Could someone please clean up the opening paragraph of this page I ve read it half a dozen times trying to figure out what is trying to be said and all I m left with is a bad headache Yes The opening paragraph makes no sense If I had some idea what it was getting at i would reviseit but i do nt A couple of external links that could be useful At least in the explanation of the history of the US Constitutional seperation of church and state would be Patrick Henry s A Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion and James Madison s then anononymous response A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessment While these two documents apply to Virginia law of the time rather than to the US Constitution I think they both give good insight into two competing views of the relationship of religious and secular authority during the birth of the US What did the Court actually say I have a question please about the following paragraph When fundamentalists attempted to force biology teachers to teach the Genesis creation story if they taught evolution the Supreme Court ruled that labeling a religious doctrine as science was insufficient to allow it to be taught to a child in public school for the purpose of converting the child to a religion To FairAndBalanced You wrote that the Supreme Court ruled that labeling a religious doctrine as science was insufficient to allow it to be taught to a child in public school for the purpose of converting the child to a religion Could you point to the page in the case where the Court said that It seems to me that the Court found that the Act failed the first prong of the Lemon test secular purpose Accordingly the Court ruled on summary judgment and did not have to examine whether the thousand pages of science that the creationists filed was actually science or not Would you agree That does not invalidate my version but feel free to change it to stick more closely to the strict legal reasoning The previous version inappropriately implied that ID was scientific Fundamentalist attempt to force biology teachers to teach Genesis When fundamentalists attempted to force biology teachers to teach the Genesis creation story if they taught evolution the Supreme Court ruled that even scientific evidence could not be taught to a child in public school for the purpose of converting the child to a religion That is religious people could not appropriate snippets of scientific evidence with the aim of persuading public school children to adopt religious beliefs Where is Intelligent Design even implied in the above statement How about you and I start from the above and change it so that you think it is accurate Or how about quoting the Supreme Court When fundamentalists attempted to force biology teachers to teach the Genesis creation story if they taught evolution the Supreme Court ruled that teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction But because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to endorse a particular religious doctrine the Act furthers religion in violation of the Establishment Clause In other words the Court did not have to examine whether what was taught under the Creationism Act was scientifically accurate Only the legislators intent to teach religion mattered to the Court Are we getting somewhere Separation of politics and religion in the US I agree with edits which resulted in a text that expressed what I meant better than my original However I reverted estrangement to separation Estrangement is separation but with the added nuance of some hostility I don t think that hostile feelings are an issue here it s just that some countries separation religion and politics by tradition and many people adhere to this vision without being hostile to religion It s just like strawberry marmalade and steak you may like each separately but think without any kind of bad feeling that they do not mix well See la cit for instance User