And Here is Why I Feel the Separation of Church and State is Important!

Caught this one a while back but had some other things keeping me from finishing my post:  http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2016/08/satanism-comes-out-of-closet-in-alaska.html

What also got me was one of the comments, it said:

"I'm a lifelong Atheist but in all fairness some churches do some good, be they Satanic, Christian, Muslim or Spaghetti."

What it raised to me was that when a theist gets defensive about their beliefs, they start spouting off about all the good works their church does, like build hospitals or feed the hungry.  What I have to ask is what does the belief set and good works really have to do with each other?

Here's my  . . . well  . . . dilemma I guess is the best word.  You see, it doesn't seem to matter to me what a belief set includes, good works are not measures against your belief set, but against society's standard of good works.  So building a hospital, for example, is considered a good work, but are religious organizations the only ones who build hospitals?  No!  Plus even building a hospital under the cover of a 'religious good work' is no guarantee that the hospital will remain a going concern.  I know of two hospitals in my local area that both had 'St' in their names that eventually closed.

I guess what I am trying to say, the social activities of a church group are separate from the religious activities of the same group and any cross-over is more accidental than deliberate.  Oh they might voice their religion as justification for doing something society considers good, but the reality is that justification is more rationalization than anything.  All sort of community groups can decide to use some of their resources to do things society considers 'good', many groups have done the exact same thing without the need to invoke a deity.  Does the deity really make a difference in medical care?  Sure doesn't look like it, does it?  Theists still get hurt and sick on par with the rest of the human population.

Now what does this have to do with the Separation of Church and State.  If you read the above article you probably had as good a laugh about it as I did.  The Satanic Temple did the invocation at a local government meeting.  Well I say GOOD!  I mean if you are going to practice religion, you should be open to any and all recognized religions.  Sooner or later I imagine a Jedi will be doing a benediction!  What I have to wonder is how many people did the temple piss off?

Here is one of my major pet peeves about most theists.  While they often give lip service to freedom of religion, they don't really mean it.  What they usually mean is freedom for their religion and everyone else gets to sit in the back of the bus.

One of John F. Kennedy's most famous quotes is:

"If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."

There is also this quote:

"‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ " Attributed to Voltaire, although the wording varies a bit.

Here is where most theists fall short of any sort of ideal.  It is also why I think the separation of Church and State is an important concept.   As I have been told over and over again, "It's not in the Constitution", my response is "So what?"  There are great many things not mentioned in the Constitution, like the 'Separation of Powers' between out three branches of government, but have become part of our everyday lives.

The phrase "separation of church and state" is generally traced to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."(January 1, 1802, letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association)"

So when the author of the Declaration of Independence states that the intent of the Freedom of Religion part of the Constitution was to build this wall  . . . then the fact the phrase itself isn't in the Constitution isn't that big a deal.

Good deeds are good deeds and trying to claim that your religion is the driver of doing good deeds seems . . . shall we say a bit disingenuous.  I mean take a look at "Whipped, hit and locked in closets: Life inside some religious day cares".  Here the exact opposite, what would be criminal behavior in a secular day care is granted a legal exemption if it's a religious day care. 

But there is why the separation should be maintained.  When your religion expects or even allows you to behave is ways contrary to societies concept of good and bad, you really need to rethink your religion!  Look at this one example from North Carolina:

"In the ’90s, [Maymie] Page operated a secular day care in North Carolina, where she wasn’t allowed to use any type of corporal punishment, even if her Christian faith encouraged it. But she didn’t let that get in her way.

She ran into legal problems in 1997 for being too rough with children and again in 1999 after she smacked a child in the head. She was arrested the following year after she pulled down a boy’s pants in front of his classmates and spanked him so hard on his bottom and arms that he developed bruises and welts. 

That was too much for North Carolina day care regulators. The state used its ultimate weapon and revoked Page’s day care license in May 2000, saying that “children were getting hurt on a regular basis,” according to a news release.
Page soon found a workaround. 

Eight months after the state shut her down, Page requested permission to reopen her day care as a religious one, affiliated with the church where her husband was a pastor, Faith Tabernacle Holiness Church of God in Winston-Salem. 

Now that Page’s day care is recognized as religious, it has the state’s blessing to spank children – the very offense that shut her down in the first place."

See what I mean?  Using religion to justify child abuse!  I am sure some theist will say 'their religion doesn't condone that', but that's point.  If you can rationalize good deeds because of your religion, you can also easily rationalize bad deeds because of your religious beliefs.

Religions should not be a weapon to discriminate nor should it be a cover for anything illegal, especially where it comes to the welfare of children.  A while back I address a question as to whether or not Creationism is a form of Child Abuse.  I am re-thinking a bit of my answer.  In a vacuum, Creationism may not be a specific example of abuse, but it's not operating in a vacuum.  It's part and parcel of a larger belief set and many aspects of various religious beliefs certainly appear to be forms of abuse.  All the good works in the world can't erase that, just ask the Catholic Church.  Also, when you think about it, how many children have to die at the hands of theists parents who refuse medical care before we get serious about separating church and state!

If your religion permits, encourages, or even demands something against the law, theists should remember that it's not the religion that gets held accountable, but the practitioners who committed the crime! In any event, as long as your belief set doesn't infringe on the rights of other people, and as long as it complies with the law, enjoy!  But there must be a limit, and that limit is the law!

Time to Re-Write History . . . Again

A few years have past so now it's time for the Discovery Institute (DI) to resurrect David Coppedge and paint him as another martyr for the cause.  The post by the toothless chihuahua davey 'klingy' klinghoffer is "World Magazine Tells David Coppedge's Powerful Story" and, as I recall, it wasn't a very powerful story, actually it was pretty dull.

Let me nutshell it for you, if you aren't familiar.  Coppedge preaches to co-workers about Intelligent Design and his personal homophobia to the point of Human Resource complaints and does a poor job in an unpaid leadership position.  He gets counseled and relieved of his leadership position . . which was an unofficial position, an additional duty.  He sues claiming religious discrimination for his 'demotion'.  During the run up to his trial, he gets downsized because he wasn't keeping his skills up-to-date and . . . as you can guess . . . adds that to his lawsuit.  He loses his lawsuit and so the DI paints him as yet another victim, like John Freshwater, Guillermo Gonzales, Catherine Coker, and a few select others.

While klingy likes to paint him in the most positive light possible, Coppedge's co-workers painted him in a very different light.  Klingy repeated Coppedge's claims that his advocacy of Intelligent Design (ID) was always done in "the most respectful, appropriate manner" and "If anyone expressed disinterest, he says, he immediately backed down" and yet the complaints by his co-workers, multiple co-workers and managers, not only about his advocacy, but his job performance painted a very different picture.  They used terms like 'unwelcome' and 'disruptive'.  Eventually he was fired as part of a downsizing event, but you know that the DI can't just leave it at that.

Just to contrast, Since 1996, the year Coppedge was hired as a system administrator, I have been a Delphi programmer, Web Developer, Programming Instructor, Program Manager, Project Lead, and a Java Programmer.  What all Information Technologists learn quickly is that the key to continuous employment is constant upgrade of skills.  The field changes so quickly that your expertise can become obsolete much faster than many people will believe.  So the idea of Coppedge being downsized when his skillset was no longer needed is easily believable.

As a matter of fact, I think I have heard this tune before.  Yes, I had to check, but in 2011 the same psuedo-news organization reported about Coppedge only that DI write-up was by Anika Smith instead of klingy say pretty much the same sort of things.  I haven't noticed anything from Smith lately, so I guess it's up to klingy to re-write things.

Bottom line for Coppedge, he lost his lawsuit, you can read the statement of decision here.  Coppedge and his lawyers had a bunch of objections to the proposed statement, but it was approved by the Court. This decision certainly showed Coppedge was not the respectful and appropriate co-worker the DI likes to claim he is, nor is he one who backed down when disinterest was shown to his religious ideas.  What he was doing was preaching during work, he was also performing his additional duty poorly, and refused to keep his skills current and eventually got fired during a downsizing.  The DI likes to claim that as a senior person, he normally wouldn't be part of being downsized, but when you factor in not keeping his skills current -- that makes him an obvious candidate.  Here is a quote form the decision:

" . . . the evidence reflects that Coppedge was less skilled than those retained, regarding the skills needed on Cassini going forward; Coppedge himself testified that the other SAs [System Administrators] were more expert in these areas."

In another light, this also demonstrates how quickly the DI is to try and re-write history.  In Stephen C. Meyer's book "The Signature in the Cell" Meyer completely rewrote the 'Sternberg Peer Review Controversy' until it was nearly unrecognizable from the reality.  Every once in a while they bring this subject up again and keep trying to peddle their revisionist history.

They repeated attack the Dover Decision, most recently here, even after claiming that it wasn't particularly binding nor had any lasting effect.  How many times will they attempt and re-try the trial?  I guess we'll find out pretty much every December.  They literally repeat the testimony they would have wanted to give if they had the intestinal fortitude to do so during the trial.

Often their history re-writes take historical figures and re-baptize them as Intelligent Design proponents, like Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Jefferson, and even Anaxagoras, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.  Of course these folks are safely dead and cannot refute their re-baptismal.

The history re-write they most often use is to try and blame Darwin for pretty much everything under the sun that they disagree with.  'Darwinism' is the blame for social ills, Hitler and the Holocaust, and even the decline of church attendance.  If it weren't for Darwin we would all be living happy, religious lives . . . as though there were no problems before the advent of Charles Darwin.  Sure, our history books show the world was all happiness and light before Darwin was born, right?

Well, that's enough today.  It's 'nice' to know that the DI will continue to re-write history.  I am glad that most of us don't fall for their foolishness.  In fact is there a difference between the DI and an old-fashioned snake oil salesman peddling his wares from a traveling wagon?  I don't see much of one, at least not philosophically.