The Like/Hate Thread

[Ashe]

Honestly, I think the ideal separation of church and state is sort of impossible as long as some people are religious. The law is based on what we believe is right. If you're religious, your opinions are going to be determined or at least affected to some extent by what your religion says (unless you happened to choose a religion that perfectly supported all your preexisting political/legal opinions). That's just logical, I don't resent anyone for it.

I absolutely agree that someone is going to make their proposals on laws based on what they believe is best for the country, regardless of where those beliefs come from.

That said, where the separation comes in is that the courts are supposed to look at these proposed laws and figure out a few things, namely "Is there a secular purpose to this or is this entirely based on religious belief itself?" Whatever direction it goes, it is hoped that it would be in the direction of the one that is all inclusive and not the one that omits fellow citizens of a different religion or without a religion.

EDIT: Just a quick point, I would find a law that says "It is illegal to pray/meditate/worship/whatever on Wednesday" to be just as intrusive as a law that says "The government recognizes each Sunday as a day to pray, so for whatever gods you may believe in, or even if you don't, please just humor us and go along with it". Don't require someone to do or NOT do something based on belief.

If I were to believe in the process of evolutionary theory and you were to believe in the argument of intelligent design, then that's fine (even if we both find the other belief dumb or annoying). However, I have no right to walk into your church and require that you now speak only favorably about evolution, as that is not the podium for such an argument to take place. A church's belief system is based on faith and faith alone. If evidence supports it, that's cool. If evidence counters it, that's fine. To those of strong faith, the acceptance of arguments from personal experience, eyewitness testimony, and appeals to emotion are acceptable and all one needs, because they "know" it to be true. To those who do not, these arguments would be fallacious, but that doesn't change that within a church, they have the freedom to say whatever they feel to be the truth without the need to amend these beliefs based on other things. I similarly expect you to have no right to go into a public school science class room, where the definition of science equates to observations made regarding the known universe and testable/observable things, in which a theory of spontaneous existence does not fall. So of course we would not be expected to teach such stuff in a "Science" classroom as that class is to teach "Science". It would be just as ludicrous to come in and try to randomly teach math or language in the class, as that isn't what the class is about.