It’s a Masonic symbol, and Freemasonry was fashionable at the time
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Didn't they go secular because freemasonry is essentially gnostic and sees all religion as tending towards the divine realisation?
Something like that. IIRC, Franklin, Jefferson and such were deists, i.e. believing that there’s something godlike and numinous but that something is not the Abrahamic God or anything similar, but rather some kind of sacred principle of being or something.
IIRC, Freemasonry requires one to purport to believe in a supreme being, though that is so loosely defined that one can fill the gap with a tautological definition.
"Our country has no preferential treatment for any religion"
"One nation under God"...
"In God we Trust"...
Eye of God on all 1$ bank notes...
i think the "under god" stuff was added later...
Apparently the pledge wasn't even a thing until the late 1800s, and wasn't adopted until the 40s.
Seems like overall is an indicator of modern jingoism and has nothing to do with founding fathers...
In God We Trust is also an objectively less cool motto than e pluribus unum which translates to out of many, one. We traded the original ideal of a people united by difference into a boringly generic religious proclamation just to try to stick it to the commies.
The beginnings of our current Christo-fascist problems in the McCarthy red scare.
As an outsider I always cringe and laugh at anything related to these kinds of things done there and we see on tv. Random political people talking? Then they mention god and all stupid stuff. Justice things like on a judgment and people swear on bibles and shit like that. It's a cult, all of it.
They don't specify a particular God
The subtext is clear and not all religions believe in a single God and not believing in God is a religious preference when talking about a state not discriminating against or in favor of a specific religion.
I can't think of a religion off-hand that doesn't have a single God, even famously "polytheistic" Hinduism boils down to narrower aspects of Brahman. And I challenge any thinking atheist to read through Spinoza without adopting a trace of abstract deism. Many of the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin to whom some sources trace the motto, were themselves abstract deists; so I question the clarity of the subtext.
If you want to move that goalpost that much try not to hurt your back!
It's 100% clear that "God" in this case is the Abrahamic God and especially the Christian version of God. In the end the problem is still the same, you can't pretend your country doesn't have a religious preference and then put God all over the place.
Again, no it isn't. You've presented no evidence to support that. It is nowhere near 100% clear.
Sure, all the people who wanted it to be added were christians but they certainly weren't thinking about the christian God!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance
Inspired by the Gettysburg Address (by a christian), first adopted by the Knights of Columbus (a catholic order), first attempt at amending the pledge by a catholic congressman and finally done by Eisenhower (who came from a family with a strong christian background) after hearing a Presbyterian minister's sermon calling for the addition... And it all happened during a decade where christian church attendance % was the highest it had ever been and increasing!
https://today.usc.edu/the-1950s-powerful-years-for-religion/
https://religionnews.com/2014/12/11/1940s-america-wasnt-religious-think-rise-fall-american-religion/
In a country where even today only a third of the population doesn't identify itself to an Abrahamic religions, you really need to be ignoring context to believe that's not the God being referred to in this context.
How about you find me a source quoting the people that wanted it to be added that says it's a neutral God and that atheists were taken into consideration when making the change even though they don't believe in God. I think you'll have a hard time with that second part considering it was a move against the atheist communists.
Except that Christianity is the only one with the hubris to take the generic term "god", slap a capital "G" on it, and call it the name of their god. Capital-G-God is the one that keeps being used, even by you...