They ruled in favor of removing the statue because otherwise there would be nothing to prevent the people in charge of maintaining government buildings from decorating them with religious decorations as much as they wanted.
If they ruled in favor of the statue, what would stop government buildings from becoming highly religiously decorated?
Well… the fact that it was the Supreme Court makes it all the more important to be completely neutral, so I guess they would never had judged in favour of the statue anyway, since any Supreme Court ruling applies to any of the lower courts…
Are you against the President including god and prayer in his speeches as well ? Should we only elect Atheist presidents ?
It’s a good thing that they removed the statue. Even the Georgian government hems and haws all day about how the presence of the statue doesn’t change a thing, just where would the religious decorations end? Immagine being a non-christian, a Muslim for example, and walking into a “Religion Free” courthouse that had a 80 foot painting of Jesus being crucified on one of the walls as you walk in. How would you feel about that? Or what if you walked into a courthouse and saw a 80 foot painting of another religion’s leader, like Buddah or Confucius?
While I’m sure the statue was there in good faith, it has no more right to be there than an 80 foot painting of Jesus or a statue depicting another faith would have the right to be there. That’s why the statue was removed.
Originally posted by Born_Loser
Are you against the President including god and prayer in his speeches as well ? Should we only elect Atheist presidents ?
Most people are so used to hearing about God ‘n’ stuff in speeches they probably don’t care, but some have and get riled up about it… I’d like to see an atheist pres to see what the reaction is.
And as for the separation of Church and State… You know my stance. Don’t forget our dear currency.
Originally posted by Xwing1056
[b]I’ve never understood why public places need to be so religiously sterile.The question is, does the Constitution outlaw religious items in public buildings? [/b]
Because of seperation of church and state. Public places such as schools and courthouses tend to be funded by government through taxpayer money.
I’m not religious, and when I pay taxes, I most certainly do not want to know that my money is going to waste, in my opinion, paying for a statue of a religious figure.
And by erecting a statue of a figure from a religion, the goverment is showing that it’s partial to that religion, when it should not be. Seperation of church and state is not the same as opressing a religion.
An athiest president wouldn’t be any different from a Christian one. He just wouldn’t reference God or the Bible. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about what the currency says. If we use shells to trade, so be it, money is money. I’m not going to get worked up about my dollar saying “In God We Trust”.
The point is not that someone might get uncomfortable or offended, since that isn’t what really matters. The point is that one of the key aspects of this country’s government is and always has been separation of church and state. That means that offices and institutions of the government cannot use their official functions to express an affiliation with any religion. Otherwise, there would be no separation; the rule would then become “church and state have to be separated, except they don’t,” thus destroying the rule since it creates a potentially enormous grey area that can be interpreted any which way. The monument in question is such an expression. The institution is a court of laws; the monument shows ancient Biblical laws. It implies that the court is based on and relies on the Ten Commandments, which are religious and spiritual laws as much as social ones. Thus, it shows that the court is founded on not only “Thou shalt not kill,” but on “Thou shalt not worship any other god before me.” This is false.
The analogy to the Amish fails, because in that case the court was not fulfilling Amish tenets, but it was not expressing a preference for another religion, and so did what it should. By not expressing an affiliation with any religion, the court is not becoming atheist - rather, it simply does not say anything about religion at all. It was not upholding Amish tenets, but it was not saying they were wrong or that other tenets were superior. Likewise, this ruling is not “destroying” or “persecuting” anything, but prohibiting people to use their official positions to push their own religion and affiliate it with the state. It would only be “persecution” if whoever put that up was prohibited from displaying it in his backyard, but that didn’t and won’t ever happen.
If the Amish can live with the court not affiliating itself with their moral worldview, and the Muslims can, and the atheists can (because a secular court is not atheist at all), there is absolutely no reason why Christianity is magically entitled to be the sole religion which has the right to be affiliated with the state, and no reason why Christians are the only ones entitled to use official institutions of the state to express their religious views (since this is about Christianity, and not about all religions). Thus, the ruling is absolutely right.
but, separation or no, secular law was directly derived from religious law even if it’s not now directly influenced by it. It wasn’t as if Frank the Secularist came down from Mount Sinai with a snappy code of legal ethics. I’m not saying I disagree with the decision, but it’s wishful thinking to believe that Western law came from something other than conceptions of religious law.
Well, as much as I didn’t want to say anything on this matter, and I still don’t want to, I just want to say that I’m a bit saddened by the event, but oh well. According to what SK has just said, the ruling is the right ruling according to our laws. I don’t like it, but there are a lot of laws people don’t like so I’m just one of the 250 million people in this country.
Originally posted by Merlin
It wasn’t as if Frank the Secularist came down from Mount Sinai with a snappy code of legal ethics.
But by the time Moses came down from there with such a code, his was not the first set of broad societal rules to ever exist, either. My point is, the reason why a clear distinction has to be made between the two kinds is that the entire reason for having any laws is fundamentally different for the two systems.
Originally posted by Dai ryuujin
[b]Because of seperation of church and state. Public places such as schools and courthouses tend to be funded by government through taxpayer money.I’m not religious, and when I pay taxes, I most certainly do not want to know that my money is going to waste, in my opinion, paying for a statue of a religious figure.
And by erecting a statue of a figure from a religion, the goverment is showing that it’s partial to that religion, when it should not be. Seperation of church and state is not the same as opressing a religion.[/b]
Interesting to note then that it will be taxpayer money that will be paying for the removal of the 10 Commandments statue. Couldn’t a Christian make a similar argument, claiming that his taxes are paying for the destruction of something he considers to be holy? Or… how about someone who just plain doesn’t like a certain government program? Let’s face it: our government spends a lot of money on things that each of us, individually, care little about or are actually against.
But this whole argument is silly. It’d be one thing if there was talk over constructing a new statue, but I seriously doubt that this is going to set some kind of precedent for tearing down religious monuments a la Soviet Russia. Conversely, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the thousands of existing religious monuments in this country. There are more important things to worry about.
This is the problem
“If we adopted his position, the chief justice would be free to adorn the walls of the Alabama Supreme Court’s courtroom with sectarian religious murals and have decidedly religious quotations painted above the bench,” the three-judge panel said.
“Every government building could be topped with a cross, or a menorah, or a statue of Buddha, depending upon the views of the officials with authority over the premises.”
Read the whole fucking article people. It makes a very good fucking point.
The particular situation we want to avoid is one where contraversy can arise. It also doesn’t matter if SOME laws were based off the original 10 commandments, esp since a lot more laws have been made since. Religion has to be kept away on all levels, else the government will appear hipocritical, which would weaken the authority of the government. A lack of uniformity in the application of the rules is something which we should all be aware of the results being a part of the community here. Religions are extremely subjective and can give individuals support to act in certain ways or present the possibility of a bias, leading to discrimination (WHICH HAS OCCURED in the US - as we have read in articles visitors posted about an elementary school girl being physically and verbally abused for not being christian in the bible belt).
In Soviet Russia, monuments tear down you.
Sorry…
Trial and Error… Trial and Error… Good thing murder is illegal or people would still be sacrificing vigins to please (insert random god here). IT would be cool to have a president that could have threesom’s without it being a big deal. Or a president that screwed some girl when he was 17 without it coming back to haunt him 50 years later.
Ohh yeah… religion… sorta got off there. Should churches pay taxes then ? I know they dont let highly religious people sit on jury’s. How about Poligamy and Bigamy laws too ? Why can’t a man have more than one wife? Or a woman have two husbands ?
Maybe we should petiton for the right to take more than one wife ?
…what the hell does that have to do with the topic? O_o
Poligamy and bigamy have a lot to do with religion (particularly adultery), and they are illegal. Is Poligamy spelled with an i, like i have been, or with a y like Polygamy ? i see it spelled both ways all the time.
Originally posted by Born_Loser
[b]Trial and Error… Trial and Error… Good thing murder is illegal or people would still be sacrificing vigins to please (insert random god here). IT would be cool to have a president that could have threesom’s without it being a big deal. Or a president that screwed some girl when he was 17 without it coming back to haunt him 50 years later.Ohh yeah… religion… sorta got off there. Should churches pay taxes then ? I know they dont let highly religious people sit on jury’s. How about Poligamy and Bigamy laws too ? Why can’t a man have more than one wife? Or a woman have two husbands ?
Maybe we should petiton for the right to take more than one wife ? [/b]
First off, what makes you think people still don’t sacrifice people to please their god? They do.
Yea, maybe it’d be cool to have that kinda pres, but in order for that to happen, you’d have to change society and its standards. Ain’t gonna happen.
Churches haven’t paid taxes since 1400-1500s (I think). Polygamy (bigamy doesn’t exist…) would anger a whole lotta people… Think about it, most of the country are Christians (or a denomination who thinks like them in this respect) that believe in only one spouse (at a time). There’d be a helluva lotta uproar if polygamy were allowed. If people who are pro-polygamy want to have multiple relationships, let them move if they want, or just practice it outside of their marriage, as well.
And polygamy covers both ends of marriage, whether it be 2 husbands or 2 wives.
And this has nothing to do with Church and State mixing or not.
Cala, when was the last time you read about something like that in the USA ? I don’t keep track of the news so… But i’m sure whoever they were they were prosecuted and convicted. Besides, Bigamy does exist.
Yeah, that was completely random 
Originally posted by Cala
Churches haven’t paid taxes since 1400-1500s (I think).
In Western Europe, no one attempted to tax the church until the early fourteenth century, and only then in England and France (which caused a huge controversy with the papacy). During the late Middle Ages, kings, wielding their new legal powers (which came about in the transitional period from feudal to absolute monarchy) certainly would have taxed clergymen (legally by their laws) to pay for their wars; the mass inflation which was effected because of the Black Death together with the high costs of late mediaeval warfare made them need all the money that they could get, and the church was a rich institution.
I do not know my modern legal history well, but I gather that clergy (at least Christian clergy) have regained tax exemption since then.