
It’s really annoying that the separation of church and state wasn’t more explicitly written into the constitution because dumbasses in Arkansas like to seize on the fact that those words aren’t actually in the document. Of course Supreme Court precedent upholds that interpretation but I wish it was more obvious
Most of my family is MAGAesque. They aren’t huge fans of the pope or religious leaders doing anything other than leading religious congregations. The Ten Commandments however, that’s big because of pragmatic application. Way easier to go to work and focus on what needs done when you’re not worried about someone trying to bang your spouse. I tend to agree.
We’re on our way to theocracy, we’ve been forced to display the 10 commandments in every room of every public school in Arkansas. No matter how pragmatic you feel that document is, it is explicitly Christian religious texts being forced on a secular nation. Would you be ok with it if we had a Muslim governor who did the same with excerpts from The Koran?
Nope. Every nation I’ve been to that utilizes those caveats appears to be falling apart. I draw the church/state line (like I was eluding to before) pragmatically. So you don’t have a theocracy, “priesthood” isn’t required or admonished when considering leadership, but competency is the primary desirable criteria. So someone who’s like “get rid of the core tenants of civilization’s stability, I don’t want to see them!” Likely isn’t a very competent judge… or historian… or wise in general.
And I don’t think you do draw the line pragmatically, I think you are entirely failing to account for your own religious biases. Unlike the founders who, despite being majority religious, were very clear about creating a secular nation that did not respect any one religion over another, or over secular interests. Forcing public institutions to display Christian religious texts is a clear cut, black and white violation of that.
I know it’s hard for you to understand because these people happen to share your religion but I hope you can imagine what you’d feel like if the laws weren’t being broken to your benefit, and instead were being broken to push a Buddhist or Muslim agenda. I think it might bother you too
By looking at things mathematically/time you can do great trend analysis. It’s why I’m not worried about a theocracy emerging. Christian’s are too decentralized and at odds with each other to accept opposing denominations priests as political leaders especially for positions of judgement as exclusion criteria
I don’t mean this as an ad hominem but you don’t come across as much of an academic, unless you specifically mean a theological academic. You seemed to drop the argument about how the Ten Commandments thing should be legal because I assume you recognize how unconstitutional it is. Being ok with an unconstitutional policy just because you personally like it doesn’t seem very academic or pragmatic.
Arguably American Christianity (evangelicals, etc) are far worse for our nation than sin or secular. Religion has no place in government, politics, or school. It has no business being intertwined with the state on any level in any shape or form. I would not be more focused on work if the 10 commandments were plastered in my face I’d be just as concerned about the corruption, crime, and violence being conducted by the very men and woman who claim to champion these ideals.
They aren’t plastered in your face… they are outside the courthouse. Is this some kind of “vampires must see a welcome matt to enter a building” type of thing? There’s somewhere between 4,000 to 10,000 established religions throughout history/today. If you’re to say “nothing in those can be near a courthouse… you couldn’t have grass… or stone… or a structure of any kind. It would basically just be a parking lot where a judge rolls down his window and hits his gavel against a jersey barrier.
And knowing Americans, they would soon after seeing that, make a religion that included Jersey barriers so even those would have to be removed from the parking lot. There’s a tax exempt church for a Flying Spaghetti Monster guys… Debora isn’t going to be happy if she can’t microwave leftovers for lunch because someone’s religion includes spaghetti.
So the thing about not rolling your window down for traffic violations is permissible if you put your license against the window and it’s visible. The flag in the courtroom having gold trim being an admiralty flag, not an American flag, appears to have a basis in truth according to historic records (you have to dig for them). The “traveling” vs driving thing is nonsense. But apparently much of the birth certificate stuff is true (the parts about it not being required, not that it’s some kind
There’s even some truth in the decor matching some occult practices like the judge wearing a specific black/white color scheme (Saturn worshippers) It’s one reason I’m not gonna flip my lid about the 10 commandments. There’s already a bunch of ancient religious stuff built into many courthouses.
I mean you could… it would be an interesting science experiment. I don’t recommend it. Each of the really old court rooms I was measuring was sort of a “point of resonance” (Masonic builders weren’t as elegant with science terms so it’s not a direct translation) so… if you want chaos to erupt from that location rather than stability, you could put ideologies in conflict with one another strewn throughout the area. But it leads me to another point why I’m not worried about them putting the 10
Commandments outside again. It sort of balances the Saturn worship (not exactly, but if you think in terms of raw concepts alone) and since those are the core of the big three, most widespread (in ideology/geolocation maybe not in practice) opposition the concepts in those who worship Saturn, you sort of cover everything in between. But if you see a courtroom do that please save this post and either comment or DM me. I would be interested to see how it plays out.