George Santayana, philospher. Born Madrid, raised and lived in US, died Rome, Italy.

Re: First amendment, separation, etc etc etc.

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

What that means, simply, is that the Federal Government can NOT align itself with ANY religion, good, bad or indifferent. And, I hate to break it to you, but using the word GOD in official documents, signs, seals, coins, oaths, and so on RESPECTS the ESTABLISHMENT of a religion. We all know that when you say "GOD", you speak of a Christian deity.

How would you good Christians feel if we added "In Allah We Trust" to all our coins? Or sang, "Buddha bless the USA!", or "Shiva and Vishnu Bless America" ???

The inclusion of the word "GOD" in official government stuff implies support of the Christian religion, to the exclusion of all others. That's simply not right.

George Santayana, philospher. Born Madrid, raised and lived in US, died Rome, Italy.

Re: First amendment, separation, etc etc etc.

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

What that means, simply, is that the Federal Government can NOT align itself with ANY religion, good, bad or indifferent. And, I hate to break it to you, but using the word GOD in official documents, signs, seals, coins, oaths, and so on RESPECTS the ESTABLISHMENT of a religion. We all know that when you say "GOD", you speak of a Christian deity.

How would you good Christians feel if we added "In Allah We Trust" to all our coins? Or sang, "Buddha bless the USA!", or "Shiva and Vishnu Bless America" ???

The inclusion of the word "GOD" in official government stuff implies support of the Christian religion, to the exclusion of all others. That's simply not right.

As I said in my previous post, the establishment of religion originally referred to sects of the Christian religion. It has since been modified by courts to include non-Christian religions, but the United States is essentially a Christian oriented nation the respects the expression of other religions. Recent surveys show that 80% of Americans claim to be Christians. To have in Allah we trust in our documents, etc., would be to have less than 1% of the population being expressed over the 80%. The US is a Christian nation in both orientation and establishment. To try to modify this is to ignore history and is equivalent to the current attempt to modify the 2000+ year old definition of marriage.