Re: Supreme Court ruling favors prayer at council meeting
Again you aren't answering the question.
You are comparing entertainment to TALKING TO GOD.
That is a false equivalency. While you see prayer as a benign activity, it's a religious ritual. Your religion offends me. Your neighbor's religion offends me. Nobody should have the right to use a public business forum to impose their religion on me when I'm at a public/government environment seeking solutions or raising concerns about my community, or problem solving pubic issues...and I and everybody else becomes a captured audience to your praying. I don't care why you want to pray, just do it where others who don't subscribe to your beliefs aren't infringe on.
Holding people captive in an government meeting and dumping religion on them is NOT separation of church and state. Yes, captive. These venues are NOT for religious rituals, but anyone wanted to confront their local governments over public issues....are forced to listen to a religious ritual. NO, I'm NOT ****ing leaving. I want the ritual to leave. It has no place in public meetings that are important for addressing community, state, or higher issues.
At any any given public meeting - unless in a purely ethnic community, there will be a majority number in attendance who subscribe to a given religion along with varying minority numbers who subscribe to other religions. Some have no religious affiliations. Somehow I doubt that prayers invoked in public meetings will be simultaneously congruent to the beliefs among all attending.
People of different religious beliefs have the tendency to want to systematically cull out those with differing beliefs - if given the chance. A predominate religious belief within a given district can impact the outcome of public issues. So the question is: Are those outcomes always going to be good for the community at large? Maybe ...but maybe not. Depends on how minority groups or individuals are affected.
250 years ago the Framers were very much aware of the strife and bloodshed caused by religion in Europe that it was on the top of the list of the Bill of Rights, which prevented government from creating a religion or allow any given religion of authority over government. And for good reason. People have wars over religion because people don't want a particular faith to be infringed on. The numbers of types of Religious beliefs in our country alone are MANY. And even ones that are considered to be closely related can't even agree on what they believe.
History tells us all that religion and government don't mix or go together very well. Religions, even today feel compelled to want to control the workings of government. The Pope would be sitting in the Oval Office today...if he could...and I mean in a heart beat. So would the Mullah in Iran.
I bet few people in this forum can't even post alike reasons for why they pray. Or how they pray. Or even what they think prayer is...or isn't.