Well… At the point he made that declaration, he wasn’t. He was just a guy who happens to be a scientist during working hours…speaking outside of working hours.
“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.” Attributed to Richard Feynman, but also to Lee A. DuBridge.
I appreciate every one views on things. Thats what make us unique and individuals. If we all believe the same things we would have nothing to talk about
Do you understand that some people do not believe in “Higher Powers”?
Yes I understand some dont. but I’m not going to pretend that I grasp why. When god or higher power is more of a third party. physical,mental and spiritual. Just because we can’t see the wind doesn’t mean it isn’t hitting us sorta thing.
Let’s not hijack this thread with the ‘existence of God’ issue. Take it to a new thread.
I’ve never really been sure which it was that so consistently put him on the wrong side of almost every issue. It could be both.
Scalia’s witty exchanges with the late William Safire on the language of some of his rulings suggest not just a certain level of intelligence but a lively sense of humor. OTOH, here we have a Supreme Court justice who openly professes to believe in a literal devil, presumably one with horns and a pitchfork – not the typical outlook of someone who would be considered a critical thinker. His defense in a TV interview of the Citizens United decision struck me as singularly shallow and uninspired. And his typically over-the-top dissent in United States v Windsor backfired on him in a big way by opening the floodgates to a sequence of state court decisions striking down same-sex marriage bans – a good thing, to be sure, but certainly not what Scalia intended.
Whoa, that doesn’t sound like a lot of work at all…
I’ve never understand the idea that some people have that there is an objectively definable “correct” view on constitutional issues.
Of course there isn’t – at least in the vast majority of cases, sometimes not even those that are decided unanimously. I would have thought that my obviously figurative comment wouldn’t have been interpreted with such humorless literalism, but maybe it was my fault for assuming too much.
What I’m saying is that there is a remarkable breadth of excellent and persuasive arguments against many or most of Scalia’s rulings that have been articulately raised by dissenting justices and other commentators.
Eh. If you don’t write clearly, don’t blame the reader.
Fair enough, and not to digress, but there is a big difference between writing expressively to get an idea across and writing in bulletproof legalese in the expectation that it will be micro-analyzed by your enemies. “He’s always wrong about everything” is a very common metaphorical style.
Fighting ignorance.
I’ve probably never mentioned this before, but the legal cases on exemptions from the ACA rest on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as opposed to the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution. The Supreme Court’s standard for the First Amendment, if applied to those cases, would result in losses for the plaintiffs. They won because of the RFRA’s more protective stance towards religious beliefs.
That’s a non sequitur if I ever heard one. I don’t play tennis. Does that make me a tennis player?
Except you didn’t say “he’s always wrong about everything”. At any rate, it says a lot about this MB that someone can blithely declare that Scalia is stupid and hardly garner a comment. Or, that belief in “the devil” is somehow different than belief in God wrt evaluating a person’s intelligence: Obama believes in a literal God, presumably an old guy with a beard riding on a cloud.
And why do you make such a presumption?
It’s sort of presumed that a Christian who recites the Nicene Creed as part of his worship isn’t fibbing.
The conventional vision of God in contemporary society is of an old, bearded man. The “riding around on a cloud” is less likely to be a literal belief, but it’s nevertheless a common image. I don’t his presumption is that far-fetched, and I think it’s absolutely reasonable to call someone out on thinking that belief in the devil is less reasonable than belief in God.
I wouldn’t. If you had followed the discussion, you would have seen that I was offering that as a contrast to:
Czarcasm: That post was overly snarky. Let me rephrase to say: I should point out that I was responding to an earlier post…
It does not say that Congress may not be guided by considerations of religion, or that individual members of Congress may not consult their private conscience when voting on legislation. Indeed, by the literal language, Congress may make laws respecting RELIGION in general, as long as it’s not aimed at an establishment of religion, and does not impact or constrain the exercise of religion in general.
What is “religion in general”, and how would one go about making a law respecting it?