Comments about ‘Letter: Has the nation forgotten the need for a higher power?’

Before anyone tries to channel the founding fathers, "In God we trust" wasn't anywhere near our money until 1864. It wasn't on paper money until 1957.

I don't know what conventions you listened to. The Dems voted to put God in their platform. It was met with a resounding NO and boos.

First, you did miss something, and second, government is not in the business of promoting religion. Its job is to ensure that the people are free to practice their religions.

And just how did they come together to acknowledge the need for a higher power? By preserving your personal right to believe but clearly seperating that belief from the operation of the government. Hardly what you're portraying. Clearly your attitude establishes a religious test for someone who would run for President a principle specifically shuned and prohibited by the founding fathers. Once again to believe in a higher power and the influence of that higher power requires you to at best look past and most likey condone a whole lot of evil. If you believe a higher power has guided this country I would suggest you have a peverse sense of right and wrong.

You're kidding me, right? Every single talk, by every politician at either convention, ended with some variation of the phrase: "God bless you. And God bless the United States of America." Every single speaker. Both parties.

The role of Government is to protect this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The greatest enemy to this nation and to all nations, world wide, is the adversary. Those who think that shunning God is the best way to defeat the adversary are mistaken. Without God, the adversary automatically wins.

What does the adversary want? He wants weak people who make up their own moral rules. He wants people to supplicate their government for their needs rather than to look at themselves, children of their Creator who were ENDOWED with rights and power and ability. He wants people to demand that God be eliminated from public conversation. He wants sole authority to dictate his demands through the minds of his followers.

That great enemy wants God out of the picture. Too many agree with him. Too many feel restricted by the rules that would bring them eternal happiness. Too many want the false, temporary freedom to do as they please, not knowing or not caring that the adversary waits with eternal chains to bind them to himself.

We need God. A nation without God and his heaven is a nation that is already in hell.

In order to have freedom of religion for all people, it is necessary to limit the freedom of the religions and their churches and their business organizations.

Even so, because of the special status conferred upon it by our Constitution, religions seek to use every opportunity to advertise their product, including the force of government. Judging from the results, religion is the most powerful lobby in government.

Even as a non-believer, I don’t mind the words on coins, the insistence of prayers at public gatherings and the structure and placement of churches. It is irksome however when the religious people falsely accuse me of a war on God. And when they falsely attribute the creation of America to God.

I appreciate the good that religion does for people and at the same time abhor the terrible things religion does. I prefer freedom of religion for the individual and rigid control of the actions of churches.

To paraphrase the comment I tried to get posted here earlier, the concept of in god we trust is fine. Just as long as it's not your god.

I didn't hear a single mention of the Lord God Zeus. I heard mention of the Christian god multiple times.

The greatest enemy to this nation and to all nations, world wide, is self rightous, bigoted, ideologues who think they have a corner on a) truth and b) happiness. Sorry Mike you have neither. You have your opinion and your beliefs..neither of which count for truth for anyone other than yourself.

The extreme left is scary.

Like Ultra Bobs comment.

George Orwell warned us against the extreme left in "1984", and the evils of leftest double speak.

Since when does LESS freedom equal more freedom?

When you start limiting one group's freedom where will it end? which group will be next? can it even be stopped?

NO. We should never even start down that path. It is much better to get the government out things and not into things.

And By the way, our founding fathers said our constitutional republic (of and by the people) NEEDS a religious and moral people to work,

as Franklin said when asked, "we gave you a republic if you can keep it".

The extreme left is trying to take it away and one of the steps is removing God and religion from the public square,

then the constitution no longer works and they say it needs replacing it with a socialist democracy (which will be run by leftist elites like Obama and his czars). (haven't we heard the left saying the constitution is outdated and needs replacing?)

We should never forget God, because our rights and freedom come from God not government.

Mike Richards, and others, say that we need God. Which God should be accepted as "the" God? The God accepted by Latter-day Saints? Evangelicals? Catholics? Protestants? Jews? Muslims? Wiccans? Buddhists? Pagans? Satanists? Deists (like a lot of the Founding Fathers, who accepted a Creator but not any of the established religions)? By [fill in the blank with every other religion practiced in the United States]? And what about the people who are agnostic or athiest?

That is the crux of the problem. I know and love God and His gospel that I know from my faith. Others feel the same way about the God and gospel they know from THEIR faith (which is different in several ways from what I believe). And still others don't accept the concept of God, or aren't sure whether there is a God and, if there is, which one is correct.

That is the wisdom and brilliance of the First Amendment. NO God or religion can be established as "the" God and religion of the country. We believe as we deem correct, but don't impose our belierf on everyone else. That is the right, fair and equitable thing to do.