double post.

It _could_ be considered an example of the proverbial 'camel's nose under the tent flap', but I don't think you can make that argument stand up vis-a-vis the non-establishment clause in court. Just as the non-establishment clause forbids the state from appointing a particular religion or religions as state approved, it follows that you also can't make religious contemplation a thought crime or tell a person what they may do in the solitude of their thoughts. Nor can a non-religious person demonstrate how they can be harmed by that which they can neither see or hear in the mind of another.

See, I think this is the flip side of the coin of zealotry. These moments of silence are a reasonable compromise that neither side totally accepts, but which I feel do help to keep the peace, as it were. Surely any non-religious person can find something worthy of a secular/humanist nature to contemplate during this time.

-Kerry O.