"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
"Gus" wrote in message
oups.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:
The hard-boiled born-again are not a vast majority. Those who believe
in
God
are a vast majority, but they have always been. And we have shown no
real
tendency to become a theocracy despite that fact.

Absolutely.


The issue now is that certain evangelicals are getting a little frisky
and
are trying to intrude their religion into government and into the
schools.
They are being resisted. They are not likely to succeed, nor are they
likely
to become a "vast majority."

It seems to me that the anti-religion forces have been trying to remove
any mention of god from public places for about 40 years or so.

Yeah, well, that corresponds roughly to the span of time over which the
theocrats have been trying to stick them in. Notice that the big issues,
the
Ten Commandments in the courthouse and so on, are of pretty recent
vintage.
Likewise, introducing religion into biology classes.

They
appear to want to change our society to fit their views. Now some
people have had enough and are resisting. Their goal seems to be to
keep things the same, not change anything.

It's a little like racial discrimination, as I see it. We've had a law
against discrimination for a very long time, but it's still a task to get
some people to live up to the law. Likewise, living up to the
Constitution,
which says we won't establish religion, is a never-ending battle.

FWIW, I happen to believe that the fundamental constitutional principle is
that the government will not encourage or promote any religion, or any
group
of religions. But I don't think it was intended for the government to
prevent citizens from expressing their religion in public settings. There
was a Supreme Court ruling that drew a fine line between the two, and I
think it was a fine decision.

In other words, at Christmastime, if the people of a town want a manger
and
a Christmas display in the town square, I'm all for it. But they'd better
also allow any other religious display, at the appropriate religious
holidays.

--
Ed Huntress

See the problem with that? If everyone was of one religion it wouldn't be a
problem for them to put up displays related to their religious practices.
Unfortunately, we no longer have a country where everyone, or nearly
everyone, is of the same religion. Now we have Christians, Muslims, Jews,
Buddhists, Wicca's, Atheists, and various others. The trend is for there to
be ever more diversity. So how can you have any one group putting up their
religious displays on public ground? You can't it wouldn't be fair. Then if
you let every group do the same thing it starts to get ridiculous. The only
reasonable thing is to deny all of them the right to display their religion
in public places. No one is depriving anyone of their religion. But since so
many different ones are going to want to do the same thing the only fair
thing is to say no one gets to use the public square to put up their
religious trappings. The problem is that since there is a large majority of
Christians they think they are entitled to do whatever they want and ****
everyone else. That goes against everything their religion supposedly stands
for but hey, who ever said that religious people are consistent? If you are
interested in peace and fairness you simply say; no religious displays on
public property, end of problem.

Hawke