All you junior Daniel Websters out there, get ready to change a definition in your dictionaries. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has apparently ruled that the definition of God is not, in fact, the monotheistic supreme creator of all.
How could it be, if the 9th Circuit could (without chortling) reversed their 2002 decision and said that the addition of ‘under God’ to the United States Pledge of Allegiance is not a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause? “The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded and for which we continue to strive: one Nation under God–the Founding Fathers’ belief that the people of this nation are endowed by their Creator,” wrote Judge Carlos T. Bea in the majority decision.
(sidebar: note use of the term God and not the term Gods, which would scandalize Muslims and Jews, but not Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists or Christians)
So in the Pledge God means ‘a reminder of our shared American history’, or ‘a fond reflection on the quant beliefs of our Forefathers’, and not the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient (or as I like to call it, The Dodge Dealer approach to godhood) and worship-requiring supreme being of the monotheistic world.
I wonder if Christians around the world take offense at the idea that God, according to the United States government, is recognized solely as the quaint idea of our Forefathers, containing no real bearing or endorsement of religion (or even the idea that a ‘god’ exists). Of course they would; but they know better. They know this is simply a smoke screen to keep an official endorsement of state religion in the national consciousness.
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Cheers to the 9th Circuit.