separation between church and state
latest supreme court nominee is jewish. read an article on cnn about how the court is now catholics and jews, but the author was saying that in reality, the catholics and jews and protestants share similar views (on governing) so it doesn’t really make a difference. but the author brought up how a more diverse supreme court would still be nice. (article – http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/19/do-6-catholics-3-jews-9-protestants/?hpt=C1)
Then read the comments, one of which said how the only way to have true separation of church and state is to have only atheists on the supreme court.
questions
- does atheism count as a religion?
- can u have separation between church and state with religious people?
- can u have separation between church and state with ANY group of people? because people will always have an inherent belief (believing in the absence of god is still a belief no?) this is kind of combination of the first two questions i have
- “The separation of church and state was to prevent the state from establishing a state church and to prevent the meddling of the state in religion.” (another comment) – true or not?
- if the above bullet point is true, what is meddling?
May 19th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
The standard line I’ve heard is “atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby”, but that question mostly comes down to semantics. According to Facebook profile settings, atheism is in the category of “religious views.” So say we all.
You can definitely have separation between church and state, with religious or non-religious people — a secular government just means that laws shouldn’t enforce things that are based exclusively on religious faith. E.g., the Catholic church is free to teach that contraception is wrong, but any argument for actually outlawing birth control has to be based on something more than subjective moral judgment — medical / safety reasons, compelling social / economic reasons, etc. — something that remains true regardless of one’s religious beliefs. More generally, government shouldn’t take actions that privilege people with specific beliefs — the government should (at least in theory) be able to equally represent all its citizens. A Catholic judge may not be personally impartial about certain things, but they should be able to recognize the difference between having personal convictions, and abusing the power given to them by the whole population by enforcing those convictions in ways the law/constitution doesn’t support. (I’m saying _should_ though, since some of them actually pull it off better than others
)
Separation of church and state is to protect both of them, though. If the state becomes the arbiter of religious beliefs, on the one hand, you no longer have a free government for anyone of a faith other than what the government chose — by definition their rights are being limited for reasons that from their perspective offer no advantage to themselves or to society (if there was advantage from other religious perspectives then the law would be secular in the first place, even if it happened to agree with the teachings of some religions). That ultimately harms the government (or at least, the country) by making a permanent underclass out of anyone of a non-official religion. On the other hand, from the church’s perspective, if the government starts making or enforcing laws that have no foundation outside religious belief, that effectively means that the government, not the church, is the one deciding what religious beliefs should be taught. (Which might sound good to some politicians, actually, but it doesn’t tend to do nice things for either the church or society when it actually happens…) And even if it works out well for one religion in the short term, once that precedent is set things can turn the other direction as soon as someone else takes office…
May 19th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I have the same question as your third bullet point. I think that any group of people subscribing to the same belief system can arguably be called a religion even if it does not include worshiping a god. I think that the push for the non-worship of a god points to the worship of oneself, which makes the individual god in that belief system. Anyway, choosing all atheists doesn’t achieve separation of church of state. Maybe diversifying judges and not fussing over their religion would though.
May 20th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
i definitely believe that atheism is a form of religion. its a belief system that affect how a person lives and thinks. i agree with talida that having a diverse group of judges would do more.