Posted on 07/01/2003 2:47:12 PM PDT by Lurking Libertarian
ATLANTA - A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a Ten Commandments monument the size of a washing machine must be removed from the Alabama Supreme Court building.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed a ruling by a federal judge who said that the 2 1/2-ton granite monument, placed there by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
[snip]
Moore put the monument in the rotunda of the courthouse in the middle of the night two summers ago. The monument features tablets bearing the Ten Commandments and historical quotations about the place of God in law.
[click link to read remainder of article]
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sadly, it's a spiritual blindness. Is there an objective right and wrong independent of the human will, or does the State decide for you?
Actually, I've done neither, your strawmen notwithstanding.
There is no constitutional ban on the state having a political preference. There is no constitutional ban on the state having a philosophical preference.
Is that so? So they can deny positions, promotions, and benefits - by law - based on the subject's political and philosophical views? That's the first I've heard of this.
Can you tell me in your own words what the reason for the establishment clause was? Because understanding that is essential to understanding its meaning.
I wouldn't resign. I'd create new precedents just as the liberals are doing.
Make a real argument and I'll gladly continue.
The purpose of the Establishment Clause? Just like the Free Exercise clause, it was to prohibit religious discrimination or persecution. But the founders were wise enough to know that just one was not enough. You prohibit persecuting any particular faith, AND you prohibit favoring any particular faith.
Do you know who started universal education? The PURITANS. Ever hear of a New England Reader? the first english bible printed in America WAS SANCTIONED BY CONGRESS. Egad! Pull up their headstones and spit on their graves - they tried to establish Christianity as a State religion! You can create new precedents but you can't change history. Harvard, Yale, Princeton (New Jersey College), Penn - ALL Christian seminaries originally - now empty atheistic amoral cesspools of liberal thought. A Ph.D. from Harvard is worth about as much as a degree in Marxism at Moscow University.
Does the state decide my morals? That's just silly. The state has no morals.
Even more accurately, there is no sacred text that says, "If, in a few centuries, a new faith arises based upon the teachings of my Son, whose coming will NOT be the arrival of the Messiah you have heard through my prophets, then the followers of the new faith shall display these tablets in their courts of law as a sign that these tablets are the source of their laws."
In fact, I can't really think of a command in the Bible to display religious symbols in civil institutions. Or not to. So whether or not it is right or wrong is left open to some interpretation. At this point, however, whether it is legal or illegal is not.
Well, logically, if you believe in objective moral standards, there must be a source for those standards. Universal moral precepts can't just hang in mid-air with no authority behind them and no origin. What is the origin? There is a difference between objective moral principles and the moral choices of moral agents (people). People can make moral choices that are contrary to universal moral standards, but the standard exists whether or not any person recognizes it.
Does the state decide my morals? That's just silly. The state has no morals.
The laws of our nation and our state will inevitably reflect the moral values of the people behind them. If people of traditional values do not make our laws (such as people like our founding fathers), then people of the new morality will, and that is what has happened over the last 40 years. Laws are morally based. The state does have morals because people run the State and people have morals. The State holds that a human being isn't a person until it passes thru the birth canal - that is a moral decision as much as it is legal. The State had decided that reverse discrimination is a-okay - moral; the State has decided that it can legislate sexual mores in striking down sodomy laws - moral.
Roy Moore believes that all law comes from God - that is exactly what William Blackstone believed and Blackstone's legal philosophy was ascribed to by our founders. The 10 commandments are indeed the foundation for all moral and civil law. The 10 commandments embody absolute moral principles - lying, stealing, murder are wrong all the time for all time. It starts there. Mankind isn't and the State isn't.
Even more accurately, there is no sacred text that says, "If, in a few centuries, a new faith arises based upon the teachings of my Son, whose coming will NOT be the arrival of the Messiah you have heard through my prophets, then the followers of the new faith shall display these tablets in their courts of law as a sign that these tablets are the source of their laws."
Since God is eternal (notice our founders embraced monotheism), his moral precepts are also eternal as they flow directly from His character. So, lying was wrong before Moses, after Moses and still is. It's universal and transcendant truth.
As far as the second point - do you keep the Sabbath on Saturday? That is explicitly commanded by the 4th. Should we have a law that prohibits Catholics from praying to a statue of the Virgin? Sure, SOME of the Commandments reflect universal law. But that can't be said for all of them. And all of them aren't even adopted by Moore's religion.
There is one possible example in scripture about display. The Ark of the Covenant contained the tablets of the law and it was always carried before the people and was eventually placed in the temple in the Holy of Holies. Moore is right about one thing. The 10 commandments are the basis of U.S. law. All one has to do is read the founders' writings to know that. So, if they are the basis of the origin of our laws, what's the problem? There is only a problem if one believes that law evolves in the atheistic darwinian sense (here is that religious connection again!).
None really, except that they are the basis of our laws, like it or not.
As far as the second point - do you keep the Sabbath on Saturday? That is explicitly commanded by the 4th. Should we have a law that prohibits Catholics from praying to a statue of the Virgin? Sure, SOME of the Commandments reflect universal law. But that can't be said for all of them. And all of them aren't even adopted by Moore's religion.
I believe I explained this. Commandments 1-4 concern a matter of conscience between a person and His God, so these cannot be regulated by the State. In fact, the founder's expressly stated that religion was a matter of conscience (read Locke). It is 5-10 that concern behavior has it affects others and this can and should be regulated. Governments are necessary because people are sinful by nature and cannot govern themselves without strife and chaos.
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