Sunday, September 04, 2005
Our Newest Op Ed
Evolution is Unconstitutional
- By Rudy Takala
On August 19th, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a prison violated an inmate's religion by not allowing him to form a prayer group. According to the court, "Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being."
It's not the first time a court has ruled in such a way. In 1961, the Supreme Court defined "secular humanism" as a religion in Torcaso v. Watkins. In the 1965 case United States v. Seeger, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a conscientious objector who claimed that his "skepticism or disbelief in the existence of God" did "not necessarily mean lack of faith in anything whatsoever."
Nonetheless, conservatives seem to have fallen in lockstep on the latest case. A senior trial attorney from the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy said, "Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion." Shortly after, conservative pundits began to rally in decrying the Circuit's ruling.
Such commentators have unfortunately missed the point. This is not, as one article argued, an issue of whether our founders were Christian men. This is an issue of reality - of what atheism really is. It is a matter of faith. It's an unproven hypothesis that its adherents want to propagate and convince others of.........
Click HERE To Read On
- By Rudy Takala
On August 19th, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a prison violated an inmate's religion by not allowing him to form a prayer group. According to the court, "Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being."
It's not the first time a court has ruled in such a way. In 1961, the Supreme Court defined "secular humanism" as a religion in Torcaso v. Watkins. In the 1965 case United States v. Seeger, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a conscientious objector who claimed that his "skepticism or disbelief in the existence of God" did "not necessarily mean lack of faith in anything whatsoever."
Nonetheless, conservatives seem to have fallen in lockstep on the latest case. A senior trial attorney from the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy said, "Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion." Shortly after, conservative pundits began to rally in decrying the Circuit's ruling.
Such commentators have unfortunately missed the point. This is not, as one article argued, an issue of whether our founders were Christian men. This is an issue of reality - of what atheism really is. It is a matter of faith. It's an unproven hypothesis that its adherents want to propagate and convince others of.........
Click HERE To Read On
# posted by Publius @ 9/04/2005 02:00:00 AM 
|
