Every man has a god. Michael Newdow is his own god and that is a matter of his free choice. He is, to himself, the highest thing there is. I have in recent days been carrying on a correspondence with Mr. Newdow, who achieved notoriety for attempting to incite judicial tyranny against "under God" in the pledge of Allegiance.

I have contended to him that to dismantle the principle of "one nation under God" is to prepare our nation for the most cruel and violent of despotisms. If atheism were not a religion, it would not have a tyrannical effect. But Mr. Newdow concedes that it is a religion. 

Mr. Newdow's belief system may be summarized in his own words: "I adhere to a religion. My religion denies the existence of any god ... My religious worldview is atheism." What conclusions can we draw from this profession of faith?

First, atheism is a religion. Most atheists deny this; Mr. Newdow freely admits that his "general view of the universe and man's relation to it" constitutes a religion.

Second, every man has a god, whether he accepts it or not. Mr. Newdow, like most atheists, would deny that he attributes divinity to anything at all. But there is something high above all else in our lives, whether it is our self or our wealth or our Maker.
 
It is the first element of self-government that men have a relationship with their god. This cannot be written into our national constitution -- as Mr. Newdow has reminded me it is not -- because it is already inscribed in the constitution of our souls. If we exist, we are sure to serve our god, be it the Living God or something else.

Third, the atheist attitude that denies a god in the loosest sense of the word leaves open the door for the worst kind of god in the strictest sense of the word. An atheist who refuses to admit that he serves a master will impose his secret master upon his fellow men. He will tell us that there is no god, only to thrust the god upon us under some other guise. We need only witness the determination with which the secular fundamentalists move within our midst these days to understand that there is a deep religious cause there.

That is not to say that there are private atheists who have no designs to impose their religion on America. There are such people, I suppose, who comprehend and admit the reality of their religion: that they worship their own god. Theirs is not saving grace, but it is a bit of honesty.

Then there is Michael Newdow and his allies in the ACLU, Americans for the Separation of Church and State, and other secular fundamentalist fronts. These are the most highly small-g godly folks of all in our society. They worship with gusto and a passion. And they tell us they have no god. Their god is secret.

For if we knew that the atheist god were to be imposed upon our nation simultaneously as the God of our fathers is dismantled from the public square, we would not see it in so innocent a light. But in fact, radical atheism seeks nothing less than to establish a religion. They seek to characterize what is not a religious establishment -- the non-theological, non-denominational, all-inclusive word "God" in our national creeds and codes -- as a religious establishment, while they aim to establish in its place the most hideous of religious establishments.

As it is now, there is room in this nation "under God," for Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and anyone else who practices peacefully. All men have a god. There is no room for those who would use the force of law to impose a specific religious practice on all. Atheism, Mr. Newdow's religion, would be the established faith if we were to de-Word our pledge, our coinage, our oaths of office, and our founding documents.

The tragedies of the Twentieth Century were constructed upon atheism. The ideologues of fascism, Nazism, and communism believed that no force was higher than themselves or their fantastical utopian dreams. They were wrong. God crushed them.

Alexander Hamilton wrote that the great error of Thomas Hobbes was his disbelief in "the existence of an intelligent superintending principle, who is the governor, and will be the final judge of the universe." This is the great error also of the supposition that our government can be organized according to the atheist god. It is a god of the self, and to assign to individuals such divinity is to render a society fit for despotism.

Hans Zeiger is a Seattle Sentinel columnist, president of the Scout Honor Coalition and a student at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

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