(January 11, 2010 at 4:46 pm)Gilligan Wrote:Michael Newdow is in the right. The phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, and was only added in the 50's to "combat communism" by asserting the US as some kind of Christian Capitalist country when truthfully it was Capitalist...but not Christian (and indeed, it is less and less Christian every year what with the growth of other religious beliefs).(January 11, 2010 at 4:41 pm)leo-rcc Wrote: I listen, I just don't agree with everything they assert. Neither do I agree with everything Dawkins has to say.
What was your opinion of Michael Newdow and Madalyn Murray O'Hair?
Likewise with Madalyn Murray O'Hair; she was right to remove mandatory prayer from schools. Children are free to pray at school if they want to, or at home or in their spare time, but they are not forced to. To do so would be to push some form of state religion (since not all religions even have prayer in them), which is unconstitutional.
I disagree with Michael Newdow's attempt to take any reference to God out of Obama's inauguration speech though. If Obama wants to talk about his faith, it is up to him. He can even use a public speech to do it if he likes, as long as he does not impose it on others or make it seem like his beliefs are equal to the nation as a whole. If he wants to "thank God" or say "God bless America", these are his personal thoughts. As it turned out, Obama addressed all believers and non-believers in his speech, showing how he could be a truly secular President of what is meant to be a secular country.
As humans, we are prone to making mistakes, which is probably what the atheists and non-Christians mean when they told you they would not listen to arguments made by Christians. There are methods to determining the truth of things, and unfortunately when it comes to God, things get tricky. God has a complete lack of material evidence, which means that either he does not exist outright, or he does not exist materially (or else removed evidence of himself from the material world). Thus, checking for him in the usual way is impossible, and we must resort to various logical arguments, which are flawed in various ways. I will listen to Christians (or any other believer for that matter) if they present a logical argument for the existence of their deity, but if I have heard it all before, the same refuted arguments like Pascal's wager or the Ontological argument, I will probably ignore them (or else tell them to read a decent refutation).
