''[F]or the men who wrote the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment the 'establishment' of a religion connoted sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity.'' 41 ''[The] Court has long held that the First Amendment reaches more than classic, 18th century establishments.'' Supp.3 However, the Court's reading of the clause has never resulted in the barring of all assistance which aids, however incidentally, a religious institution. Outside this area, the decisions generally have more rigorously prohibited what may be deemed governmental promotion of religious doctrine.
I also suggest reading this very important decision:
This of course demolishes the atheist argument under the Establishment Clause, since atheism is a religion per Supreme Court caselaw.
I will be buying popcorn on the day this Kaufman decision is used in litigation for an expanded publicly funded science curriculum vis-à-vis evolution. The legal theory would be that limiting publicly funded explanations of origins to metaphysical naturalism (atheism) is unconstitutional since it is an establishment of religion based on the same caselaw plus Kaufman.
Thanks for the ping - and please consider yourself pinged to my last post!
“The caselaw involving the Establishment Clause is much more complex than your simplistic retort suggests.”
I don’t think I was suggesting anything very simplistic. In fact, what I said is a fair interpretation of the Constitution, which as you know is much more complex than your simplistic original statement suggests.
But thanks for posting those interesting links.
About atheism being regarded as a religion for the purposes of interpreting the first amendment, I found this part of the decision particularly interesting:
“Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of ‘ultimate concern’ that for her occupy a ‘place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,’ those beliefs represent her religion.”
Frankly, I’m not persuaded by that reasoning. I don’t think that definition of “religion” is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. And the court’s unwillingness to deal with the philosophical issues here is a little embarrassing. If the court is going to allow such an unconventional definition of “religion” into the law, they should at least try to back up that action with some philosophical argument.
But in any case, as flawed as that decision may be, I do not think it will lead to much popcorn eating for you. The ruling does not suggest that science itself is a religion. Any education about origins in the classroom should be done on scientific grounds, and not explicitly atheistic grounds. (The fact that science and atheism are closely connected for many people is not reflected in the law books, so far as I know.)
Perhaps what you are hoping for is a day when we will no longer be able to distinguish between science and religion, and so the science classroom will be indistinguishable from a theological discussion group. Is that the case?