To the editor:

Rebecca Pingel makes several understandable mistakes when considering the topic of religion and money in her March 22 letter.

First, she claims that “In God we trust” isn’t broke, so we shouldn’t fix it, and that it has been there for a while.

In actuality, “In God we trust” was added to our money during the McCarthy era, and for a very specific reason. It was added to tell communists, atheists and people of non-Christian religions that the United States is a Christian nation. Frankly, the United States is not a Christian nation, not by any definition of the word.

Furthermore, having a phrase on our money designed specifically to alienate a segment of our population IS “broke” and, with all due respect, should be fixed.

Sure, the word GOD all caps does not convey necessarily the Christian God, but the whole sentence is all caps. You can hardly say that by putting it in all caps (in order to be readable at that small size) amounts to a concession to non-Christians.

I ask you, what of us who have more than one god? Should money say “IN GOD(S) WE TRUST?”

What about those of us who know that no gods exist?

“IN GOD(S) WE TRUST OR NOT, BECAUSE HE DOESN’T EXIST.”

Well, you might object because stating on our money that God doesn’t exist is offensive to you. I agree, because stating that God does exist on our money is offensive to me.

The next mistake, and believe me, this is a common one for Christians, is to tell us that everyone looks up to something, and this thing can be called “God.”

A common line of argument says that many non-Christians look up to and worship money, so they are in fact, religious. Quite frankly, this is insulting to your entire Christian faith.

I look up to my mom and dad; are they God? Are they my personal savior? I do have a job to earn money, I attend college to get a great job and to be filthy rich, but if this is “worship,” then what you do in church is really quite silly, isn’t it?

Merely looking up to something as an ideal is hardly the same as worshiping it.

Here’s the lemon test for that one: If I walked up to you and said, “I look up to God,” would you believe me to be a right and proper Christian? You would not, because Christianity requires believers to worship God.

The final problem with this argument is that plenty of Christians look up to their parents and chase after money and various ideals. At the least, if we are to believe you, Christians are polytheistic.

Because there are many of us without a religion, we are not honored by having the only currency state the antithesis or our beliefs. We must remember that just because a majority of people believe something doesn’t make it any more right to do it for all people.

A large number of atheists believe our world would be a better place if organized religion weren’t a part of it.

I refuse to force my beliefs on everyone and hope that Christians out there follow the golden rule and do not force their beliefs on us.

Keith Twombley

Sophomore

Computer Science