Of Coins and Constitutions

For those that haven't heard, a series of dollar coins were mistakingly printed without "In God We Trust" on their edge. I thought this was quite an appropriate accident given that, as far as I and many others (not just atheists) are concerned, such words have no place being there.

But of course the misprint has already prompted infuriated responses from Christians too blinded by their piety to bother checking any facts. The letter to the editor states:

This nation was built under “One God,"

Really? Then why does the Treaty of Tripoli (passed by congress and signed by the president in 1796) state,

the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion

The writer goes on to make several more astoundingly ignorant statements stating,

as far as I know “In God We Trust” has always been on our currency

Guess what! As far as I know, I have always been alive. I certainly can't remember a time before then. As such, the universe must have popped into existance with a pre-formed history at the instant of my divine birth!

Laughable, I know. In reality, I'm quite certain that the world was around long before me, and I'm sure it will carry on quite well after I'm gone. Similarly, reality exists outside of the head of Dot Beckner. The words "In God We Trust" weren't added to coins until the late 1800's and not on paper money until 1955.

But the idiocy doesn't quit there!

Why change it now? Because some liberal is offended.

It has nothing to do with being offended. Rather, it has everything to do with constitutional legality. The government endorsing religion, especially a specific religion is in direct opposition to the founding principles of this nation.

They have taken the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer out of our schools.

More uninformed falsehoods. Both the pledge and prayer are still completely legal in school. Currently, "under God" remains in the pledge and in most districts, there is no judicial ruling prohibiting the government from leading this sectarian affirmation. Prayer is allowed in schools as well, but it was ruled that this was unconstitutional if school officials were leading it, in numerous cases (many started by theists) including Murray v Curtlett, McCollum v Board of Education, and Engle v Vitale.

Dot keeps huffing and puffing though:

What next? Are they going to make us close our churches and pray in the dark corners of our basement, not to be seen or heard?

That'd be wonderful. However, this is expressly forbidden by the constitution. And since I have no interest in trying to subvert the laws of a nation that I love churches are quite safe and Christians are free to preach all they want, so long as they're not getting the government to sponsor it.

Overall, Dot is clueless as are many of the posters responding to her drivel.

But this entire occurance has serindipitously occured right as Michael Newdow visited KU last night. As you can probably expect, I was in attendance.

The issue of "under God" on our coins and in our pledge is one I've been having a growing interest in, and as soon as I have a few hours to write up a summary and review of Newdow's talk as well as some of my own research I'll be having a few more posts on this topic.