In response to my critics, I present the following:

To those who say that I am just trying to impose my will on others, I am not; I am merely saying that the reference to a god does not belong in school. According to the first Amendment to the Constitution, quoted below, congress is not supposed to make any law respecting the “establishment of religion”. This means that any government run agency should not be promoting religion of any sort either. The Pledge of Allegiance, also quoted below, does just that. It says, “One nation under God.” It does not say “One nation under Buddha” or any other religious figure. A Catholic priest placed this phrase in there in the 1950’s. It was clearly meant to represent the god of monotheistic religions such as, and not exclusive to, Christianity and Catholicism. This is clearly respecting religion, which is a clear violation of Amendment I. Students are forced to, either directly or indirectly; which will be explained in a moment, to recite this every day in school. By indirectly I am referring to what psychologists call the power of the situation. In some schools, students are allowed to not say the Pledge but are still forced to stand for it. I have had direct evidence of students who do not say the Pledge being ostracized by both the faculty and their fellow students. The students who do not say the Pledge are sometimes picked on so badly by their peers that they eventually succumb to peer pressure and begin to recite the Pledge. You may say that a student has a right to omit the words “Under God” while reciting the Pledge. This may be the case but the same issue applies. There are so many religious students in schools that any omission of this part of the Pledge will be met with the same indignation as not reciting the Pledge at all. What I am advocating is the abolition of at least the words “Under God” in the Pledge if not the Pledge in its entirety, this will be explained later. For those who say, “The 1^st Amendment forbids the federal establishment of a national denomination, but does not forbid the entanglement of government and religion”, I do not know what that means. I can only assume that you mean government can at any time, bring religion into their rulings or other government related business. It seems that this is exactly what the first Amendment is trying to prevent, any law that respects a particular establishment of religion is prohibited. We cannot have a mixture of church and state. This is unconstitutional. As I mentioned earlier, I think that the Pledge of Allegiance should be eliminated from schools. The reason for this is that any time a person pledges their allegiance to anything that means that they are saying that they are going to accept anything that the country, I.e. government, society, or beliefs, may be, no matter how atrocious. This, as has been shown throughout history, is a very dangerous thing to do. We should look at everything that a country stands for, as we all know it changes from one generation to another, very closely and ask ourselves if it is truly the right thing to do. We should be critical of any institution. We must not accept any ideas; e.g. beliefs, customs, government regulations, government decisions, etc., without full examination of all of the evidence and solid arguments backing these ideas. Blindly following ideas is not what America was suppose to be all about nor is it suppose to be what being a human is all about. We should be free to question everything and pass judgment on nothing until we are sure of all of the facts and arguments behind these ideas.

Some critics also say that the Pledge of Allegiance is not pledging your allegiance to a deity but instead to the country. In response to this I say that these are one in the same, at least according to the Pledge of Allegiance itself, depending on what one means by pledging allegiance to a country. As mentioned above, I interpret this to mean the following: by pledging allegiance to a country a person is pledging allegiance to the countries government, its society, and its cherished beliefs. By placing a phrase such as “One nation under God”, you are saying that the entire nation holds a belief in God, and I capitalize this, as does the Pledge of Allegiance, which, according to Webster’s dictionary, is meant to signify the god of the Judeo-Christian religion. If this is a belief that a nation holds and you pledge your allegiance to this nation then you are also pledging your allegiance to this belief; I.e. the belief in God.

There are also those who say that irrationality is subjective, what is irrational for one is not irrational for another. They conclude that a belief in a god may be irrational to one person but rational to another. Alas, this is not the case. By the very definitions of the words irrational and reason, quoted below from The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English, © Oxford University Press 1996, a belief in God is irrational. For many centuries, theists have been trying to come up with arguments for the existence of a god. Every argument has been proven to be in error. Some theists still contend that there are arguments that do not error in any way but most theists concede to the idea that their belief is based solely on faith, which is, by its very definition, an irrational belief in something. There are two arguments that theists still fall back on for the existence of a god; they are the moral argument and the cosmological argument. The moral argument, in its simplest form, says that without god there would be no morals. This means that a god would not be subject to morality. A god would have no constraints put on any actions it does. To put it simply, a god would be amoral, without morals. If morality were somehow above a god and independent of it then there would be no reason to posit the existence of a god as a basis for morality. There would be morals in the world without a god. The cosmological argument says that every fact in the world is contingent on some other fact, this cannot go on forever so there must be a non-contingent fact to base all of these facts on and that is a god. If we say that every fact is contingent on some other fact then we cannot say that there is some fact that is non-contingent. If we say that there is a non-contingent fact then could not we say that it is the universe that is this fact rather than positing a god? All other attempts at an argument have been equally as miserable. Any belief that does not have a good argument to back it up is an irrational belief. There is no subjectivity in what is rational and what is irrational.

Irrational

1 illogical; unreasonable. 2 not endowed with reason.

Reason

1 intellectual faculty by which conclusions are drawn from premises.

To the critics who say that in order to make an informed decision we must have all of the information presented to us; I say that they are absolutely right but if the information has been shown to be in error and nothing further can be learned from this then it shouldn’t be taught in a school. As mentioned above, all arguments for the existence of a god have been proven fallacious. These arguments should only be presented to students of mythology and history, as well as skepticism and other classes which make sure that they point out that these views are in error and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Besides that, I do not see how allowing for the words “Under God” to be said allowed in school, teaches anything to the students. Saying the ‘Pledge’ every day is not suppose to be a teaching tool. It is not part of a lesson plan.

As for those who say that everything is based on our own personal biases, I as them, what about mathematics, gravity, or relativity, or the biological mechanisms of the human body, or any other good science? These do not seem like ideas which are based on personal biases. Rather, it seems like these ideas are based on rational thought and empirical evidence.

The critics also may say that kids are very inquisitive in their nature. This is the case. Much more so than adults in some circumstances. If students are taught the proper way, with a good dose of skepticism and allowing for the weight of all of the evidence to guide them to a conclusion, then these students would not need to try out things like alcohol, drugs, smoking, or religion. They will realize that these things are wrong and harmful. Kids do not try these things strictly because they are considered taboo either. They try these things because they see other adults, which they are told they should respect and listen to, doing them so they decide to mimic the adults.

Finally, some may say that this country was established by our founding fathers on the faith in God. To this I say this is not true. One of the main signers of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, when referring to god, used the term “Natures God”. People of a deist type of belief commonly use this term. For those unfamiliar with the term deist, according to the Oxford Companion to Philosophy it means the “Philosophical belief in a god established by reason and evidence (notably by the design argument) without acceptance of the special information supposedly revealed in, for example, the Bible or Koran. Hence, deism involves belief in a creator who has established the universe and its processes but does not respond to human prayer or need. In the eighteenth century, the word was applied to positions as far apart as the positive religious rationalism of Samuel Clarke and the negative quasiatheism of Anthony Collins. The archetypal deist is Voltaire.” You may say; “Well, he still believed in a creator”, this may be so but he was not advocating that the government be based on this idea. To prove this here is a quote:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

About the idea of God, itself he wrote:

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.”

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Amendment I

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Pledge of Allegiance

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God. Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”