Mad Minerva
Cloudcuckooland Dartmouth Editorial Muses on Religion in the Public Forum
posted Tuesday, 18 May 2004
And it does NOT advocate the total eradication of all religion from public places. (Sorry, ACLU.)
Check out this interesting piece by student Adrian Ng, class of 2005. Read this fantabulous blurb, then go read the whole thing:
| I am not convinced that the separation of church and state means that the public square must be purged of all religious perspectives. Secularism, by this interpretation, implies the formation of a naked public square where religious thought is excluded from any serious participation in public life and religious belief is confined to the private realm, where it may do little public harm and little public good. This concept of secularism takes upon itself the obligation to expose the blindness and irrationality of historical religions and liberate modern minds from myths and delusions. But some have argued that secularism of this aggressive nature sets itself as an alternate faith, a new religion, a substitute orthodoxy, and actually creates a new establishment with the distinction of being an establishment, not of religion, but of irreligion. Is this not a violation of the non-establishment clause, too? Does the First Amendment forbid the establishment of state religion but condone the establishment of official non-religion? |
Questions, comments, snide remarks?