Following is a Chapter 5 excerpt from the Complete Article, as the Complete Article is cited as a 40+ minute read. This excerpt is edited, updated, and has differences from the chapter as first published. This excerpt contemplates reference to the Complete Article to be understood as presented.

5. The Divisive Systemic Intrusion of “God.”

A lot of people want America to be their church. This human tendency of misery-loves-company, and justified-righteousness-by-volume-numbers insecurity is completely humanly natural, for those who can perceive it. [46, 47]

But, alas, America is not church. [48]

For those who can reference it, the framework of America is like the Justice of Plato’s Republic. Justice in a free-thinking society is that quality that allows the framework to sustain unto itself. Justice in a free-thinking framework is religiously amoral, not immoral, but amoral, by its own necessity of existential principle.

Justice in America allows the atheist, the agnostic, and all the sects of the theists to coexist equally before the law. [*46] Justice is abstract and independent, as it must be in a free-thinking society. Systemic abstract justice invites higher tiers of society to apply concrete rules within an offered legal framework equal for all.

In a free-thinking society, justice in government is a controlled abstraction.

The Founding Fathers specifically de-weaponized religion, because they understood the lesser selfish weakness of human nature to succumb to divisiveness by irrational socialized delusion, being the body-burning torturing medieval horror of Europe from which America rebelled. [55, 24.17]

The Founding Fathers were eradicating a persistent ancient pestilent socio-politico problem of human nature by creating a new free-thinking America.

They knew that civil morality—that is, the orderly civil administration of a diverse free-thinking people—never ever requires religion or god (or the gods). Yes, they were that disciplined, that smart, that “loving neighbor as self,” and that selfless. [49, 24.6]

“It does me no injury,” said Thomas Jefferson, “for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” [*49, 24.7]

But, let us be careful with Jefferson’s confession. Jefferson separated more than church and religion—but rather “god” itself—from the orderly civil administration of a diverse free-thinking people, in his seminal statement, Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson’s overt statement “or no God” makes his intention absolutely clear regarding the civil horror of religious tests inherited from god-tortured Europe where god was entwined into government. [53] Like Jesus himself, Jefferson understood that religion follows god like a dog, and oft a rabid one. [*44] So implied rebel, anti-establishment, anti-religion, no-form and all-substance, Jesus. [24.15, 24.16, 24.18, 24.19, 24.20]

Thomas Jefferson formatively opined:

[I]n every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty.

[50] Indeed, the ancient priest’s entire reason for being is to cause uniform thinking by social conformity. [*49, *24.7] But, at the moment divine revelation is personal and uniquely within self, when it refuses to replicate and to socialize, and when it refuses to conform into one rigid uniform self-righteous godly dogma [54], the ancient priest of every age is out of business. [24.13, 24.14]

We know that different churches cannot integrate or harmonize as such by their own respective existential principles of rigidly conformed godly dogma; therefore, liberty and justice in America, having adopted principles of existential unity and free-thinking must naturally reject existential division and conformity.

Conformity of thought is abhorrent to diverse free-thinking liberty, and non-conformity of thought is abhorrent to rigidly conformed church godly dogma. Therefore, the existential principles of church are abhorrent to the existential principles of America, and the existential principles of America are abhorrent to the existential principles of church.

Civil morality and religious morality are not the same thing, the former is what we do, the latter is why we do it. [*37] But churches tend to share at least the fallacious argument that civil morality and religious morality must be the same thing, which is why churches are hostile to civil liberty. First the churches must destroy civil liberty, then they must destroy each other. And, we see this fact proved now and throughout every age with the pestilent death and destruction of humanity in the name of god. [59]

If we can keep it [98], America can harmonize churches within America’s existential free-thinking framework of civil justice, but churches cannot harmonize American liberty within the church’s existential rigidly conformed godly dogma. The lesser cannot subsume the greater. Civil liberty can subsume different churches, but different churches cannot subsume civil liberty.

But what America cannot do within its existential framework is to adopt to be church, because churches are existentially divided by uniformity and America is existentially united in diversity. [57]

Alas, each church selfishly cares more about itself than it cares about America. By superficial feign, the church professes to care about America, but, if it would be honest and tell the whole truth, what each church really cares about first is everyone in America becoming theistic, and then having conformed everyone to theism, then converting and further conforming everyone to the same rigid uniform godly dogma of that particular church. To the church, the United States of America is merely incidental. [*24.7, 100, 24.21]

Thusly, we behold the 2,000 years of thought-evolution and the enlightened literate brilliance of Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers; to wit: The orderly civil administration of a diverse free-thinking people. Diverse harmony with liberty and justice for all. This is the new civil law: America as new wineskin for new wine. Church stays in church. [*24.15, *24.16, *48]

But, even so, let us step back again and remember that liberty and justice for all in a diverse free-thinking civil society existentially requires one thing that is abhorrent to each church—supremacy of civil virtue. [*37] Not self-righteous religious moral virtue, such as it is, but rather civil virtue.

That is, the temperance, discipline, strength, and self-restraint—if not courage—from replicating each church’s rigid godly dogma outside of the church walls. Applied civil wisdom. Conversion to social conformity and uniformity is the abhorrent betrayal and death of the free-thinking civil diversity that the Founding Fathers intended to live forever, settled in America, with liberty and justice for all. [*44]

Behold it. In desperation for survival, each ancient church must replicate its own rigid self-righteous godly dogma, and therein lies Jefferson’s contention that the ancient hostile priest, who is a conformed obedient to his own ancient church’s godly dogma, is committed to the unhappy crusades of everyone joining him, contradicting diversity of free-thought and liberty. But don’t tread on me. America, if we will keep it [*98], must not yield.

The ancient church simply will never allow civil society the liberty to thought-evolve, blood-letting it to its death, and so society returns to doing the same thing, over and over and over, and still expecting a different result. [*54, *55]

It’s not working. It never has. The last best hope of man on earth is the United States of America. If we can keep it. [*98]

If the orderly administration of a free-thinking diverse people cannot be sustained in the United States of America, then it cannot be done anywhere, the catastrophe of human nature being too undisciplined, too weak, too selfish, too insecure, and too vicious to allow the survival of diverse free-thought, with liberty and justice for all. [*55, *98, *1]

In 1954, after WWII, with growing reliance upon foreign fuel, the threats of communism, and the rage of returning soldiers (“everyone prays in a foxhole“), the phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. Of course, priests loved this fact, because they want America to be their church. (Which church and which “god” is not clear.)

Until 1954, the Pledge closed with “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This text was unifying perfection, perfection. Perfection.

Perfection, until the folly of the edit by lesser emoting selfish minds that contradicted the Pledge’s own overt reason for being; breaking what was fixed, dividing what was unified, to wit, adding “under God”; that is, “one nation [under God], indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” It confuses the premise, and introduces—ironically within an adjacent statement of indivisibility—the most divisive topic ever known to mankind, that we cannot even discuss at happy weddings. [51]

One nation, with justice for all, except for the poor patriotic atheist who can no longer say the Pledge with applied equal justice. “Well,” say the selfishly smug theists, “he can just omit the words…” What a hypocritical politico-socio-legal-philosophical ironic wreck. It is not justice for some, but equal justice for all, even atheists. Such divisive folly; that is, to add Odin (or might it be Zeus, or Marduk, or Bastet the Cat) to the Pledge. Even Porky Pig knows better.

Church is systemic theism. America is not by the blood of its rebellion.

Some might say that America needed the divisive references to god (or the gods) to be a morally strong country, but others might suggest—if it is to be correlated—that 1954 was the climax of American strength and power, not to be matched ever since. That is, the country was pretty strong before 1954 without words purporting to fix something that was never broken and previously better.

And then the premise kept creeping and feeding upon itself. In 1956, the also secularly-perfect slogan, “E Pluribus Unum,” meaning “From Many, One” embodied all the diverse unity that America is and professes. It was also unifying perfection. Perfection, until lesser weaker uneducated or undisciplined minds changed it to “In God We Trust.” [*51, 52, *53]

A tragedy framed in travesty. God is the most divisive subject ever devised by humanity, hubristically purporting itself to be a fact, when it is properly deprecated to be merely an opinion, like a virus that must attach to a host and thereby replicate itself to live, being insufficient, incomplete, and too insecure to exist all alone in its own perfect environment of self-truth and self-revelation. As it has been said,“Revelatio religionem repellit.” (“Revelation repels religion.”) [*54]

Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself…And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.

[*49] The uniformity paradox. [*51] Poor Thomas Jefferson, with mud on his nose. He gave America perfection, with lesser selfish undisciplined minds nullifying his revolution bringing it full circle from where it escaped, blood to blood. [*55, 56]

Some people, some cultures, and some countries simply will not de-weaponize ancient religion, as they selfishly think everything serves them and theirs, as slaves to religion as their master. [*57] They won’t let it go. But the American Founding Fathers were strong enough to let it go, expressly, unselfishly, and selflessly, so that America and its idea could live. [58] If god should bring the peace of divine revelation through love, then it is the devil who weaponizes it by death through hate, as a thing is known by the fruit of its production. [24.8, *59]

Death, destruction and pestilent war tied to any religious purpose is no part of the objective of America, but, indeed, exactly, exactly the opposite. [*55] America does not fight religious wars for itself or for others. [*57]

But for the slavery of the inflation of vapor money, slavery of national debt, failure of education, and unholy slavery by fuel, American would be free of self-destructive entangling alliances and foreign wars.

Some people refuse to perceive the correlation of adding “under god” to the Pledge of Allegiance, the ancient criminal nonsense of circumcision, and zygote gestation controversies, and other such inductive civil policies, but, with rational consideration, we discover that they all grow from the same seed, choking the garden of orderly civil administration of a diverse free-thinking people yearning to breathe free, once and for all.

Alas, returning full circle, by devolution, to same horrific place of judgment and uniformity from whence free-thought in the United States of America had almost brilliantly successfully escaped. [*48, *54, *55, *56]

We are charged to open our eyes to look at cause and effect, and to perceive what is, why it is, why it tends to be, and what will tend to be. [*24.2-*24.5]

“When Abraham Lincoln was accused of being an atheist for failure to join a church, he replied in substance, ‘I have found their articles of belief too complicated. I would join any church that has love as its only requirement for membership.‘ It does not get any better than that. But I might be wrong.” [*54]

Go To Complete Reference Citations Post

[20] https://www.zippia.com/advice/working-age-population; https://usafacts.org/articles/what-is-the-us-national-debt-and-how-has-it-grown-over-time/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ND-ElectionsGov&msclkid=902217b370f613d502bb7273af761b54 [$36,000,000,000,000, divided by 207,406,609 working age is $173,572 or at two third middle and upper class feeding the system debt of 136,888,362 $262,988]

[24] ONE®: The LinkedIn Reference Set [#GRZ_183] 24.1 ONE: 1022 [T11:19] (“Wisdom Vindicated By Works“); 24.2 ONE: 1325 [T15:14] (“Blind Lead Blind-Ditch“); 24.3 ONE: 296 [L4:23] (“Physician Heal Thyself“); 24.4 ONE: 1661 [T18:6, R9:42, L17:2] (“Millstone); 24.5 ONE: 1143 [T13:13, R4:12] (“Perceive“); 24.6 ONE: 1040: [L10:27] (“Love Neighbor As Self“); 24.7 ONE: 582 [T6:24] (“Serve Two Masters“); 24.8 ONE: 635 [T7:20, L6:44] (“Tree By Its Fruit“); 24.9 ONE: 921 [T10:10] (“Workman Worthy Meat“); 24.10 ONE: 2632 [T26:50, L22:48] (“Betray With A Kiss“); 24.11 ONE: 514 [T5:30, R9:43] (“Right Hand Cause to Sin“); 24.12 ONE: 577 [T6:21] (“Heart Treasure“); 24.13 ONE: 1661 [L10:33] (“You Are Gods”); 24.14 ONE 1747 [L17:20] (“Kingdom Within“); 24.15 ONE: 799 [T9:17, R2:22, L5:37] (“New Wineskins“); 24.16 ONE: 2121 [T22:20, R12:16, L20:24] (“Caesar Coin Tax”); 24.17 ONE: 373 [J2:25] (“Human Nature“); 24.18 ONE 2211 [T23:25, L11:39] (“Inside-Out Hypocrisy“); 24.19 ONE: 1040 [L10:27] (“Good Samaritan“); 24.20 ONE: 2061 [T21:28] (“Deeds Over Words“); 24.21 ONE: 1438 [J8:32] (“Truth Free“)

“Religio deum ut canem sequitur, et saepe rabidum.” (“Religion follows god like a dog, and oft a rabid one.”); “Auto-revelatio est in se contenta et perfecta, religio debet evadere et replicare.” (“Self-revelation is self-contained and complete, religion escapes and replicates.”); “Revelatio religionem repellit.” ~grz

A Farmer had a Goose that began to lay golden eggs.

Each day one new golden egg would be laid by the Goose, and the Farmer grew very rich. However, the Farmer was impatient and tried to get the Goose to lay more than one golden egg each day.

In desperation for even more golden eggs, the Farmer cut the Goose open to get all of eggs at once! And, when he cut the Goose open, he got only the death of his Goose, and no more golden eggs.

Moral of the Story: Unsatisfied with some, we lose all. [99, *58]

ChatGPT Review

🧭 Deep Dive Review: “God” – Chapter 5 Excerpt from The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony

✍️ By Gregg Zegarelli | 📅 Original Publication Context: “The Seven Cardinal Deadlies” Set

I. 🧠 Core Thesis: The State Is Not a Church

Zegarelli opens Chapter 5 with a stark warning: when religious belief enters the machinery of governance, justice becomes contaminated by moral absolutism. This, he argues, is contrary to the philosophical bedrock upon which the United States was founded.

“America is not a church.”

This isn’t simply a declaration about pluralism; it’s a defense of the neutrality of justice. Justice, he asserts, must be amoral—not immoral, but free from moral dogma, precisely because it must serve a population of differing and often conflicting values.

II. 📜 Foundational Reasoning: Jeffersonian Logic and the Agnostic Republic

Zegarelli anchors his position in Enlightenment philosophy and America’s founding texts:

🗽 Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists is evoked not just in spirit but in principle: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.”
🧠 The American legal structure, according to Zegarelli, is secular by design—a constitutional agnosticism that makes room for all beliefs by favoring none.
⚖️ The Founders understood from European history that theocracies divide and dominate, while republics unite and liberate—but only if the state stays out of the pulpit.

III. 🧩 The Philosophical Implications: Justice Beyond Morality

Zegarelli draws a distinction crucial to understanding the chapter:

Morality is not a prerequisite for justice.

This is counterintuitive for many, but essential in law:

✅ Justice is procedural and equitable, not theological.
✅ It must exist independently of belief in any god—or no god.
✅ Introducing religious morality into secular law delegitimizes justice by shifting its standard from reason to faith.

Zegarelli compares this to Plato’s Republic—in which the philosopher-king leads not by dogma, but by truth-seeking. Truth is the compass; not belief.

IV. 🔥 The Political Consequence: Faith as a Weapon

A major thrust of the chapter is not religion itself—but how religion is exploited politically:

🧨 Religious rhetoric is used as a bludgeon to silence dissent.
⚔️ Morality becomes a weaponized value system, dividing citizens into “righteous” and “wrong.”
🧱 Zegarelli suggests that this weaponization is one of the “Seven Cardinal Deadlies” contributing to the fall of American unity and global prestige.

By wrapping public policy in religious language, secular governance is eroded, and a theocratic specter begins to form.

V. 🪞 Cultural Self-Deception: The Narcissism of Moral Certainty

A subtler layer in the chapter critiques the narcissism of assuming one’s personal faith must define universal law:

⚠️ A belief in the infallibility of one’s religious values leads to legislative absolutism.
🪞 The state becomes an instrument for self-righteous projection, rather than collective governance.
🧩 Pluralism—central to the American experiment—is displaced by sectarianism, dressed up as patriotism.

VI. 📉 Connection to the Larger Narrative: The Fall of Hegemony

This chapter is not a stand-alone polemic. It’s part of Zegarelli’s broader diagnosis:

The decline of American hegemony stems in part from internal contradictions—chief among them, the failure to honor secularism as a civic virtue.

When faith dominates politics:

The nation becomes internally unstable.
Its laws become morally inconsistent.
Its global legitimacy—especially as a promoter of freedom—is undermined.

VII. 🏁 Conclusion: Preserve the Fire, Not the Flame

Zegarelli’s message is not anti-faith; it is pro-boundary. The Founders believed in the sacredness of belief precisely because they removed it from the jurisdiction of the state. Protecting religion requires protecting the government from religion.

To govern justly:

🔒 The state must be blind to religion, so it can be fair to all.
🧱 Justice must be built on reason, not scripture.
🇺🇸 America must stand for freedom of conscience, not the dominance of any creed.

In this way, “God” is not about theology—it’s about liberty.

Would you like this merged into a formatted document (PDF or Word), or structured as a formal op-ed or speech adaptation?

You said: What is your opinion on the addition to “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance “In God We Trust” on official US currency, in light of US Constitutional Policy and American Founding Father Ideals.

ChatGPT said:

My reasoned opinion—grounded in U.S. constitutional principles and the Founders’ political philosophy—is that both “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency are incongruous with the intended spirit of American constitutional secularism, though not necessarily unconstitutional under current jurisprudence. Let’s break it down in light of history, policy, and founding ideals.

🧠 1. Original Intent of the Founding Framework

The Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, envisioned a Republic where government was:

Neutral with respect to religion, not promoting nor suppressing any belief,
Structured around natural rights accessible through reason—not divinely granted theology,
Designed to prevent sectarian control of the state, as was common in Europe.

Jefferson famously wrote:

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.”

The Constitution contains no reference to God. In fact, Article VI bans religious tests for office—a radical break from European models.

📜 2. Historical Origins of the Phrases

“In God We Trust” first appeared on coins during the Civil War (1864), not at the Founding. It became the official motto of the U.S. only in 1956, during the Cold War, as a symbolic contrast to Soviet atheism.
“Under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, also during the Cold War, again to delineate America from “godless communism.”

These were not constitutional incorporations. They were political decisions based on cultural positioning.

⚖️ 3. Constitutional Analysis

Current Supreme Court precedent (e.g., Aronow v. United States, 1970) considers these phrases “ceremonial deism”—meaning they’re seen as non-religious ritual phrases due to tradition and repetition. But that’s a legal compromise, not a philosophical resolution.

From a purist constitutional standpoint:

These phrases risk implicitly endorsing theism, in tension with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
They may suggest to non-theists (atheists, agnostics, pantheists) that they are not fully included in the national identity.

🇺🇸 4. Are They Consistent With Founding Ideals?

No, in principle:

The addition of “under God” and the adoption of “In God We Trust” were not part of the original vision of a pluralistic, secular Republic.
They reflect reactionary policy during ideological conflicts, not enduring Enlightenment ideals.
They blur the necessary boundary between public governance and private belief.

🏁 Conclusion: Keep Church and State Apart—For Both Their Sakes

In my view, the inclusion of “under God” and “In God We Trust” are philosophical errors, even if tolerable under modern legal doctrine. They are:

In tension with American secular founding ideals,
Potentially alienating to non-theistic citizens,
Symbolic of a drift away from the clarity of the Founders’ vision.

If we seek to preserve true religious freedom, we must preserve true governmental neutrality—not by erasing religion from private life, but by removing religious identity from the state’s mouth.

20250413.4o

The statements or opinions made in this article are solely the author’s own and not representative of any institution regarding which the author is affiliated.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/history-decline-fall-american-hegemonychapter-5-gregg-zegarelli-esq–pwiee

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The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 5 Excerpt—God