My point is, why not require the government to define the word "God"? If it can't be defined then why should it be used?
(My hope is that the attempt to define it will lead to the conclusion that government shouldn't be pretending to know things that no one can know, and it shouldn't be using one religion's opinion over another regarding what the definition of "God" means.)

In particular, any heaven-hell Christian who doesn't believe non-Christians are evil seems to be playing a game of cognitive dissonance, no? If not, then some part of that narrative isn't holding up.

Similarly, why would a genuine Christian not want to establish theocracy, unless s/he has some doubts as to his/her faith's truth?

"One nation under: Bold BBQ Doritos"... "One nation under: the weather? Try Aspirin"... "One nation under: Pfizer, you know why"...

It wouldn't end well. Collectible coins just got a lot more complex, though. :) It's fun to think about it, but I doubt it'd end well.

Regarding the Ebon's comments on the issue of changing the "Under God" motto. I have a practical suggestion. First when we became a nation under a god you would expect there to be some benefit if that god is real and appreciated the gesture. I defy anyone to find such a benefit after we changed our motto. So why retain that that god if there were no benefits?

Football and baseball stadia change their names based upon a simple precept: it goes to the highest bidder. Why not offer out our motto the same way? We have mountains of debt, so no reason to give your motto away for free under such circumstances? Let's retire some of the national debt with our national motto.

I suggest we offer out the motto to the highest godly or religious bidder on, e.g., a monthly basis, with the clincher that we'll remove all costs and retain him in the motto permanently if he can show his appreciation in demonstrable ways unquestionably connected to his existence and actions. The chance to reduce the national debt and prove your god exists at the same time. Who could pass that up?

That wouldn't be without precedent. In the Greek myth, the city of Athens was given its name after Athena and Poseidon both offered a gift, in return for the city being named after them. Poseidon offered a miraculous spring, but the inhabitants chose Athena, who offered them the first olive trees. It's a much better way to go, because by having multiple gods competing against each other, more benefits can be obtained as they go out of their way to outdo one another.

Yeah, yeah, there's whackos in every group, fine. But you might as well take the movement at face value because that's at least what all the people in the movement can agree to among themselves/in public/on the face of it. We'll deal with the whackos as they come up - and they'll always come up, no matter what.

If I were a theist, how would you convince me that I can take the movement at face value? That is what I was pointing at. Many theists are convinced that the ultimate aim of any secularist movement is to persecute Christians. They are afraid of atheists because they don't believe that atheists are sincere.

I suppose that this blog exists not only to provide a virtual meeting point of atheists (which is itself a worthwhile purpose), but also to express arguments that can convince theists to loose their faith, or at least to become more secular, as in this post. If so, then I find saying "see, we don't aim to persecute you, because else we would have announced it already" a bit superfluous. Either one believes that the secularists can be trusted, and then it is enough to say "we don't want to persecute Christians", or one doesn't believe that and then such argument is simply pointless.

tl;dr version: I find sentences "we will do X" and "we will do X because we've said so" more or less equally convincing and thus I don't consider the part "because we've said so" a valid argument for veracity of "we will do X".

P.S. I write "the secularists" instead of "we" not to indicate that I myself am not a secularist (which I am), but because the original post was mainly about the secular movement in the US, where I don't live.

Football and baseball stadia change their names based upon a simple precept: it goes to the highest bidder. Why not offer out our motto the same way? We have mountains of debt, so no reason to give your motto away for free under such circumstances? Let's retire some of the national debt with our national motto.

I suggest we offer out the motto to the highest godly or religious bidder on, e.g., a monthly basis, with the clincher that we'll remove all costs and retain him in the motto permanently if he can show his appreciation in demonstrable ways unquestionably connected to his existence and actions. The chance to reduce the national debt and prove your god exists at the same time. Who could pass that up?

someone named Christopher

Heh, at first I thought you were talking about Christopher Hitchens... he's an asshole.

But, yes, there are atheist extremists, people who advocate for the total elimination of religion, who will condone violence to this end, and who will brook no disagreement on this matter, perceiving any criticisms or misgivings about their stated beliefs as moral failings and concrete acts of evil on the part of their detractors.

There are. In fact, there are probably at least three of them.