Atheist's New Target - Remove the Gideon Bible! (recall, according, society)
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But who put them in the drawers? I can almost guarantee you that it was hotel staff, and that makes it tax dollars. I've seen the housekeeping carts with a stack of 2-3 of those bibles in the bottom, for replacements I am sure.
And if so, then it is all the more problematic. But even if it is individual Gideons carrying Bibles to rooms, it is still problematic. My point is that we ought not get hung up on the taxpayer issue, and miss the larger issue of violation of the establishment clause via discriminatory access to state controlled resources. And that is larger than simply Bibles in hotel rooms, much larger...
We are in agreement and you are not missing anything. No, this is not correct. I am saying this is NOT a Constitutional issue involving the establishment of religion. It may be a discrimination issue, but it has nothing to do with the establishment clause. Again, it is NOT a Constitutional issue involving the establishment clause. It may be a discrimination issue, but it has nothing to do with the establishment clause. ANY exclusive access ina public facility would be discriminatory, but NOT a Constitutional violation of the establishment clause. IT either establishes a state religion or it does not. It is like a pregnancy, you cannot almost establish a state religion.
I agree, but not that it is an establishment clause issue.I am NOT advocating government discrimination.
No that is not the third option and you misidentify the actual danger. The animus agianst God belief is misplaced. Religion is the enemy, NOT belief in God. Every time you misidentify some trivial issue as a violation of the establishment clause you "cry wolf." You are familiar with the problem with doing so, are you not? The vast amjority in this country believe in God. They may not want a theocracy, but they don't appreciate the constant dissing of God. The real danger is a political abreaction that overcorrects and does violate the establishment clause or prompts legislation or a Constitutional amendment or clarification that worsens the situation.
The principle is misidentified. It is anti-religion, NOT anti God.
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
Ok good, I did not think I was understanding this correctly, and wanted to be sure...
Here I disagree. There can only be a problem with discrimination, because of the establishment clause. If there were no establishment clause, then a government institution could freely discriminate based on religious content. Allowing only one sect of one religion to use government facilities to express their view would be no worse that the fact that every elementary school in the US only allows the message of "illegal drug are bad". We do not give NORML the access to elementary schools that we give to groups like Above the Influence, and without the establishment clause there would be no reason the government could not legally discriminate against specific religions.
So it is both an establishment issue and a discrimination issue. But regardless, we can agree that is is an issue, and that the government should not be in the business of allowing specific religious groups to use state owned facilities while prohibiting others.
That is not true. It is a problem of discrimination whenever the government does not provide equal access and equal treatment, period. It has nothing to do with the establishment clause. When you try to pretend it does and apply it to these trivial cases that have nothing to do with "establishing a religion" you dilute the prohibition. I am more concerned with keeping the more important prohibitions in place by NOT diluting them by angering the public with these trivial issues that might precipitate a backlash that will worsen the situation, not better it. Things like "in God We Trust" as a motto has nothing to do with establishing a religion because it is only acknowledging God, but pursuit of it under the establishment clause dilutes the prohibition. Those who pursue these kinds of issues ARE trying to diss the very mention of God, period, and that dilutes what a religion is. It will backfire.
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Maybe I am confused here. The issue was the Gideons, a specifically protestant evangelical Christian organization with specific doctrinal stances, distributing Protestant versions of the Bible in a state owned and operated hotel.
This has everything to do with a government resource being used to further one specific religious sect, and nothing at all to do with generic God-belief.
First off, this has nothing to do with "dissing" God, it is about government institutions being used to further specific sectarian religious goals. The universities (and there were others along with the one in Iowa) had the opportunity to allow all religions (and non-religious groups) equal access. They chose to end the Bible distribution program rather than do that.
The issue has nothing to do with the validity of a specific God-belief, the issue is that using governmental conduits in this way is inappropriate. It is similar to the issue in Florida where the Good News Club was distributing materials to children in school. Once the Church of Satan decided to distribute its coloring book (a very cute and innocuous book full of good life lessons, I might add), that got shut down very quickly. Why? Becasue the people who are attempting to use the government to further their religion are not interested in those freedoms being extended to every one, only their own group. The 10 commandments in OK, the reason station in Warren, the Good news Clubs in Florida, the list of abuses of the establishment clause by Christian groups is incredibly long, and growing longer. This is not a new issue, it goes back before the Civil War when it was the Protestants trying to force their faith of Catholics and Jews. To argue that us atheists should just ignore it and hope it gets better is naive.
-NoCapo
See above. The trivial issues are preventable under equal access, equal treatment and equal protection. there is no need to dilute the establishment clause using spurious argumentation that does NOT involve the establishment of ANY religion, but only seeks to diss the mention of God, period.
No, to be fair, this was not on the taxpayer dime. The Gideons donate these Bibles.
I wasn't aware of that. Thank you for telling me.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Things like "in God We Trust" as a motto has nothing to do with establishing a religion because it is only acknowledging God, but pursuit of it under the establishment clause dilutes the prohibition.
See now, this I don't agree with, though. To begin with, In God We Trust and the Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance were both added onto the money and onto the original pledge. Those weren't there in the beginning. So if they were added on, they can be taken back off. There are a lot of people who don't believe in the "God" that is represented by these sayings, but those people have to handle that money every day. To me it's like having to press 1 to hear English. If our money comes from the government, it goes right back to that flyer in a store or the Bibles in the drawer - to look at it makes you think that religion is being endorsed by our government, and it's not. Nor should it be. So why does the "God" have to stay there?
Serious question- why so much hostility toward Christians-I don't get it?
You will have to ask someone who has hostility towards Christians. I am not that person. I have hostility towards ChritianITY and other religions.... when and ONLY when they interact with our public halls of power, education, science and medicine. But I have no issue with Christians, and in and of itself I have no issue with Christianity either.
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Originally Posted by bryan85
You have the right to not believe, but seem to take real offense if someone disagrees.
You appear to love this word "offence" and love applying it to people like me who feel none of it. Perhaps you are so ingrained in taking offence yourself.... that you simply assume other people must be doing it too.
I have no issue with people who disagree with me. What I DO have issue with is unsubstantiated claims. This is not "offence" it is merely a sound and worthwhile conversational practice.... that one should investigate the basis behind the claims of others. You, for example, appear to have NO basis whatsoever about the vast majority of the sheer unsubstantiated nonsense you have spewed onto various threads on the forum in a short time.
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Originally Posted by bryan85
Is it THAT important for you to "be right?
I think the truth is important. Which is that I think it is THAT important that we as a species be "right" where we can. It does not matter if I as an individual am right at any given time. It IS important that we as a species move towards being right. And as I said above the most powerful way to do this is ask people who make fantastical nonsense claims "Can you show this claim to be true?" or "Have you any substantiation whatsoever that suggests what you have claimed is credible or true?"
And with the tosh you have offered us, the clear answer is "no" to this question. If there IS a "god" then I think it would be important for us as a species to know that. So it is a good thing to do, when people claim there is one, to ask people what they are basing their claims on.
And you, as I keep pointing out, have offered not just poor basis, not just paltry basis, but absolutely NO basis for what you have claimed.
Protesting Gideon bibles in motel rooms is missing the more important issues with church all up in our state business.
The presumption that the existence of one thing precludes the existence of something else is a logical fallacy. People can protest the insinuation of Christianity into state operations with regard to state-run lodgings supporting Christianity and not all other religions, while not "missing" any of the more important issues. You sound like you think that it is smart to go after the head of the monster exclusively and ignore the tentacles. That's myopic.
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Originally Posted by 1insider
What's next, atheists outraged over church bells ringing?
Turn it around: When the local mosque begins using loudspeakers for the call to prayer at morning twilight, midday, mid-afternoon, sunset and after dark, every day, how will Dominionists feel about that? I don't have a bias in this regard: I can accept either of two answers but the only two options are either all religions are permitted to project sound associated with their religious rituals beyond the boundaries of their property as per their traditional religious practices or no religions are allowed to. Which?
That is not true. It is a problem of discrimination whenever the government does not provide equal access and equal treatment, period.
Not to belabor the point too much here, but can you explain this further? I don't see how in the absence of the establishment clause, anti-discrimination laws would apply here.
A thought experiment:
The 1st amendment does not contain the phrase, "respecting an establishment of religion, or", and simply refers to free speech, the press, and petitioning the government. Assume the rest of the Constitution is the same. Under what basis would a school allowing only specific clerics to proselytize be rendered unconstitutional? What legal authority would you cite?
As best I can tell, since it would be legal for the federal government to hold discriminatory policies toward religions ( due to the removal of the establishment clause), it would follow by the 14th that it would be legal for State and local governments to do the same. The lack of an establishment clause implicitly permits religious discrimination, thus the equal protection clause would be rendered useless.
So I get what you are saying from a PR perspective. These issues can be framed as combating religious discrimination or combating "Dominionism", and you find framing it as a discrimination issue to be less likely to goad the religious into really egregious behavior. I agree, which is why the FFRF, Americans United for Seperation of Church and State and other work very hard to frame it in the former light. It is the religious opposition that is trying to frame it as a war on God. Why? Because it doe inflame passions, because it does convince otherwise secularly minded people to push against equal treatment and non-discrimination. To the extent that you buy into the idea that this is a war of "God", not against unconstitutional religious overreach, you are buying into the narrative of those whose views you claim not to support. In other words, they got you...
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Things like "in God We Trust" as a motto has nothing to do with establishing a religion because it is only acknowledging God, but pursuit of it under the establishment clause dilutes the prohibition.
To be fair, Mystic, if "In God we Trust was ruled to be a genuine acknowledgement of God, the 9th Circuit would have ruled against it. The reasoning they gave to keep it is that it is religiously meaningless, and is only a ceremonial or patriotic gesture. It is not acceptable because the government is allowed to endorse belief over non-belief, it is acceptable because the court found it to be religiously meaningless.
And to be fair, I think it made the wrong ruling. I would argue that we can see that there is a clear religious character to the motto by a simple experiment: Change it to In Allah we trust. The meaning is exactly the same, Allah is as much a generic term as is God. But I think you would find massive resistance to that, because no matter what is being claimed in the courts, those who defend the motto do not mean it in a meaningless, symbolic, or patriotic sense...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
there is no need to dilute the establishment clause using spurious argumentation that does NOT involve the establishment of ANY religion, but only seeks to diss the mention of God, period.
While I disagree with your understanding of the establishment clause, I think by looking at the actual facts at issue here, we can agree that the various universities were overstepping their legal bounds and took one of the two appropriate remedies when called on it. I see no war on "God" or even religion (although I cannot for the life of me see a distinction. All human concepts of God are a set manmade beliefs about God and its implications, which would qualify as a religion to me, even if just a personal one), just people concerned about the separation of church and state exercising their 1st amendment rights, and the government responding appropriately
You will have to ask someone who has hostility towards Christians. I am not that person. I have hostility towards ChritianITY and other religions.... when and ONLY when they interact with our public halls of power, education, science and medicine. But I have no issue with Christians, and in and of itself I have no issue with Christianity either.
You appear to love this word "offence" and love applying it to people like me who feel none of it. Perhaps you are so ingrained in taking offence yourself.... that you simply assume other people must be doing it too.
I have no issue with people who disagree with me. What I DO have issue with is unsubstantiated claims. This is not "offence" it is merely a sound and worthwhile conversational practice.... that one should investigate the basis behind the claims of others. You, for example, appear to have NO basis whatsoever about the vast majority of the sheer unsubstantiated nonsense you have spewed onto various threads on the forum in a short time.
I think the truth is important. Which is that I think it is THAT important that we as a species be "right" where we can. It does not matter if I as an individual am right at any given time. It IS important that we as a species move towards being right. And as I said above the most powerful way to do this is ask people who make fantastical nonsense claims "Can you show this claim to be true?" or "Have you any substantiation whatsoever that suggests what you have claimed is credible or true?"
And with the tosh you have offered us, the clear answer is "no" to this question. If there IS a "god" then I think it would be important for us as a species to know that. So it is a good thing to do, when people claim there is one, to ask people what they are basing their claims on.
And you, as I keep pointing out, have offered not just poor basis, not just paltry basis, but absolutely NO basis for what you have claimed.
According to you- "truth" is whatever your opinion happens to be!
But who put them in the drawers? I can almost guarantee you that it was hotel staff, and that makes it tax dollars. I've seen the housekeeping carts with a stack of 2-3 of those bibles in the bottom, for replacements I am sure.
Wow, are you really that set against Christianity that you think a hotel staff spending 15 seconds of their time to place a Bible in a drawer is a use of tax payer money? This example just shows the extreme lengths that atheists are using the Constitution to establish freedom from religion. You know, maybe some people appreciate that they always have the option of the Bible in the drawer. But no, the majority must be denied to appease atheists.
Wow, are you really that set against Christianity that you think a hotel staff spending 15 seconds of their time to place a Bible in a drawer is a use of tax payer money? This example just shows the extreme lengths that atheists are using the Constitution to establish freedom from religion. You know, maybe some people appreciate that they always have the option of the Bible in the drawer. But no, the majority must be denied to appease atheists.
As long as you are ok with the same staff spending 15 seconds on the Rig Veda, the Tibetan book of the Dead,the Quran, the Satanic Bible, maybe "God is Not Good", and every other conceivable religious text than it is all good. This is an option these universities could have chosen. But, if you want The Gideons to have exclusive access to these hotel rooms, and to the services of employees of these tax funded institutions, then there is a problem.
According to you- "truth" is whatever your opinion happens to be!
A charge made on the basis of your own projections. It is actually YOU who declares by fiat that truth is whatever you think it is, with no other authority than that you follow a religious text that you claim is handed down from an invisible man in the sky. Nozz and any other self respecting empiricist do not make things up or accept prefabricated fantasies, they go with the best available facts in evidence.
Are we infallible? Of course not. Are we ever wrong? Of course. But as Nozz ably pointed out, it is not relevant that he or I or any one person is right or wrong in a particular instance, but whether humanity is heading in the direction of facts and evidence, or in the direction of unsubstantiated assertions or outright superstition.
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