I have been thinking of the series of posts that would make up this project for months. Here it is, the second day, and I am already altering the arrangement.

Two members of the studio audience responded to yesterday's posting by saying, in effect, "I'm comfortable with 'under God' in the Pledge. The issue just does not interest me."

I know that this is a very common sentiment.

I consider this sentiment to be like that of the fundamentalist Muslim woman who has become comfortable wearing a burka each time she goes out in public, who does not go out in public except in the company of a family member, who is comfortable being denied an education or any activities outside the home.

This is not an insult. I am talking about a social phenomenon that we can see played out in, for example, the case in which the victims of one generation of religious fundamentalism prepare the next generation to also be victims of religious fundamentalism.

Not only is she comfortable in this life (because, face it, it is the only life she knows and we are certainly more comfortable with what is familiar to us than what is different), she enthusiastically begins teaching her young daughter to be comfortable in this life as well. Young minds are malleable, and can be made comfortable with a great many things. We know as a matter of fact that a young girl born in such a country can be raised to be comfortable with the limitations that the leaders of her fundamentalist religion will require of her.

In Texas recently we found another example in which children, raised in a closed community where girls are married off at puberty, also became comfortable with their situation. They could not conceive of anything else.

In America, the government begins the process of fitting children comfortably into the atheist burka on the first day of school. From the first day they are not only told, but they are encouraged to repeat, that the government frowns on those who do not support 'one nation under God' as it frowns on those who do not favor 'liberty and justice for all'.

Over the years their grasp of the concepts will grow. Yet, this one basic component will be clear from the start. The pledge says that people who support 'one nation under God' and 'liberty and justice for all' are good people, and that those who don't support 'one nation under God' or 'liberty and justice for all' are not good people – at least as far as the government and the school are concerned.

The fact that some children are permitted to sit out the pledge will not change what the pledge says.

Some people like to speak about phenomena such as this in terms of 'memes' – mental analogues to genes that get passed from one generation to another. We should not be surprised that natural selection will favor the gene that causes those who are infected with it to feel comfortable, and thus unlikely to resist passing the memes on to the next generation. Ideas fed into the brains of young children are just the type that generate the type of comfort. So, the six year olds of today will teach the six year olds of tomorrow to wear the atheist burka comfortably and not to complain.

Many of us have thought about this issue with other groups – with religious fundamentalists passing their ideas onto children in ways where the child cannot grow up to question them. We have not realized that we are a party to passing down a set of myths to our own children as well.

Our government requires that children as young as six be taught the myth that people who do not favor 'one nation under God' are as bad as people who do not favor 'liberty and justice for all'. The government requires that signs be posted where the youngest Americans cannot escape them that tell children, "If you want to be one of us, then you will trust in God – and if you do not trust in God we will not think of you as one of us."

The question of how religions hand down their myths can be found in how 'comfortable' we have been made to be at allowing these myths to be passed down to the next generation.

In some of his writings and his speeches Richard Dawkins has talked about 'consciousness raising'. Here is one area where the concept of 'consciousness raising' applies.

"I am 'comfortable' with the myth that a person who does not support 'one nation under God' is like a person who does not support 'liberty and justice for all'. "

Really?

You're comfortable with that?

And you're going to stand aside while the government teaches the next generation to be comfortable with the idea that those who do not favor 'one nation under God' are as bad as those who do not favor 'liberty and justice for all'? You are our children growing up to be 'comfortable with' a barrier that keeps them out of public office and positions of public trust? You are 'comfortable with' them handing the atheist burka on to their children, and then to the generation after that?

'Consciousness raising' was introduced to deal with the problems, found in other groups, of people who were 'comfortable with' various forms of discrimination against other groups. They were 'comfortable with' treating women as property whose sole duty was to to obey their fathers and their husbands. It had to deal with teaching women when they were being submissive and allowing others to choose their lives for them.

This is exactly what atheists do when they become 'comfortable with' barriers placed between them and government office and positions of public trust – when they become 'comfortable with' the social institutions that produce those barriers.

This is exactly what atheists do when they become comfortable with a President who states, "We need common-sense judges who realize that our rights come from God, and that is the type of judge I intend to nominate." Recognizing that they and their neighbors have young children who have judge heard the President say, "If you do not believe that our rights come from God then you are not qualified to be a judge," yet they are 'comfortable with' this situation and simply go about their business.

The atheist burka means atheists not being judges in the United States.

They hear of an Illinois representative tell an Atheist witness before a government committee that, "Yours is a philosophy of destruction," and "You have no right to sit in that chair."

The atheist burka means shrugging and doing nothing while representatives sitting in legislative session deciding on the laws that we must all live under declare atheism to be a philosophy of destruction – free to base their votes on these sentiments without being challenged or condemned.

Ultimately, my point is that I do not care how comfortable you have come to be in the atheist burka. It is time to take it off.

More importantly . . . much more important than you taking off the atheist burka yourself, you should not allow the government to put the atheist burka on the next generation of children.