Is Freedom Of Religion Making Sense Fundamentally?

I forget what stupid state it was in.

This a thousand times, from the highest mountain, on the calmest day.



Also, anyone who doesn't see the violation here is an unmitigated idiot. It spells it out in the plainest of words, Church and State are to be separate.

And it's not just protection from the Religious against the Non religions. If you'll take a moment to remember history, before the Reganauts coaleced the faiths of Christianity into the single quagmire of "Christian", you all were killing each other as much as the Muslims. Separation of Church and State is as much a protection for the Religious as it is the Non Religious.

Again, I want to stress that if you're mind can reconcile Lead prayer in Congress with Separation of Church and State, you are an idiot.

"Freedom of religion" may not be in the Constitution, but neither is "separation of church and state." Not that I don't agree that they should be separate, I'm just defending the Supreme Court against a bunch of people on the internet that think they know the Constitution better.

the "wall of separation" in legal terms is actually from a supreme court decision in 1947, the term obviously was coined by Jefferson much earlier while attempting to garner support for ratification of the Constitution with the first 10 amendments. From the supreme court decision:


We could go round and round about whether decisions like this are in line with the drafter's intent, but that is the purpose of the supreme court, and there is a reason why those members are not elected by popular vote.


Technically speaking, no, those people are given the right to speak or not speak any prayer they wish even in a government building so long as the prayer took place BEFORE the official start of the session. Making it an official part of the session, however, would be grossly in violation.

No "freedom of religion" and "separation of church and state" are not in the document itself. Thank you for pointing it out -- I know it, but others may not -- but it's been inferred so many times that the vast majority of people accept it as true.

It's more about whether freedom of religion means if the majority of people are one religion (as is the case with Christianity in this country), if those people have the right to consider their religious beliefs when making legal policy (they don't, imo) and, if so, if they have the right to ask for divine protection and guidance while making policy (again, in my opinion, no).

Perhaps that is why Kagan went after the target audience, the public, instead.

Legislation of religious ideals is strictly prohibited by the Constitution, however, a lot of legislation could be considered secular while being in line with a religious ideal. Case in point: Murder is forbade by many religions, that doesn't mean that having laws against homicide is a religious law. Semantics aside, we're on the same page.

Prayer before a legislative session is in bad taste, imo, but legally it's not a problem. It's the content of the legislative session that matters.

Yeah. It's a slippery slope, I admit.

It kind of comes down to "where do you separate morality, human rights, and religion?"

Pretty much anything where the only reason not to do it is because "the (holy book) says so" falls into the latter. As for the rest...

Going to just have to disagree here, they elected themselves that power, it wasn't their original purpose.

Morality has no place in government. Ethics is the system appropriate to legislation.

The problem with morality is that it is highly individualized and tends to be culturally charged (and often shaped by religion). That makes it far too unreliable to use as a guide. It is immoral to consume bacon if you're a practicing Jew or Muslim, but it'd take a special kind of lunatic to try to legislate bacon out of existence on that basis.

As for human rights, those are a derivative subset of ethics (or morality, arguably), so there's really no debate to be had so long as you work from first premises.

Which isn't to say that ethics is easy or perfect. If one considers the long list of consequences that follow from permitting alcohol to be legal (albeit limited by age and location), it seems fairly unethical to permit it. As we saw demonstrated almost a century ago, though, criminalizing it produces even worse results. So is it ethical to choose the lesser of two evils?

The rights of the minority are protected from the will of the majority, that's the basis of our republic. Sadly, a lot of people, including legislators, have the misconception of "majority rules".

Sooner or later, we are going to come to a deciding point of whether the will of the majority can trump the Constitution, and I'm very worried about that outcome.

They only have that misconception when they perceive themselves to be the majority. It's not a very difficult leap in logic to see why the games are played.

It's a very scary thought.

You know what else is a scary thought?

Dennis Rodman in politics.

Thanks. *** you too.

I would agree if the purpose was to exclude or promote one's particular flavor of deity, but I don't see that here. The Establishment Clause or the concept of a wall of separation doesn't assure complete insulation of government from religion, and prayer itself isn't exclusive to Christianity. Unless that happens I don't see it as much of anything other than rote ceremony.

I do see it, because they bring in Christian Pastors and lead the entire "Congregation" in a Christian prayer.

If it was nondenominational I'd be cool with it. But it's obviously a show of Christian power.

Maybe they changed it, I haven't really watched CSPAN in a while.


Don't worry too much. My list of "People who are Idiots" is all inclusive, and I occupy a few dozen sects myself. I just needed to jump in here with with a bit of zaz.

On the subject of Morality/Religion: Morality existed for at least 250,000 (Possibly a Million) years before religion. The now innate need for solidarity in our species, as well as our capacity for learned empathy is what creates the sense of common morality. These are traits that can be traced through biological evolution, most obvious in any social animal.

Religion first put words to the instinct of protection for the group. The aversion to Theft and Murder for example, could be described charitably as a mutual standoff. Don't kill me, I won't kill you. Everyone wins a little, nobody loses everything. A very practical arrangement. Throw in the obvious advantages of group cooperation, and "Morality" becomes an arrangement of survival and prosperity, not supernatural forces.


Morality and Human rights isn't particularly complicated either. An individual's rights end at the mutually exclusive point of their self determination and survival with another person. That is to say, every human has the right to forge their own path in life, as long as it does not endanger the life, or restrict the right to self determination of another human being. This is why ***like Sharia law is so disgusting to me.

It's very rarely a direct denial of other religions, but rather an exclusion of representation by never inviting them to begin with.

Also, the majority has the ability to simply ignore the minorities. Accurate representation is not a science, and I for one don't trust my city council to build without hidden agendas, let alone uphold the separation of church and state by being inclusive (How does one truly gauge inclusiveness, anyway?). I'd rather limit their power than expand it.

I don't take much of anything said here personally, lol.

This is where I agree with the dissenting opinion where they criticized the way other non-Christian representatives were included in the town meetings, and I think that Kennedy went out of his way to make excuses for the town in the Court's opinion.

The actual implementation, if this kind of thing becomes more widespread now, is where I see ***going awry very easily, but any valid complaints will benefit from now having clearer guidelines and legal precedent.

*** that. I tie my entire ego up in FFXI Debates and other online forums. And before you ask, I have a huge penis. Perhaps the biggest there ever was. Certainly not classified as clinical micropenis in any way!

I'm a big burly man with a 3-inch penis though.

Is "I got a 151 IQ" too obscure for you guys? I don't know how many are veteran (Former or current) 4channers.

This conversation went downhill fast, lol.

From now on I will refer to discussion about IQ as 'Who has the biggest mental penis?'

http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/roanoke_county/roanoke-county-supervisor-ready-to-strike-prayer-policy-after-supreme/article_95c8b212-d4a5-11e3-81c0-0017a43b2370.html?barneystinsonwouldnotapprove
Well that didn't take long.

Just as expected. It's all a matter of Christian privilege.

This is why we can't have nice things.

You know, it seems Christians like to always make this about persecuting them for their beliefs, but it always has seemed to me about showing the other side of the coin.

Just as in the other thread about Baphomet being added to Oklahoma, these Christians want religion protected as long as it's only their brand of religion. Completely disregard other religions in the process as quackery, and that's ok, but when you dare speak about the Christian faith and literal inconsistencies quoted from their own book, every excuse under the sun is made to prove they are correct and should have the right to spew their *** but other people can't spew theirs.

It really does boil down to Christian privilege. They think being treated equal to other religions is an attack on them, because they clearly are the right ones. Most don't even notice how court houses and famous monuments are clearly displaying deities of other religions already, or you get the ones that are off their rockers which see "luciferian symbols" everywhere.

If they want prayer and want to argue it's protected, they can't turn around and dismiss other religions who want to practice their own form of prayer.

Also, regarding freedom of religion, etc... No, the constitution does not state that. The first amendment is what makes it clear that congress shall not pass any laws which favor a particular religion. If prayer is going to be allowed since it's a common practice among many religions and isn't unique to Christianity, then officials cannot later state, "No, I won't include prayer from other religions. Have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, as long as my religion is on the protected side of that line!"

If it's found constitutional due to it being a broad practice, then it's left open to be broadly practiced, otherwise that is unconstitutional since congress is now behaving favorably only to specific religions, which is a big no-no in the first amendment. It's either all or nothing in this case, though I don't doubt the people currently in charge of the rulings will actually follow that.

I'm starting to get annoyed with the attitude of some of these groups who win major court cases. Is it too much to ask to show humility at least for a little while before proceeding to see how far they can cross the line? It's as if they have the next court battle all planned out before the current one even finishes.

Firstly the 1st amendment only guarantee's you the freedom to worship anything you want, it doesn't protect you or your fragile ego from witnessing other people's worship. Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. It also prohibits the government from showing preferential treatment to any one religion over another.

The Supreme Courts reasoning is that as long as it's strictly ceremonial, not proselytizing and doesn't force participation then it's fine to have. If all members on that council want to do a prayer before they get down to business, then they can do so. If there is a member who doesn't want to participate then they can sit there and pray to whichever supreme entity they believe in, and if they don't believe in any deity then they can just sit there and wait. This is a very common sense approach that allows people to express their own freedom of religion while also preserving other people's freedom to not be forced to participate.

Scheduling and rituals should be a strictly local thing. If a local government wants to open it's sessions with some sort of ceremonial prayer, then it should be up to their constituents to decide. As long as the prayer falls into the guidelines set above it seems reasonable.