Saturday, December 01, 2007

Separation vs Establishment

Wow, I guess my faith in the intelligence of the average American needs to diminish. Can anybody find the separation of Church and State in the Constitution? Anybody? You in back, you got something? Of course not! There is no separation of Church and State in the Constitution. There is a clause procluding the ESTABLISHMENT of religion, but nothing about separation. There is a difference, you know. One means you can have absolutely no religion in government funded anything. The other means that there will never be a Church of the United States, like there is a Church of England.

I'm not advocating prayer in schools, or 3PM prayers in the direction of Mecca. I am warning people that ANYTHING that can be construed as a religion is going to be under fire. Will we stop putting crosses on the graves of soldiers? Will we declare Darwinism to be a religion (evolution is not, Darwinism is, but we'll discuss that later). How about politcal philosophy's? Is socialism a religion? Is republicanism?(I assume if you found this blog, you know we do not live in a democracy, we live in a republic. A democracy is mob rule, he who has the most votes gets his way. In a republic, you have representative government who decides, and there are checks and balances so that the many cannot destroy the few...but I digress). Where do we stop?

I'm not sure why I am ranting on this...an old subject, well discussed and documented. I get a'skared when I hear a debate between the luntic fringes of both sides of this aregument. I stick my by formula, T = 1/g, that is the technological capability of a civilation is inversly related to the number of gods they have. Whenever I hear people debating religion in a political context (i.e. ANY Rrepublican debate) I fear a little bit that g will increase...and T will go down. Anybody for the Dark Ages, the Inquisition...or maybe the Salem witch trials? I thought not. Let's hope we all keep thinking and stop this nonsense.