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2/4/2009
The ‘Establishment of Atheism’ clause
Along with the “coming out” of militant atheism in recent years, there's a growing perception that freedom of religion is tantamount to freedom from religion and is a legitimate objective of The First Amendment. Such sentiment was displayed lately in a recent Letter to the Editor in the Appleton Post-Crescent.
Such absurdity is easily exposed when we insert other concepts as substitutes. If “freedom of speech” means “freedom from speech,” then we would abridge the rights of many to uphold the privilege of few, while negating the traditional understanding of tolerance.
In his treatise, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), Justice Joseph Story, the foremost legal expert of his era, stated that the First Amendment was never intended to insure a state imposed negative neutrality toward religion expression. The First Amendment rather, was crafted to insure the prohibition of a particular ecclesiastical establishment by federal government and to uphold the religious liberty of conscience for each individual.
After the framing of the First Amendment, Congress called on President Washington to proclaim a day of prayer and thanksgiving. His proclamation began with...
“Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God...”
The very legislative body which framed the First Amendment saw that the acknowledgment of God was not only a permissible act of state, but a requirement of the magistrate.
In the last sixty years we've witnessed a change of meaning engineered by the judiciary, which has allowed religious suppression organizations to claim that state acknowledgment of God is the establishment of religion. And that's ridiculous.
The dissenting opinion issued by Justice Potter Stewart, in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963), expressed concern that the trend toward expunging public religious practices in public school settings could result in establishing secular humanism by default.
If atheism is defined merely as a lack of belief in God (as is often the case for contemporary professing atheists), then does the legal prohibition against acknowledgment of God by the state, result in establishment of atheism by default?
Robert E. Meyer, Fox Valley
COMMENTS
Robert:
My sentiments exactly.... Although I was the one who wrote a response to the original article that was published. Yours is much more eloquent and pointed!
Very nicely put!
Sean.
Sean (Fri Feb 06 13:45:57 2009)
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