Re: Judge Jones sided with the Discovery Institute and ruled against the Dove...

Just 2 points on this, 1 specific & 1 general.
............
> In his 1833 "Commentaries on the Constitution", Supreme Court
> Justice Joseph Story wrote:
> "The real object of the [first] amendment was, not to countenance,
> much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by
> prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian
> sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which
> should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national
> government . . ."
> "The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and
> attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to him
> for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a
> future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the
> personal, social, and benevolent virtues;- these never can be a matter of
> indifference in any well ordered community. . . ."
..............

It's significant that there's nothing in this list of things to be promulgated which is distinctively Christian. A lot of people who subscribed to the natural religion popular in the 18th century could have subscribed to it. Orthodox Jews could & Muslims would (I think) have trouble perhaps only with the "moral freedom" part. In any case there's nothing at all about Incarnation, Trinity, Justification &c.

Then the general point: Assuming for the sake of argument that all of this is correct, it's germane to the present situation only to the extent that the need to challenge evolution is something that Christians hold in common. & of course it isn't.

George L. Murphy
Received on Wed Jan 11 14:00:38 2006