Our constitutionaly gauranteed rights exist for just this reason. The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights is to pretect the minority from the whims of the majority. Just because a group is greater in numbers does not mean it is right, or has the right to push a belief on others. Those who would tell atheists to sit down and shut up are no more right than the majority of Romans or the money changers in the jewish temples who thought Jesus should sit down and shut up. This nation does not exist under one true God. Millions of Americans are pagans, hindus, buddhists, shintos, atheists, or any of hundreds of other belief systems. No one of those systems is any more right than any other - all religions are equally valid and to argue anything to the contrary de,onstrates the kind of incredible arrogance that has started far too many wars and left to the xrucifiction, stonging, drowning, and burning at the stake of far too many innocent victimes. I suggest people consider the consequences and history of such absolute beliefs before forcing them on others.

It seems that every passing week gives me another reason to be ashamed of living in the commonwealth of Virginia. First it was Pat Robertson's antics after Sept. 11th, then the legislature's refusal to toss out the Crimes Against Nature law, and now the insistence on mentioning God as many times as they possibly can in public schools. Since when was the United States a theocracy?

I do not trust in God, as I have never seen any evidence that there even is a God in which to trust. Nor do I trust in the McCarthyists who defined our national motto in an almost certainly unconstitutional law at the height of the red scare.

Though I'm glad the Pilot published an editorial in agreement with the ruling by the court in California declaring the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, I am quite disappointed in the author of the original news article for his failure to select a more diverse sample of quotes. Every single person he interviewed was a follower of a religion that teaches the existence of a single God. There are a number of religions which don't, as well as no shortage of people like myself who don't believe in God at all. One need only visit the Unitarian Church of Norfolk to find several. Buddhists, Wiccans, Hindus, Shintoists, and the followers of any of the various other nature-based religions do not believe in God, not to mention the atheists.