Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for)

I know I shouldn't be responding to you since you won't understand it but imagine my religion asks me to rape and kill my neighbours, should the cops be prevented from arresting me since it would violate my religious rights?

While Robert does seems to be pursuing a record of being wrong about the largest number of fields of human endeavor in a single post, he is not completely wrong here. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.As Dr. Adequate has already pointed out, at the time the Bill of Rights was written, the first amendment was surely understood as a limit on federal power only. In fact, during the late 1700s there were state churches in at least a few states with the Church of England being the most common one. Some state constitutions still include provisions that prevent atheist from holding state office. These provisions are of course null and void under modern first amendment jurisprudence. But the Supreme Court decision explicitly establishing this date from 1961. See Torcaso v. Watkins.The point is that at the time of adopting the Bill of Rights, states fully expected that they would be able to keep the federal government from establishing a federal church while imposing their own brand of religious constraints. As understood at time of adoption, the Establishment Clause would not have prevented teaching religious doctrine by the state even in public schools.The problem with citing Reynolds v. United States is that the case apples the Establishment Clause to a federal law. It does not rely directly on Fourteenth Amendment incorporation. The doctrine of incorporation that results in applying some of the constraints in the Bill of Rights to the limit state government as well as the federal government is a still developing portion of legal jurisprudence. For example, early court cases after adoption of the fourteenth amendment held that the first amendment did not apply to the states. Incorporation began piecemeal in the late 1890s and incorporation of the 2nd amendment was decided very recently.The court cases in 1947 and later were the first explicit holdings that the Establishment Clause applied to the states although some 1930 cases did apply other portions of the first amendment to the states. At least a couple of the current Justices probably do not agree with the current application of the Establishment Clause to the states.

In fact that is a side-issue, irrelevant to Robert's arguments. In addition to the points on incorporation, it was apparently the intent of John Bingham who framed the 14th Amendment that it should make the First to Eighth amendments applicable to the States. So even the idea of incorporation goes back to the mid-1800s.We can also note that if the Scopes case had made it to the Supreme Court there was every possibility that the matter would have been decided in the 1920s. It certainly seems likely that Scopes was let off on a technicality largely to avoid that possibility.

I think the side issue is relevant to his original intent arguments and to his complaints that the current application of the First Amendment to public school education is relatively new. The idea does date back to the mid 1800s, but the Supreme Court did not apply incorporation in that way. In fact the SC held that the First and Second amendments did not apply to the states in some 1870s cases. Further, the SC essentially read the Privileges and Immunities Clause, the natural clause for incorporation doctrine, out of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases in the 1870s.Even now there is not complete incorporation of the first eight amendments. For example, the Fifth amendment requirement for indictment by grand jury has been specifically held not to be incorporated against the states. The Seventh Amendment right to jury trial in civil cases is not incorporated. The Eight amendment is not fully incorporated. Second Amendment corporation was decided by the SCt last year and third amendment incorporation is mostly theoretical. True, but that would not be enough to counter Robert's complaint that the current Establishment Clause jurisprudence dates from the 1900s. I think he can make a good case for that.Of course Robert's argument is still nonsense. Original intent is not the be all and end all of Constitutional interpretation particularly if it does not take into account the amendments. We know that the "separate but equal" interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment lasted until even later than 1947, but most of us aren't still moaning for the good old days of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Err, no. If Robert raised the issue of when the courts ruled that the establishment clause applied to the States then I'd like you to tell me where he said it. If he didn't it's a side issue.And of course, it is not relevant to original intent arguments since for those court rulings are not relevant - while the intent of Madison, Jefferson and Bingham would be highly relevant.Meanwhile, I will stick to my points:The idea that the state should not advance religion goes back to the formulation of the Bill of Rights.The idea that the First Amendment does not forbid the state to make laws which hinder religion goes back at least as far as ReynoldsNeither was invented in the middle of the 20th century, nor for the purpose of battling Creationism.

Roberts has said any number of times that the current interpretation of the Establishment Clause dates from the 1900s and that the founders would never have agreed to it. Message 330 contains one example. Yes it is relevant. We both agree that incorporation dates from the 1800s, and we seem to agree that the original intent of the first amendment was federal scope only.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

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Roberts has said any number of times that the current interpretation of the Establishment Clause dates from the 1900s and that the founders would never have agreed to it. Message 330 contains one example.

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In other words he HASN'T raised the issue at all, just as I thought.

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Yes it is relevant. We both agree that incorporation dates from the 1800s, and we seem to agree that the original intent of the first amendment was federal scope only.

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It seems to me quite obvious that the original intent must precede the passing of the law, let alone it's application in court. Court decisions, therefore cannot be relevant to original intent. Your claim to the contrary is simply absurd.As for the States we know that Jefferson felt that the states SHOULD have similar legislation, since he was so heavily involved in Virginia - and drew on that experience in framing the first Amendment. So again you can only focus on peripheral issues apart from Robert's main claim. We are not dealing with an interpretation of a law invented to fight creationism in the middle of the 20th century. We are dealing with ideas very current when the Bill of Rights was framed,

eLooks like I did not select the best example. But Robert has repeatedly said things the following from message 360:

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In fact its none existent and a dumb invention from the middle 1900's to ban creationism on the intent of 1700's constitution creating American settlers.

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I think the only interpretation of that sentence that makes any sense is that Byers is complaining that the current interpretation of the first amendment is 1) different from the original intent of the first amendment, and 2) dates from 1947.The argument is given in greater detail and with greater eloquence on countless Creationist web pages, with more explicit references to Everson v. Board of Education (1947).Perhaps I'm just being a little more charitable to Mr. Byers than you are. I agree that Robert is making a losing argument, but it is not quite the leap into insanity you make it out to be.I do agree that Roberts statement about the intent of the Justices in 1947 is off base. Correct. However original intent is not the sole method for interpreting the constitution. Also original intent is not merely the intent of the drafter. It should also include the understanding of the members of the constitutional convention and possibly even the understanding of the adopters. I'll defer to you on that point. But do Jefferon's feelings support your argument or mine? If state legislation would be needed, does not that support an argument that Jefferson knew that the First Amendment alone would not apply to the states. Aren't we talking about the Bill of Rights and then the later Fourteenth Amendment? Do you disagree that the adopters of the Bill of Rights expected the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law...") to apply only to the federal government? In fact, wasn't the Establishment Clauses intended to keep the federal government's paws off of churches established by the states?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

LOL. How is the opinion of the Founding Fathers at all relevant?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

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I think the only interpretation of that sentence that makes any sense is that Byers is complaining that the current interpretation of the first amendment is 1) different from the original intent of the first amendment, and 2) dates from 1947.

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True, however if you look at his posts you won't find ANY indication that he is referring to the idea that the Establishment clause applies to the States - or that he narrowly applies it to court precedents. Neither point seems at all relevant to his arguments. Your position then is reaching to find an interpretation of the above claim consistent with the facts, ignoring the rest of the discussion.

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Correct. However original intent is not the sole method for interpreting the constitution. Also original intent is not merely the intent of the drafter. It should also include the understanding of the members of the constitutional convention and possibly even the understanding of the adopters.

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You seem to have a problem inderstanding context. I was answering YOUR assertion that court verdicts were relevant to "original intent" arguments.

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I'll defer to you on that point. But do Jefferon's feelings support your argument or mine? If state legislation would be needed, does not that support an argument that Jefferson knew that the First Amendment alone would not apply to the states.

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That would again ignore the context. The Religious Freedom statute in Virginia came before the Bill of Rights - as I pointed out Jefferson applied his experience in Virginia when drafting the First Amendment. The First Amendment could not apply before it was even written ! However it does support my point that Robert is wrong to say that the ideas were invented in the mid-1900s since we have very similar ideas appearing in the 1700s, in a context significant to Constitutional history.

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Aren't we talking about the Bill of Rights and then the later Fourteenth Amendment?

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I was talking about the Religious Freedom statute in Virginia and how it was similar to the later First Amendment. Again, it seems that you have a problem reading statements in context.

I never said that court verdicts were relevant to original intent. But they are relevant to what the state of the law is at the time of the decision. Constitutional law is not strictly about original intent.My clean up of Mr. Byers' slop is as follows:The original intent of the first amendment (1700s) was federal application only despite the fact that Jefferson believed in universal application.Incorporation of the Establishment Clause was affirmed in 1947 after a previous Supreme Court holding in 1870 it was not incorporated. Incorporation begin in the 1890s and was piecemeal. Even now, it does not apply completely to the first eight amendments.Yes it is pretty sloppy to say that incorporation was "invented in the 1900s" but we can say that incorporation of the Establishment Clause was not the law until at least the early 1900s.

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That would again ignore the context. The Religious Freedom statute in Virginia came before the Bill of Rights - as I pointed out Jefferson applied his experience in Virginia when drafting the First Amendment. The First Amendment could not apply before it was even written !

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I cannot tell when you are you insisting on original intent of the first amendment and when you are not. You seem to restrict me to relying on original intent when I want to talk about court cases. On the other hand, you talk about Jefferson's belief that states should enact legislation. Jefferson's idea simply did not make it into the first amendment. Most likely, he knew such a thing could not be ratified in 1789-1791.So, the original intent of the first amendment, at the time of ratification ("1700s"), was not application to the states. Enactment of local laws extending similar protection at state level was originally left to the discretion of the states. Many states did no such thing. Although most states did get rid of the idea of state churches prior to ratification of the 14th Amendment, those states continued to enact other religious-based policies.

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However it does support my point that Robert is wrong to say that the ideas were invented in the mid-1900s

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I don't disagree. But we could also say that the idea of equal rights for all men was invented well before 1865. Nevertheless, we know that universal equality was neither enshrined in the Constitution nor enacted in the Bill of Rights. Evidence for that can be found in the exposition on race relations found in the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott, even though that court decision came in 1857.Regardless of what Bingham himself wanted, his ideas were explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court throughout the 1870s. I don't understand why you consider that to be irrelevant simply because it was not in Bingham's head.To continue my analogy, we might legitimately date the modern version of equal rights from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 rather than from the enactment of the 14th Amendment in 1865 or from the equality in ancient Athens. Similarly, we might date the modern version of the Establishment Clause at 1947 rather than 1865 or 1789.

Well you were certainly claiming that court verdicts were relevant to original intent arguments.And you seem to be missing the fact that Robert's claim is about when the idea was [i]invented[\i]. In pointing out the ideas of Jefferson and Madison and Bingham, I am not simply focussing on original intent, I am looking at where these ideas were really introduced to thinking about the U.S. Constitution.An idea that goes back to the 1700s or the 1800s cannot reasonably be said to be "invented" in the mid-1900sSo, even if Robert meant incorporation (and there is every reason to think he did not) he would still be wrong to say that it was invented in the mind-1900s.

No, I wasn't. I've gone back through my posts and I'm at a loss to find any such thing. I did cite court cases, but not in an attempt to establish the original intent of the first amendment. If you can point to the message where I did so, I'll post an apology.Or you can accept my subsequent denials that I meant any such thing. Surely I've made clear my intended argument plain by now. No I didn't miss that. I've already acknowledged that Robert's saying the idea was "invented" in the 1900s was wrong. I don't buy into the creationist conspiracy theory regarding the Establishment Clause.From message 385: Robert seems to struggle quite a bit with the English language. I'll admit that I have cut him considerable slack, in part because I've seen the argument that he's attempting to use elsewhere.

In Message 379 you start talking about original intent arguments and when I pointed out that the court decisions you had introduced were not relevant to such arguments, in Message 381 you insisted that they were.And if you agree with me that Robert's claim was untrue and you can't even produce any argument that he was thinking of incorporation, then what point have you got to make?

I've put the text from message 381 here.

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Yes it is relevant. We both agree that incorporation dates from the 1800s, and we seem to agree that the original intent of the first amendment was federal scope only.

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While I did respond to your statement that the court cases were not relevant with the above statement, my response cites the actual original intent of the first and fourteenth amendments and does not cite case law. I apologize for the resulting confusion, but I think it is clear that I am not citing case law as evidence of original intent. It is not quite that simple. There is more to the discussion than simply arriving at the correct conclusion. Arguments based on the original intent of the first amendment are simply wrong.I'll summarize my argument for a final time.Robert is correct that the first amendment, as ratified, would not have prevented teaching the Genesis origin story in state sponsored public schools as science. At the time, it was fully expected that regulation of religion would remain within the police powers of individual states, and states actually did exercise those powers. In my opinion, your original intent arguments to the contrary are simply wrong. If Jefferson thought that the Virginia model was correct, he did not manage to draft an amendment that accomplished anything other than federal restraint.It is also the case that actual incorporation of the Establishment Clause via the fourteenth amendment is a relatively recent development and represents a significant change in the thinking of the Supreme Court from shortly after the passage of the 14th Amendment. The case law we've discussed certainly shows that.I'll leave the conspiracy theories regarding the source of that change in thinking to creationists. I've also tried to explain why Byers' post is evocative of the incorporation argument at least three times. I won't go over that again.