Something to bash on

[LemmingofGlory]

Yes. He didn't base his comment on a careless falsehood.

Reconsider. When he says "The intent of the original writing of "Separation of Church and State" was meant to protect these religious minorities from the tyranny of the majority, rather than to excoriate all religiousity from the public's view." he's saying "A xor B." I'm not looking for you to say "There exists position B". I'm trying to see why A xor B is the appropriate statement. Going by what you said, the statement should be closer to A xor (B or C or D or ... or etc.), where B, C, D, etc. are the collection of opposing positions.

May I quote you on that? Well said.:)

Can't imagine why you'd want to.

So, why deal with dead men's words? Doctrine. Those dead men's words are the guiding principles of our system, guiding principles that left wiggle room when they couldn't agree on specifics, or could not predict them. The current debate is a disagreement on detail. (...) So, there you have it, part of the why of this war: to win a referendum, you have to change perception and belief.

Changing perception is exactly why I think it makes more sense to debate the merits of notions like "separation of church and state." When people debate whether T.J. & The Founding Pappas meant one thing or the other, it seems to me that the constitutionality of it takes center stage rather than the merits of the idea. To me, the idea itself is the important thing, and if our constitution supports it, great! But it's possible the constitution neither explicitly supports it nor forbids it. Or maybe it's so vague we can't tell. So if, as written, the constitutionality of the idea cannot be clearly decided from what's written, we should be able to put the brakes on and say, "Let's try another approach." At what point can we say that something is independent of our existing axioms?

-Lemmy