A federal judge has ordered Lehigh Valley County, Pennsylvania, to remove the cross from its seal. He says it violates the Constitution. The cross represents the reality of sin, separation from God, and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ to reconcile us to God.

The judge in the case “made it known in his ruling that he was not happy about the decision he had to make but was following the rule of constitutional law, including the establishment clause, which states that Congress may not pass any laws establishing a religion.” (Fox News)

The state of Pennsylvania is not “Congress.” The states wanted the Bill of Rights to keep the federal government from making such rulings. What’s next, removing “done in the Year of our Lord” from the Constitution” and whitewashing the murals in the Pennsylvania state capital that includes a panel of the Ten Commandments, including the Sixth Commandment, “Though shalt not murder”? Atheist organizations have worked overtime to get images of the Ten Commandments removed from Government buildings. Judge Roy Moore, the current Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, was removed from office because he put up a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama.

On what basis does an atheist have to say that killing someone is a moral wrong?

At the moment, the Las Vegas shootings are on the minds of all of us. Do you think there is a connection between removing God from everything and these evil deeds? We ask, Why should someone do such an evil thing? Can they be called “evil” if there is no God? Las Vegas is often described as “Sin City.” But there is no sin in a world without God. Stuff just happens. That’s it. I know, atheists will say they are moral. They are, but only because they are inconsistent with the operating assumptions of their worldview.

Famed atheist Richard Dawkins mocked the mass murder of innocent people in Las Vegas because of our Second Amendment.

They aren’t psychopaths. They are only carriers of DNA.

Dawkins’ own evolutionary philosophy offers no foundational basis for the rightness or wrongness of the massacre. All that happened was the killing of DNA receptacle pods. According to Dawkins, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music”1

The shooter was only dancing to his own DNA. How horribly ironic that the shooting took place at a music festival.

There is no fear of God if we are only meat machines housing DNA. Any would-be shooter who follows the atheistic worldview of Dawkins and the Freedom From Religion Foundation that brought the suit against Lehigh Valley County is not bound by anyone greater than himself. There’s no one who can ultimately say, “What you plan to do will have eternal consequences.” At death, there is no difference between this current mass shooter and the greatest philanthropist in the world. At death, each of them is nothing but “dust in the wind.”

There has been a steady stream of legal actions taken against all things religious.

The official emblem of the city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is adorned with three crosses. A federal lawsuit alleged the crosses, which are religious symbols, are unconstitutional because they appear on government property. “The crosses serve no governmental purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christian citizens,” said the lawsuit filed by Paul F. Weinbaum, a member of the recently formed local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who lives in the Las Cruces area, and Martin J. Boyd of Las Cruces. For those not familiar with Spanish, “Las Cruces” means “the crosses.” So it seems rather appropriate that crosses would appear on an emblem that describes the city’s name. In his book Las Cruces New Mexico, 1849–1999: Multicultural Crossroads, author Gordon Owen cited several stories about travelers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were attacked and killed near the Rio Grande. The crosses marking their graves led city founders to adopt the name.

If the presence of three crosses on a city seal is constitutionally suspect, then the city’s name should be changed as well. And let’s not stop with Las Cruces. Santa Fe, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Bethel (“house of God”), Corpus Christi (“body of Christ”), St. Louis, Providence, Bethlehem (“house of bread,” the city where Jesus was born), and so many others should have to change.

San Francisco, St. Paul, Santa Barbara, and San Diego are Catholic Saints. Parishes of Louisiana have names like Assumption, Ascension, and St. John the Baptist. A county in Illinois is named Christian.

Then there are all fifty state constitutions that make reference to God or providence in their preambles. Let’s not forget the Declaration of Independence and its insistence that rights are an endowment of the Creator. As mentioned above, the Constitution references Jesus Christ in its closing statement: “DONE in the year of our Lord….”

• The city seal of Los Angeles was changed because it contained a small cross in one of its seven panels.
• The town of Oak Park, Illinois, blocked a private Catholic hospital from erecting a cross on its own smokestack because city councilors say some local residents would be offended.
• In Idaho, the ACLU sued to remove religious references from public monuments and memorials.
• The Federal appeals court in Chicago declared that the city seal of Zion, Illinois, was unconstitutional. The seal displays the design Zion’s evangelical founder selected, a banner with the words “God Reigns” surrounded by images of a dove, a cross, a sword, and a crown.

The day may come when America, as an officially atheistic nation, decides to be consistent with its anti-God dogmatism perpetrated by dishonest lawyers in the name of the mythical “separation of church and state” dogma. If this ever happens, the restraining moral worldview of Christianity will no longer be around to stop tyrants who seek power for power’s sake. Not even atheists will be safe. If God is dead, then we are all dead.

1. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995), 133. [↩]