From: kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Limiting religious speech
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 00:44:45 GMT

[Reply to a thread in alt.censorship.]

aultj@rpi.edu (Jim Ault) writes:

[...]
>Why did the country exist for so long with such references to God
>throughout our government?  Why is it only now, over 200 years after
>the framing of the constitution that suddenly everyone wants to remove
>all these traditions (and references to God)?   

The Constitution contains no references to God. The only use of the word
"religion" in the main text of the Constitution is:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of
the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial
officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall
be bound, by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no
religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office
or public trust under the United States."

>Here's a quote from John Adams:

> "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with
> human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice,
> ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our
> Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is
> designed only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly
> inadequate for any other."  

So what if John Adams was soft of separation? (He called the colonial
religious taxes and official chruches "the most mild and equitable
establishment of religion that was known in the world." [p. 71,
_Visions of Liberty_] The fact remains that the Constitution makes no
mention of God, forbids religious tests, and allows affirmations in
place of oaths to God.

>Yes, I would say that was the turning point, and that application of
>the 14th amendment, turning it as a weapon against the states, is what
>I most disagree with.   

Many of the founders wanted the First Amendment to apply to the
States. As originally written by Madison it read "No state shall
violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press,
or the trail by jury in criminal cases." Madison called this "the most
valuable amendment on the list" and it passed by the House (where he
was a member) by the required two-thirds. (It did not pass the Senate
by the required two-thirds, but because the proceedings where secret,
no one knows the vote or the reason.) [_Visions of Liberty_ p. 44]

I wrote:

>   In any case, Jefferson wasn't Christian. He re-wrote the New Testament
>   removing all references to the divinity of Jesus. How would you feel
>   if a teacher at your local school started to use the Jefferson Bible
>   as a required text?

aultj@rpi.edu (Jim Ault) writes:

>From the Jefferson memorial in Washington:
>
>"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a
>nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction
>in the minds of the people, that these liberties are the gift of
>God?"
[...]
>This quote comes from a man who believes in God.  You can quibble
>about his other beliefs, what flavor and so on, but he does believe in
>God, and that God does have influence in the affairs of men.
[...]

I didn't say that he didn't believe in God. I said he wasn't
Christian. He was in fact a Desist which in a nutshell means that he
"argued that the course of nature was sufficient to demonstrate God's
existence and that he regarded formal religion as superfluous." [_Age
of Enlightenment_ by Peter Gay, 1966, p 33] Would you really want him
to be teaching your kids his religion?

- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Newsgroups: alt.censorship