I simply asked if you believed that Christianity has nothing to do with the topic.

If you do, then your statements that you don't believe anything are obviously a mistake.

Everyone makes mistakes.

i believe nothing, jeanie. my experience is that i've read nothing to indicate that christianity was mentioned or implied by mh.

Then if you don't believe that, why would you make the statement?

If you cannot or do not believe anything, even your own statements, then why make any statements at all?

Just sayin...

why would i make the statement that i did not read anything that suggest mh mentioned or implied christianity? well, simply because i did not read anything that mh mentioned or implied christianity. like these easy questions.

That was not the statement I was referring to.

But why would I be interested in anything that you may or may not have read?

If I am to believe that you don't believe anything, your opinion on anything is rather pointless.

I havent been able to read the thread, but want to thank everyone for posting.......and hopefully being nice throughout the thread....anyways...

I feel that taking blessing away from school football/sports games by a priest remain wrong in publc schools and intead o prohibiting the practice, but including the religous blessing of all players would remin a better practice inclusion over exclusion IMO

Id agree that any type of prayer coming from a citizen as a reflection of their personal beliefs, should not be muted or restricted,,,

I don't think prayer should be made a public ritual at school or government functions, but if someone told me I couldn't pray in public or in a school myself whenever I felt like it, I would make a point to do it every chance I got.

lol,,

thats what I mean, neither mandated nor prohibited.. left as a personal option

yourself and creativesoul are far from the first people to call my opinions pointless, jeannie. what would be a first would be my saying to anybody that there opinion is pointless. but then i'm not you or creativesoul or any of the other people who judge mine or anybody elses opinions as pointless, invalid, moronic, dumb or many other adjectives that convey very negatively. but if you think that saying my opinion is pointless somehow addresses the topic of discussion, be my guest because frankly i could care less whether or not you'd be interested in anything i have to say if that's your attitude. i didn't think it was. now i know. but fear not, i'm questioning my newfound knowledge as i type this. sheesh. i just might be wrong about you. ya think? lol.

seems to me that the only way to be fair to all religions in doing that would be that prayer from every religion on the planet would have to take place in these government venues. and even then where is the fairness for the secular folks who actually see religious dogma as harmful to humanity? the only way for government to fairly treat all religious belief fairly is to keep religion entirely out of government. that is precisely what the establsihment clause is meant to do. EXCLUDE religion from government.

I'm sorry if you took that personal. I understand that you have your opinions. But a person whose conviction or justification for their opinions is only based on their personal experience would have to be limited to their own personal experience as far as knowledge goes. Add to that a person who claims that they don't believe anything, then they, as a source of information lose a lot of strength of authority.

However if you are an excellent observer, or you have perfect recall your expertise could be as a professional witness.

Back to the topic of Church and State, I agree with your opinion, --but I'm not sure if you are sure about your opinion since you don't believe anything.

So your opinion just happens to be the same as mine on that subject.

I disagree with the meaning...

I believe it was worded to PREVENT government from INSERTING themselves in religion...

It says nothing about religion not having restrictions of any kind.

it does say 'or prohibiting the FREE exercise thereof'

Free, means unrestricted, but there are always exceptions and those are what continue to be debated,,,

it is indeed inserting themself when they take the stance that my religious expression is 'unfair' to someone else who doesnt believe what I do and should therefore be limited or muted,,,,

this is exactly the reason you're having trouble with the establishment clause i think, mh. nowhere in the establishment clause does it say 'or prohibiting the free excercise thereof.' those words are found in a completely separate clause commonly known as the 'free excercise' clause. but the origional question asked about separation of church and state which the ESTABLISHMENT clause NOT the FREE EXCERCISE clause that you keep referring to mandates. if we were to discusse the free practice of religion then we would look at the free practice clause because that is the applicable clause. if we were to discuss free speach we'd look at the free speech clause.

perhaps it'd be easier for you to understand if the first amendment were broken down to several amendments because that is precisely the kind of things the courts do when interpreting the constitution. we can do it ourselves for the sake of discussion;

amendment 1a; congress shall make no law respecting an establsishment of religion.

amendment 1b; congress shall make no law restricting the free practice of religion.

amendment 1c; congress shall make no law abridging free speech.

amendment 1d; congress shall make no law abridging the press.

etc., etc.


can you now see that each of the clauses of the first amendment have very different applications in law as my example of separate amendments for each clause would show? you cannot rightly read my amendment 1b to correctly find the meaning of amendment 1a any more than you could refer to the second amendment right to bear arms in deciding if gays have the constitutional right to wed. they are two entirely different legal concepts each with their own applications.

oh i hardly take attacks on my opinions or myself personal, especially here, jeannie, where personal attacks are more common than punctuation errors and misspellings. i just find that typos of whatever kind rarely have much real hinderance on effective communication as demeaning another's opinions or person does. as i say, i'm no stranger to anything here found on the forums but i let some things slide that i find inconsequential and point out others that i find absurd and a block to a fair exchange of views. as we all do of course.

seems you're confusing the words 'opinion' and 'knowledge'. what do my opinions, or anybody's opinions, have to do with knowledge? like ben franklin i like to say that i have no opinions and like einstein i say that i can never really know anything absolutely but still the concepts of opinion and knowledge are highly different in my mind, one having nothing to do with the other. and of course in forming no opinions, a 'strenght of authority' is irrelavent to me. what weight you put on it is your concern.

i don't have an opinion regarding separation of church and state and i certainly don't recall stating one here. what i do, jeannie, as a very serious hobby that i've enjoyed for more than a quarter century, is read the constitution and study the opinions, both concuring and desenting, in constitutional case history so that i can better understand how this great country runs. during discussions such as this i simply try to relate in my own words some of the things that i've read over the years but nothing i've said here should you take as MY opinion.

indeed it has been pointed out by others that they see me as an excellent observer with much higher than average recall abilities. nothing i've quoted here from the constitution is copy/paste for instance. but is there such a thing as 'professional eye witness'??? sounds like easy money to me. lol.

never said it does. so what 'meaning' do you dissagree with???

I dont see the comparison jr.

the first amendment states

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

the second amendment states

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

,,,amendment two obviously mentions nothing about marriage whatsoever and would be a seperate issue

but amendment one speaks of religion in both contextes of not legislating either the respect of the establishment or the free exercise THEREOF

looking even closer, those other parts of the FIRST amendment are seperated by SEMI COLONS, but the religion part just has a comma,, indicating a continuation of the SAME thought(not a seperate one)...

similarly, freedom of speech and press are one thought joined with a comma, as are right to assemble and petition are one thought joined with a comma .


so I think a more accurate breakdown would be

1a: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (;)

1b: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press (;)

1c: Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

nevermind then. tried to help by showing that the establishment clause and the free excercise clause are separated by by commas just as the other clauses are and that as such each has it's own meaning and application. that's precicely what the courts do but you insisting that the establishment clause and the free excercise clause should be combined to understand their collective meaning just says to me that you'll never really understand the meaning of either. but i'll try one last time. in your mind. what does the following statement mean to you? assume that you see it written on a single peice of paper by itself.


congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.


in a nutshell, is that statement not what this thread topic is all about? it was paraphrased of course into separation of church and state but the two are conceptually the same if one follows constitutional case history. nowhere in the opening post did i see a reference to the free practice of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, expression, assmbly, redress of grievances, the right to bear arms, habeus corpus, due process, illegal search and seizure, commerce, nothing other than a question about the separation of church and state. so what does the statement i wrote mean to you? forget that there is a period that ends the statement and not a comma. we can argue punctuation correctness later. i'll of course argue that both a period and a comma complete a thought but for now so that we can move along, what does the statement i wrote, and only the statement i wrote, mean to you?

I read about the idea of a professional "fair witness" in a science fiction book about some future.

I thought it was a very interesting idea. People would pay these "fair witnesses" to witness things and they would be called into court to testify.

For example, when you would ask a fair witness what color the house was, he would respond, "It is white on the front and left side." Because if he had not walked all the way around the house he could not testify that the entire house was white.

He would only report exactly what he saw.


They were certified trained professionals.

Perhaps you are the very person who founds this new profession.