Too Many Flaws with Evolution

As private citizens, state school officials still have every right to express their own personal beliefs, but not as agents of the state acting on behalf of the state. Uh, you're a bit off there. That was not included in the framing of the Constitution. Rather, it was added later, as The First Amendment. If it had been included in the framing of the Constitution, then it would be an amendment. Right?When James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights (including the First Amendment), had formulated the idea of the Wall of Separation a few years earlier -- his wording was "The Great Barrier that defends the rights of the People" -- , it was in direct response to a proposed law to grant public tax money to support the teaching of religion. So you see, the original intent (that term that was so popular with the Radical Religious Right in the 1980's) was clearly to prevent direct government support of religion. Which is what teaching religious beliefs in the public schools would be.Oh how far ye hath fallen from what our founding fathers really meant!

One of the problems that caused lax enforcement of the Establishment Clause in the early years was that there really wasn't anything to prevent states from violating citizens' civil rights. That is, until the 14th Amendment in 1868.The public school system grew out of Protestant schools around the 1830's. This immediately created problems for Catholic students, especially when that minority's numbers grew due to immigration from Catholic countries. You see, it wasn't a matter of the schools mentioning God, but rather that it was solely the Protestant teachings about God and the Protestant Bible being used and Protestant prayers being said. The schools steadfastly refused to allow the Catholic kids to practice their own religion, but rather they were being forced to practice the heretical Protestant religion. And as for the Jewish kids, they were even worse off!You want to have religion in the public schools because you think that it will be your religion that will be taught. Would you really be as eager if it was going to be the Catholic religion? Or the Mormon!!! religion? Or Islam?Why do you think that there are parochial schools? The Catholics took the action left to them: pull their kids out of the public schools and create Catholic schools for them. Well, since the Protestant schools were getting tax money, the Catholics wanted it too. And the Protestants didn't want them to get any, so for decades the Protestants built a body of state laws and court decisions that blocked the Catholic schools from getting any tax money. They did such a thorough job of it that -- oh sweet irony! -- that same body of legal precedence now prevents Protestant schools from getting tax money.Atheists and agnostics, you say? It was a community of theists who succeeded in getting explicit Christian teachings out of the public schools. The Jewish community. Can you blame them, after all those decades of having Christianity rammed down their throats? Especially since that religion has traditionally been hatefully anti-Semitic. Do you know why part of the Seder is to open the door for Elijah? Because of persistent Christian rumors that Jews kidnapped and killed Christian children and drank their blood during the Seder. The Jewish response was to open their doors to show that they had nothing to hide. The Christian response was pogroms. Oh, and the Spanish Inquisition.BTW, you completely sidestepped the point. Reread what you quoted. And this time actually read it. Here it is again: Well, you have already proven totally and persistently clueless about what a theory is, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us when you prove just as clueless about what an amendment is.Here's what you yourself had written (my emphasis added): An amendment is a change to the Constitution, all of which have been made after the Constitution had been completed; ie, after it had been framed. That is why they're amendments. Any changes that were made while the Constitution was being framed simply became part of the Constitution, not amendments, since there was not yet anything that could even be amended.While we could say that all the amendments that have been made to the Constitution are now in our present day part of the Constitution, we cannot possibly make the same claim of the Constitution between the time that it had been framed and before the first ten amendments had been added to it. You yourself had specifically referred to the point in the Constitution's existence that predates the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights!What part of "First Amendment" do you not understand?