Posted on 08/22/2005 6:39:44 PM PDT by wagglebee
It is of critical importance that the Christian movements in the United States of America not miss an absolutely golden development and apply its results without modesty or restraint.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that Atheism is a religion. We have been waiting for this for years.
Brian Fahling, attorney for American Family Association, absorbed in the intracacies of the individual case, was in no position to recognize the larger import.
Indeed, he missed it.
"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion....”, he said. No Brian! Not like that!
The one thing that possibly could have been better than having a federal appeals court declare atheism to be a religion is if the U.S. Supreme court declared liberal-naturalism to be a religion. And that, my friends, should be our utter, concerted, cause for which we should be willing to sacrifice nearly all.
Why, you ask?
For forty years in the USA, we have been fighting the waves of contagion spilling from our court system as, time after time, rulings have been handed down against Christianity and Christian principle explicitly because our beloved faith has been inarguably a religion.
The targeting and public rejection of our convictions has been strictly and solely because they are religious convictions.
You may not have a cross on the seal of the city because it is expressly religious. But note now my friends: you may not have the absence of one because it is expressly a religious absence.
It has been permissible in this land to remove principles, symbols, practices, policies from the public square explicitly because they are religious.
But we may now show that the removal of these things is also explicitly religious - it satisfies the religious convictions of atheism. As such we have a new opportunity: the state may neither affirm the cross on the council’s wall nor take it down in support of atheism.
Every man on the street knows that the state continually assaults the public decency by approving of atheism in any and every way and rejecting public Christianity in any and every way. It is obvious to the casual observer that a program to atheize society has been pursued by the courts. We can now sue the government for this forced atheism and we should.
This will require great vigor, subtlety, and thought. Do not just knee jerk do whatever the Family-blah-blah council says to do. In this, an attorney with such a group has totally missed the cultural sword that has been handed to us. Instead we must recognize with freshness and newness all that God is doing.
For thinking people it is stark offense, grating and shameful like Lance Armstrong’s yellow girlfriend, that the state, full of coercive power and unelected officials, has forced its religion on the populace through the tyranny of the arbitrary in the judiciary.
But never the less, this judiciary has to give some reasons for what it does. It is, to some lesser extent, bound by the previous things it says, by the contortions of logic it institutionalizes.
There are arguments they have constructed over the years to carefully justify the railroading of Christianity from public life; things you say can and will be used against them in a court of law - as we make the same arguments to strip atheism from public life.
We cannot remove the cross from city seal! It would be a state endorsement of atheism. We cannot force a time of prayer long established in a state legislature to become a “moment of silence”.
Atheists practice moments of silence in substitute of prayer. Making such a substitution would mean that the state were publicly conforming public practice to support atheistic doctrine. The court has no purview.
We cannot deny the investigation of Creationism on public property simply and only because we must remove mention of the Supreme Being from the schools.
Atheism explicitly endorses the removal of mention of the Supreme Being from public schools - it is the convicted faith of atheism to be antithetically hostile to, for example, the Christian or Jewish presentation of God. As such the state cannot be involved.
Do you see the manna which has just fallen from heaven?
But we may now show that the removal of these things is also explicitly religious - it satisfies the religious convictions of atheism. As such we have a new opportunity: the state may neither affirm the cross on the council’s wall nor take it down in support of atheism.
This is an excellent point!
(Sort of) evolution ping.
Sorry, its a lot narrower than you probably hoped. Check it out!
I haven't read it yet, but I certainly will.
Looks like the unofficial but very, very real State Religion of the Government, MSM, Academia, etc., just got exposed as such.
The practice of religion--which the federal government is forbidden from regulating by the first amendment--involves prayer and worship.
Religious establishments--which the federal government is also forbidden from regulating--include places and organizations of worship.
Both prayer and Churches are supposed to be protected from laws passed by the federal legislature. As for laws made up by the federal bench regulating religion--they are absolutely abhorrent, and should not be entertained on any level.
End zone celebration before the end of the game.
While I do think that atheism is as much a statement of faith as is any other religion, I do not think the courts will rule that the absence of something equals the presence of something in terms of removing 10 commandment monuments from public squares.
Jmho.
Do you remember who wrote the opinion? Was it Diane Sykes?
My pdf program has the flu. If anyone can post the decision, I'd appreciate it.
Not sure how to post a pdf. Not going to retype it!
I'm perusing this thread now for more details.
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