Church and State: “We” means “We”
After posting the article Church and State: “In God We Trust”, where I argue that the motto unjustly divides peaceful citizens into groups of “We” (us) and “They” (them) based on religious beliefs, I received feedback from a few people arguing that “We” needs to be interpreted in a way that includes those who do not trust in God.
The suggestion is absurd on its face. The phrase “In God We Trust” is nothing other than a yoda-esque way of saying “We Trust in God” To interpret this statement as including those who do not share believe in or trust a single God is as absurd as interpreting, “We are going to the movie” as including all of those who are not going to the movie.
This response, which involves the denial of something that is quite obvious, struck me as similar to another issue in ethics.
Sociologists and psychologists have long noted that criminals tend to come up with ways of reconceptualizing their actions, casting them in new light so that which is clearly wrong appears right. Rapists, for example, would sometimes argue that the woman deserved what happened - that some transgression, real or imagined, somehow justified inflicting a harm on the woman in the form of rape.
Another common form of reconceptualization involved interpreting “no” as “yes”. The rapist hears the woman saying “no”, but then sees or “senses” something in the woman’s behavior that he interprets as meaning “yes”.
This common tendency eventually prompted the slogans, “‘No’ means ‘no’” and “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?”
When I read the responses to my original posting from people who said that the “we” in “In God We Trust” does not exclude atheists, my initial reaction was to shout in frustration. “‘We’ means ‘we’. What part of ‘we’ do you not understand?”
If I say “We are going to the movie,” then I am including those who are going and excluding those who are not going to the movie. And if the government says, “We Trust in God” then it is including those who trust in God and excluding those who do not trust in God. This is as obvious as “ ‘No’ means ‘no’”.
It is one thing to inflict a wrong on a person. It is another to listen to the victim complain about the wrong, present his evidence, and have the wrongdoer simply deny what is right in front of her eyes. The claim “‘We’ does not mean ‘we’” is as aggravating as that of a person committing torture refusing to believe that the victim is suffering as she screams in agony.
In fact, a great many people fell into this trap a couple of centuries ago, when they performed medical experiments on live animals. Critics of these procedures pointed out that the animals were in agony. To answer these criticisms, proponents asserted that the animals only appeared to be in agony. Since animals had no soul, they argued, the animals could not actually feel pain. They only mimicked pain.
This illustrates the absurdities that humans can accept when it enables them to see the wrongs they inflict on others as acceptable. They can refuse to see the animal’s pain. They can interpret ‘no’ to mean ‘yes’. And they can interpret “We Trust In God” to mean “Even those who do not trust in God, trust in God”.
This also illustrates another flaw in the moral character of the person who allows himself to be persuaded that these claims actually make sense. A decent person who is concerned that he not wrong his neighbor would see the importance of ensuring that he is not seduced by error. Even the best person can make mistakes; but the best person can also avoid the easiest and most obvious mistakes, if he cares to look for them.
Some people, unfortunately, show that they do not care to look.