You’re a disgrace

What kind of moron are you?

The ACLU is a joke? Excuse me, how about “What kind of Judge holds prayer meetings in his court?”

Did, for some unknown reason, he skip Constitutional Law class the day they discussed the Separation of Church and State?

You know what, idiot – this is EXACTLY WHY the ACLU is NOT a joke. Why we need the ACLU, and other civic minded groups just like it.

Do you think that say, Catholic, or Jewish, or Muslim, or agnostic petitioners think that they are going to get a fair hearing a court where the judge holds prayer meetings?

People like you, Dumbass, are the reason America is held in such low esteem in the rest of the world. Other countries have their share of stupid people too – but at least there they have the common decency to a) recognize how stupid they are and b) keep quiet.

Nice pun.

Gyges,
Thank you. Judaism and Christianity have very different philosophical and theological conceptions. for instance:
Satan is at the most a metaphor for evil with Jews, not a some super-being that tempts people into sin. Jews by the way don’t believe in the concept of “Original Sin.” Whether Jews believe in an afterlife (i.e. heaven and hell)is a matter of dispute. Jews believe that humans should live a moral/good life in this world and work to perfect it. We believe the world can be perfected and is not intrinsically evil. The use of Judeo-Christian as a descriptive actually assumes more of a similarity than it should.

As a Jew and as I guess a Deist, I don’t write this to express feelings of superiority, or to denigrate Christian belief. This is merely to point out that the two religions may indeed share The Torah, but their view of its message is quite different.

I will point out that I do agree with you that if a Judge did the same thing as Judge McKathan, but praying to Satan instead of God he would be condemned. That’s Jill’s point. If the Government says it’s legal for one religion to do something, but not the other religions to do it, that seems an awful lot like making “a law respecting the establishment of a religion” to me.

I agree with others that there’s an incredible assumption that you’re Christian, or at least Christian or Jewish. The questions are often meaningless to others, but when they say so they’re marked as “uncertain” at best.

But as others have said, that’s entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. This country has an explicit prohibition on an explicit mingling of official duties and religion. He might not like it, but he can’t ignore what he’s sworn to uphold.

Thanks for mentioning Sylvia Brown. I didn’t know of her before. Count me as one of her fans now! I love this stuff, (well to a point, where she and others like her prey on the desperate and take their money). Why are people asked to send their cancer money to these scams? Why can’t they be healed first and then send a remittance?

Excuse me? How can you consider don’t believe as “truth?” Do you actually understand the English language or do you just sort of smash keys and hope that what comes out makes sense?

It would have been a much better argument if you had just admitted “I hadn’t seen that poll, but 86% is the vast majority of Americans.” But since you can’t conceivably be wrong, you have to pull out some ill thought out parsing of words. To top it off you pull out one that doesn’t even work.

However, even if your point made sense and didn’t just read like a terrible attempt at symbolist poetry, it still doesn’t matter.

dundar,

No person has to swear an oath to god in a courtroom. In fact one christian sect called the Quakers expressly forbid doing so. They, and others are free to say, I do affirm instead.

I love how when we talk about religion in the U.S. we assume that Christian and Atheist are it. We just sort of nod at Jewish people and then throw them in with the Christians. Also we tend to forget that there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians and are actually deists, Pantheists, or even Henotheist (there are a lot of people who view angles as tier of “less gods,” just look at all the books Sylvia Browne sells).

Although a few don’t believe in God, they do know that the God they don’t believe in, to the vast majority, represents truth and creation.

Well, that sure explains why after a witness is sworn in: “Do you swear to tell the whole truth, so help you God?” they arrest the witness for bringing religion into the courtroom……..

95% huh? that’s pretty amazing seeing as how a 2007 Gallop poll found that 86% of Americans believed in God. Also only 70% believed in the Devil. You can check out http://www.pollingreport.com/religion.htm to see that, it’s the 3rd or 4th poll down.

But of course Jill is right. It doesn’t matter if your figures are right.

So what? The rule of law protects the rights of minorities. If you want religion in the courtroom. to allow one kind and not the other violates the law. It’s also a violation of the law to allow any religion in the courtroom. Before you get so certain about how great it would be to allow christians to practice their religion on the bench think about which christians you’re going to allow. Their are christians who believe the bible speaks clearly of a male and female aspect of god/dess. There are different versions of the 10 commandments. Some christians favor the stoning of adulterers. Some christians believe in liberation theology of justice for the poor. These are all still christian people. The 95% figure isn’t accurate, but assuming anything even close to it, there’s a lot of beliefs in that figure. There are good reasons we seperate church and state as well as protect minority rights. You may assume you’re in a majority, but that may not be true and even if true now, not in the future.

So of course such an action as praying to Satan in a court of law which seeks the truth would be rightly and roundly condemned by virtually every single American alive.

As a result, most in America now have zero respect for the ACLU.