Really? Quote me the words that state this in the Constitution.
You are proof that our education system has been dumbed-down with a bent towards creating mind-numbed robots that are hostile to Christianity.
Where's your "tolerance"? Simply show me the scientific evidence against ID and we can refute it scientifically, not based on anti-Christian religious values
Really? Quote me the words that state this in the Constitution.
Try reading the First Amendment.
You are proof that our education system has been dumbed-down with a bent towards creating mind-numbed robots that are hostile to Christianity.
Uh huh. Sure. Try reading some Madison, Jefferson, or even Theodore Roosevelt sometime, they said the same thing -- was their education "dumbed down" too? Or perhaps it's just yours. Here's a former post of mine dealing with another person who was as unfamiliar with this subject as yourself:
The First Amendment says no such thing,
I'm sorry that you're ignorant of American history. Madison and Jefferson both felt very strongly about the separation of church and state (even using that very term), and wrote of the importance of not using the public moneys or institutions to support one or more religions. In Madison's famous "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments", he wrote strenuously against using public money to underwrite in any degree the promulgation of religious teachings. In another opinion, he wrote:
A University with sectarian professorships becomes, of course, a sectarian monopoly: with professorships of rival sects, it would be an arena of Theological Gladiators. [...] On this view of the subject, there seems to be no alternative but between a public University without a theological professorship, and sectarian seminaries without a University.In another essay, he wrote:Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.And:Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In the strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. [...] If Religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals, singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their Constituents shd discharge their religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own expence. How noble in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution; and the divine right of conscience!Writing of the success of the First Amendment's unique new approach to the age-old problem of religious/government entanglement, Madison wrote:It was the Universal opinion of the Century preceding the last, that Civil Government could not stand without the prop of a Religious establishment, and that the Christian religion itself, would perish if not supported by a legal provision for its Clergy. The experience of Virginia conspicuously corroborates the disproof of both opinions. The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.And in the same vein:Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance.But hey, what would Madison know, he only *wrote* the First Amendment...As for Jefferson, he also wrote favorably of "a wall of separation between church and state" on many occasions, for example:
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.Like Madison, Jefferson was likewise of the opinion that public schools should be secular. When the College of William and Mary wanted to become Virginia's state university, Jefferson would allow it only if that school divested itself of all ties with sectarian religion. The college declined, so Jefferson himself instead founded the first truly secular university, University of Virginia. Of his new University, Jefferson wrote:A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution.And to teachers at his University, Jefferson said:This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it.And from a famous earlier historian of the US:... I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have a personal interest in their survival ... all thought the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that.The "complete separation of church and state" is no modern ACLU invention...
-- (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859The modern court cases upholding this principle of keeping religious advocacy out of the schools merely uphold the original intent and meaning of the First Amendment, and indeed make explicit reference to Madison and Jefferson's writings on this matter:
As the momentum for popular education increased and in turn evoked strong claims for state support of religious education, contests not unlike that which in Virginia had produced Madison's Remonstrance appeared in various forms in other states. New York and Massachusetts provide famous chapters in the history that established dissociation of religious teaching from state-maintained schools. In New York, the rise of the common schools led, despite fierce sectarian opposition, to the barring of tax funds to church schools, and later to any school in which sectarian doctrine was taught.So yes, just as I said, attempts to get religious views taught in public schools, whether overt or thinly disguised, are a violation of the First Amendment -- not just the modern view of the First Amendment, but the original intent as well.[...]
The upshot of these controversies, often long and fierce, is fairly summarized by saying that long before the Fourteenth Amendment subjected the states to new limitations, the prohibition of furtherance by the state of religious instruction became the guiding principle, in law and in feeling, of the American people.
[...]
The preservation of the community from division conflicts, of government from irreconcilable pressures by religious groups, of religion from censorship and coercion however subtly exercised, requires strict confinement of the state to instruction other than religious, leaving to the individual's church and home, indoctrination in the faith of his choice. [...] The extent to which this principle was deemed a presupposition of our Constitutional system is strikingly illustrated by the fact that every state admitted into the Union since 1876 was compelled by Congress to write into its constitution a requirement that it maintain a school system "free from sectarian control".
[...]
We find that the basic Constitutional principle of absolute separation was violated when the State of Illinois, speaking through its Supreme Court, sustained the school authorities of Champaign in sponsoring and effectively furthering religious beliefs by its educational arrangement. Separation means separation, not something less. Jefferson's metaphor in describing the relation between church and state speaks of a "wall of separation," not of a fine line easily overstepped. The public school is at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny. In no activity of the state is it more vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools, to avoid confusing, not to say fusing, what the Constitution sought to keep strictly apart. "The great American principle of eternal separation"--Elihu Root's phrase bears repetition--is one of the vital reliances of our Constitutional system for assuring unities among our people stronger than our diversities. It is the Court's duty to enforce this principle in its full integrity. We renew our conviction that "we have staked the very existence of our country on the faith that complete separation between the state and religion is best for the state and best for religion."
-- Justice Felix Frankfurter, U. S. Supreme Court, in McCollum v. Board of Education, the 1948 decision that forbid public schools in Illinois from commingling sectarian and secular instruction
classic Marxist/ACLU double talk...
Yeah, boy, that Theodore Roosevelt, what a Marxist and ACLU lawyer:
"I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools."
-- Theodore Roosevelt Address, New York, October 12, 1915.
"You are proof that our education system has been dumbed-down with a bent towards creating mind-numbed robots that are hostile to Christianity."
I teach Catholic CCD Confirmation prep classes on Sunday. Hostile to Christianity? Ha!
"Simply show me the scientific evidence against ID and we can refute it scientifically, not based on anti-Christian religious values"
Read the transcript of the trial. There's plenty of evidence there.
That's actually part of the reason ID isn't considered science: there's no possible way to test it. Unless there are some restraints placed on the powers of the hypothetical designer, absolutely any observation is consistent with "Oh, that's just the way the designer did it."
This means that there is no way to either confirm or to falsfy ID.
Evolution theory, on the other hand, places severe limits on what should be and should not be found. EG, the distribution of genetic markers of various types should track the phylogenetic tree: If it's found in both cow and whale genomes, it will also be found in hippos. And so on and so on...