Re: Judge Jones again

Oh dear, where to begin. I despise "Christian America" rhetoric, but I
despise this sort of revisionism even more. Some of the "founders" were
rationalists, many were Deists, and a few outright rejected traditional
religion. But most were Christians, and though they intended to establish a
secular republic and not a "Christian nation," they surely would never have
accepted the trope that "true religion" is reason freed from the tyranny of
quaint artifacts like churches and Bibles.

Nor would they have recognized "religious freedom" as "barring any alliance
between church and state." They viewed the church as fundamentally the ally
of the state because they understood that a republican democracy is doomed
without an informed, virtuous public, and they further understood that
knowledge and virtue come fundamentally from institutions like the church
and the home, and not from the government (or from government-run schools).
They would have been horrified to learn that the first amendment, which was
intended to secure religious freedom in part by prohibiting an official
state religion, has been read to require the establishment of a state-run
education system scoured of references to God and religion.

More and more it's clear to me that Judge Jones is no friend of anyone who
believes religion and science need not exist in perpetual conflict.

On 5/22/06, Carol or John Burgeson <burgytwo@juno.com> wrote:
>
> Judge Jones again.
>
> "The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down
> by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free,
> rational inquiry. They possessed a great confidence in an individual's
> ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the
> exercise of his or her reason. This core set of beliefs led the founders,
> who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of
> religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state."
>
> --U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, who outlawed the teaching of
> "intelligent design" in science class, in his commencement address Sunday
> to 500 graduates at Dickinson College, his alma mater.
>
> More and more I am coming to believe that church-state separation and the
> best teaching of science are inextricably intertwined.
>
> Burgy
>
Received on Mon May 22 20:47:43 2006