Reflections of Truth

Which is more powerful, the truth or the lie told so often that it becomes reality? God and our Founding Fathers are invoked with the ease of spreading peanut butter. What follows are not my words.

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize..."
Thomas Paine

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself and God does not take care to support it, so that it's professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
Benjamin Franklin

"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony & irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause..."
George Washington
(Washington refused to take communion, kneel in prayer in churches or at Valley Forge, have a priest at his deathbed or take last rites.)

"The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
Signed Treaty of Tripoli, 1797
John Adams

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear..."
Thomas Jefferson

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been it's fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution..."
James Madison

Here is the original Pledge of Allegiance: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The words "under God" were added on June 14, 1954 by Congress. The original pledge was written by an ordained minister.