Of course you're right about this, highball. But that is not what the language of the second clause envisions. It means non-coercive exercise, exercise respectful of other religious faiths, and of people who hold to no religious tradition, without the government endorsing one faith as against all the others (that's what the establishment clause means).
I wish the atheists could grasp this concept -- and I do consider atheism to be a form of religious expression. But your typical atheist wants all religious expression (but especially Christianity) wholly concealed from public view (except for his own, of course, which is the anti-God religion). religion is something, apparently, that can only be tolerated in the privacy of the home. (For now.)
These folks tend to be very coercive individuals, I've noticed....
Yes. Perhaps that's why the courts are so sensitive to this issue when they review the actions of governmental officials. Example, gathering students into an auditorium and recommending that they go to the library to read a creationist tract -- like that Pandas book which figured so prominently in Judge Jones' opinion.
Of course you're right about this, highball. But that is not what the language of the second clause envisions. It means non-coercive exercise, exercise respectful of other religious faiths, and of people who hold to no religious tradition, without the government endorsing one faith as against all the others (that's what the establishment clause means).
Precisely. But that's simply not what we have in this case.
In this case, we have a school board who wanted to use the power of their office to enshrine their own faith in science classes to the exclusion of all others. Then they lied about it under oath, and they lied about the money trail.
It is not "non-coercive exercise" if the teachers are forced to endorse it to their students. It is not "respectful of other religious faiths" if their faith is the only one given such endorsement.
I have never once argued for the elimination of faith from all public life. But what these wackos did was flagrantly un-Constitutional (or they wouldn't have tried so desperately to hide it), and now the poor people of their district are stuck with massive legal bills resulting from such "breathtaking inanity".