"The Constitution's First Amendment always referenced but not quoted is simply this: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof.'" "The posting of the Ten Commandments, quotes from the Upanishads, or verses from the Koran in a school or any other government building is completely constitutional. Posting religious texts, praying out loud, or even speaking about God or one's religion does not equal Congress making some law respecting an establishment of religion. In fact, preventing such action by law would actually violate the First amendment." -- John Byrum, Letter to The Washington Times, 8/25/02 Debate away...
A nitpicking lawyer could argue that a prayer, an organized activity that can take both verbal and non-verbal forms, is an action and not necessarily speech (at least if it's a non-verbal prayer) and is therefore not constitutionally protected. It'd be a harder case to make with spoken prayers that they are somehow not covered by the first amendment. The good thing about this argument is that would in theory apply to all religions and could not single one out, unless it is a religion that has no verbal incantations and is simply ceremonial. The "action, not speech" argument was used extensively to argue (by George Will, among others) that flag burning was not constitutionally protected because it was action and not speech, that verbally speaking ill of the flag, the country, etc. is protected but the action of burning a flag is not.
Congress passed a law requiring all children to go to school. If while at school, children are subjected to a specific religion then, defacto, that religion has been established.
Then according to Will's ridiculously didactic argument, the deaf or mutes have no recourse to freedom of expression.
Did Congress pass such a law? I thought school related matters were handled at the State and local level, not in Washington.
The federal government has no right to intervene in state schools? Boy, guess I caught Earl Warren on a good day, huh? Sincerely, Thurgood Marshall
If I skip school is that a federal offense? The little rascals caused the formation of the FBI, IIRC. Oh yea, I hate you gringo for not including me in your politics hall of fame.
Did I miss something in the news recently? What law did Congress enact to "establish a religion" or "prohibit the free expression thereof"?
Thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment, the states cannot do anything that is unconstitutional. And the congress does plenty of things that establish a religion. Who was it that decided to add "Under God" to the Pledge of Obedience?
No, you see, religion mostly revolves around how to solve the problem of the receding of the Aral Sea, due to over-irigation of cotton fields in Uzbekistan. Moron.
They're all ************ing God denominations. Each religion has some sort of a supreme being or beings. If invoking god(s) in a pledge one is forced to listen to in schools isn't establishment of religion, I don't know what is. Do they need to bring preachers to public school for you to concede a point?
The First Amendment says "religion," not "a religion." So your question becomes the even more rhetorical "God is religion?" It's both ultra-legalistic and Orwellian to say that since the two concepts aren't precisely equivalent according to the dictionary, that they therefore aren't deeply intertwined. By your logic, "under Nature" or "under the writings of Mohammed" would be Constitutional, since neither is precisely, exactly "a religion." In any case, until the Supreme Court strikes something down, I believe it's "constitutional." Since a case challenging "under God" on the currency hasn't made it to the High Court, and since it's not the job of the US Mint to decide constitutional issues, we're stuck with that stupid 1950's Congressional resolution, until Congress repeals or the Court has reason to rule on the matter. The damage to the environment caused by the friction of the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves should be reason enough. (Oops - spejic was referring to the pledge, and not the motto on the currency. So the US Mint has even less jurisdiction here than I thought.)
Athiesm is a religion. What God do they worship? There are a lot of people who believe in a God but don't follow an organized religion. Dude, stop being such a whiney pansy...we're all forced to listen to little things we don't want to hear. But, most of us get over it and move on in life and don't get our panties all in a bunch. Are you offended when Sam's Army sings "God Bless America"? Get over yourself.
Does anyone else here find this sentence as hilarious as I do? By Ian's definition then both libertarianism and neoliberal economics are "religions" because they are faith-based belief systems that invoke an ethereal and hypothetical anthropomorphized entity (in this case The Market) and they both spawn fundamentalist whackos whose rantings have nothing to do with any demonstrable or verifiable objective reality in a scientific or empirical sense. At any rate, I know that legions of sociologists, anthropologists and such will recoil in horror from using a mere dictionary to define "religion" but this is what Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary has to say regarding its definition: "the service and worship of God or the supernatural". Atheism posits neither a God nor anything that can be defined as "supernatural". Therefore, while it is a belief system, it is not a religion. If you insist on making a positive definition of atheism as opposed to, more accurately, focussing on what atheism negates, then atheisms of all stripes can probably best be described under the category of "philosophy".
Seeing as I'm Canadian, I'm not really a supporter of the US team and hence don't go to very many games involving the US NT. I'm not even going to comment on that, other than to point out that the correct spelling is 'atheism.'
Or people with English degrees. You see, some of us have actually graduated not only High School, but also colleges, universities or similar institutions.
Dude, if you actually had an English degree then you would know it's improper to capitalize high school in the context you used it. Loser.
Hey, you're the dude who claimed to hold an English degree, not me, dude. Where did you get that degree, Woeful State University?
Great Zeus, I have been using "dude" for a long time on BigSoccer. There is nothing wrong with using "dude", by Shamash.