God in the Constitution, by Robert G. Ingersoll

[JoeHorn]

Robert G. Ingersoll's article entitled "God in the Constitution" is in the Library here: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/god_in_constitution.html

His thesis, of course, is that God is not mentioned in the United States Constitution.

It seems to me that he's wrong on two counts.

(1) The US Constitution ends with the date given in the form, "in the year of our Lord...". Our Lord? Who other than God might that be referring to?

(2) Every single one of the 50 states' constitutions (including your state's constitution) mentions God explicitly, usually in the Preamble. Since all the states' constitutions were written after the US Constitution, Ingersoll's argument falls apart. The federal government is certainly secular (or ought to be), but the 50 individual states are most certainly not.

At least that's how I currently see it, and I thank you for tolerating contrary points of view, which cannot be said of most religious forums I've visited.

-Joe-
Joseph K. Horn

[-DM-]

Hello Joseph,

Thank you for your feedback regarding God in the Constitution (http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/god_in_constitution.html) by Robert G. Ingersoll (http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/index.shtml). I hope you noticed that Robert Ingersoll died more than 100 years ago and that this article is in the Historical Documents (http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/index.shtml) section of the Secular Web Library (http://www.infidels.org/library/index.shtml), which carries the following disclaimer:

The Historical Library contains writings written before 1970, only. For material written during or after 1970, please refer to the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

This section is provided for those doing research into the history of nontheism. It is not intended to be--and should not be used as--a source of modern, up-to-date information regarding atheistic issues. Those looking for modern critiques of theism should go to the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

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-DM-