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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (26739)	12/8/1998 7:40:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Bob, You asked E to identify issues you hadn't responded to. I rather hoped for an answer to this post - I'll re-post it below. HiTech might be interested as well. For my part, I don't really care much what the founding fathers thought. This is what I think: Bob, I think you may be missing an important point. The principle of separation of church and state - including the notion that public money or facilities may not be used to promote religious objectives - did not originate from an effort to curtail religious freedom. It came from a desire to assure religious freedom. The people who fled to America to achieve religious freedom were not fleeing persecution by atheists, they were fleeing persecution by state-supported churches. They knew very well that the greatest risk of curtailment of religious freedom comes from an alliance between the state and an exclusivist religion. One of the great challenges in defining religious freedom is dealing with religions like Christianity and Islam, which require their members to violate the religious freedom of others. If "testimony" is permitted in schools, doesn't this violate the right of my family to worship - or not - as we choose, without having to be bombarded with prosletyzing from those with a misplaced urge to "save" us? How would you suggest balancing the principle of freedom for all religions with the obsession that some religions have with converting others? Private prayer, as I believe Del has already pointed out, is between you and whatever God you choose to worship. It cannot be constrained because nobody else knows it is taking place. Public prayer is a very different thing. It is, and has always been, a way of enforcing religious conformity and identifying nonconformists. There are many, many, schoolchildren who belong to religious traditions other than Christianity, or to non-religious traditions. Imposing Christian prayer forces them to either deny their own beliefs or to proclaim them, exposing them to ridicule and persecution by conformists. No child should be forced into that position. School should be a place where people of varying traditions can gather to learn on neutral ground, where potentially divisive issues are temporarily set aside for the good of the group, not a place where the majority is allowed to impose its beliefs on the minority. This does not mean ordering children to abandon their beliefs. It means asking children to keep their beliefs private while in school, out of respect and consideration for the beliefs of others. This is something all civilized people should be capable of doing. There are times when it is simply inappropriate to discuss religion, just as there are times when it is inappropriate to discuss politics. Teaching evolution is not an attack on God or Jesus, it is simply acknowledgment that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion and evidence points in this direction. If you want to believe otherwise you are welcome to do so, but I don't think you can reasonably ask the community to subsidize the teaching of your beliefs. I don't think that any American is agitating to curtail the right of Christians to gather and worship as they choose outside of publicly funded institutions. But those institutions simply cannot be used as platforms for any faith, Christian or otherwise. Doing so would be a clear violation of the religious freedoms of other faiths. Steve