Re: Atheist State Lawmaker Quotes Carl Sagan Instead of Doing Prayer Before House Ses
I don't believe they did separate Church and State. If so where did they do that?
Ahh, ye olde Teahadist argument that, because it does not explicitly state separation of church and state in the Constitution, then the merger of church and state is meant to be. Let me enjoy smacking down this line of manure. I will start with what was in the minds of our forefathers, then I will go to the Constitution itself, and bury your misguided misconception 6 feet under.
Our forefathers - All of them were distrustful of religion, and they all remembered persecutions of those who did not adhere to a strict interpretation of religious thought in European countries.
1) Thomas Jefferson was vocal about what he thought of church and state in his autobiography, in which he said this about the Religious Freedom Act that was passed by Virginia Colony.
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
And, in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, written in January 1802, Jefferson writes:
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
As you can see, Jefferson explicitly stated their intent when they passed the First Amendment - Separation of Church and State.
2) James Madison was fearful of establishing religion in government. In a paper he wrote in 1785, called
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, he penned this, as an argument against the establishment of religion in government:
Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions?
With this background established, let's move on to the wording in the Constitution itself. While the words are not explicitly there, the idea certainly is.
1) On oaths and affirmations in Article VI....
....but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
2) The First Amendment's establishment clause.....
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
Quite simply means that no religion can be made the official religion of the United States.
3) The Free Exercise clause, also part of the first amendment:
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
That's right. If someone wants to practice Islam, that is his right. If someone prefers to be an atheist, that is also his right. The government cannot, by law, interfere.
3) So, if the government itself, by law, is not allowed to support a church, and members of government, by law, are not allowed to support a church, and neither government, nor members of government, by law, are allowed to force people to believe in any particular religion, or any religion at all, for that matter, then that is a brick wall of separation between church and state, and nothing can change that. Our forefathers were quite wise in setting it up this way. This keeps a minority, such as the Teahadists, from imposing their religion on others, just as Europeans did in the Middle Ages.
The Teahadists, of course, have an agenda, which is why they use the silly argument "I don't see it", despite the fact that anyone with an IQ higher than a bag of hammers can see it quite easily. The Teahadists, by the way, are not idiots. They see it too. Their only problem is that they want to impose their own extremist agenda on everybody else, so are praying that this silly line of manure will hold up. It won't. The vast majority sees them for who they really are..... Petty, vindictive assholes.
