It looks like your money will continue to have “In God We Trust” written on it.
The lawsuit filed by atheist Carlos Kidd against President Obama and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to remove the motto from the currency was dismissed by a judge earlier this week.
The brief ruling by the judge said that there was no Establishment Clause conflict based on previous church/state separation cases.
I’m no lawyer… but how is that phrase not an endorsement of religion over non-religion? (Not only that, you know the phrase refers to the Christian god…)
It’s not the most pressing issue atheists have to worry about — we still have to fight against faith-based initiatives, for one — and I would think it virtually impossible to get the phrase off our currency anytime soon, but this is a lawsuit I don’t mind seeing.
Some could argue that it’s yet another case that will set a precedent for the future — a lawsuit that will hurt our future efforts in this area.
Still, I see an upside. Lawsuits like this can get blasted by the media and bloggers. But it raises the question of why that phrase is on the currency in the first place. People start to read up on why the phrase was adopted by our country as its motto — in response to those “Godless Communists” — and why it was originally put on our coins in the 1860s.
Why was it, you ask? Here’s a piece of the letter from Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase which urged the Secretary to put holy words on the coins:
Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.
One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.
…
This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.
A couple years later, “In God We Trust” was adopted. It went away for a little while, but it’s been there since the 1950s.
How is that phrase not Christian? How is it not a violation of church/state separation? How is it not a violation of the Establishment Clause?
The judge was wrong, plain and simple.
And, yes, so were all those other judges before him.
This week the theme is Bait and Switch and of course they thought about Christians.
So they found Off The Map because we are in the business of helping Christians learn how to not be jerks which means we hear a lot of jerky stories (some of which are bait and switch).
So last weekend I found myself sitting in the studios of KUOW / NPR Seattle (94.9 FM), headphones firmly situated, with Ira Glass in the middle of my head talking with me. The conversation continued for an hour and fifteen minutes…
I suppose Jim still technically owns my soul… which means I can safely say I have now met Ira Glass.
… All of this is informed by my worldview as a communist. At the same time, because this communist worldview is rooted in confronting the world as it actually is and as it actually can be, there is tremendous room for others, coming from their own worldviews but similarly committed to the betterment of humanity, to be enriched through an engagement with these views on morality.
From all this, it is clear that the EHSC knew I was a communist from the very beginning. But, as the date of my long-scheduled talk approached, some began a drive to cancel my talk exactly because of these views…
Second, we have a statement from a woman (Sue B.) who coordinated Sunsara’s tour and worked closely with the EHSC over the past few weeks:
… I believe that part of the reason EHSC is persisting in deliberately misrepresenting what happened and spinning a story that fortifies an untruthful account is because they don’t want to confront the reality of how ugly this whole thing has been, how much it goes against their own principles…
Finally, there’s a statement from lawyer Martha Conrad, who was present at the event:
… I was present at the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago [EHSC] on November 1st. I personally witnessed the entire incident leading to the arrest and can lay out the salient facts of what occurred at EHSC that day.
That morning, I entered the building behind Ms. Taylor and others about ten minutes before the 10:30 am program was to start. No one at any time told Ms. Taylor, the videographer or anyone else that they could not enter the event, which was advertised as being “free and open to the public.”…
I’m not sure if there’s any resolution to be had between Sunsara and EHSC. But at least both sides have had a chance to explain themselves in a public setting.
I just started my day with a dose of outrage. The notion of hell exists in many religions and denominations. If a person believed it to be torture and that his friends or family members would suffer eternally unless they converted, it makes sense for them to evangelize.
What a powerfully successful meme. What a sick, twisted, and fucked up belief system.
I almost blew a blood vessel watching the following bullshit. It’s a hypothetical letter from hell written by a teenager to his Christian friend describing the terrible agony and asking why he didn’t evangelize.
I refuse to watch it again to type up a transcript of any kind.
I used to think that John Stuart Mill was right that when ideas were freely exchanged the marketplace of ideas would eventually expose the truth and that people would come to know it for the truth. But then I started learning more about the flaws and weaknesses in human reasoning and perception. We’re extremely vulnerable to this kind of emotional manipulation, and it threatens to overwhelm our rational faculties. Being true is different from being convincing. I no longer trust that the truth will win out.
Talk about intellectual cowardice. This entire argument is a blatant appeal to emotion which should be dispelled by stopping to think for 10 seconds. But when you’re irrationally terrified, it’s hard to form rational thoughts. Too often, religion uses bad logical arguments slipped in the ‘emotional’ side door to our beliefs.
These are the memes we are up against. People believe it because they themselves have been affected by the meme. I give them credit for genuinely believing in the horror of hell and for – understandably – wanting their friends and family to avoid it.
We are not up against the people who believe; we are up against the memes that have infected society and are spreading irrational fear. It’ll be a tough struggle – we can’t overcome the inherent flaws in our evolved brains. But I for one think it’s a struggle worth having.
This is something that i’ve been wracking my brain about lately. I live in Lynchburg, Virginia (yes, THAT Lynchburg) and there’s this one house on this one street that happens to be on my route to work. This guy has his own personal little church sign board you can put lettering on, and boy does he wear his beliefs on his sleeve.
For the longest time most of his messages and statements have been pretty benign. Standard stuff like “Jesus is life” and “It takes more faith to be an Athiest than a christian” (he can’t spell either).
However, over the past 6 months or so, the sign has gotten highly offensive. For example, he currently has “TURN OR BURN” on his sign. Other previously offensive things I’ve seen on that board are “EVOLUTION: A LIE TAUGHT TO CHILDREN” and “EVERYONE HAS A MASTER.” I’m just glad I work a later shift now and don’t have to stare at the other side of that thing anymore. Being that this is a sign owned by a private individual, is there anything I can do? I’m sure hundreds if not thousands of people come down that road every day and are exposed to the misinformation and hate this guy spews through that sign.
Can anything be done about this sign? I’ve tried scouring through laws for my state on google, but keep coming up empty handed. Please help!
J
Dear J,
I think you know what the answer is. Live with it, and every time you see that sign, rejoice gratefully that you live in the land of the free. The sign is apparently private property on private property. Unless it is violating local signage codes or zone regulations, there is nothing you can do about it and nothing that you should do about it.
Either we all have freedom of speech or none of us have. Any law that could shut him up could and would be used to shut you up as well. Many people have given their lives for both of you to be free to speak your minds, and I’m afraid that to protect our freedom, many more may have to give their lives yet. There will always be those among us who would forcibly remake everyone in their own image, if they could. Resist the seductive temptation to be one of them.
We need to raise our threshold for feeling offended. It seems to have become very low in our society lately. Increasingly, more people are decrying as “offensive,” smaller and smaller things that contradict their views. If this thin-skinned trend continues, since no one can see anything exactly as anyone else does, then eventually everyone will be offended by everyone else on every possible subject. We will be omni-offended.
I know it can be annoying to see some dimwit displaying his disapproval of his wide variety of scapegoats. Annoyance is inside us, not around us. It is our reaction, our emotion, our creation. If we allow too much of it to occupy our minds, it drains us of our strength, and it foments discouragement. We will never get rid of all the annoying things, but we can change how we respond to those things.
Carl Jung once said, “Everything that annoys us about others can help us to understand ourselves.” Disagree intellectually with the sign man’s opinions all you want. But you can follow your annoyance into your mind to find where you feel insecure, or have hurt, or have your own anger or resentment, and then by facing and resolving those things, you can become more serene. Imagine. Using that sign to become more serene?! Richard, you’re crazy. Yes I am. Thank you.
A sense of humor can help as well. Think of the phrase “sense of humor” literally. Not creating something that is funny, but sensing the humor that is already there in the situation. It’s there if you can but sense it. Sensing the humor in a situation brings you a measure of mastery of that situation. You can begin to rise above it.
Think of the sign as a public service announcement. If the guy wants to publicly announce that a superstitious, intolerant ignoramus who is getting steadily worse lives in this house, then thanks for the warning! If anyone has an emergency on that road, they’ll know better and go to the next house for assistance.
I’d be looking forward to my daily dose of dementia from the local kook. There’s a chuckle in it if you can first create peace within yourself.
Richard
You may send your questions for Richard to . All questions will eventually be answered, but not all can be published. There is a large number of requests; please be patient.
In short, as I reported it, Sunsara was invited to speak to the group on the topic of “Morality Without Gods,” then later uninvited when her other political/social views became known (and it was understoof that some of those views would work their way into her talk). Sunsara got quite a bit of support from individuals (including me) who found it ironic and “unethical” that a speaker at an ethical society would be uninvited for holding views such as Communism.
Sunsara staged a protest the morning she was supposed to speak, inviting EHSC members to hear her talk at another member’s house. A videographer was on hand to capture this… as were a couple cops, who arrested the man with the camera. It wasn’t pretty.
Members of the EHSC board feel they’ve gotten a bad rap from this and much of it is due to misinformation being spread.
They wanted a chance to clear this up and sent me the following email. With their permission, I’m posting it here:
Dear Mr. Mehta,
We don’t know if you know all of what has happened since your letter of support for Ms. Taylor but we wanted to give you the history of all that has transpired. All of the signees of this letter contributed their shared experience to this account.
Our Sunday speakers are chosen by a committee of nine people. In July, at one of the committee member’s nominations, Ms. Taylor was provisionally invited to speak on a topic of “Morality Without Gods” on November 1. The official confirmation letter was withheld until the committee was provided with a written description of her talk.
The written description was finally received on October 13. Some of the committee felt that the description provided was far outside the topic that was originally proposed. Ms. Taylor was contacted about adjusting her talk to fit what the committee originally thought they were getting. She understandably refused to adjust her talk. The committee decided by a vote of 7 to 2 to cancel Ms. Taylor as a speaker and the cancellation, with apologies, was emailed on October 19.
We are democratically run organization and the vote isn’t always unanimous; some members were disappointed. A petition was started to let the invitation stand of which only about 20% of the members supported. In the end we stuck with our democratic principles.
From October 19 onward Ms. Taylor and her people demanded she be given the November 1 platform. Attempt after attempt was made to find a solution that, although not ideal for either side, was palatable for both. The society bent over backwards to appease Ms. Taylor. She was given an October 31 workshop that was well attended and a member of the society offered her home for Ms. Taylor’s self proclaimed “speech in exile” on November 1. Notice of the “exile” speech was even made through the Society’s list serve. The only thing we would not agree to was having her speak at the society on November 1. All we asked is that she not disrupt the Sunday platform. She did not budge an inch; there was no effort at compromise from her or her people.
One plain clothes police officer from the Skokie police department was at the society the morning of November 1 because some members felt threatened by the fact that Ms. Taylor would not commit to not disrupting the Sunday program. We had no idea what a Sunsara Taylor inspired protest would entail so the decision was made to err on the side of member safety.
When Ms. Taylor, her cameraman and 20 plus followers showed up on Sunday they were asked not to enter the building, they ignored this request but no action was taken by the society and they entered private property.
After entering the building and our auditorium, Ms. Taylor started to give her speech and her camera man started taping. They were asked to stop and let us continue our event in our building repeatedly. They refused and it is then that we asked the single plain clothes officer for support.
When the cameraman acted aggressively toward the police officer he called for backup on his radio. Uniformed officers responded to that call. This man continued to resist police attempts to get him out of the building. It finally took five police officers using mace to subdue him. One police officer was injured.
What you do with this information is of course entirely up to you, but we thought you should be aware.
Respectfully,
Matt Cole – President
John Ungashick – Board Member
Lisa Crowe – Board Member
Sue Walton – Board Member
Laura Drower – High School Youth Advisor
Sharon Appelquist – Sunday School Director
Joe Burck – Program Committe
Susan Burck – Program Committe
Evan Kane – Member
Katie Merrell – Member
Ed Drower – Member
Tom Hoeppner – Member
Not that they needed to, but they also sent me copies of their email correspondence, which confirms the statements in their letter.
I extended an invitation to Sunsara to see if she’d like to respond in kind. I haven’t heard back yet, but if she would like to issue a public response, this forum is available to her.
Even for those who don’t believe in luck, we know that some people feel luckier than others. Some people stumble across good jobs, good dates, and good opportunities for no discernible reason. What can you do to become luckier? According to this 2003 article I just came across, you listen to Richard Wiseman (who, by the way, has a great blog).
I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people’s ability to notice the unexpected.
…
My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
My one comment (besides, “isn’t that so interesting?”) would be that he didn’t mention the necessity of preparation. I imagine that if you prepare for a variety of circumstances, you’ll be able to get the best outcomes and seem lucky. Bad events won’t seem as unlucky and you’ll be ready to take full advantage of the good events.
Wiseman was even able to train people to become (feel) luckier!
I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck.
One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky.
I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Niels Bohr. His friend noticed a horseshoe hanging above Bohr’s door and asked why he put it up, given that he didn’t believe in luck. Bohr replied, “I don’t believe in luck, but I hear it works even if you don’t believe.”
Having a “lucky” talisman can give people confidence – and thus lead to better results. It becomes a self-reinforcing and helpful belief. I might hesitate before bursting that bubble by arguing with them that luck doesn’t exist. But if “luck” is just a combination of learnable skills, we would be empowering people, not breaking a spell by alerting people to the fact.
I found this article fascinating. Of course, I always love it when we come up with rational reasons for things that we previously considered out of our control, but it’s particularly relevant to me right now. I’m in the process of looking for a new job (update on that soon) and trying to have a “resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good”.
Isn’t it “lucky” that I found this article when I did?
We humans are so intent on finding meaning in things that we have a tendency to find it even where none was intended. It’s what we call a false positive and it happens all the time. We often hear about people seeing the Jesus or the virgin Mary in a particular piece of toast, water stain, or IKEA bathroom woodwork. But we usually associate it with images, not words, making this story about Governor Schwarzenegger particularly valuable.
It turns out that Schwarzenegger sent a veto letter to the state legislature. This is nothing out of the ordinary and wouldn’t be worth my mentioning, so you must know that there’s more of the story to come. No, it’s the “secret message” that got attention – see if you can find it (image from the San Francisco Bay Guardian):
But wait — there’s a real message, an actual missive from the Gov to Tom, embedded in this text. And it’s not hard to find — in fact, it’s hard to believe it could have been a coincidence.
Read down the letters on the left side of the message
If you read along the left-most column and take the first letter of each line, you get “I fuck you”. This was seen as a dastardly and immature prank. But I’m betting that the odds of a ‘coincidence’ like this are higher than intuition suggests.
To be honest, I’m not particularly interested in whether of not the message was intended, but the story does raise an interesting question: how likely are we to find a “hidden message” where none was intended?
It’s absolutely possible that the message was deliberate – I certainly used to do that sort of thing in my English papers (I hated the classes and needed some creative way to keep the projects interesting). There are also other important factors – there was a feud between the governor and the politician in question, the wording is stilted, etc. But as it stands, I’m not willing to rule out the null hypothesis (a hilarious coincidence) quite yet.
It looks like Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room tried the kind of analysis I was envisioning. He says the odds of that particular phrase are about 1 in a trillion, taking into account the likelihood of different letters being the start of each word.
Now, the likelihood that some phrase would be spelled out? Ignoring letter distribution, there’s about a 0.3% chance any four letter string is a common English word, and a 3% chance any three letter string is a common English word. The specific likelihood of the words “soap” and “poet” appearing, for example, given the Schwarzenegger speeches, is one in 100,000 — much greater than the one in 10 million shot of “fuck” appearing.
As letter distribution would make the appearance of common words more likely (e.g. “teas”), the probability of some two-word combination appearing is on the order of two percent. The likelihood of it making any sense, of course, is smaller. A more accurate estimation is left to the reader.
Good to see there are fellow nerds in the world interested in spending time on the question! But what’s missing from Brad’s analysis is the possibility of messages hidden other ways – we would be similarly remarking had the message been at the end of each line instead of the beginning. Or had the message been in the first letter of consecutive words. Or the last letter of consecutive words. Or in another language. Or backwards. This would surely increase the potential for “hidden” messages dramatically.
I should see how often “hidden messages” appear in the Bible.
This is a job for Python! Quick – to the bat-computer lab!
You’ll all be happy to know that this conversation took place in my classroom yesterday:
Me: …and that’s how you do a Geometry proof. Any questions?
[Male student raises hand]
Me: Yes…?
Student How does a tampon work? I can’t figure it out!
Me: FML…
Good times.
On top of that, I was at school all night for parent-teacher conferences. So I’m a little exhausted.
I did have some exciting news to share about the current SSA fundraiser and I posted that below.
For the rest of today, though, I’m turning the blog over to my friend, Jesse Galef, who will offer a few postings of his own.
…
We are almost there.
You see the thermometer in the side bar. We’ve gotten contributions, large and small, from so many people and we’re unbelievably close to reaching the $50,000 mark set by Todd Stiefel when he made his matching offer.
Todd told us the deadline was December 21st. We felt there was a lot of support for us out there, but to raise that much money in only 2.5 months was an admittedly daunting task.
Is it possible to raise it all within a single month…?
Please help us get there and make the campus environment a safer haven for student activism, expressions of freethought, and intelligent conversations about religion.
Secular Student Alliance Member Todd Stiefel has agreed to match all donations to us by 12/21/2009 up to a total of $50,000. Double the value of your support and help us get the whole match by donating now.
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