(January 30, 2012 at 4:51 pm)walknh2o Wrote:(January 30, 2012 at 2:09 pm)walknh2o Wrote: I wanted to be one good atheist after I turned my back on Christianity.
Since I can't really obey "love thy neighbor" and "don't be angry" types of rules, therefore I'm a hypocrite Christian,right?
Well, being an American citizen with "IN GOD WE TRUST" in my wallet, using and reading the text everyday to buy stuffs will dis-qualified me as a real atheist, and become a hypocrite again for the second time?
Give me your $.02
History lesson:
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 140 making it mandatory that all coinage and paper currency display the motto "In God We Trust." The following year, Public Law 851 was enacted and signed, which officially replaced the national motto "E Pluribus Unum" with "In God We Trust" All of this occurred at the height of cold war tension, when political divisions between the Soviet and western block was simplistically portrayed as a confrontation between Judeo-Christian civilization and the "godless" menace of communism. Indeed, the new national motto was only part of a broader effort to effectively religionize civic ritual and symbols. On June 14, 1954, Congress unanimously ordered the inclusion of the words "Under God" into the nation's Pledge of Allegiance. By this time, other laws mandating public religiosity had also been enacted, including a statute for all federal justices and judges to swear an oath concluding with "So help me God."
Is it a futile form of protest? A symptom of frustration? Some Atheists and separationists are crossing out the national motto on paper money. Whatever your opinion, the history of how "In God We Trust" ended up on currency shows that the motto is religious, not secular, in its origin and function today.
"inner conviction" using "IN GOD WE TRUST" money just gives me guilty feelings to be a real dedicated atheist.
"An atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An atheist accepts that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth – for all men together to enjoy. An atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help lead to a life of fulfillment."
