Atheists: Outsiders

Though, in a recent post, What Makes Us Moral?, I criticized a Time Magazine article by the same name, the article also contained an underappreciated truth.

The article described how treating others unjustly is made easier by casting those to be treated unjustly as 'outsiders' - as not part of the group.

The main objection to a pledge of allegiance to "one nation under God" or a motto of "in God we trust" is that it casts those who are not 'under God' and those who do not trust in God as outsiders - as non-members. This makes it psychologically easier to treat them as lesser beings, treat them in ways that one would not treat another insider.

These acts deserve to be condemned not as 'unconstitutional' or 'a violation of separation of church and state', but as flatly unjust and immoral. No person who claims to have any appreciation of right and wrong could sanction such a system, and no person who sanctions such a system can make any claim that their side has a better appreciation for and disposition to do that which is right.