By Rabbi David Eidensohn

The Supreme Court is deliberating now about whether to permit the pledge of allegiance to include the phrase "one nation under G-d." Some feel that this imposes religion. How do we respond to this?

Are we a nation under G-d? If we are, it belongs in the Pledge. Otherwise, how can we teach our children to recite a lie? How do we determine if we are, indeed, a nation under G-d?

If we are, indeed, a country whose majority believes in G-d–and a majority does believe in G-d–then we may surely recite the phrase. However, this is only true if the majority believes this to be a fact, not if the majority accepts some mystical or even mythical deity because it wants religion. Herein lies an important issue. Is G-d a fact or a fancy?

Voltaire, echoing Aristotle, felt that "if god does not exist we would have to invent him." In other words, selfish people without a religion to tame them destroy society. Society can only survive when people give and sacrifice. Why should a young man in the flower of his youth risk his life and limbs to defend others? Let him run away. Therefore, society must inculcate beliefs in sacrifice and benevolence in order to survive.

This requires a deity.

So society throughout history has accepted a deity. This, at any rate, is the deity of Aristotle and Voltaire, who are actually similar pagans. Their god is fantasy, a social construct.

There is another level of this invented deity. People are, as the bible points out, merely clay bodies. They are similar to animals. They have envy, anger, and amoral lust. Can society exist as a cage for circling animals? Therefore, a deity is necessary, as is a religion, to inculcate in people a respect for themselves they may not feel naturally. People must feel that they have a higher force, a soul. They must respect the human condition in order to accept the concept of morality. Thus, a religion is really a prerequisite of successful social settings. Is that all there is to it?

There are those who invent religion in order to escape from the anxieties of life. One philosopher explained the extraordinary control his religion demands by saying that people suffer when they have to make choices. Therefore, religion tells them exactly what to do from morning to night. An Eastern idea was that in order to escape the fear of death we must be ready to defy it, even if we live in a culture of suicide. These ideas are inventions to deal with social or personal problems. This is the utilitarian god.

People who invent a god to serve social and personal purposes retool the deity as times change. People who believe in such a god know it is a fantasy. It works, but it is false.

As I write these words, my community is buzzing with preparations for Passover and the Seder meal. At this meal, we sit down with our family and guests and talk about our history. We were slaves in Egypt. G-d brought us out. He split the Red Sea. He led us through the Sinai Desert for forty years. He brought us to the land of Israel. He exiled us time and again and restored us. One day, He will restore us again. G-d told Moses to write the bible.

The G-d of Sinai is not an invention. It is a historical fact. Frederick the Great of Prussia asked a Lutheran minister for proof of G-d. He replied, "The Jews." That any Jews are alive today practicing their religion is probably the greatest of all historical miracles. Yes, it is a proof of G-d. But there are other proofs.

There is, for instance, Creation. You and I can look upon the heavens, marvel at life, and feel the Presence. Physics, however, got there backwards. Physics looked for numbers, for formulas about completely material matters when it stumbled upon Creation. From the time of Aristotle people believed in the Eternity of the Universe. There was no creation. The cosmos was always there. Don’t ask how.

Albert Einstein, in his Theory of Relativity, proved that matter rose from nothing at a specific time. This was the first second of Time, because Matter and Time as we know it cannot exist without each other. The tiniest of dots came from nothing and turned into the cosmos. This was miracle, and pointed to a Creator for two reasons.

One, physics does not tolerate something from nothing. Thus, Einstein’s Big Bang was a supernatural defiance of physics. Thus, the first moment of creation, when the tiny dot first appeared, was a Miracle. The dot then began to expand. This was another supernatural act. Why?

Modern physics knows that matter pulls other matter towards it. It matters not why gravity works, either the theory of Galileo or Einstein works for our purposes. However, gravity is a natural law. When mass exceeds a certain density, nothing can escape it. Thus, when a huge star collapses into a Black Hole, even light cannot escape from it. That is why it is called a Black Hole.

The first tiny dot from nothing had in it the mass and material of the entire cosmos. All of it was squashed into the tiniest dot. Such a mass could never expand, could never allow anything escape from it. There is even a serious question among physicists such as Steven Hawkins whether knowledge can escape a Black Hole, although this arcane topic is better left to people like Steven Hawkins. Thus, when the tiny dot expanded and spun off matter, forming stars, etc., this, too, was a mighty miracle. According to modern physics, the first dot should have shrunk and not expanded. Only miracle called for expansion from the incredible mass pressed into that tiniest of dots.

We thus have two mighty miracles by the lights of physics pointing to a supernatural Creation and inevitably to a Creator.

Recently, physicists in England, a very unreligious country, decided that mathematical formulas revealed by modern physics pointed to a system of Anthropic formulas. That is, the universe is designed for people! Surely, this is a worthy miracle, right up there with something from nothing and the expansion of the primordial dot. Three miracles prove that G-d created the universe.

Then, if you are an observer of the Jewish people, as was the Lutheran minister in the court of Frederick, you have a fourth miracle. The Jewish people survived a constant process of enmity of the greatest kingdoms. And yet, despite all of the problems, I practice the same religion, without deviation, that Moses received from Sinai. Moses connected Israel to Abraham and Shem, Noah and Adam. From Creation to today, there is an unbroken chain of G-d’s prophets, sages and saints. The historical process of Israel is surely a great miracle, pointing to one nation under G-d.

Of course, if you follow modern Jewish history, and see the rising of Israel from the ashes of Europe to its present thriving in various countries, you must surely suspect supernatural forces, and G-d hard at work.

When the state of Israel was first formed, the British backed the Arabs to the hilt. When the British saw the Jews beating the Egyptians in aerial duels, pilots of the Royal Air Force joined the battle. Five British planes, the flower of the nation that defeated Germany, went down in flames. This was in 1948. Several decades later, the Russians backed Egypt. They sent their modern jets to challenge the Israelis and drive them away. Five Russian jet flamed to earth. In both these encounters, the Israelis lost nothing. This is not a natural occurrence. A dogfight involving modern aircraft and swarms of tracer bullets and cannon shells does not favor one side by such a margin. Heaven does.

Norman Podhoretz, the noted secular thinker, observing Jewish history, said that he does not understand how the rabbinical wing of Judaism triumphed over the secular wing. He does not know, because there is no secular answer. G-d is the answer. Throughout Jewish history, time after time, people with the greatest talents challenged the rabbis and built enthusiastic followings. All of them disappeared. We see this today. The mighty Conservative and Reform movements, when I was young, dwarfed the tiny and insignificant Orthodox community. Today, they are disappearing big time, and Orthodox is exploding. There is no natural explanation for this.

There is no really good explanation for the collapse of Communism. George Kennan, the ranking expert on Russia, called it a miracle. Furthermore, the collapse of Germany, coming just before it could develop its jet air force properly and develop atomic weapons, and while it had many millions of trained fighters fully ready for battle, is only due to the incredible errors of Hitler. These came only at the end of the war. In the beginning, he made no errors.

As the British raced into Germany, a senior British General said, "I want to meet Hitler. I want to shake his hand. He is worth ten divisions to us." Suddenly, the greatest genius became the greatest fool. There is no explaining it, other than miracle.

Therefore, we are one nation under G-d. However, we are a nation whose culture, whose educational institutions, do everything possible to conceal these divine miracles, or even to conceal the Creator. We are a nation that militates against religion, the belief and worship of G-d. Soon, the bible of G-d, given by Him to Moses at Sinai, will be declared a hate book. The Supreme Court in Romer, in 1996, considered it "animus."

Why do we pledge allegiance to G-d and yet drive Him away?

The reason is that historically, people want religion. They want G-d. But they don’t want the pain and suffering religion inflicted upon European society. Europeans who fled the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, and constant struggles between Catholics and Protestants, built America. They erected a secular, materialistic society where religion would never venture into the government and street to destroy those who did not "believe."

The reason that Americans love religion and Europeans hate it is because Europeans suffered from religion and Americans benefited from it.

Now, with the radical secular left gobbling up America’s culture, educational system, its medical and mental therapy, its media and even much of its religion, there are those who have had enough. They want to bring religion into America, with the power to arrest the forces of the radical left. Some of them have voiced the need to organize as Christians to battle the Moslems. The alternative, they feel, is a world for their children devoid of the beautiful beliefs that made America strong. However, it is possible that the very efforts these people will make will backfire. So great is the rot, that organized religion has very little power anymore. Even a boycott of Disneyland by major religious groups failed. The hope of some people to overturn the present legal system and replace it with adherence to a particular religion is farfetched.

Passion, the Mel Gibons movie, awakened in many Christians a new energy, and aroused them not to despair in the secular climate. Others see it differently. They note that Gibson had the Satan march among the Jews, and twisted history to show that Jews were bad and the Romans, arch-murderers historically, were not.

Thus, much depends on what religious people do when they finally wake up to the fact that the enemy is at their front door and intends to take over.

If religious Americans teach that America is one nation under G-d, the G-d of physics and history, they will succeed. If, however, they use the gay lobby and the secular radicals to raise money for their coffers, and preach that anyone who disagrees with their interpretation of religion is damned and must be converted, they will ultimately bury America even deeper under the secular banner.

Throughout the world, the new realities, the disappearing Caucasian in Europe, the immigration of different races in countries devoid of youth, the collapse of traditional religion and the rise of New Age and secular substitutes for the G-d of Sinai produce chaos and change.

We need a steady path. We have one. One nation under G-d, the G-d of Science,  the G-d of the bible, the G-d of traditional American values, unfettered from organized radical secularism, will bring to family and America a lasting harmony and peace.

Only the future will tell. The issue is not the Supreme Court. The issue is whether religion, in its formal form, is perceived as a threat, similar to the old European variety, or is perceived as a positive moral force producing love and not hate.

That is the only kind of religion America will tolerate.