Could anyone explain to us not from the US, why it would in any way be important who this Story fellar was or his connection to some university?.
Nobody required you to cite an atheist website. Conservapedia is such a laughably bad source in terms of both its quality and open biases that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody try to use it as a citation here. If you want people to take your arguments seriously and if you don’t want the staff to wonder if you are just trying to annoy other posters, use good cites and read them carefully. Do at least the basics to avoid being completely wrong.
Joseph Story served on the Supreme Court 200 years ago. He has stated opinions that are congenial to GEEPERS. Therefore, any and all decisions rendered by the Supreme Court in regards to the concept of Seperatio of Church and State should be considered null and void.
He was a US Supreme Court justice; unlike those of many countries, US courts (and the Supreme Court in particular) shape law because they have the authority to strike down legislation which conflicts with the US Constitution.
Harvard Law School is important because it’s where most of our Supreme Court justices went (including 6 of the current 9.) It’s the American Sorbonne, or Oxford, or whatever. It’s not really important in the context of this debate, but I corrected a factual error and GEEPERS got all shirty about it.
Story is important because he shaped both Harvard and the Supreme Court’s views on several issues, including property rights. None of his well-known opinions have much to do with religious freedom, but there you go.
Thomas Jefferson, founder of the USA would say the both of your are wrong:
“… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
-Thomas Jefferson
See my prior statement about people like you who are unable to wrap your brain around the concept. “uh…the problem is the First Amendment is being reinterpeted to fit secular agendas..” Yeah. Exactly. That 's what the term SECULAR means - “separate from religion”.
Harvard is a private school. They can do whatever they want with respect to religion.
FYI, Harvard Law School was founded in 1817, ten years before Joseph Story ran it.
Well, we have Joseph Story’s take on things. What about the guy who is, as you say, the “so-called Father of the Constitution”? What did he think about the idea that “Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state”?
The views of a man who died 170 years ago also don’t tell you very much about real-life atheists and “Mahometans.” It should go without saying that not every Supreme Court justice has agreed on how to interpret the First Amendment and separation of church and state, but we can still talk about how those ideas have been interpreted over the years, and in more recent generations they have not been interpreted in a way Story might have agreed with. A teenager in Rhode Island didn’t wake up one day and change everybody’s interpretation of the Constitution. In fact, Christians contributed a great deal to current interpretations. Unless we’re going to discuss how the law is currently interpreted and applied - something GEEPERS doesn’t seem interested in understanding because it destroys his position - I don’t see why Story matters either.
Geez, you lot won’t even spot a guy a blatant, transparent appeal to authority. Talk about unsporting.
He was friends with James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution”. It’s reasonable to assume that he would have a much better idea of the original intent of the 1st amendment than some modern day judge who caters to secular humanism.
GEEPERS,
Clearly at the SDMB our belief is the majority belief, and you’re just being a rude brat. You should just be quiet with your minority opinion.
Sincerely,
The Moral Majority
Go read the 2 MEBuckner quotes that cite from Madison. Madison who may, or may not, have known what Madison was thinking.
Wow, I had been thinking that to GEEPERS, a “True Christian” excluded anyone who was not GEEPERS. Now I see that he even excludes himself!
Jesus and God are excluded too. God, especially in the OT, was one violent guy. Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword. That whole thing with the pigs was dickish too. I don’t think either of them are worthy to be called True Christians.
“Original Intent” is a wonderful concept, and historically interesting, but the Constitution is a living document, designed to be amended and interpreted as American society learns and grows. It must reflect and guide our current population and ideals or it is irrelevant.
Setting aside the fact that Madison had other ideas entirely (see **MEBuckner **quotes), did he also have much better ideas of the original intent of the Constitution than the folks who tacked the 13th Amendment to it ?
So SCOTUS is beyond all criticism because obviously if you disagree with their decisions in one area of law, you obviously are advocating anarchy?
God, in his official capacity, often finds it necessary to perform acts which he personally abhors.
GEEPERS, I don’t think anybody is arguing that all judges and legal scholars throughout history have interpreted the First Amendment and the concept of separation of church and state the same way. They haven’t. But the bottom line is that if you want to argue that the banner does not establish a religion and that the judge got it wrong, you have to look at how the Constitution is applied today and what the law says today. And according to the law, it’s pretty obvious this thing flunks. The wording is overtly Christian and the banner was put up with the express purpose of replacing the recitation of The Lord’s Prayer, an act that the Supreme Court had already ruled an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Not only that, the wording of the banner and the Lord’s Prayer are nearly the same: “our heavenly father” compared to “our father who art in heaven.” The Lord’s Prayer usesa slightly wordier way of addressing the prayer to the same exact deity. The moral message of the banner is the same without “our heavenly father,” and those words were not added to the banner by accident. The fact that believers of other religions could say “our heavenly father” is a dodge because they don’t say that - only Christians do. That’s a pretty good reason the other religious believers don’t say it, in fact. They’re not Christians. Since they don’t pray that way and Christians do, that should tell you that the banner’s wording takes the form of a Christian prayer.
If that’s true, then I’m declaring victory right now. Drinks are on me.
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