©Rrk, Jan. ‘03 

 In the McCarthy era the insertion of “God” in the Pledge was a paranoidal defense against “godless” communism. Granting Michael Newdow that a corrective measure is called for, it will never come to pass because it is as permanently engraved in the minds of Americans as “In God We Trust” on currency. That the good doctor equates this aberration with “civil rights...as important and as serious as any in our history” is ludicrous.

He thinks he is perceived as a “second class” citizen who is “allowed not to worship” as though atheism were some weird belief not to believe. On the contrary, atheism is not on a plane of religion or non-religion. It is a philosophy — stripped of faith — intertwined with the scientific nature of the universe.As such atheism does not deny the symbolic syntax of language. That Congress opens its sessions with prayer is of no concern to an atheist precisely because his perspective is from a distant, intellectual indifference — not from the emotional view that he is free not to worship.

An atheist can still be thrilled walking by the magnificent Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza without the slightest guilt that he does not feel the need to take umbrage. However odd and demonstrative religious practices to an atheist, they are never repulsive except for gory sacrifices. An atheist does not proselytize — to each his own — and philosophically accepts diversity as natural selection in a complex world. In fact, he himself can accept his own aberrations, such as when he mistakes his thumb for the nail head and yelps “Jesus Christ!”

If an atheist is reared to think religion intrusive, then he is as intolerant as one who takes religion to heart. It is contradictory for an atheist to be an “activist” unless religious activists overtly place him in harms’s way. The utterance of “under God” does no harm for he is capable — unlike some adversaries — to separate fact from symbolism and still be able to live with those who take the symbols as fact.
 Copyright © 1999 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: November 9, 2003