I see you're another ingoramous that allows others to do your thinking for you. There is nothing nuetral about the 1st Amendment, it's quite clear, congress shall pass no law establishing a state religion and Congress shall pass no laws prohibiting the free expression of your relligion. Doesn't sound very "neutral" to me.
I see youre dishonest and post only selective parts of the 1st Amendment. As I identified earlier, the FFs were very clear about the constitution being neutral regarding religion. Selective parsing is frequently a tactic of those wishing to press an agenda or a particular issue so youre actions are not terribly surprising. For that matter, theyre typical of those pressing a fundamentalist religious agenda.
It has already been argued and long ago acknowledged that the concept of men's religious beliefs were part and parcel of the founding of the country. However, the wording of the Constitution is clearly meant to encompass numerous beliefs, extant at the time, to cover the general consensus of beliefs. Hence, deistic terms like "Creator" and "Nature's God", "divine Providence" and the quite evident lack of reference to Jesus and Yahweh (despite robust debate to include them). The closest reference is to a "Supreme Judge", but of course that could be Amun Ra, couldn't it?
I'm sorry, the Constitution says nothing about promoting or favoring one religion over another, that is what Court Precedent said, not what the Constitution said, and Thomas Jefferson warned us that we would live under an oligarchy if we allowed the supreme court to be the only arbiters of the Constitution. If they were adverse to "promoting" one relgion over another, then you could maybe explain to me about the funding to pay missionaries and to build churches coming from Congress. How Congress funded and authorized the printing of a Christian bible during the Revolution. Why they had Chrsitian church services in many Public Buildings including the US Capitol on Sundays and, well the list goes on and on, but my point was made with just one of these.
Now youre beginning to get it. The Constitution says nothing about promoting or favoring one religion over another. A gold star for you.
What point did you make? Very often, the discussions promoted by fundamentalists goes the way of sidestepping which invariably leads to answers couched in terms of but, but, but, but what about and personally, I find fundamentalists to be the worst offenders at that. They become divorced from reality, dissociated from the thread topic, and what began as a search for understanding degenerates for them into a hopeless, unwinnable promotion of their religious beliefs.
What you should be aware of is that it was The Continental-Confederation Congress that authorized the activities you describe. Once again. The constitution, (you know what the constitution is, correct?), disallows promotion of any one religion.
Note the part of the 1st Amendment you chose not to include in your post demands no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
The result of the above is profound in that it extends a simple courtesy to all citizens of the U.S. (as much as it may be revolting to you). However, the result of this by definition means the gov't cannot exalt one religion over another. Keep Christianity in culture, whether or not Christianity is dominant or not, but do not allow the government to assert it or any other religion over the other. The only way to do that is to be neutral on the issue of religion at all. As the country does become more diversified and embraces more religious beliefs (including none) the Constitution is designed to evolve to include those concerns. The Founding Fathers would, I believe, note their legal design has worked quite successfully even despite conservative Republican disassembly of the separation of church and state under Eisenhower in the 1950's (changing the FF's motto of "E Pluribus Unum" to In God We Trust" and placing "Under God" in the pledge-- both done in the 1950's).
One last morsel of food for thought: How incredibly weak some gods are, that they need to be compelled on all.
They belonged to Christian curches 93% of them, most of them to the most extremely "conservative" Christian churches of that day and made public declarations of that fact and that is historical fact and that fact speaks for itself.
Another historical fact that speaks for itself is that these men who belonged to Christian curches 93% of them, most of them to the most extremely "conservative" Christian churches of that day, knew enough about Christianity (and religions), to understand the dangers that religion can present.
Thank god for the Founding Fathers, eh? Their foresight in crafting the Constitution is instrumental in protecting me from being forced to pledge to your gods or anyone elses gods. Whew, Im a happy non-believer. I would hate to think of the state of affairs that this nation would be in if fundamentalist Christians had a free hand in government.
The Founding Fathers knew that there was no claim to protect the state from religion as that would be impossible. The men who were elected to govern would have brought their religious beliefs to the legislature-- whatever those beliefs are. The wall of separation most assuredly does protect the plurality of religion, and by design, which is why when the state endorses any religious concepts it must by definition disenfranchise other beliefs. The inclusion of a monotheistic god for instance by definition excludes any polytheistic religious persuasion (a mainstream one like Hinduism for example).
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