No Freedom From Religion

People who don't know anything about a topic shouldn't put themselves in the position of offering their ill-informed opinions on it. That should be an obvious truism, something that everyone knows and everyone follows, but I'm sad to say that it's ignored on a constant basis - especially by those who feel it is their duty to tell others how awful atheists and secularists are.

Trisha Knapp writes for the Chaffey Breeze:

The argument is being made once again that the Constitution prohibits the mention of God in any public venue. It doesn't. ... It doesn't say you are protected for all of eternity from having your fragile little ears bruised by the harsh pronunciation of the word G-O-D. The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

I think that it's pretty clear that if Trisha Knapp read even a tiny bit of the arguments on the Pledge of Allegiance, she didn't actually understand any of them. I don't know which is less flattering: that she wrote her opinion column without bothering to do a little original research or that she did the research and came away at least as ignorant as before. Perhaps she read the opinions of members of the Christian Right and imagined that qualified as "real" research?

Knapp actually does get one thing right: the Constitution doesn't prohibit the mention fo God in public venues. The problem is, that isn't the argument Michael Newdow makes, that any other atheists make, or that any of the religious people supporting Newdow's case have made. No one, to my knowledge, has ever argued that people should be prohibited from uttering the word "God" in public. It would be a silly argument to make and it's even more silly that conservatives like Knapp try to attribute this position to others.

The real argument being made is that the government doesn't have the authority to declare, in the legal code, that an official statement of declarative patriotism must be accompanied by a declaration of a certain type of theism. Our government has no more authority to declare (and tell us we should declare) that we are "one nation under God" than it does to declare that we are one nation under Jesus, one nation under Zeus, or one nation under no God. The current wording of the Pledge of Allegiance is wrong for all the same reasons that those alternative readings are.

Couldn't a case be made that Newdow is attempting to prohibit the other 30 children in his daughter's class from their inalienable right to recite the pledge, or to practice their own religions? To utter aloud the word "God" without government interference, and to infuse that word with whatever meaning is traditionally held by their families?

No one is saying that individuals cannot add "under God" when they recite the pledge. People should have that right just as they have the right to insert "under Jesus" or "under no God" if it suits them. The problem lies in the government's legal codification that "under God" should be included. No one should be stopped from saying it, but by the same token no one should be told that they should say it. This is important because Trisha Knapp also writes:

Ultimately, we must go back to the wording of the document itself - The Bill of Rights. "Congress shall make no law..." When last I checked, Congress had not dictated that every kindergartener recite the pledge or face jail time.

It is true that no one faces jail time - but the definition of a "law" isn't "something which, if broken, results in jail time." Again we are forced to confront Trisha Knapp's profoundly disturbing ignorance. It is a simple fact that current law lists the words "under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance. Knapp acknowledges that "Congress shall make no law..." on such matters, so in fact she herself has provided an argument in support of Newdow - but she's just not knowledgeable enough to realize it.

I don't suppose that any of this ridiculousness is surprising. Trish Knapp is the same person who has written that: gay marriage is bad because the small number of gays who marry will result in so many divorces that courts will become "clogged" in the process, that "the origin of laws as we know them" is the Bible (displaying a horrible ignorance of the history of law), that becoming a homosexual is a "choice" much like whether to remain a virgin or not (I wonder when she chose to be a heterosexual?), that no religion endorses homosexuality (I can't even begin to imagine the depths of ignorance necessary for that comment), and so forth. If anything, the material I quoted above is among the more sane things she has written.

Read More:

• Secularism 101
• Separation of Church and State 101
• Religion in Public Schools
• Newdow v. U.S. Congress (case summary & explanation)
• Pledge of Allegiance (background & origins)