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I won't refute, but add too.

What most forget is that a majority of the founding fathers were Christians. Read the Declaration of Independence and notice how many references to God there is. Also notice what it says about inaleinable rights, given to us by the creator. Where does the Bill of rights come from? Not men, but God. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mention separation of church and state. These two documents tell us one thing, God is an intangable part of our government and our way of life. The atheist/communists/socailist want that changed so they may rule us like in China or the former soviet republic.

WITHOUT INALIENABLE RIGHTS GIVEN TO US BY OUR CREATOR, THEN WE HAVE NO RIGHTS.

I won't refute, but add too.

WITHOUT INALIENABLE RIGHTS GIVEN TO US BY OUR CREATOR, THEN WE HAVE NO RIGHTS.

Will someone explain this whole pledge mess to me in simple terms? I haven't been following the whole story too closely, because it doesn't make sense and everyone else is following it anyway.

Has the judge suggested that something before him must be remedied, or has he merely made a legal finding regarding the pledge and the constitution? Of course in either case, there's nothing binding on the states.

A federal law actually regarding the pledge would be a federal law requiring the pledge to have a certain wording AND a certain place in public proceedings. I'm not aware of any such law. Is this the proverbial "tempest in a teapot"?

I tried some of your earlier examples of God in documents etc. on my friends and they said that they weren't the same because they weren't being compelled to say them.

So I was thinking what about this example of using God?

When you testify in a court of law, you must place your hand on a Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God

In this case, the person is being compelled to swear the oath to God. Is this Constitutional? Are atheists compelled to take the oath? Are atheists compelled to tell the truth in a court?

Here's what I think is the basic reasoning of the liberal supporters of the decision. It all hinges on what "an establishment of religion" means.

There has been a significant trend in the Supreme Court to judge that there is "an establishment of religion" whenever any religious expression is sponsored or allowed at a state funded institution or a public event with which the state is in any way involved. That trend was taken farthest, to my knowledge, in the Santa Fe, Texas case, decided in June 2000, which involved school-sponsored pre-game inspirational remarks by a student which might include a prayer if the student so chose. The logic of that decision, as I remember, was that one's rights are violated if anyone expresses religious faith in one's hearing on a state-sponsored occasion.

So on this reasoning, it doesn't matter whether the Pledge is voluntary or not; if the state sponsors or allows any reference to "God" as a real entity however defined, "religion" is being "established." It is difficult to see why this reasoning does not forbid the posting of the Declaration of Independence in schools.

The rational answer to this is that in the 18th century the phrase "an establishment of religion" had a precise meaning. The Framers were not equating "religion" with "religiosity" or declaring that religious faith must be kept quiet in the public square. Until the 19th century, the basic definition of "religion" in western society was Cicero's "a way of worshiping the gods." In other words, "an establishment of religion" means putting state power behind one way of "worshiping the gods" at the expense of others. It meant giving one way of "worshiping the gods" the status the Anglican Church had in England, the Lutheran churches in the German princedoms, and the Roman Catholic Church had in other European countries. The Anglican example was the central one, since the Framers were Whigs, and the specter of corrupt prelates making deals with kings to their own advantage was one of the central themes of the Whig version of English history.

The recent jurisprudence that equates "an establishment of religion" with anything that can be considered religion-friendly in public life, however non-coercive, reflects the tendency of the courts, following left-wing attitudes, to turn the First Amendment into a declaration of each person's right to "freedom from religion." The First Amendment never had anything to do with protecting the tender ears of secularists from the jarring effect of the public pronouncement of the word "God."

The Pledge is speech. No speech is unconstitutional unless it's threatening someone's life.

How can a pledge be unconstitutional?

And if forcing someone to say the Pledge in a public school is unconstitutional, why is forcing someone to listen to evolution being taught not unconstitutional? Where in the Constitution does it say that you have the right to a public education? If you don't like the public schools then get your kids out; maybe this school voucher ruling will help you to send your kids to an athiest private school of your choice now, if you can find one. If you want your kids schooled athiest, then homeschool them athiest.

In constitutional theory, what generally goes on in a state-run public school is not the federal government's concern. If a state wants God in or out of their public schools, then that's the state's concern, not the federal government.

The problem really is in libs thinking of the educational environment as a compulsory statist function where the pursuit of knowledge is entirely controlled by government action. A student's relationship to a teacher is not the same as that of a citizen to a court of law, the senate, congress, presidency, etc. Discussions about "God" or propositional discourse mentioning the phrase "under God"
do not compel someone to belong to a "state church," one Christian denomination notarized as requiring membership of all citizens in order to have voting rights, property rights, etc. The "establishment clause" is not about protecting people from being embarrassed or offended by mention of the existence of God. It prevents one Christian denomination, one of the churches active in 18th-century America (Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists), from being legally "established" as the official state church of the United States. Since they all believed in God, the mere mention of the existence of God does not give preference, priority or legal establishment to any one particular denomination (as, for instance, the Church of England) in the legal "established" sense which forms the background of the amendment. The idea that the secular temporal order and historic action are "under" a Creator and divine providence was discussed by all the major players. That mention of such were included in the Declaration of Independence and can be found in various writings of Washington, Jefferson,
Madison, et al., is no minor accident. Whether you want to call this "ceremonial deism" or a first principle of Anglo-American culture, it's part of our history.

"2. Jefferson gave federal money to missionaries."

Jefferson approved the Lousiana Purchase without a Constitutional Amendment, too. (Although my understanding is that he at least drafted one.) In any case, just because Jefferson did something, doesn't mean it was Constitutional. (In fact, Jefferson wasn't a member of the Constitutional Convention, because he was in France at the time.)

"3. Madison, the father of the Bill of Rights, supported, alongside with Jefferson, a bill to "punish Sabbathbreakers" while in the Virginia Legislature. Keep in mind these were two of the most liberal founding fathers."

That's because the First Amendment applied only to the federal government...at least until the 14th Amendment was passed. The First Amenment allows STATES to establish religions, it merely prohibits the federal government (Congress) from doing so.

"4. The U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the public display of the Ten Commandments is wrong, has a statue of Moses and the Commandments in its chambers."

No Supreme Court judge follows the Constitution unerringly...and many of them basically disregard it. See item #1...just because Supreme Court judges do something, doesn't mean they're following the Constitution.

"5. It was not until the 1940's when the current radical view of the separation of church and state came about. In fact, previous rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as state supreme courts, ruled in favor of things as far as blue laws mandating the closing of stores on Sundays."

Yes, and the doctrine of "separate but equal" was accepted throughout the South, right into the 1960s. That doesn't mean that "separate but equal" is compatible with the Constitution.

"6. The Northwest Ordinance, which was needed to become a new territory since I think 1787, required that schools support religion and morality."

Again, the First Amendment's prohibition against establishment of religion only applied to the Federal government (not to state or territorial governments) until the 14th Amendment (circa 1866).

Summary: The "under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance was only added during the Eisenhower adminstration, so for more than half a century, people didn't think it was necessary. So one solution would be to remove it. Another solution would be to simply allow students (and teachers) to not say "under God," if it offends their religious sensibilities. (I'm sure, for virtually all of them, it does not.)

In other words, "one nation *silent pause*, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

This whole fuss is symptomatic of the foolishness with which our nation routinely becomes distracted. Our federal government is MASSIVELY violating the Constitution, and people are distracted by whether people pledge allegiance--in the name of a Supreme Being, or not--to a scrap of cloth.