Posted on 07/01/2003 2:47:12 PM PDT by Lurking Libertarian
Constitutional law. I'll rephrase my point. Suppose the California Assembly passed a new law saying that the state's official ideology is green socialism. Under this law, any state official would be required take an oath declaring his adherence to this ideology. Any of the Founders would have recognized this as a religious test. The fact that there's no supernatural aspect to this particular religion is completely immaterial. It's exactly the type of situation that the constitutional prohibition was designed to address.
The purpose of the Establishment Clause? Just like the Free Exercise clause, it was to prohibit religious discrimination or persecution.
And whom was Chief Justice Moore discriminating against or persecuting?
Jews are godless? I suppose that does take the "Judeo" out of "Judeo-Christian."
(Been gone all day. Late to the discussion.)
Reminds me of the TV show "Touched by an Angel" - the show always had a moral and mentioned "God" - but not Jesus, or Allah, or the Torah, or had any sectarian spirit. It was 100% non-denominational. Prayers such as you are mentioning can be non-denominational as well, and can therefore be appreciated by all monotheists. The only people who would be offended would be ultra-sensitive hair-trigger atheists and polytheists. And I would bet good money that they are in a tiny minority.
And since the founders of this country found it constitutional to have religion in public promoted by government, even though they weren't all the same sect or whatever - as libertarians like to remind everyone - why now, so many years later, it's unconstitutional?
In California, it's mandatory. K-12, since 2001.
The root of the word "atheism" is the Greek word for "God" (theos?) stemming from the Sanskrit "deva". So a-theism really can only exist in the shadow of God.
But you are right. The religion of secular humanism has a "catechism" that must be believed in on faith, certain "sacred" rituals, and one is considered a blasphemer if one disagrees with the tenets.
Provide me with chapter and verse.
"We see all the time, Justice O'Connor and I, and the others, how the world really – it's trite but it's true – is growing together," Breyer said. "Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations."
Clearly, any justice that believes that globalism trumps the Constitution should be impeached and removed from his office. This is scary to say the least!
As an epilogue to our earlier exchange, I would simply say that that many of our founders did use the federal government to promote Christianity (no particular denomination) and it was their stated intention that the church be protected from the state, not vice versa. In light of history, no one can deny that the "wall of separation" doctrine is a fabricated reading of the Constitution.
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