"Under God" should be removed from the Pledge of allegiance.

Thank to Kasmic for his arguments. This round I'll be putting forth my constructive case. In order to avoid repetitiveness, "separation of church and state" will henceforth be referred to as "SCS". C1) SCS is not violated The existence of SCS as a legal principle stems solely the 'establishment clause' of the Constitution's first amendment, and therefore we should look to that clause in order to determine the parameters of SCS; it reads -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." From this, we see that only two specific government actions are being prohibited. Firstly, it disallows the use of state power to specially promote any particular religion (e.g. creating an official state religion or publicly funding religious monuments, proselytization, festivities, etc). Secondly, it prevents the government from making laws which directly infringe upon people's freedom of religion (e.g. banning or forcefully imposing certain religious beliefs or practices upon people). Obviously, I maintain that the inclusion of the phrase "Under God" in the pledge falls into neither of the prohibited categories. The phrase clearly does not favor any single religion; it is, at worst, a neutral reference to theism (which is not an "establishment of religion"). Furthermore, "Under God" cannot reasonably be construed as imposing theism on anyone because (1) saying the pledge is not mandatory, which removes the coercive element that is necessary for it to be considered an infringement of freedom, (2) there is no intent to even vaguely 'promote' theism evident in the inclusion of the phrase, and (3) the phrase can be interpreted as being purely symbolic -- of "God-given rights" and the deistic tradition of the Founding Fathers -- so saying "one nation under God" does not necessarily imply any sort of acknowledgement that God exists. C2) Opportunity Cost In practicality, any attempt at actually removing the phrase "Under God" from the pledge is going to take up a large amount of time and resources on the part of Congress due to its general predisposition towards inefficiency, coupled with the inevitable emotional back-lash (Christians - including politicians - tend to feel as if they are "under attack" when religious traditions are threatened). However, the issue of "Under God" being in the pledge has literally *no* serious impact on *anyone*. There is a nearly-infinite number of vastly more important issues which actually affect millions of people -- reforming the welfare system, dealing with illegal immigration, helping Americans cope with the exorbitant costs of healthcare, fixing the public education system, implementing gun control laws, improving law enforcement efficacy, beginning the long process of campaign finance reform... the list goes on. The point is that even if the phrase "Under God" technically is a violation of SCS, the process of removing it from the pledge incurs a gigantic opportunity cost because there will *always* be other enormously more important issues which Congress could and should be spending its time/resources on. ============= CONCLUSION ============= 1. The pledge does not "respect an establishment of religion" or "prohibit the free exercise [of religion]" 2. The empirical impacts of the issue are negligible to the point that, in practicality, Congress cannot afford to waste its limited time and resources on addressing it. (In other words -- who cares?) The resolution is negated. Back to Pro.