"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
No religion is being established and no one is stopped from exercising their religion. It's constitutional.
It's still a claim that a God exists....whatever God that might be. I think the establishment of any such being violates that clause.
But it doesn't say what specific God, so it's not preferencing one religion over the other. It's kind of a generic thing. But then again, I'm no constitutional scholar.
It's a preference of religion over non-religion. And not all religions believe in one supreme being. On top of that, the intent was clear to preference Christianity. It's unconstitutional.
The First Amendment addresses the issue of religion, not of non-religion, specifically it addresses the issue of the establishment of a national religion, or of a law establishing preference of one religion over another religion.
I disagree that a preference to Christianity is clear in the phrase, I can't think of one religion that doesn't have a central god figure.
The question of finding the phrase unconstitutional via the argument that it appears to denote a preference of religion over non-religion, is interesting. However, to have the phrase removed from the money would then show a definite preference of non-religion over religion, in order to appease a segment of the population to whom the phrase is meaningless, and may simply find it offensive.
There is no constitutional protection from being offended by the idea that other people practice religion.
No...it is not unconstitutional since it doesn't establish a religion, it doesn't denote preference for one religion over another, and since a lack of religion is not a religion (now, there's a real debate...is atheism a religion?), it does not cross that border either.