Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham

Would you at least agree that that is the interpretation of the organization?

Would you also agree that there are plenty of people who are not atheist who are anti-religious right?

No majority of the Supreme Court has ever agreed with your peculiar analysis. I know that fact will have no bearing on your belief given your astronomical Dunning-Kruger tendency. But I thought I'd mention it anyway. No. What is says is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In 1947, every Justice on the Supreme Court agreed with this description of that clause:

quote:

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"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.'"

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No Supreme Court majority opinion has ever cast doubt on that analysis.You are of course free to believe whatever you like about the First Amendment. but nothing you believe can alter any of the facts that I have presented here.

Without commenting on the accuracy of your factual analysis, the fear of that kind of thing happening is one of the reasons supporting the exact interpretation of the First Amendment that you disagree with. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause are both intended to protect government from religion and protect religion from government. Anything that the government supports in any way at all is something that the government can control.Think long and hard about that before you start telling us what you think the First Amendment is supposed to mean.

You did disagree with it, in Message 709Do you think it should also allow Christian business owners to refuse to serve blacks? Persons of different religions? Should it allow Muslim cab drivers to refuse to carry fares that have alcohol in their belongings? Should it allow Hasidic Jews to discriminate against women?If you don't think all of those things should be allowed, where to you draw with line? Why there?

Wonderful.But what about all the other situations I mentioned? Different people draw different lines in different places. Should the law allow all of them to refuse to serve the people they wish to?

And by what reasoning do you deny those people the right to conform to their religious beliefs but claim for yourself the right to conform to your beliefs?

In Message 721, you said, "I think it also should protect Christian business owners from the kind of legal abuse they've been receiving for acting on their Biblical objections to gay marriage." Are you now retracting that opinion?

I will confess that my understanding of the law in this area is not as clear as it could be. But I believe that, generally, businesses are allowed to refuse service where that service includes expressive activity where the message they are asked to express is one they disagree with. And that is the case whether the disagreement is based on religion, or any other reason. The idea is that the First Amendment Freedom of Speech Clause prohibits governments from requiring people to express ideas they disagree with. Situations that I understand courts have approved include a bakery offering to bake the cake but leave off the offending message, leaving it to the customer to supply that themself. I have not considered this question extensively, but at first blush that seems like a fair compromise situation.Applying this rule to the situation of a gay marriage, a bakery cannot refuse to bake the cake, but can refuse to include messages supporting gay marriage, and perhaps could refuse to put two same sex spouses on top of the cake. The mere baking of a cake doesn't suggest support for the occasion for which the cake is baked, and the baker isn't required to show support for the occasion through any expressive conduct included in the baking.

Let me take a half step back for a minute.First, I'll note that not all Christians share your view. I believe your position is a minority one, losing adherents daily. In this regard, it is a close parallel to the way churches have responded to broad societal changes in the past; i.e. slavery, women's suffrage, civil rights, etc. In a decade or two, I suspect opposition to gay marriage will be even lower than opposition to interracial marriage is today.Second, it's far from clear to me that there is any meaningful difference between making a cake for a wedding or for funeral, a birthday party or just the hell of it. I've been married twice and neither time was there the kind of intimate interaction between us and any of the various professionals we hired. In short, I'm convinced that some Christians are inflating the level and kind of offense they experience.Tell me, do you distinguish between objecting to a gay marriage and objecting to an interracial marriage? I'm not now asking about what the First Amendment says. I'm asking if you think a baker should be able to refuse to bake a cake for an interracial wedding for religion reasons?

It may surprise you to learn that in the past most Christians believed biblical support for slavery, biblical opposition to women's suffrage and biblical opposition to interracial marriage was every bit as high as you believe biblical opposition to gay marriage is today. And those who believed those things in the past would call you exactly the same kind of apostate that you believe supporters of marriage equality are. There is substantial evidentiary support for these facts, they are not mere supposition on my part. Yes and no.It's well-established that people are capable of self deception and can easily fall victim to post hoc rationalization. That's all people, regardless of religion, education level or any other variable you want to include. And one area where it's easiest to fall into the trap is the rationalization of pre-existing prejudices.You deny the existence of biblical support for slavery and biblical condemnation of interracial marriage, yet 150 years ago, those were very common if not majority opinions. What's changed? Not the bible.It's society. We now know slavery is evil. We now know it's unjust to deny people the right to marry the person they love just because of racial difference. Society is well on it's way to understanding that it's unjust to deny people the right to marry the person they love because of their sexual orientation.Thus, when someone claims that it's their religion that prevents forbids them from baking a cake for use in a particular kind of ceremony, I don't think we're obligated to take them at their word. I think we're entitled to probe their reasons, cross examine them to determine if they are telling the truth, and break down their reasons to see if they are truly based on religion, or simply a self-serving way to justify a prejudice they learned somewhere else.You say, "There is nothing in God's word, rightly understood, against interracial marriage." Even today, there are some people who disagree with you. Why7 should your understanding of scripture trump theirs?

Sadly, we cannot. There's no question that many of their claims about what is happening in the world are wrong, but I've yet to meet anyone who can definitively distinguish between lying and delusion.I certainly don't claim to be an expert on the subject, and it's quite possible I'm just being fooled, but the delusions are so widespread and seem to be so genuinely believed that I can't help but believe that at least some people actually think that the world is as they represent it to be. I've known people whom I believe to be good, honest people, who believe the queerest things, and no amount of evidence can convince them otherwise.We can tell when they are wrong. We can't tell what they actually believe.

Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.Go ahead, keep slaves, but gosh it sure would be swell if you didn't treat them so badly.

But giving up killing, stealing, sex and lying, that's a piece of cake.