[BikerNYC]

...show me where a state has violated the first ammendment by passing laws ... establishing ... churches or their rituals...

Prayer in public schools? It is the state establishing religious ritual in school, thus establishing those religions that sanction and hold prayer to be good and noble to a higher degree than those religions or non-religions that do not believe in prayer. State institutions should not be in the business of favoring one form of religious ritual over another. (At least that's the argument.)

[DCBurgess58]

First off let me say I am not an advocate of school prayer, unless they try to outlaw children who wish to pray on their own or with a group on school grounds. The arguement you make about one religion being made superior to another however holds NO constitutional validity. Once again I remind you that a passage of law by congress or a state, with respect to the establishment of a religion or repression of an individual's right to practice it, is the minimum trigger for a first ammendment violation or invocation of the equal protection clause. Anything less is judicial activism.

[Thraka]

Prayer in public schools? It is the state establishing religious ritual in school, thus establishing those religions that sanction and hold prayer to be good and noble to a higher degree than those religions or non-religions that do not believe in prayer. State institutions should not be in the business of favoring one form of religious ritual over another. (At least that's the argument.)

It's a bogus argument, though. As I have noted many times before, the position taken by the 'no prayer in school' crowd is not an atheist position, it is an _anti_-theist position. An atheist believes in no diety, and should not, therefore, reasonably feel anyhting but some mild amusement when dealing with theists. The anti-theist, on the other hand, has a fanatical position very much akin to rabid fundamental theists, and feels compelled to _eliminate_ expressions of other beliefs; such people are zealots who want to convert, or at least silence, others. We all know that religeous fanaticism is dangerous, and that allowing fanatics to determine religeous behavior is a recipe for disaster. It is high time we recognized anti-theism as a religeon in its own right, and restrained it as we do any other religeon.

Thraka