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[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

Then why bother with an oath of enlistment or of office at all because that argument applies to any pledge, statement or word of honor regardless of whether you add "so help me God" at the end or not.

Quite right about oaths, in general. Here's an interesting article on the subject:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...aths-and-books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._our_oath.html

All the oaths of office etc., are really not binding and have little or no legal repercussions. An oath in court or before a legislative or administrative inquiry, however, is a codified legal procedure with serious ramifications of charges of perjury. That said, how often have we seen persons stand before a court or Congress, knowingly lie their asses off and not suffer one bit penalty? Think of all the tobacco industry execs who swore they knew nothing about the dangers of smoking all the while their office files were full of data substantiating those very same dangers; think of all the defense contractors, lobbyists, and other who wove tales out of whole cloth and never saw the inside of a court on charges of perjury. Some even boast about their perjury: Oliver North lied to Congress while in full Marine uniform (still a sore point to many of his fellow Marine officers), violating not only the oath he swore before his testimony, but, also, the oath he swore as a Marine. He gleefully boasted about lying and how he had gotten away with it and did so with no remorse much as those others I indicated above perjured themselves and showed no remorse. The problem of the oath being meaningless lies not in the oath in many cases, but in the fact there are no repercussions for violating an oath...

On the subject of oaths and religious underpinnings, there have been many cases of Christian evangelist who have engaged in questionable and illegal activities, sworn they were not guilty, and then were proven they were, in fact, very much guilty. The very public "mea culpa" followed by the pleas for forgiveness have been played out many, many times over the years. And let's not forget the whole priest sex scandals where the highest clergy of the Catholic Church have perjured themselves in criminal investigations, but they, like their evangelist brethren, have tried to shield themselves behind a façade of piety. Perhaps, if there was a little more rendering unto Caesar, there would be less of their shenanigans...


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