from:"Francis Beckwith"

Re: A note about the Atheist Legal Center, or at least its founder

2005-12-13 Thread Francis Beckwith

I second Paul's concern.

Frank

On 12/13/05 7:37 AM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I wonder if Mr. Darby's anti-Semitic self-promotion really belongs on
 this list serve?
 
 Larry Darby wrote:
 
 Thank you to all who have expressed an interest in restoring good
 government to Alabama - and the United States of America, for Americans
 for a change!
 
 Those persons who want to stay abreast of current events dealing with
 our Zionist-Occupied Government and other current events regarding the
 global endeavors of traditional enemies of Free Speech, I am proprietor
 of the Atheist Daily News, the publication of record for the community
 of reason.
 
 A year's subscription is only $52.00 and may be mailed to Atheist Daily
 News, P O Box 3722, Montgomery, AL  36109.
 
 I am no longer an officer of the Atheist Law Center, Inc. but it, too,
 has a daily publication, the Atheist Daily Briefing.  Those wishing to
 subscribe to it may do so by going to this link:
 http://www.atheistlaw.org/news-subscribe.cfm. It is edited by John
 Nielsen of Jackson, Mississippi.
 
 There is little overlap of stories covered. Some people get both
 publications.
 
 You may also make a tax deductible contribution to the Center by
 clicking on the Donate icon at the top of the web page.
 
 Thank you all for your interest and continued support for the
 constitutional principle of separation between religion and government
 (not the misguided separation of church and state response to
 politically correct preferentialism or government accommodation of
 non-Christian religion).
 
 Larry Darby
 
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Larry Darby
 Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 1:23 PM
 To: 'Law  Religion issues for Law Academics'
 Subject: RE: A note about the Atheist Legal Center, or at least its
 founder
 
 Eugene, thanks for the publicity!  My campaign address is:
 
 Larry Darby for Attorney General
 P O Box 3722
 Montgomery, AL  36109
 
 There is no limit on contributions from individuals.
 
 Larry
 
 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene
 Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 1:11 PM
 To: Law  Religion issues for Law Academics
 Subject: A note about the Atheist Legal Center, or at least its founder
 
 Since people on this list specialize in the law of government
 and religion, they might be interested in the activities of the Atheist
 Legal Center, and might even be inclined to work together with them on
 some matters.  (I would have been one such, on certain subjects.)
 
 Given this, I thought I'd pass along an item I posted about the
 Atheist Legal Center's former president and Alabama Attorney General
 candidate Larry Darby -- who, by coincidence, has also participated on
 this list.  Mr. Darby has stepped down as the head of the Center in
 order to run for AG, so perhaps his replacement does not share the views
 I describe below.  On the other hand, his having been involved in the
 group, and the Center's having hosted David Irving while Mr. Darby was
 president, makes me concerned about the group more broadly.
 
 http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_11-2005_12_17.shtml#113441423
 9
 
 [Eugene Volokh, December 12, 2005 at 2:03pm] 0 Trackbacks / Possibly
 More Trackbacks
 Leading Atheist Legal Activist and Candidate for Alabama Attorney
 General
 
 Has Some Rather Interesting Views About Jews, Zionism, and the
 Holocaust: Larry Darby is apparently a pretty prominent atheist legal
 activist. He was the president of the Atheist Legal Center (though he
 has since stepped down to run for public office); filed amicus briefs in
 the Supreme Court's Ten Commandments cases on behalf of various atheist
 groups and also on behalf of Scouting for All; ran the Alabama chapter
 of American Atheists; got the Atheist of the Year award from American
 Atheists; has been quoted in various newspapers, mostly in Alabama but
 also elsewhere; and has appeared on various television programs in
 connection with his opposition to Judge Roy Moore's actions related to
 the Ten Commandments. Darby is now running in the June 2006 Democratic
 primary for Alabama Attorney General - I suspect that he has little
 chance of winning, but I take it that he'll want to use the race as a
 platform for expressing his various views, which include juvenile law
 reform and decriminalization of marijuana.
 
 Mr. Darby also (1) apparently wrote that David Duke is right on with
 the problem of Zionism and the Zionist-Occupied Government we live
 under, (2) seems quite interested in whether media representatives who
 contact him about such matters are Jewish, and (3) was substantially
 involved in organizing a speech by noted Holocaust denier David Irving.
 
 I first heard about this when an acquaintance of mine e-mailed me an
 exchange that included Mr. Darby's Zionist-Occupied Government quote.
 I then e-mailed Mr. Darby to verify the

Re: Kansas Prof Physically Attacked

2005-12-08 Thread Francis Beckwith

The problem is that methodological naturalism prevents us from detecting a
hate crime, since hate is an immaterial property had by agents that can
only be inferred from behavior, speech, etc. Other minds cannot be observed,
just inferred by analogy, like the traditional argument from design.

Because it is always possible that what appears to be hate may very well
be the result of non-agent causes that merely manifest themselves in a way
that appear to be agent caused, attributing hate to a cluster of cells we
call a human being is just hate-monger of the gaps. It is an argument
from ignorance because we have not yet discovered the non-agent causes that
made the hate come into being.

[The above is a genre known as parody.  Please read it that way]

Frank

On 12/8/05 11:01 AM, Will Linden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

   Perhaps it reflects what a fuzzy concept hate crime is?
 
 At 10:09 AM 12/7/05 -0800, you wrote:
 
 Thanks very much, but this update seems quite mysterious -- does
 anyone know *why* the attack is now not labeled a hate crime?  Is it
 because the police didn't believe that the attack was motivated by his
 decision to teach the anti-ID class?  Or because such a motivation
 wouldn't make the crime be, in their view, motivated entirely or in
 part by the . . . religion . . . of the victim . . . [or] the
 defendant's belief or perception, entirely or in part, of the . . .
 religion . . . of the victim?
 
 Eugene
 
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Luke Meier
 Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 9:47 AM
 To: 'Law  Religion issues for Law Academics'
 Subject: RE: Kansas Prof Physically Attacked
 
 
 For those who care, an update:
 http://www.kansan.com/stories/2005/dec/07/ne_mirecki/
 
 Seems like there might be more to this story.
 
 Luke Meier
 Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
 University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law
 
 
 
 
 
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brad M Pardee
 Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 12:49 PM
 To: Law  Religion issues for Law Academics
 Subject: Re: Kansas Prof Physically Attacked
 
 
 Shameful and shocking.  This is the story as it appeared in the KU
 campus newspaper.
 
 http://www.kansan.com/stories/2005/dec/06/mirecki/
 
 I completely agree with the following quote from the article:
 
 Sen. Kay O'Connor (R-Olathe), who has strongly criticized Mirecki for
 his e-mails, said whoever beat him should be prosecuted to the
 fullest.
 If they try to cover themselves under the mantle of being Christian or
 being Christian people, sorry Charlie, she said. They're just thugs.
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RE: Swedish Pastor Beats Hate Crime Rap

2005-12-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

Michael:

The Declaration of Independence is merely a document that is intended to convey 
what its authors believed are truths eternal in their patrimony. You are 
correct that these truths were not applied justly. However, the failure of 
mortals to live up to these standards does not diminish the value or truth of 
these standards.  Being short-changed at the grocery store does not diminsh the 
truth of mathematics. If anything, it demonstrates it. In the same way, the 
fact that we can make the judgment that the declaration's principles were not 
appropriately deployed to protect all human beings under its authority 
ironically relies on the veracity of those very principles. After all, to say 
that someone entitled to justice was denied it, assumes the truth of the 
justice one was denied. To say someone does not measure up, implies that there 
is a standard by which we can make the measure. 

Frank

 
On Friday, December 02, 2005, at 10:23AM, Newsom Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:


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--
Francis J. Beckwith, MJS, PhD
Associate Professor of Church-State Studies
Associate Director, J. M. Dawson Institute for 
 Church-State Studies, Baylor University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://francisbeckwith.com








And, I assume, others are free to reject
your claims about the Declaration of Independence. (I reject them because the
supposed rights laid out therein did not apply to my African and
African-American ancestors. I look elsewhere for instruction on the matter of
human rights.) Dont you think that your position might be construed as
hegemonic?











From: Ed Brayton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005
2:30 PM
To: Law
  Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: Swedish Pastor Beats
Hate Crime Rap





Newsom Michael wrote: 

Shouldnt
we be careful in applying American notions of free speech to other cultures and
traditions? Sweden
may have had good and sufficient reasons for taking a different position on the
question. I would be curious to know if the Swedish Court relied at all on American
cases.













Quite frankly? No, I don't think we should be careful
about applying American notions of free speech to other cultures and
traditions. I take seriously the supposition found in the Declaration of
Independence that we are all endowed with unalienable rights that precede the
institution of government, that governments are instituted in order to secure
those rights, and that it is unjust for any government to violate them. I have
no problem whatsoever applying that principle universally, whether it indicts
my own government or another government. 

Ed Brayton






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Re: Alito Views SCOTUS Doctrine as Giving Impression of Hostility to Religious Expression

2005-11-04 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Alito Views SCOTUS Doctrine as Giving Impression of Hostility to Religious Expression



I dont want to be too picky here, but Alito is saying impression of hostility, not necessarily hostility. So, in a sense, he does not disagree with Marty. Alito says impression, and Marty says misperception. A misperception is in fact an impression, but an inaccurate one.

I do think that Alito is correct that there is an impression of hostility. Now whether that impression is justified is ever or always justified is another question. But clearly Alito is justified in saying that many ordinary people in fact have that impression. 

Frank

On 11/4/05 4:31 AM, Marty Lederman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/politics/politicsspecial1/04confirm.html
 
Alito believes that the Court's doctrine really gives the impression of hostility to religious speech and religious _expression_ and that the court had erred by going too far in prohibiting government support for religion at the risk of hampering individual _expression_ of religion? Even after Widmar and Mergens and Lamb's Chapel and Good News Club and Rosenberger, etc.?  
 
To be perfectly honest, I find this a bit disturbing -- particularly because it plays into the all-too-common public misperception that the Court's modern doctrine has been hostile to private religious _expression_. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. (Indeed, I think it's fair to say that the Court has done more to protect private religious _expression_ over the last 25 years than just about any other form of private _expression_.)

What Alito appears to be getting at, of course, is not private _expression_, but govenmental speech (or government preferences for religious speech). In particular, he appears to have sent Cornyn signals that he thinks Santa Fe was wrongly decided -- which, if true, is very unfortunate, IMHO.

Further evidence, I think, that one of the very first and most dramatic shifts of doctrine in the move from SOC to Alito will be w/r/t the Religion Clauses.


Nominee Is Said to Question Church-State Rulings 
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylLamp;v1=DAVID%20D.%20KIRKPATRICKamp;fdq=19960101amp;td=sysdateamp;sort=newestamp;ac=DAVID%20D.%20KIRKPATRICKamp;inline=nyt-per 
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 - Senators of both parties said Thursday that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/samuel_a_alito_jr/index.html?inline=nyt-per , President Bush's choice for the Supreme Court, had told them he believed the court might have gone too far in separating church and state.

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/texas/index.html?inline=nyt-geo Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said that Thursday in a private meeting Judge Alito expressed empathy for the impression that the court's decisions were incoherent in this area of the law in a way that really gives the impression of hostility to religious speech and religious _expression_.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/westvirginia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo , said after his own meeting with the judge that he, too, was very satisfied that Judge Alito had said he believed the court had erred by going too far in prohibiting government support for religion at the risk of hampering individual _expression_ of religion.

He indicated that people have a right, a very distinct right, to express their religious views, Mr. Byrd said.

Although the senators said Judge Alito had not told them how he would rule in specific cases, their comments were the first indication of his views concerning one of the most contentious issues before the court.

Many liberals and religious minorities view the court's jurisprudence on separation of church and state over the last 50 years as a bedrock principle of American life. But anger over the court's rulings against school prayer, government displays of the Ten Commandments and other public forms of religious _expression_ also played a major role in the birth of a conservative Christian political movement.

The selection of Judge Alito, a conservative federal appeals court judge, has ignited passions on both sides of the aisle, in part because he would succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/sandra_day_oconnor/index.html?inline=nyt-per , who provided the swing vote on abortion rights and other issues.

The intensity is so high that some members of Congress and outside groups worry that the divide over Judge Alito could lead to a filibuster. The so-called Gang of 14 - seven Democrats and seven Republicans who banded together this year to avert such a shutdown of the nominations process - met Thursday and publicly proclaimed their agreement intact, at least for now.

Judge Alito's

Re: Alito Views SCOTUS Doctrine as Giving Impression of Hostility to Religious Expression

2005-11-04 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Alito Views SCOTUS Doctrine as Giving Impression of Hostility to Religious Expression

Touche Steve. I guess not to be nitpicky is like with all due respect. :-)

Take care,
Frank

On 11/4/05 8:50 AM, Steven Jamar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

For not wanting to be picky, that was picking nits.

But in the same vein, if what the court has done (as opposed to what the media and interest groups have done with what the court has actually done) is create that impression, and that impression is wrong, then the solution is to do something different to create a different impression.

But Alito is, it seems to me, more likely to be simply trying to avoid accusing the sitting justices of subjective hostility while conveying the message that he thinks their decisions have been wrong and have had a hostile effect. A position touted on this list with distressing (to me) regularity.

Steve

On Nov 4, 2005, at 9:21 AM, Francis Beckwith wrote:

I dont want to be too picky here, but Alito is saying impression of hostility, not necessarily hostility. So, in a sense, he does not disagree with Marty. Alito says impression, and Marty says misperception. A misperception is in fact an impression, but an inaccurate one.

I do think that Alito is correct that there is an impression of hostility. Now whether that impression is justified is ever or always justified is another question. But clearly Alito is justified in saying that many ordinary people in fact have that impression.

Frank

Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017

Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567

2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Washington, DC 20008 http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/

I do not at all resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it for a time parts company with reality.

Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, 1941

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Re: Faith tests okayed for campus Christian group at ASU

2005-10-19 Thread Francis Beckwith

Perhaps I missed something, but it seems to me that ASU is in fact 
discriminating against a group because of its religious practice.  There is, 
after all, a free exercise clause in the constitution and not a free love 
clause. (You ex-hippies may think otherwise, of course). It seems to me that if 
a student group of the American Cancer Association forbade membership to those 
who smoked cigarrettes (including smokers for religious reasons) that it would 
be wrong for ASU to discriminate against such a group because it happen to 
exclude religious smokers. After all, the CLS prohibition is against all 
non-marital sex, heterosexual or homosexual. This is part of a long and 
important moral tradition. It seems to me that ASU, by excluding such a group, 
is in fact making a judgment about the rationality of such a tradition. 

For all the talk about diversity, these sorts of requirements in fact result in 
a sort of universal conformity in which all groups must accept the same 
practices and moral traditions but just look different. Cosmetic diversity is 
not real diversity. 

Frank
 
On Wednesday, October 19, 2005, at 11:36AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Yes, of course, the private club has a right (although not a constitutional 
one, I'd argue) to exclude from membership any persons who are sexually active 
outside marriage (which is what the settlement apparently involves).

The question at issue, however, is not membership, as such, but instead the 
group's eligibility to be recognized by the university, and to be given the 
public perqs that come with such recognition.

ASU has decided, like most schools, that it will not afford such recognition 
and perqs to any groups that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation 
-- on the quite reasonable theory that ASU does not wish to facilitate, or be 
party to, any activities for which a percentage of its student body would be 
ineligible by virtue of their sexual orientation.  According to the article, 
CLS has agreed that it will *not* discriminate on the basis of sexual 
orientation -- and thus that it will comply with ASU's nondiscrimination 
conditions that are a prerequisite to university recognition.


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--
Francis J. Beckwith, MJS, PhD
Associate Professor of Church-State Studies
Associate Director, J. M. Dawson Institute for 
 Church-State Studies, Baylor University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://francisbeckwith.com




Brad M Pardee wrote:

  I haven't heard this story in the news anywhere, but
given
the media's general distaste for anything evangelical, I'm not
surprised.
The sad thing is that it takes litigation (or the threat thereof)
to compel universities to do the right thing.
  
  
  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/011/5.25.html
  


I'm always baffled by cases like this. It's a private organization,
regardless of whether it exists at a public university. Of course they
have the right to determine the standards of their own membership.
That's true of this group, it's true of the Augusta National golf club,
and it's true of the He-Man Woman Hater's Club from the Little Rascals.

Ed Brayton


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Re: New lawsuit against U Cal Berkeley

2005-10-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

The problem with the answer, devoutly religious people believe X and Y at
the same time, assumes that the way we answer such questions is to ask the
people who believe both X and Y rather than assess the conceptual
compatibility of both X and Y. If, for example, I were to ask the question,
Can one be both a bachelor and married?, and you answered, Fred here is
devoutly married by he also claims to be unmarried as well. By suggesting
to student that the way you answer conceptual questions about religion is to
point toward religious people teaches them that religion is not a matter of
intellectual rigor but personal piety and subjective preference.  That is a
particular religious epistemology, and controversial at that.

I addressed the site in question in a piece I published last year in
American Spectator online. You can find it here:
http://www.spectator.org/util/print.asp?art_id=6395  Timothy Sandefur
responds to me here (or as Ed says completely shreds me):
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000100.html  And I respond to him
here: http://degas.fdisk.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=121
Sandefur responds that one here:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000132.html  And respond that one
here: http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/ts.htm

Cheers.

Frank

On 10/18/05 3:58 PM, Volokh, Eugene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Unless I'm mistaken, all the views noted on the site
 (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/7445_statements_from_religiou
 s_org_12_19_2002.asp#top) endorse the same family of religious positions
 -- Judaism and Christianity are consistent with evolution.  Am I missing
 some items on that page that express the opposite points of view?  My
 sense is that the range of opinions given on that page is a range from
 Judaism is consistent with evolution through Protestantism is
 consistent with evolution to Catholicism is consistent with
 evolution, not a range of opinions that really captures the opposite
 points of view.
 
 Eugene
 
 Ed Brayton wrote:
 
 I think if the same website did not also acknowledge the
 opposite points 
 of view, and do so in both cases in purely descriptive language, this
 would be more likely. But in fact it does describe multiple religious
 points of view and does not endorse any of them, merely describes the
 different viewpoints and which ones conflict with what we science has
 found and which ones do not. If it did not also acknowledge
 that there 
 are religious viewpoints that are not compatible, their case would be
 much stronger.
 
 Bear in mind also that this is a website designed to help
 teachers not 
 only teach evolution more effectively but also deal with
 questions they 
 are likely to be asked by students (I am fortunate enough to
 have seen 
 the website as it was being developed and know the folks who put it
 together and it was conceived as a tool for training teachers; it has
 since been expanded and made publicly accessible). If a student asks
 whether evolution contradicts with religion, what possible
 answer could 
 a teacher give other than something like, Opinions vary.
 Some religious 
 views are incompatible with it and some are not, but the fact
 that there 
 are thousands of devoutly religious scientists who also work in the
 field of evolution clearly means they aren't inherently at
 odds with one 
 another? The link to the statements from various religious
 organizations was put there for teachers to see what the range of
 opinions are, not for them to give to students.
 
 Ed Brayton
 
 
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Re: New lawsuit against U Cal Berkeley

2005-10-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: New lawsuit against U Cal Berkeley

Ed:

As for married bachelor, I suspect that President Clinton would defend its coherency. :-) All kidding aside, I use the illustration to make the point that a religious persons claims about the coherency of their own beliefs is not the proper object of analysis. You correctly point out that the concept, married-bachelor, is in fact incoherent regardless of whether or not someone believes it isnt. What I think the Berkeley site should have done is to say that there is a wide range of views across a continuum. I do not think the Berkeley site does that. It citesif my memory serves me rightonly religious groups and organizations that are left of center. There are, as you know, religious groups that take a different point of view, that would be classified as conservative but not fundamentalist. I think, for example, of a thinker like C. S. Lewis, who, in the Abolition of Man, offered an argument against scientism, but in other works claimed that evolution is not inconsistent with theism. This sort of approach, theological realist but not fundamentalist, I do not believe is represented in the NCSE list. What is represented are liberal religious groups that have largely rejected the theological traditions of their predecessors.

I guess I am in the Lewis camp. I do not think that evolution and Christian theism are incompatible. But I do think that philosophical materialism and Christian theism are incompatible. And this is where religious citizens see the tension. They are told, as Lewis believed, that evolution and Christian theism are compatible. Fair enough. But then they see their position represented by the NCSE in the published statements of liberal religious groups who are essentially hostile to their theological traditions and have abandoned the notion that traditional theology may be rationally embraced by thoughtful people.

Take care,
Frank

On 10/18/05 5:36 PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Francis Beckwith wrote:

The problem with the answer, devoutly religious people believe X and Y at
the same time, assumes that the way we answer such questions is to ask the
people who believe both X and Y rather than assess the conceptual
compatibility of both X and Y. If, for example, I were to ask the question,
Can one be both a bachelor and married?, and you answered, Fred here is
devoutly married by he also claims to be unmarried as well. By suggesting
to student that the way you answer conceptual questions about religion is to
point toward religious people teaches them that religion is not a matter of
intellectual rigor but personal piety and subjective preference. That is a
particular religious epistemology, and controversial at that.

Frank, surely you would not defend the position that evolutionary theory and religious belief are inherently incompatible? I don't think you have to delve into the question of which is true or false at all in order to take what is, to me, the obviously true position that some religious beliefs are compatible with evolution and some are not. I would also note that a teacher in a public school really can't go beyond this sort of descriptive statement without running into serious establishment clause problems. I would assume that you don't want teachers to delve into this religious epistemology any deeper than the merely descriptive statement that some religious people accept it and some don't, do you? The analogy to a married bachelor is quite inaccurate simply because there is a simple and objective and legal answer to whether one is or is not married, there is only one possible answer, you either are or you aren't. Not true of religious beliefs, which are as varied as they could possibly be. Surely we don't want teachers to delve into taking a position on which one is right. That is precisely what Caldwell claims to be going on here, though it isn't. You seem to be arguing that the failure to do so is a problem, which I'm afraid leaves me quite confused.

Ed Brayton

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Re: New lawsuit against U Cal Berkeley

2005-10-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: New lawsuit against U Cal Berkeley

Ed:

On 10/18/05 9:44 PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Only because they have been told that evolution = philosophical materialism.
That is not only false, it is absurdly false. No one has yet explained why
evolution is naturalistic or materialistic in any difference sense than
the way in which the germ theory of disease or the kinetic theory of gasses
are naturalistic or materialistic. They all use the working assumption of
methodological naturalism and none of them require philosophical or
metaphysical naturalism.

But that's not what we hear from some of the folks doing the legal work on this subject. For example, attorney Steven Gey, who co-authored a recent law review article with Barbara Forrest, an expert witness at Dover, had this to say about the nature of the first amendment:

The establishment clause should be viewed as a reflection of the secular, relativist political values of the Enlightenment, which are incompatible with the fundamental nature of religious faith. As an embodiment of these Enlightenment values, the establishment clause requires that the political influence of religion be substantially diminished.Religious belief and practice should be protected under the first amendment, but only to the same extent and for the same reason that all other forms of _expression_ and conscience are protected -- because the first amendment prohibits government from enacting into law any religious, political, or aesthetic orthodoxy.[R]eligious principles are not based on logic or reason, and, therefore, may not be proved or disproved[R]eligion asserts that its principles are immutable and absolutely authoritative, democratic theory asserts just the opposite. The sine qua non of any democratic state is that everything political is open to question; not only specific policies and programs, but the very structure of the state itself must always be subject to challenge. Democracies are by nature inhospitable to political or intellectual stasis or certainty. Religion is fundamentally incompatible with this intellectual cornerstone of the modern democratic state. The irreconcilable distinction between democracy and religion is that, although there can be no sacrosanct principles or unquestioned truths in a democracy, no religion can exist without sacrosanct principles and unquestioned truths...

For the same reason, the state may teach the value of rationalism and critical thought in the humanities, and favor logically coherent theories in the sciences n492 because those actions do not concern the fundamental questions which form the heart of the religious project.

Steven G. Gey, Why is Religion Special?: Reconsidering the Accommodation of Religion Under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment 52 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 75, 79, 167, 174, 179-80 (Fall 1990) (notes omitted). Much of this quote is reproduced in my recent article, Gimme That Ol Time Separation, Chapman Law Review 8.1 (2005), which can one download from this page: http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/downloads.htm

Forrest herself teases out what she believes are the materialist implications of science in her article, The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution, Zygon: Journal of Religion Science 35.4 (Dec 2000), 861-889. She writes:
We have established scientifically some disquieting facts: (1) human beings have evolved from nonhuman life forms, meaning that (2) at one time we did not exist, and that (3) according to paleontological and astronomical evidence, at some time in the future we shall cease to exist. Furthermore, from a scientific standpoint, there is no discernible reason that we had to evolve in the first place, and there is no guarantee that we shall continue to evolve successfully; more hominid species have become extinct than have survived. The price of such knowledge has been the gnawing question of whether human existence has genuine meaning if it was constructed with cranes rather than supported by skyhooks, as Daniel Dennett says.
The problem of meaning is easily resolved for those who embrace a preconstructed system of meaning such as religion. However, religion cannot help us find meaning in any honest sense unless it can assimilate the truth about where human beings have come from, and the only real knowledge we have about where we came from we have acquired through science.
Id., 862 (emphasis added) (notes omitted)

Ed, I know these may not be your views. But one some of us read this stuff by counsel and expert conscripted for your cause, we find it difficult to believe that this project is not anti-theological and not just anti-literal interpretation of Genesis.

Frank

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Re: Public Schools, Intolerance Christian Dancers

2005-10-07 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Public Schools, Intolerance Christian Dancers

Be fruitful and multiply!

On 10/7/05 9:35 PM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

ADF is larger than ACLU now? Amazing.

Ed Darrell
Dallas

Rick Duncan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Here is an ADF press release concerning a victory in a public school censorship case:
On with the show: ADF secures student's right to dance to religious music
Once-censored song back in play for high school performer
Friday, October 07, 2005, 8:30 AM (MST)
ADF Media Relations | 480-444-0020

Comments

TORRANCE, Calif. - Initially barred from using religious music to accompany a dance performance audition, a California student has regained the right to take the stage after receiving support from the Alliance Defense Fund.

Lauren Stoudt, a West High School student, choreographed a piece to the music In Your Presence in anticipation of a Dance Team concert in January 2006. School officials, however, rejected her song choice based on its religious content.

We can all agree that the First Amendment applies to all Americans, said ADF litigation staff counsel Jeremy Tedesco. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that schools cannot discriminate against private student _expression_ simply because that _expression_ has religious content. The First Amendment rights of religious students do not vanish once they step on campus.

After Lauren's father contacted ADF, Tedesco sent a letter to TUSD Superintendent Dr. George Mannon, West Hig! ! h School Principal Tim Stowe and other officials warning legal action if they did not allow Lauren to perform. Officials quickly changed their tune, and agreed to permit Lauren to audition her dance routine to In Your Presence.

ADF commends the school district for doing the right thing, Tedesco said. We hope other schools follow this example and respect the free speech rights of religious students.

ADF is America's largest legal alliance defending religious liberty through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.

Any thoughts?

Rick Duncan

Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone. C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. --The Prisoner

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Re: UC Case: Facts from Complaint

2005-09-06 Thread Francis Beckwith

You can conclude the course with the lecture, Why the moral relativism
embraced by secularism can't adequately account for the wrongness of the
acts I just condemned.

Time for Eugene to spank us.

Frank

On 9/6/05 1:24 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 The KKK (and the use of the Cross as a symbol of terrorism and hatred;
 Christian identity movements in the last 25 years
 Father Coughlin's antisemitism
 The hanging of witches in Salem and Quakers in Boston
 The use of Christian theology to defend (as well as attack) slavery
 The use of conversion of slaves to help prevent resistance to slavery
 Ownership of slaves by churches
 The utter failure of the Protestant Churches in the South to the take a
 strong stand in favor of legalizing slave marriages
 The persecution of Mormons and the murder of Joseph Smith
 The death penalty (fortunately reduced to exile) for a Jew in colonial
 Maryland because he denied the divinity of Christ
 The whipping and jailing of Baptist ministers in Virginia in the
 Revolutionary period.
 The intellectual intolerance of the 1920s (and more recent periods) by
 prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the public schools
 The forced reading of Protestant version of the Bible imposed on
 Catholics in the 19th century
 The attacks on Al Smith's presidential campaign (and also attack on John
 F. Kennedy) because they were Catholic.
 The strong stand against integration taken by virtually ever southern
 Christian minister in the 1950s and early 1960s.
 The influence of religious groups in undermining Indian culture and
 religion and forcing Indian children not to learn their own language.
 The use of Protestant theology (and the influence of Christian leaders)
 to justify wars against Indians, particularly in the colonial period.
 
 Yes, it would be a great course; I would love to teach it.
 
 Paul Finkelman


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Re: UC Case: Facts from Complaint

2005-09-06 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: UC Case: Facts from Complaint

Bobby, I dont disagree with you. All I was saying is that secular relativism cannot account for the wrongs. I did not say that secularism is relativistic per se. What I was thinking of was the stuff written by Stephen Gey in which he says that constitutional democracy assumes moral relativism. Having said that, I do believe that a view that implies or asserts that there can be no non-empirical knowledge of immaterial reality has a difficult problem of accounting for notions of rights that depend on human beings having direct awareness of moral knowledge and possessing moral properties, both of which are immaterial and unchanging.

Thats my story, and Im sticking to it. :-)

Frank

On 9/6/05 3:18 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Just before Eugene spanks us, it is a conceptual confusion to label all forms of secular morality as relativistic. A commitment to the principle that individuals should determine their own values, or even that societies should determine their own values is as universalistic and absolutistic as can be. It's just that such a principle does not conform to other universalistic and absolutistic principles that specify in advance how individuals should behave in every area of their lives.

Bobby

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware

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Re: Mean hoax (these things happen too often)

2005-08-25 Thread Francis Beckwith

Let's not forget this one: Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame
left a will specifying that 10% of KFC's profits be given to the Ku Klux
Klan.  Read about it here:
http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/sanders.asp

On 8/25/05 2:16 AM, Will Linden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Remember the hooraw about the purported memo supposedly leaked from
 Vice-President Agnew's office about Nixon's plans to cancel the election
 and repeal the Bill of Rights?
 How often have you seen the Hitler law and order speech fabrication?
 How many times have you received forwarded versions of the petition to
 prevent World War III and other such? (Note snopes.com's remarks on
 slacktivism.)
 
   Was this because the secular left is particularly susceptible to such
 disinformation?
 
   (Bracing for cries of that was DIFFERENT!)
 
 At 06:43 PM 8/24/05 -0500, you wrote:
 
 
 Particularly susceptible?  Is this like when the Washington Post said
 that followers of the religious right are largely poor, uneducated, and
 easy to command?  The FACT is that there are a ton of e-mail hoaxes out
 there.  I get them sent to me.  Things like this as well as warnings about
 a tax on e-mail or offers from Microsoft that will earn you money for
 everyone you forward an e-mail to, etc.  Not all (or even most) of the
 hoaxes I get have anything to do with the Christian nation.  Rather than
 it being about the general low intellect of conservative Christians that
 you seem to be inferring, it's about people IN GENERAL not checking chain
 e-mails at Snopes or similar sites.  People get e-mails from friends and
 family and assume the information is correct.  But that is by no means
 unique to the rank and file of the religious right.  Could it be your
 response says more about the stereotypes you are holding than about who
 does or doesn't forward chain e-mails without checking them out?
 
 Brad Pardee
 
 Ed Brayton wrote:
 This is an old hoax. I've had it forwarded to me probably a dozen times
 over the last few years and even took the time to debunk it on my blog, as
 have many others. For some reason, the rank and file of the religious
 right seem particularly susceptible to this sort of nonsense and they tend
 to forward them on with all the appropriate howls of outrage to all of
 their friends and family. There are also probably a dozen different
 variations of the Christian Nation email that is forwarded among the
 same people, complete with a dozen or so fake quotations allegedly from
 the founding fathers and lots of historical ignorance.
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Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article

2005-08-24 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article



What would be an example of values trumping science? Now, Ive read articles and books in which authors offer arguments as to why certain scientific experiments and research are unethical. Because of these suggested constraints, we would likely know less than if such constraints were not in place. But, in principle, you would have to agree that some things are just not worth knowing if the means to acquire that knowledge are unethical. So, it seems to me that the issue is not values v. science, but rather, the issue is who and what we are and can we know it. Thus, it is entirely and exclusively a philosophical issue between two (or perhaps three or more) contrary philosophical positions. 

Just as it is wrong to suggest that opponents of child pornography are against art, it is wrong to suggest that citizens who have thoughtful ethical arguments against certain types of scientific research are against science.

Frank


On 8/24/05 10:14 AM, Newsom Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I see IDers as merely a subset of those bound and determined that values should trump science. If I did not make myself clear on that point, I apologize. 

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2005 7:02 AM
To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
 

In a message dated 8/23/2005 3:51:26 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
The facts are what they are. Many American students have been driven
away from the natural sciences because of the overreaching of some
religionists.

But you didn't say that at all: you said the ID'ers want to drive students away from the natural sciences. Your conclusion that some students will walk away because of the overreaching of religionists addresses a remark you did not make, and answers a question no one asked. Did you have something to support the earlier charge, or are you abandoning it?

 

Jim Henderson

Senior Counsel

ACLJ

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Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article

2005-08-21 Thread Francis Beckwith

Ed:

We are veering off the church-state issue. So, in order to not irritate
Eugene, I will respond briefly.

I think the Craig-Smith debate makes my point.  Both Craig and Smith agree
that Big Bang cosmology, because it is knowledge, has implications for
theology.  For Smith, it better comports with atheology; for Craig, it
better comports with theological realism. Regardless, both agree that
theology and science are not two non-overlapping spheres, but different
knowledge traditions whose claims may overlap at some points.

But this is not surprising at all. For example, there are internal disputes
in evolutionary biology about a whole array of issues, but no one would
conclude (as you have correctly noted on occasion) from the different
inferences drawn from the same facts that either scientists dispute
evolution qua evolution or that the facts and the inferences are two
different subjects. The disagreement between Craig and Smith is a real
disagreement about the same subject. Consequently, I look at that
disagreement differently than  you do.

Second, drawing non-scientific inferences from scientific facts (as you
understand those terms) occurs quite often in the literature published by
some of your allies.  You may not agree with these folks; so I don't want be
presumptuous in concluding that you do. However, many of us, rightly or
wrongly, read these works and are not convinced that folks on your side are
holding up your end of the science/non-science bargain. Here is what I mean.
Robert T. Pennock writes that ³[S]cience rejects all special ontological
substances that are supernatural, and it does so without prejudice, be they
mental or vital or divine,.² Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel: The Evidence
Against the New Creationism 324 (MIT Press 1999). But he writes elsewhere
that ³Aristotle had held that all species were characterized by some
defining essential characteristic that differentiated them from other
species, and Darwin¹s discoveries overturned this view forever.² Id, 156.
But to say that a particular metaphysical position is overturned forever is
to prejudge all future arguments as unsound, that is, to embrace a
prejudice. In addition, one cannot reject all non-natural substances without
prejudice unless one knows either that non-natural substances cannot
in-principle count against Darwinian accounts of the natural world (but that
can¹t be, because Pennock says that Darwin¹s discoveries overturned them) or
that non-natural substances cannot exist by definition (but in that case,
there was nothing for Darwin to overturn).

Third, if one draws an inference from scientific premises, and the premises
are true and they strongly support (or deductively demonstrate) the
conclusion, why would it matter to call the inference scientific or
non-scientific? It seems to me that one would have a good argument that
provides support for a conclusion that is more likely true than not.  If
knowledge is seamless, then the term science carries no actual probative
strength.  

Fourth, I don't think you properly characterize ID, though I suspect that
there are proponents who have fallen into the errors you note.  Many of the
charges you raise, I believe, have been adequately responded to by Del
Ratzsch, J. P. Moreland, and others.

I have to prepare for the new semester that begins tomorrow.

Take care,
Frank


On 8/21/05 3:40 PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Frankie Beckwith wrote:
 
 Could not a claim both be scientific and religious at the same time?
 Conceptually, I don't see any problem with that.  But this raises an
 interesting problem. Suppose a particular scientific theory happens to lend
 support to a religious point of view in strong way, e.g., the Big Bang lends
 supports to first cause arguments.  Suppose that a devout theist on a school
 board realizes this and suggests that an intro to science text book mention
 the Big Bang theory (Imagine, ironically, that its absence is a result of
 young earth creationists getting it removed because it is inconsistent with
 their view of the earth's age, which is, by the way, a view many of them
 hold.).  Imagine further that it were discovered later that the inclusion of
 the Big Bang was motivated by religion, even though the purpose of the
 inclusion is secular because it is the better scientific theory and students
 ought to learn the better scientif theory. This tells us two things: (1)
 motive and purpose are conceptually distinct, since the former is a belief
 held by minds and the latter, when it comes to statutes, is a property held
 by texts; and (2)clearly, the better scientific theory could be the more
 religious one in comparison to its rivals, but that seems like a less than
 good reason to prohibit teaching it in public schools.
 
 
 I think a distinction needs to be made between an idea that happens to
 comport with a religious position, or that informs one's religious
 position, and an idea that is inherently religious. Lots of

Re: No Secular Purpose

2005-08-21 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: No Secular Purpose

Ed:

Its not clear to me why the beliefs of ID advocates should be the object of judicial assessment. As I understand the Madisonian and Jeffersonian traditions on matters religious, the state has no right, and thus no legitimate power, to interfere with the religious consciences of individual citizens. That is, to paraphrase Justice Black, citizens should not be rewarded or punished because of their beliefs or disbeliefs. What you seem to be suggesting, Ed (and perhaps I am reading you wrongly), is that the religious motives of ID advocates are sufficient to reject its teaching in the classroom. And then you say that even if the motives were non-religious, the lack of a good case for ID would be sufficient. But what of the case in which a curriculum is supported by exclusively religious motives but the case for it is very good? What happens in the case. I think what happens is that the stuff gets taught because it is good and the motives of its supporters play no part. On the other hand, if the curriculum is bad, then the motives dont matter either. So, the adequate criterion of assessment is whether it can be defended with reasonable arguments whose premises do not contain claims to religious revelation. Thats all that should matter. I know that the Supreme Court, such as in Jaffre, took motives into consideration. But I think such assessment violates Blacks principle stated above. Motives, after all, are types of beliefs that causally contribute to bringing about certain actions. But beliefs are off limits, according to the Courts Jeffersonian tradition. So, if you accept that tradition, religious motives can not be part of any courts assessment.

Frank

On 8/21/05 2:45 PM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

We're back to the evidence. Under the circumstances listed below, I don't think ID can qualify as science. If there is no research, no data, and no support, on what basis could it be called science? What other reason would there be to teach it, then, other than religion? We cannot expect courts, or pro-science client attorneys, to turn a blind eye to the many statements of ID advocates that the purpose of the ID movement is to put religion back in the schools. But even absent those statements, it would be difficult for ID proponents to establish a non-religious purpose to what would be portrayed as junk science in the classroom. It would be interesting to see a defense of ID as non-religious, but constitutionally-acceptable pseudo-science. I doubt such a defense would be a winner.

Nor is there a science purpose to exposing students to the controversy that would be acceptable to ID advocates, I think. A fair curriculum would of necessity expose the manifold errors of ID, and ID advocates would protest. That's why high school biology texts take it so easy on creationism now.

Creationists need courses in evidence in civil procedure, not Constitutional law.

Ed Darrell
Dallas

Rick Duncan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

The EC bans religious endorsements, but so long as ID is not religion, it can be taught in science classes. Even if there are no ID labs, if ID consists of scientists like Behe discussing scientific data and scientific concepts like irreducible complexity, there should be no EC problem when it is taught for the purpose of exposing students to the controversy.

Cheers, Rick

Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone. C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. --The Prisoner

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Re: No Secular Purpose

2005-08-21 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: No Secular Purpose

Good point, Sandy. I was unclear. What I should have said is that religious motives cannot be part of any courts assessment in Establishment Clause cases since it would be penalizing citizens for their beliefs rather than because of their actions or legislative proposals. You are correct that religious beliefs do a play a part in protecting a citizens FE rights. But I think that fact shows that in both EC and FE contexts beliefs are protected absolutely (actions and practices, of course, are a different matter), which means that they cannot be the basis for restricting a citizens liberties.

Frank

On 8/21/05 5:13 PM, Sanford Levinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Francis Beckwith writes:

. Motives, after all, are types of beliefs that causally contribute to bringing about certain actions. But beliefs are off limits, according to the Courts Jeffersonian tradition. So, if you accept that tradition, religious motives can not be part of any courts assessment.

But this simply cannot be true if one believes, for example, that the FE Clause protects certain behavior when engaged in for religious motives, but not otherwise. One can argue that courts aren't very skilled in identifying motivation, not least because there may be an incentive to engage in strategic misrepresentation, but one literally could not understand FE law without bringing motives (and beliefs) into the equation.

sandy

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Re: No Secular Purpose

2005-08-21 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: No Secular Purpose

What I am saying is that if the citizens have good secular reasons for their policy proposal, then their religious motives should be irrelevant, since motives are not the justification for the policy or even the policy itself. Motives are beliefs that causally contribute to an agents actions, but they are not the actions themselves and they are not necessarily the justification for the actions. My APSA paper, which I will deliver in about two weeks, deals precisely with this issue.

Take care,
Frank

On 8/21/05 5:25 PM, Sanford Levinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Frank writes:

. But I think that fact shows that in both EC and FE contexts beliefs are protected absolutely (actions and practices, of course, are a different matter), which means that they cannot be the basis for restricting a citizens liberties.

But, of course, we aren't really talking about restricting a citizen's liberty to believe in ID, which is absolutely protected. The discussion is whether citizens can in effect foist those views on the public schools by virtue of capturing control of a school board. And, for better or for worse, the Lemon test, which has never successfully been slain, so far as I know, strikes down legislation that is motivated by a religious purpose. As Marshall wrote in paragraph 42 of McCulloch, courts must always be open to the possibility that any given piece of legislation is being defended by pretextual arguments and, therefore, be willing to pierce the veil, as it were, of the strategic misrepresentation.

sandy

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Re: No Secular Purpose

2005-08-21 Thread Francis Beckwith

into legislation, absent other valid, secular motives. Certainly they will be scrutinized.

If a case is very good for a curriculum on secular grounds, the religious motivation is additional, and while it might be contested, valid secular purposes tend to carry the day. The Jewish religious significance of handwashing and bathing has never been a factor arguing against teaching good hygiene to kids in public schools. When things are quite concrete and clear, the religious arguments tend not to be a factor.

But bad curricula are taught, generally with religious motivation. Dr. Chance's recent indictment of one particularly bad Bible studies curriculum is a good example. Some of the problems in the curriculum produced howls of laughter from the Methodist and Jewish audiences I've seen -- and groans, too. These are groups who prefer that scripture be taught, but they want it taught well. That hasn't deterred some school officials who have defended the curriculum and say they plan to keep it.

Third, religious motives are exactly what Jefferson was aiming at, and appropriate areas for court inquiry, I think. In his drive to get the Bible out of elementary and secondary schools, for example, Jefferson argued that use of the Bible was ineffective in its secular guise, as a reader, and wholly inappropriate as reading material for young minds, and in whatever guise, unconscionably sectarian. Instead of the Bible, Jefferson said, kids could get instruction on morality. He didn't disagree that kids need to learn moral behavior. He disagreed that morals should be taught from any one religious view.

But of course, ID advocates ultimately can't have it both ways. One of the arguments advanced in Cobb County, Georgia, was that banning the warning stickers was an affront to Christians. Before lawyers told them the law, that was the argument of school board members in Pennsylvania, too. As an active and practicing Christian, I have difficulty figuring out what these peole say is offensive in evolution. That is evidence again that it's a sectarian issue, and not one of science.

Ed Darrell
Dallas

Francis Beckwith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Ed:

Its not clear to me why the beliefs of ID advocates should be the object of judicial assessment. As I understand the Madisonian and Jeffersonian traditions on matters religious, the state has no right, and thus no legitimate power, to interfere with the religious consciences of individual citizens. That is, to paraphrase Justice Black, citizens should not be rewarded or punished because of their beliefs or disbeliefs. What you seem to be suggesting, Ed (and perhaps I am reading you wrongly), is that the religious motives of ID advocates are sufficient to reject its teaching in the classroom. And then you say that even if the motives were non-religious, the lack of a good case for ID would be sufficient. But what of the case in which a curriculum is supported by exclusively religious motives but the case for it is very good? ! sp;What happens in the case. I think what happens is that the stuff gets taught because it is good and the motives of its supporters play no part. On the other hand, if the curriculum is bad, then the motives dont matter either. So, the adequate criterion of assessment is whether it can be defended with reasonable arguments whose premises do not contain claims to religious revelation. Thats all that should matter. I know that the Supreme Court, such as in Jaffre, took motives into consideration. But I think such assessment violates Blacks principle stated above. Motives, after all, are types of beliefs that causally contribute to bringing about certain actions. But beliefs are off limits, according to the Courts Jeffersonian tradition. So, if you accept that tradition, religious motives can not be part of any courts assessment.

Frank

On 8/21/05 2:45 PM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Nor is there a science purpose to exposing students to the controversy that would be acceptable to ID a! dvocates, I think. A fair curriculum would of necessity expose the manifold errors of ID, and ID advocates would protest. That's why high school biology texts take it so easy on creationism now

Re: Pledge of allegiance held not to be religious observance

2005-08-19 Thread Francis Beckwith

Steve:

I have not read the Court opinion, so I could be writing this from ignorance. 
But if the Court deemed the pledge not a religious exercise, then the 
presence or absence of the term under God may not be relevant. For example, 
if the students were required (with exemptions) to stand up and recite the 
first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, I think it is reasonable to 
say that it is not a religious exercise even though it claims that our rights 
are endowed to us by our creator.  This is because God could serve a 
philosophical, non-religious function, in one's comprehensive worldview.  For 
example, Aristotle's unmoved mover is not an object of religious devotion, but 
an entity postulated to explain universal motion. That does not preclude the 
unmoved mover from being an object of worship, which only means that God is 
much more rich in its philosophical uses if we don't think of the concept as 
permanently sequestered to the realm of the subjective and non-cogniti!
 ve.

Take care,
Frank
 
On Friday, August 19, 2005, at 09:32AM, Steven Jamar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


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The 4th Circuit says that the recitation of the pledge of allegiance is not a religious exercise and so does no violate the establishment clause.Surely this would be correct, but for the "under God" language, although I'm sure a number of folk on this list and elsewhere would have some trouble reconciling supporting that decision with the assertion that the state is pushing a religion they call "secularism" on the poor unsuspecting youth.Given that it is OK to require "under God" to be said every day, will the volume of disinformation about god being banned from the schools be turned down?  I doubt it.http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/au19pledge.html --  Prof. Steven D. Jamar                                 vox:  202-806-8017 Howard University School of Law                       fax:  202-806-8428 2900 Van Ness Street NW                        mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Washington, DC  20008      http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar  "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."  Reinhold Neibuhr 1943  ___
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Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article

2005-08-19 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article



I not only read it, but I reviewed it for Journal of Law and Religion in Fall 2001. 

Frank

On 8/19/05 1:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In a message dated 8/19/2005 2:14:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
And do Mark and Sandy really equate Behe's scholarship with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Holocaust Denials?
I wonder whether anyone on this list has read Darwin's Black Box?

On equivalencies, I wonder whether anyone is willing to equate the author of the Protocols with the authors of Dred Scot and of Plessy?

Jim What's Hiding Under those Robes Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ

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Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article

2005-08-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

Mark:

Having been the victim of such retaliation here at Baylor, I am skeptical of 
Ed's response (though I like Ed personally, and carr no ill will toward him).  
Some of these people will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who even entertains 
the possibility that ID advocates are raising important questions that may have 
a place in public discourse including classrooms (such as in my case).   

Below is my letter that was published in the most recent issue of Academe, in 
reply to a misleading hit-piece penned by Barbara Forrest and Glenn Branch, two 
people who never even bothered to contact me before they wrote their piece. 
Yet, they claim to know intimate details of what occurred here at Baylor as 
well as the content of my writings.  

Frank

---
TO THE EDITOR:
Barbara Forrest and Glenn Branch misleadingly depict my appointment at Baylor 
and my academic work on intelligent design in the January-February issue. They 
falsely imply that I was sought after by the Baylor administration and hired 
autocratically as part of some conspiracy to turn Baylor into an academic 
enclave for intelligent design. Until my on-campus interview in February 2003, 
I had never met or spoken to a Baylor administrator. That interview occurred 
while I was on the faculty at Princeton as a James Madison Fellow, five months 
after I had applied for the Baylor post in response to a national advertisement.

The authors state that twenty-nine descendants of my department's namesake 
(J.M. Dawson) requested that Baylor remove me from my post. They don't mention 
the support for me from my provost, department chair, department colleagues, 
and numerous professors from around the world, some of whom disagree with my 
views. One of them, Kent Greenawalt of Columbia Law School, was so aghast at 
the Dawsons' use of a quote of his to hurt my appointment that he wrote a 
letter to my chair condemning it.

I argue that it is constitutionally permissible to teach intelligent design in 
public schools, which is the conclusion of the thesis I wrote in 2001 as part 
of my M.J.S. degree at the Washington University School of Law. It was 
published as a book in 2003, and various portions of it appeared in articles in 
Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, San Diego Law Review, and Notre Dame 
Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy.  I'm not an intelligent design 
advocate, and I don't think it should be required in public schools. I do 
think, however, that some intelligent design arguments raise important 
questions about philosophical materialism and the nature of science that should 
be taken seriously and may indeed have a place for discussion in public school 
classrooms. Academic liberty knows no metaphysical litmus test, whether it's 
religious or irreligious, or proposed by Jerry Falwell or Barbara Forrest.

Although I stand by my work on intelligent design and public education, it is 
only a recent interest of mine. I had already established myself with scores of 
articles and many books in the areas of ethics, religion, and politics. In 
fact, my monograph on abortion is cited several times in the Encyclopedia of 
Philosophy article on that subject.

In my opinion, Forrest and Branch are blacklisters whose witch-hunt tactics 
should be shunned, and not published, by Academe.

FRANCIS J. BECKWITH
Associate Director, J. M. Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies
Baylor University
---

On Thursday, August 18, 2005, at 02:16PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Scarberry, Mark wrote:

Pardon me, but I think the original post involved retaliation taken by
Smithsonian Institution officials against a scientist who did not believe in
ID but who had edited a respected journal in which a peer-reviewed piece
appeared making certain arguments with respect to ID. This is a kind of
secondary boycott, so to speak. Not only must IDer's be ostracized, so must
any scientist who is willing to allow IDer's to speak. If the ID article was
flawed, the thing to do is to point out the flaws, as it seems some have
done. 


Except that there was no retaliation. Although it is now clear that 
Sternberg did go around the accepted procedure to insure that this very 
badly written article got into the PBSW journal - the board of directors 
of the PBSW has publicly stated as much - there was no retaliation 
taken. He got a few unkind comments and got the cold shoulder from some 
colleagues, and that should hardly come as a surprise. But the OSC 
letter makes clear that, though there was discussion among the 
Smithsonian staff on what they could do, they ultimately decided that 
nothing should be done - and that is what happened. Dr. Sternberg 
continues to have full access to the Smithsonian collection for research 
purposes and continues to have an office in which to work in the 
Smithsonian. A few rude comments does not discrimination or retaliation 
make.

Ed Brayton


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Re: Increase in No Religion?

2005-08-07 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Increase in No Religion?



Of course, what constitutes the public good is itself in dispute. For example, is the public good advanced or inhibited by denying vouchers to religious parents who want to send their children to private schools? It depends. If one believes that parental stewardship of children is logically prior to the state (a fruit of the marital bond that Justice Douglas said in Griswold was prior to the state), then the burden is clearly on the state to justify its coercive policy that places a financial burden on parental stewardship. On the other hand, one could either reject this understanding, meet the burden, and/or offer a higher good to which the state should aspire that trumps parental stewardship. 

The point is that appeals to the public good ultimately beg the most important question of all.

Frank

On 8/7/05 12:01 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

It's called possessive individualism, and it has affected believers and nonbelievers alike. The push for religious exemptions from general laws with no regard to the public good is another part of this worldview, because it rests on the assumption that individual religious belief should trump the larger public good. 

Marci


In a message dated 8/7/2005 12:52:29 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Thank you for your thoughtful response, all of which I pretty much agree with. I don't think anybody was intending be insulting; I was merely focused on what appeared to me to be the implausible claim (if indeed I interpreted it correctly) by the original authors of the study that people belonging to mainline churches quit their mainline churches because of what third parties (i.e., the religious right) were doing.

I wonder whether believers' disaffiliation from church  denomination is merely a particular instance of the more general phenomenon popularized in the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. A pertinent portion of the review published by Publishers Weekly follows (the emphasis is added): 
 

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Re: Increase in No Religion?

2005-08-07 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Increase in No Religion?

I dont disagree in principle, Marci. However, it seems to follow, then, that any so-called secular claims about what constitutes the public good that may burden religious practice have the same burden. Here I am thinking the horrible law in California that forced Catholic Charities to use its economic resources to pay for contraceptives as part of its employees health benefit package, even though artificial contraception is forbidden by Catholic theology. (I am not Catholic, and do not share that point of view, by the way). In any event, it seems to me that it is not clear how the public good is served by the state using its coercive power to force Catholic Charities to fund what it does not believe is moral, and which is part of a well-established tradition in moral philosophy. Ironically, Catholic parents who work for Catholic Charities cant get vouchers for their kids, but they can get birth control pills so they can have fewer kids.

Frank

On 8/7/05 5:09 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I think the obligation runs both ways. The religious individual's claim from faith should be treated with respect, and the facts indicate that such claims are not only treated with respect at this time in history, but extraordinary respect (if one includes within the concept of respect political power).

At the same time, a religious individual has to know that a claim with no concurrent explanation as to why the proposed policy is good for others or the polity as a whole, is not likely to carry the day by itself.

Marci

In a message dated 8/7/2005 5:56:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
All that I am suggesting is that religious claims are of a wide variety, some depending on revelation (as you correctly suggest) and others that depend on arguments whose premises do not appeal to such notions. What I am saying is that a religious claim should not be dismissed out of hand, but the arguments offered for it assessed on their merits.

Frank

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Re: Increase in No Religion?

2005-08-07 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Increase in No Religion?

There is a difference, I think. In the Catholic Charities case, the state defined religion in such a way that anything that did not constitute worship or evangelism was not religion (thus excluding organizations like CC that engage in works of mercy). Also, CC was not being taxed and that money going into a general fund that was eventually distributed to programs with which it disagreed. Rather, CC was being forced to directly fund a private health care program that supplied contraceptives. So, there was no government middle-man so to speak. It is the state directing the religious organization to give its money directly to something with which it disagrees.

Frank

P. S. I see that you will be APSA. Perhaps our paths will cross.

On 8/7/05 5:42 PM, Sanford Levinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Frank Beckwith writes: In any event, it seems to me that it is not clear how the public good is served by the state using its coercive power to force Catholic Charities to fund what it does not believe is moral, and which is part of a well-established tradition in moral philosophy.

I have a certain sympathy for this claim, but I can't figure out why the Catholic Charities should be treated any better on this score than any individual Catholic or, of course, pacifist who belives that it is immoral to force him/her to contribute to what is, by definition, the immoral use of force. Are we forced back into direct, indirect tests to differentiate the Charities and the individual. But I presume that all the Charities must do is to purchase insurance policies that include coverage of contraception, which seems pretty indirect to me.

sandy

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Re: Increase in No Religion?

2005-08-07 Thread Francis Beckwith

Well, I believe in revealed truths. But I am also an odd sort of Evangelical
Protestant in the sense that I believe that there are a variety of religious
claims for which I may offer non-religious arguments.  I am also a Thomist
(and more than just a peeping Thomist, to borrow phrase from Ralph McInerny
:-)), which means that I have much more confidence in human reason than my
Reformed friends do.

Take care,
Frank

On 8/7/05 5:45 PM, Sanford Levinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Frank writes:  
 
 
 All that I am suggesting is that religious claims are of a wide variety, some
 depending on revelation (as you correctly suggest) and others that depend on
 arguments whose premises do not appeal to such notions.  What I am saying is
 that a religious claim should not be dismissed out of hand, but the arguments
 offered for it assessed on their merits.
 
 
 I think we are in fundamental agreement, but I do wonder whether anyone on the
 list who believes in revealed truths (and who make recourse to such truths as
 part of their arguments) could possibly join in.
 
 sandy
 
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Re: Increase in No Religion?

2005-08-07 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Increase in No Religion?



Interesting. A couple of years ago I suggested in a discussion with a colleague that one may have secular reasons for believing in revealed truth, insofar as one attempts to marshal evidence for the inspiration of a particular text. So, in principle, one could have a religious reason that is really just an intermediate conclusion for more basic non-religious reason.

Frank

On 8/7/05 7:06 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I am curious about the relationship between revealed truths and reason in the contention that one could embrace both. Is it that some canonical authority states a truth such as Love thy neighbor or God is the source of moral goodness, and reasons explicates the content of these revealed truths?

Being able to offer non-religious arguments for religious claims raises the problem that the non-religious arguments--if available for all religious claims--might render the religious claims superfluous. I suppose one test of whether someone is really committed to both revealed truths and reason is how he or she resolves conflicts between the two.

Bobby

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware

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Re: Establisment clause and oppressive taxation

2005-08-04 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Establisment clause and oppressive taxation



What if the synagogue, temple, or mosque also distributes and sells religiously-prepared foods as does the local grocery stores, but some of the believers would rather purchase food with their stamps from those they trust to prepare the foods correctly, namely, those at their local house of worship. 

Frank


On 8/4/05 11:04 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

This is not the same as giving money to a synagogue or other religious institution; a Jew can use food stamps for kosher food; and Hindu for vegitarian food; a Moslem for Halal meat; but they should not be allowed to give the stamps to their synagogue, temples, etc.

Rick Duncan wrote: 
Or better yet, change the food stamp hypo to Kosher food. Why should non-Jews be taxed to pay for Kosher observance? The answer, of course, is that they are not being taxed to pay for Kosher observance. They are being taxed to pay for food supplements for the poor, including food stamp recipients who choose to keep a Kosher kitchen.

The same with education taxes supporting school choice. No one is being taxed to support religious instruction as such. Everyone is being taxed to pay for education, and everyone gets a free tax supported education up front in return for paying a lifetime of educational taxes. Both Kosher education (in private religious schools) and non-Kosher education (in all other schools) are equally funded. There should be no strife at all, because everyone pays and everyone receives. Indeed, the battles over the public school curriculum we have been discussing would be less likely to occur (less strife) if dissenting families could exit the public schools without penalty.

The real strife is created when Jews are denied Kosher food in the food stamp program and when families who choose private schools are denied their fair slice of the K-12 educational benefit pie. I deeply resent being forced to pay taxes to support a system which provides no benefits to my children. I feel like a second class citizen. And many millions more feel the same way.

Rick

Francis Beckwith [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]  wrote:
Given the regulatory state in which we liveone that requires that parents who send their children to religious private school must pay for both the school tuition as well as taxes to fund public schools--it seems to me that the principle from which Madison drew his conclusion is not so easily dispositive in resolving this dispute. Suppose, for example, it were discovered that food stamp recipients were using some of them for the purchase of bread and grape juice for Catholic Masses conducted in their homes. Would that violate Madisons principle, since the purchase results from money acquired through taxing non-Catholics? Or would it be consistent with Madisons principle, since the purchase is the result of the free agency of the citizen who received the food stamps rather than a result of a government-directed order (as in the case of r! eligious assessments in early America)? Suppose we change the food stamps to school vouchers and the bread and grape juice to Catholic school admission? 

Im not sure Madison is helpful here.

Frank



On 8/3/05 11:27 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I would suggest you reread Madison's remonstrance on Religious freedom; one of the clear motivating factors for the establishment clause was to preclude the possibility that people would have to pay for other people's religion. That was what was going on in Va and that, quite frankly, is what the voucher system is all about; when tax money ends up in a religious school, it means that taxpayers of one faith are forced to support the religious schools of someone else. Madison understood how deeply wrong, dangerous, and offensive that was. I am surprised that you and Rick don't see this. 

Paul Finkelman

Pybas, Kevin M wrote:
All of the comments are helpful, but let me raise another question that is akin to the one Rick raised. He asked 


whether, why, and / or how these motivations, or the
undesirability of such strife should be used to supply the
Establishment Clause's enforceable content.


WIth regard to neutral aid programs (as the Court characterizes them), is it really religious strife that worries us? In other words, in the context of the modern administrative state, are the conflicts over the funding of education, for example, whether it be vouchers or the type of aid at issue in Mitchell, really about religion, or religiously-motivated in any sense? In other words, how do we tell the difference between religously-motivated political strife and ordinary political disagreements (I understand that the word ordinary may not he all that helpful, but hopefully you see what I mean.) 







From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Paul Finkelman
Sent: Wed 8/3/2005 5:08 PM
To: Law  Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject

Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

2005-08-03 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

The notion of falsifiability as a criterion for truth claimswhether inside or outside of sciencehas come under withering criticism by philosophers of science over the past 40 years. Proposed in its most robust and sophisticated form by Karl Popper, there is a no consensus on its adequacy. For example, we know that theories that encounter contrary datapossible defeatersare some time supplemented by ad hoc hypotheses. Does that make the original theory unfalsifiable, or is postulating ad hoc hypotheses a legitimate tactic in the face of a possible defeaters to an otherwise fruitful theory. When do we know that a theory has been falsified? Is it one anomaly, 20, 50? Nobody knows.

Clearly, there is potential data that count against theistic accounts of the universe. For example, if there is a good argument that the universe did not begin to exist, then that would show that God as an explanation for the universes beginning is unnecessary. Since genetic inheritance is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition, for Darwinism, its falsification would falsify every theory of biological change that relies on inheritance including Darwinism. So, that isnt much of a test. The other examples are equally unpersuasive: Find a single hominid (or even mammalian or avian) fossil in situ in precambrian strata and evolution is dead. I doubt it. I can easily imagine someone saying any of the following: maybe our dating methods are wrong; maybe evolution worked differently than we supposed; or maybe this anomaly will be explained in the future, but one anomaly is no reason to give up an otherwise fruitful theory. Heres the other example: If the fossil record showed that all life forms lived and died at the same time, evolution would be dead. Actually, we wouldnt be here to make that observation, because we would be one of those dead life forms.

The debates about the nature of science, falsification, etc. are much more complicated than can be written about here. Nevertheless, much of this discussion on design and naturalistic evolution is poorly assessed, in my opinion, because of the disciplinary fragmentation of the academy. A result of this is the ridiculous notion that calling an argument philosophical or religious means that the argument can never serve as a defeater to the deliverances of science. But if knowledge is seamless, as I believe it is, then a good philosophical argument against a scientific hypothesis counts against it. If, for example, I can show that it is conceptually impossible for an infinite series of causes to exist in reality, then I dont care how many multiple universes Stephen Hawking wants to postulate in order to avoid the daunting conclusion that the ground of being is indeed personal. Just like I know there cant be five married-bachelors in the next room without having to look, I can know that an infinite regress of causes is impossible without peering through a telescope or lifting a pyrex tube.

Keep this mind: the distinction between science and non-science is not a judgment of science, but a philosophical conclusion about science.

Frank

On 8/3/05 1:21 PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Some add to this pot the concept of falsafiability; and this important consideration is what I find most troubling about the devoted adherents of evolutionary faith. Where the scientific method and falsafiability would require, for example, that the theory of relativity be subjected to testing intentional designed to show how the theory FAILS to explain, evolutionary theories are not subjected to falsifiability analysis; the closest anyone comes to such analysis is when ID proponents or neo Darwinists or others point out the gaps and failures of explanation.

I don't think you understand the concept of falsifiability. Falsifiability does not mean that you must subject a theory to testing designed to show how the theory fails to explain something. It only means that one must, in principle, be able to imagine a set of data that would falsify the explanation if that data were found. In the case of evolution, this is rather easy to imagine. Find a single hominid (or even mammalian or avian) fossil in situ in precambrian strata and evolution is dead. If the fossil record showed that all life forms lived and died at the same time, evolution would be dead. If genetics did not allow traits to be inherited, evolution would be dead. One could go on all day. The fact that evolution hasn't been falsified doesn't mean it's not falsifiable, it more likely means it's true. On the other hand, how could creationism (broadly defined) possibly be falsified? No matter what the data said, one could simply say that God created in that manner for reasons unknown to us. Now creationism as narrowly defined, say as young earth global flood creationism, which makes specific claims about the natural history of life on earth that are testable,

Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

2005-08-03 Thread Francis Beckwith

On 8/3/05 2:48 PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Francis Beckwith wrote:
 Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design Clearly, there is potential data
 that count against theistic accounts of the universe. For example, if there
 is a good argument that the universe did not begin to exist, then that would
 show that God as an explanation for the universe¹s beginning is unnecessary.
 
 But one can hardly imagine what kind of evidence there could be the universe
 always existing. And showing that God is unnecessary as an explanation for one
 thing doesn't falsify the existence of God. If it did, the failure of every
 god of the gaps argument in history would have falsified it and it didn't.
 Unnecessary is not synonymous with falsified.

But it seems that there are entire is cluster of rational beliefs that
cannot be falsified that are nevertheless essential. For example, the claim
that falsification is necessary itself can't be falsified.  So, clearly
there is at least one necessary, though unfalsifiable, belief. Second, if I
hold to the belief that George Washington had an affair with Abigale Adams,
I can't really falsify it, but I can marshal evidence against it and show
that the belief is unreasonable. Because it is possible that the belief is
true, one cannot technically falsify it. But that actually counts against
falsification as a test of rationality, since we know it is rational to
reject this belief and it is nevertheless unfalsifiable.


I think you may be confusing a believer's subjective adherence with a belief
with the grounds for a belief. You are correct that people will believe all
sorts of things in spite of the evidence, but that does not mean that the
defeaters they ignore are not real defeaters or at least count against the
belief.  

 Since genetic inheritance is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition, for
 Darwinism, it¹s falsification would falsify every theory of biological change
 that relies on inheritance including Darwinism.   So, that isn¹t much of a
 test.
 
 I don't understand the reasoning here. If it can falsify more than one
 explanation, it's not much of a test? All that is required for
 falsifiability is that the explanation be falsified if a given set of data is
 found; whether the data also falsifies another potential explanation is
 irrelevant. If the police had 3 suspects for a murder, 2 male and 1 female and
 genetic evidence showed that it must have been female, the fact that this
 evidence falsified two of the three possible explanations hardly makes the
 falsification of those explanations any less true or compelling.

What I was thinking here was a test that would uniquely falsify Darwinism
and keep in tact genetic inheritance.  Since, after all, nobody denies
genetic inheritance, not even Duane Gish (as far as I know).  Specificity in
these matters is virtue.

 
 The other examples are equally unpersuasive:  ³Find a single hominid (or even
 mammalian or avian) fossil in situ in precambrian strata and evolution is
 dead.²  I doubt it. I can easily imagine someone saying any of the following:
 maybe our dating methods are wrong; maybe evolution worked differently than
 we supposed; or maybe this anomaly will be explained in the future, but one
 anomaly is no reason to give up an otherwise fruitful theory.

 Falsifiability is not based upon whether someone will admit that a theory is
 falsified, but rather on whether the evidence logically does falsify it. If it
 required admission, then the potential falsification you offered above for the
 existence of God is even weaker and less compelling.

I probably wasn't clear in my example. What I was trying to show is that
fruitful theories do not collapse under the weight of one or two, or even
many, anomalies. It is perfectly acceptable to offer ad hoc hypotheses to
cover for problems.

In fact, anomalies sometimes inspire changes in research programs to try to
account for anomalies. So, it's not about the personal virtue of the
scientist (whether he or she will admit the game is up); it's about the
problem in trying to come with what counts as evidence that does falsify a
theory. I think it's much more difficult and complicated that you let on,
especially when vested interests and professional reputations are at stake.
I think we all underestimate the sociology of science and extra-scientific
factors play in the history of progress of science.

 
 Here¹s the other example: ³If the fossil record showed that all life forms
 lived and died at the same time, evolution would be dead.²  Actually, we
 wouldn¹t be here to make that observation, because we would be one of those
 dead life forms.
 Okay, so make it all other life forms or all other life forms were on the
 planet simultaneously. Either way, it's still a valid potential falsification
 because it would negate the possibility of ancestral relationships.

Good comeback, though ancestral relationships would also be consistent with
some forms of design

Re: Establisment clause and oppressive taxation

2005-08-03 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Establisment clause and oppressive taxation



Given the regulatory state in which we liveone that requires that parents who send their children to religious private school must pay for both the school tuition as well as taxes to fund public schools--it seems to me that the principle from which Madison drew his conclusion is not so easily dispositive in resolving this dispute. Suppose, for example, it were discovered that food stamp recipients were using some of them for the purchase of bread and grape juice for Catholic Masses conducted in their homes. Would that violate Madisons principle, since the purchase results from money acquired through taxing non-Catholics? Or would it be consistent with Madisons principle, since the purchase is the result of the free agency of the citizen who received the food stamps rather than a result of a government-directed order (as in the case of religious assessments in early America)? Suppose we change the food stamps to school vouchers and the bread and grape juice to Catholic school admission? 

Im not sure Madison is helpful here.

Frank



On 8/3/05 11:27 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I would suggest you reread Madison's remonstrance on Religious freedom; one of the clear motivating factors for the establishment clause was to preclude the possibility that people would have to pay for other people's religion. That was what was going on in Va and that, quite frankly, is what the voucher system is all about; when tax money ends up in a religious school, it means that taxpayers of one faith are forced to support the religious schools of someone else. Madison understood how deeply wrong, dangerous, and offensive that was. I am surprised that you and Rick don't see this. 

Paul Finkelman

Pybas, Kevin M wrote:
All of the comments are helpful, but let me raise another question that is akin to the one Rick raised. He asked 


whether, why, and / or how these motivations, or the
undesirability of such strife should be used to supply the
Establishment Clause's enforceable content.


WIth regard to neutral aid programs (as the Court characterizes them), is it really religious strife that worries us? In other words, in the context of the modern administrative state, are the conflicts over the funding of education, for example, whether it be vouchers or the type of aid at issue in Mitchell, really about religion, or religiously-motivated in any sense? In other words, how do we tell the difference between religously-motivated political strife and ordinary political disagreements (I understand that the word ordinary may not he all that helpful, but hopefully you see what I mean.) 







From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Paul Finkelman
Sent: Wed 8/3/2005 5:08 PM
To: Law  Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: religiously-motivated political strife






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Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

2005-08-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

Because the federal courts have addressed the question of evolution curriculum in a number of opinions, has not the issue now been federalized? So, though Ed is correct that curriculum is a local issue, but at least one aspect of it has been federalized.

Frank

On 8/2/05 8:07 AM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Using NCLB to require a change in curriculum would be a federal power grab in education quite unprecedented. Heck, the federal establishment was nervous about simply making available lesson plans used in schools through the old (soon-to-be-gone) ERIC Library System, and both parties and all players were insistent that federal curriculum not be a possibity when I was partly responsible for redesigning the ERIC system in 1987. It's a quietly sensitive issue.

There was a proposed amendment to NCLB endorsing the concept of including alternatives to education made by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA strongly opposed the amendment and it was pulled down. ID advocates have argued that a mention of the language in the report on the final bill is as good as law, however. We may see that argument made in the Dover, Pennsylvania, intelligent design case, if it actually goes to trial (the school district fired their expert witnesses backing ID; most ID advocates have argued this is not the case they should push).

But generally, curriculum is off-limits for federal action. There are no curriculum writers at the Department of Education, by design, by tradition, and by several different laws. Curriculum is a local issue.

Ed Darrell
Dallas

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There was a story in yesterday's NYT about a group placing Bible classes in various public schools. Apparently, the content includes assertions about intelligent design. So it would appear there is a mutli-pronged approach.

To me, what is most interesting about the President's statement is that it follows on the heels of the Viennese Catholic Archbishop's statement that evolution is in doubt. I think it is a mistake to underestimate the political ties between the anti-abortion forces in the right Catholic and the right evangelical Christian groups. That political unity appears to have yielded another issue where they are in synch. The ID offensive is a fairly coordinated social movement to push science aside for the purpose of furthering religion through the public schools. (Even more interesting, I suppose, is that Catholic schools, in the US at least, are not changing their curricula in response to the Catholic statement, even though it was apparently endorsed, or permitted and encouraged, by the Pope.)

Any thoughts on whether Pres Bush will try to use No Child Left Behind as a base of power to force public schools to teach ID? Could the Bush Administration put in place regulations under NCLB that would do as much?

It's also very interesting that this issue comes to the fore in the midst of the Roberts nomination. Having chosen the business interests' favorite candidate and gotten pilloried by some right Christian groups, Bush may well now be placating those same groups.

Marci
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Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

2005-08-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

Ed:

Cause and effect correlations are extremely complicated on issues such as these, since there are a variety of reasons that American students may under perform. Im always suspicious of the use of such data, regardless of who offers it. Having said that, I believe that the Supreme Court is in fact a branch of the federal government, and if it touches a matter, no matter how small or insignificant in a local setting, it elevates the issue to a federal one. After all, in order to reach its holding it must appeal to federal principles and make the argument that those principles apply in this local case. So, Congress may address the issue if it so chooses, since by the court addressing it the court is in fact saying that the issue is of federal concern. It would be odd, to say the least, that it is a matter of federal law but federal lawmakers cannot address it.

Frank

On 8/2/05 9:04 AM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In each case in which the federal courts have addressed the issue a governmental body was attempting to impose a religiously-motivated curriculum. This is a violation of the establishment clause. Other than that, the federal courts have remained neutral in curriculum. Protecting the religious rights of citizens against state, local and local school government encroachment is quite a bit different from the executive branch of the federal government mandating curriculum.

As a political matter, every other nation whose students perform better than U.S. students in academic achievement tests, has a national curriculum with high standards to which all schools in the nation aspire or to which all schools are mandated to achieve. In each of those cases evolution is a part of the curriculum. I believe that a significant part of the drop off of educational achievement in U.S. kids is because of the wrangling over putting religion into the curriculum at the local level (4th grade U.S. kids lead the world in science achievement; by 8th grade they are apace with other industrialized nations; by 12th grade they are significantly behind other nations). Repeated studies indicate that U.S. kids are not taught evolution because teachers and administrators fear the hassle of parents and interest groups who complain. But as Mr. Brayton noted, even in the law hoped to improve our kids' educational achievement, amendments! were offered to encourage the watering down the science curriculum. (Mr. Levinson is right -- the language is facially not so damaging; but the amendment, which was written by a leading intelligent design advocate, a lawyer, includes those buzzwords and buzzphrases that indicate the intent to frustrate the teaching of evolution rather than require higher standards of achievement. Gotta know the jargon, sometimes.)

The federal courts' have addressed only whether the insertion of certain materials violates the establishment clause, and not other aspects of the science curriculum.

Ed Darrell
Dallas

Francis Beckwith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Because the federal courts have addressed the question of evolution curriculum in a number of opinions, has not the issue now been federalized? So, though Ed is correct that curriculum is a local issue, but at least one aspect of it has been federalized.

Frank

On 8/2/05 8:07 AM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

There was a proposed amendment to NCLB endorsing the concept of including alternatives to education made by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA strongly opposed the amendment and it was pulled down. ID advocates have argued that a mention of the language in the report on the final bill is as good as law, however. We may see that argument made in the Dover, Pennsylvania, intelligent design case, if it actually goes to trial (the school! district fired their expert witnesses backing ID; most ID advocates have argued this is not the case they should push).

Ed Darrell
Dallas

To me, what is most interesting about the President's statement is that it follows

Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

2005-08-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Pres. Bush Supports Intelligent Design

But given incorporation, it would follow that no one shall make no law. In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which expands religious liberty by banning discrimination based on religion in the workplace (if involved with interstate commerce), would be unconstitutional under your construal.

I cant out-flag-wave you, however. :-)

Frank

On 8/2/05 12:24 PM, Ed Darrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

But isn't that exactly what the First Amendment means when it says Congress shall make no law? It's not odd at all, to me. It is historically, patriotically, and liberty-confirmingly comforting.

Ed Darrell'
Dallas

Francis Beckwith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Ed:

Frank

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Re: Challenge

2005-07-29 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Challenge

Gene:

Isnt there something odd about the government setting the parameters of appropriate religious activism on the grounds that religion and the government should be separate? If they should be separate, then the government should remain silent on the subject? But it hasnt. So, I can only surmise that the position you are holding is that the government and the government alone determines the limits of a religions public theology. But that doesnt that violate your principle that the government and religion should remain separate? What am I missing here?

Frank

On 7/29/05 2:51 PM, Gene Garman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I have just been challenged by the list manager to establish the meaning of the Establishment Clause in terms of an understanding which establishes its meaning as an establishment of religion, in contrast to the revisionist understanding, for example, of Justice Rehnquist, in his 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree dissent, in which, by adding words, he asserts the wording really means (in his opinion) a national religion.

Actually, I thought no one on the list was ever going to ask. Thank you.

Since joining the list, I have deliberately withheld any comment in respect to the Free Exercise Clause, because I knew the challenge would ultimately be presented.
I will do my best to convince you that the wording of First Amendment is not ambiguous and is entirely consistent with James Madison, Founding Father and cochair of the joint Senate-House conference committee which drafted the final version of the First Amendment, who provided numerous subsequent examples of his understanding, as detailed in his Detached Memoranda, wherein he wrote: Strongly guarded ... is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States.

The Free Exercise Clause commands: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The word thereof is the word which needs to be filled with understanding. According to English 101, the word thereof gets its entire meaning from whatever it is to which it refers. The Free Exercise Clause obviously refers back to the Establishment Clause and to whatever the Establishment Clause means.

If you accept Justice Rehnquist's revision of the Establishment Clause, it means a national religion. If that is the fact, thereof MUST mean a national religion. The Free Exercise Clause then is to be understood as, Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise of a national religion. Think about that?

To the contrary, thereof means religion, which is the word used in the Establishment Clause, not a national religion.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. It is religion which is not be established by law or Congress, not just a national religion. Any law respecting an establishment of religion is unconstitutional. President Madison's 1811 veto messages, of religion bills passed by Congress, and his c.1817 Detached Memoranda, provide numerous specific examples as to applications of the Establishment Clause consistent with the understanding that, in America, an establishment of religion is not the business of Congress.
The Establishment Clause provides no exceptions.

The First Amendment commands the free exercise of religion. Government is the essence of coercion. In America religion is to be completely voluntary (the absence of government). That is much of about what America is. James Madison perfectly stated the constitutional principle established by the Constitution's religion commandments in Art. 6. and in the First Amendment: separation between Religion and Government. Let's keep it that way.

Gene Garman, M.Div.
America's Real Religion
www.americasrealreligion.org http://www.americasrealreligion.org

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Re: ajc-church-state barrier has baptist roots

2005-03-31 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: ajc-church-state barrier has baptist roots



Of course, Nathaniel J. Hammond, given his confederate credentials, was likely no friend of the 14th amendment and or the doctrine of incorporation. Given that, it makes sense why he would think it necessary to pass legislation in Georgia that could not be gotten from the First Amendment. Is Ms Rose suggesting, by her apparent endorsement of this essay, that if Hammonds statute were repealed that there would then be no Constitutional prohibition to using public funds to support religious organizations? 

Frank

On 3/31/05 7:25 PM, Joel Sogol [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 

 

Joel L. Sogol

Attorney at Law

811 21st Avenue

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401

ph (205- 345-0966)

fx (205)-345-0971

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 

Ben Franklin observed that truth wins a fair fight -- which is why we have evidence rules in U.S. courts.

 

-Original Message-
From: Rose, Shelley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 3:24 PM
To: Rose, Shelley
Subject: FW: ajc-church-state barrier has baptist roots

 

ADL Civil Rights Committee Members:

 

Below is an excellent historical piece by GA State Sen. George Hooks in last week's AJC that I thought you would appreciate.

 

Shelley Rose

Associate Director

Anti-Defamation League

3490 Piedmont Road, Suite 610

Atlanta, Georgia 30305

Phone: 404-262-3470

Fax: 404-262-3548

Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 

 

 
Church-state barrier has Baptist roots
George Hooks - For the Journal-Constitution
Monday, March 21, 2005
Much has been said and written about the proposed constitutional amendment before the Legislature on the issue of funding religious organizations. 

While this issue should be decided on its merits, it is important that the voters know that --- despite claims to the contrary --- the credit or blame for the provision in our Constitution that separated church and state should actually be given to the founders of the Georgia Baptists and not to James G. Blaine of Maine, an 1870s era anti-Southern national lawmaker, who many are pillorying today. 

Here's the true story: At the first constitutional convention in 1777, Georgia withdrew official support for the Anglican Church and asserted religious freedom. Then, in 1785, in response to the legislative efforts of the state to establish public financial support for churches, Silas Mercer, a Baptist minister, wrote a remonstrance that promptly stopped those attempts. 

In 1789, Georgia held its first statehood constitutional convention, which was attended by Mercer, and also by one of my ancestors. Mercer was a convention delegate and the man behind passage of a provision that stated: No person within the state shall upon any pretense be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping God in a manner agreeable to his own conscience. 

In 1798, Georgia held another constitutional convention. This time, Silas Mercer's son, Jesse, was the Wilkes County delegate. Jesse Mercer was a preacher-politician for whom Mercer University is named. It was under the younger Mercer's leadership that freedom of conscience in matters of religion was enshrined in our state's constitution. Notably, it was largely due to the efforts of Jesse Mercer and Adiel Sherwood that the General Association of Georgia Baptist churches was formed at Powelton in 1822. The association eventually changed its name to its present title, the Georgia Baptist Convention. 

As for the Blaine amendment, it was named after James G. Blaine of Maine, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who later became a U.S. senator. Blaine proposed a national constitutional amendment on Dec. 14, 1875, in reaction to agitation for public parochial schools by the Catholic Church and others. The amendment passed the U.S. House, but failed in the Senate. Afterward, the Blaine amendment was incorporated into a number of state constitutions, especially in the west, but not Georgia. 

In Georgia, following Reconstruction, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the carpet bag constitution of 1868. Throughout 1876, calls for a new state constitution were widespread. Then, almost 200 delegates assembled at the state Capitol on July 11, 1877. The dominant personality there was Georgia political giant, Gen. Robert Toombs, a Confederate veteran, who went to his grave as an unreconstructed Rebel. 

On the morning of July 23, Toombs recognized Fulton County delegate Nathaniel J. Hammond, also a Confederate veteran, who was the state attorney general and one of the chief authorities on constitutional law. His large oil portrait hangs beside the main doors of our state Senate chamber today. Hammond inserted, without debate, a provision that states: No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect or denomination. 

This is not Blaine's language. Hammond's language does not mention the funding of education, which typical Blaine amendments do. As was true of all

Re: Harm to Others as a Factor in Accommodation Doctrine

2005-03-14 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Harm to Others as a Factor in Accommodation Doctrine

Although Marcis point is well-taken, I think another way to understand Marcs (BTW, how cute is that, Marci and Marc?) point is to change Marcis counter-example from churchs protecting pedophiles under the free exercise clause to abortion clinics protecting pedophiles under the right to privacy. Recently, an attorney general (I forgot what state) tried to acquire the medical records of underage girls who underwent abortions in order to try to investigate whether their pregnancies were the result of relations with adult men. Many folks opposed this acquisition on the grounds that it violated the girls right to privacy. Imagine, however, if the teenage boys molested by priests were seeing them under the cloak of penitent-minister confidentiality. So, we have a pretty good analogy here: penitent-minister, patient-doctor. Heres what Marc may be suggesting (if I am wrong, Marc, please correct me): if the first is fair game (penitent-minister), why not the second (patient-doctor), if in both cases the goal is to prosecute child abusers?

Frank

On 3/14/05 8:52 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Just for the record-- I never said never can there be any burden on third parties, rather that that burden should be assessed by the legislature. There are arenas where the burden may never be tolerable, though, e.g., there are few burdens on children's health or safety that can be justified.

There is a broad sprectrum, of course. Exemptions for peyote and religious headgear in the military create de minimis burdens on third parties. Exemptions that permit churches to hide pedophiles from unsuspecting parents and children are enormous burdens.

Marci

For those who believe accommodation can never entail any burdens on third parties, I wonder if they could explain why the constitutional right (or interest) is in free exercise of religion qualitatively different than these other examples.

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Re: Public Good

2005-03-09 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Public Good



Thanks Marci. I appreciate it. Sorry for not replying more promptly. Its mid-term, spring-break season here at Baylor and Ive been very busy. 

Have you been approached by these federalist society folks in Seattle to debate me on teaching intelligent design in public schools? My wife received an email from them and I agreed to do it, but weve had a tough time nailing down the dates.

In any event, if we can work this out, I look forward to meeting you in person. 

Take care,
Frank

On 3/6/05 5:23 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Frank's question is perfectly fair. By the public good, I mean that horizon of concern that is intended to guide elected representatives in a republican democracy. It does not have specific policy content, but rather requires representatives to look beyond any specific group or demand to consider what is best for all in the particular context. When representatives kowtow to any single interest, regardless of its identity, they betray their obligation to seek the public good in the interest of the people. But when they take into account the interests of all those that would be affected by what they do, the resulting legislation serves the public good as I'm using the term. Policy content, thus, comes from elected and accountable officials, not from either academic or judicial judgment.

Having said that, as a citizen, I have all sorts of views about what the public good ought to look like. We are all supposed to second-guess elected representatives, even though we cannot direct them. Thus, all sorts of legitimate laws will be passed consistent with the public good in my formulation, but that does not mean I, as an individual, will be satisfied my elected representatives reached the appropriate end. 

Marci 


In a message dated 3/6/2005 5:51:03 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

So, what I am suggesting is that both Tom and Marci explain what they mean by the public good and why their view is better than their rivals. 

Frank




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Oops

2005-03-09 Thread Francis Beckwith

Sorry for the last message, my listserve friends. I meant it to be sent
privately to Marci. My bad.

Take care,
Frank

-- 
Francis J. Beckwith
Associate Professor of Church-State Studies  Associate Director
J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Baylor University
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Website: http://francisbeckwith.com
--


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Re: evangelize

2005-02-27 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: evangelize



Would it be appropriate of me to say that Bobbys comments about evangelism are good news? :-)

Frank

On 2/27/05 9:16 AM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Amen!

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  
I think Eugene is absolutely right, and so I ask his indulgence regarding this post. I simply want to point out that the nature of religious belief--its intelligibility or unintelligibility, circularity or noncircularity, and whether it can explain the problem of evil and suffering--is relevant to constitutional law and theory and thus relevant to this serious academic electronic seminar, to use Paul's apt phrase, evangelizing is not. 

Bobby

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware


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Re: question

2005-02-26 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: question

I think the gentleman, Mr. Ingle, may have been asking his question in total innocence. I think that Ross Heckmans response was kind and gracious, for it assumed that Mr. Ingle may be a novice to either this list or to internet interaction in general. Having been at the receiving end of a similar mistake I made on a philosophy list over 10 years ago, I know how grateful I would have been if those that had hurled insults at me had given me the benefit of the doubt and offered me the sort of direction that Ross offered Mr. Ingle.

Frank

On 2/26/05 3:55 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I am curious why this is on our list serve?

It violates the entire principle of this list, which is about serious discussion about law and religion and not designed to provide a venue for people to seek converts, proclaim their religions beliefs, or speculate about what might have happened to someone's body after he was executed by the Romans.. I would respone to Mr. Ingle, whoever he might be, that I am find his post of this offensive and intrusive.

As for his question, I suppose I would have to say that I follow the same religion that Jesus followed, and, as Mr. Ingle might put it, if it was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me. So please, Mr. Ingle, take your curious questions elsewhere.

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Re: proselytization

2004-12-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: proselytization

Heres the way I look at. People who I agree with set out to raise consciousness. People I disagree with proselytize with militant zeal. :-)

FJB

On 12/18/04 10:08 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In a message dated 12/18/2004 10:33:33 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Prof. Lipkin was proselytized by his neighbor. They both handled it
with tolerance and maturity. How does that change the fact of
proselytization? How does what the neighbor did not constitute an
inducement to change religions -- the definition of proselytize? This
was no mere it came up in conversation or informal, impromptu
exchange of views over the backyard fence when doing lawn chores. That
the neighbor lacked evangelical fervor (militant relentless advocacy)
does not change the proselytization -- the inducement to change beliefs
to something else.

I thoroughly enjoyed Don Quixote, even though our reading of him required me to keep my Cassell's English/Spanish Dictionary close at hand. Perhaps the tilting at windmills was subconsciously part of the attraction for me.

But, truth be told, Sancho Panza like, I tire of the game of persuading those who refuse to consider just how offputting the choices of language can be. I had expected that some, with their own cultural or ethnic sensibilities, would realize that just one instance of poor word choice can mar the dialogue while it is yet a-birthing. Proselytizing is a poor word choice in this arena precisely because those who use it, in the main, use it to describe only zealous religious evangelism, but never apply the term to the relentless pursuit of justice, of equality, of fairness, of abortion, etc., etc., etc.

His story about his neighbor proves the point that proselytization is not necessary to the discussion.

Jim Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ
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Re: Supposedly Deistic nature of the Declaration of Independence

2004-12-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

It seems to me that Eugene is right. The God of the Declaration is
theologically minimal, which means that it is consistent with common
understandings of Deism and orthodox Christianity.   It seems to me that one
can be virtually any sort of theist and accept the principles of the
Declaration.   One may be a Christian and see the God of the Declaration as
congenial to one's theology, but it does not follow that one must be a
Christian in order to see the God of the Declaration as congenial to one's
theology.  

Frank


On 12/18/04 10:39 PM, Volokh, Eugene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I'm not positive, but it sounds to me like Paul is saying that the vision of
 God expressed in the Declaration is generally Deistic.  Deism, as I understand
 it, is defined as The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created
 the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no
 influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation (I drew
 this from dictionary.com, which is based on the American Heritage Dictionary).
 
 But even if endowed by their Creator and Laws . . . of Nature's God are as
 consistent with Deism as with Christianity, can the same be said about
 appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
 intentions and a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence?  The
 rhetoric, at least, sounds like a God who at least judges people after their
 deaths (Supreme Judge of the world) and perhaps even protects people in this
 life (protection of divine Providence).
 
 Now it may well be that Jefferson didn't fully believe in this rhetoric
 himself:  Politicians may often use language that they think of as appealing
 to the public even if they themselves might have put things differently in
 private life.  But it sounds like the public meaning of the Declaration
 referred to a judging and perhaps even interventionist God, and not simply a
 creator.  Or am I mistaken?
 
 Eugene
 
 
 
 Paul Finkelman writes:
 
 Divine source, perhaps, but certainly not the God of the Bible, but rather a
 diestic creator or nature's God.
 
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Re: Wait, there's more: Leading ID think tank calls Dover evolution policy misguided, calls for it to be withdrawn

2004-12-14 Thread Francis Beckwith

On 12/14/04 7:03 PM, Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Alan Leigh Armstrong wrote:
 
 There are many holes in the theory of evolution. Evolution appears
 to violate the laws of thermodynamics. There are also many things that
 have been presented as evidence of evolution that have been proven false.
 
 No, evolution does not violate the laws of thermodynamics unless one
 misdefines the laws of thermodynamics. That argument is so thoroughly
 debunked that even most young earthers cringe when they hear it repeated
 today.

Ed is correct.  However, the second law--which is entropy--does some
interesting cosmological questions that have been raised by philosophers of
religion such as William Lane Craig. Technically, Craig's arguments--like
the fine-tuning arguments--do not challenge Darwinism, but rather,
naturalism. In my book Law, Darwinism, and Public Education I write about
these different ways to approach the problem of naturalism as a necessary
condition for science and cite Craig's work along the way.
 
 The problems with evolution and the major schools of thought within
 evolution should be taught to the students. If DI has a different
 theory that fits the facts, it should also be taught.
 
 Some claims can fit any set of facts whatsoever. An undefined designer
 operating at some point in the past did something is not a theory at
 all.

An explanation doesn't have to be a theory. For example, if I were to claim
that undefined designer operating at some point in the past had to
intervene in order for event X to occur since the event X exhibits the
characteristics of a designed entity, I am offering an explanation.
Suppose Behe's argument for irreducible complexity works, that is, certain
biological entities cannot be accounted for by non-rational mechanisms since
they exhibit the characteristics of entities designed by agents.  Now, the
theory is Behe's set of conditions that must occur in order one to be
warranted in inferring a designer.  Darwin, of course, provided an account
that a vast majority of scientists believe is a defeater to Behe's view.
But that means that Behe's view is a view that may count as an explanation,
though many people believe he's wrong.  But they believe he's wrong because
his account has less explanatory power than the Darwinian account.  We
reject his account because it fails as an explanation, not because it can't
pass a metaphysical litmus test.

  DI doesn't have a theory that fits the facts, it has a few specific
 areas in which it claims evolution does not yet have a fully
 satisfactory explanation. They leap from that assertion to the
 conclusion that since evolution has not yet explained phenomenon X to
 their satisfaction, an unknown (wink, wink) designer must have done
 something at some point in the past to make it happen. But don't ask
 them what the unnamed designer did, or when he did it, or how.

If I discover a piece of rock that resembles Socrates in my office tomorrow
morning, am I not justified in claiming that someone designed even if I
don't know the designer's name or how he did it (suppose I am completely
ignorant of sculpture) and when? It seems to me that the name/how/when
objection doesn't do the trick.

Now, if you are saying that one should not jump to ID until the naturalistic
explanations have been found wanting, then we are into a different sort of
problem, one that is part of the standard fare of philosophy of science: how
many anomalies does it take to say that theory B is better than theory A in
accounting for phenomenon X.
 
 I tend toward the 6 days of creation with the clock counting the time
 being at the center of the big bang. The gravitational effect slowing
 down the clock so that we may still be in the seventh day.
 
 You of course have every right to believe this. What you do not have a
 right to do, in my view, is to pretend that it is a scientific theory
 supported by actual evidence and demand that it be given equal time in a
 public school science classroom.

I agree with Ed that ID should not be given equal time in the public school
classroom.  (I don't even believe it should be required to be taught at
all).  In fact, I have made that point on numerous occasions. My interest
has been on the more modest question of whether it is even in-principle
permissible for a teacher to mention in passing that some thinkers have
raised questions about the adequacy of naturalism to limit the rationality
of non-natural accounts of the order and nature of things.  It seems to me
that if a biology instructor in a public school classroom were to set aside
just 15 minutes out of a 60-hour semester to briefly, and respectfully,
mention Behe's argument (noting to the students that it is highly
controversial and critiqued by man) that that teacher's academic freedom
ought to be protected assuming she has fulfilled all legal duties to her
employer and the state.

Take care,
Frank

-- 
Francis J. Beckwith
Associate Professor of

Re: Justice Thomas in Newdow

2004-06-18 Thread Francis Beckwith

Dear Frances with an e:

Of course, there are differences between private entities and government
ones, and I am fully conversant with those attributes.  My point was to show
that one could in principle disagree with the claims of a practice, but out
of tolerance and the importance of sustaining a republic based on
fundamental rights see its importance in advancing the public good.

Public schools, in some jurisdictions, offer lesson plans, and make
pronouncements on issues, that are off-putting to religious believers from a
wide variety of traditions.  These religious believers find it troubling
that the state, which coerces its citizens to attend public schools, employs
its power and authority to issue judgments on questions over which citizens
of good will disagree.  It seems to me that if the justification of
jettisoning the pledge is the atheist student feels marginalized test,
then in the interest of fairness, lesson plans that offer understandings of
human sexuality, the nature of knowledge, reality, etc., that imply that the
views of the religious citizen are false and/or irrational should go the way
of the pledge.  This is not necessarily my view.  I'm just thinking out loud
and wondering whether we are being inconsistent in expecting the religious
citizen to be tolerant of views and practices he considers aberrant and
harmful while taxing him to pay for their proliferation to his children as
well as his neighbors' children, but we don't expect that sort of tolerance
and acquiescence from the Newdow-types who consider belief in God harmful.

Take care,
Francis, with an i. :-)

On 6/18/04 11:22 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 In a message dated 6/18/04 11:42:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 So, like the Christian who must tolerate the distracting presence of nudy bars
 on our interstates as he or she makes her way to church on Sunday mornings, I
 tolerate the Pledge every morning prior to the start of the school day. . . .
 
 
 Can you truly not distinguish between commercial speech by private entities
 (the businesses you describe as nudy bars) and governmental speech?  This is
 facile argument often made in Establishment Clause discussions and one I see
 often in chain emails--that because so much vulgar speech exists in the
 marketplace (think advertising, television, etc.) the government should be
 allowed to engage in religious speech/endorse religion.
 
 But I will concede we are probably not so far apart on the icky-ness of a
 good deal of contemporay American culture. Frances with an e, an afternoon
 tea (with biscuits and sometimes little sandwiches) drinking, garden-loving,
 small dog owning, quaint English village murder mystery reading, reality
 television-Victoria Secret programing-Viagra commercials (My man likes, let's
 just say, the quality of response it gives him--ugh!) disapproving British
 import.   
 
 Frances R. A. Paterson, J.D., Ed.D.
 Associate Professor
 Department of Educational Leadership
 Valdosta State University
 Valdosta, GA 31698
 
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Re: Justice Thomas in Newdow

2004-06-17 Thread Francis Beckwith

I don't think Thomas disbelieves that incorporation has occurred (or
happened), and that has included the establishment clause.  I think he is
questioning whether it is justified.  After all, in the same 1940s in which
Everson came down the pike so did the Japanese internment case. I don't
think anyone would accept as a justification of the latter the citation of
historical fact: broadening the federal power, including interning the
Japanese, happenend again with our third Constituiton (New Deal-Warren
Court. Yes, it happened. But was it justified?

I think there is another way to understand Thomas that is consistent with
establishment applied to the states but without incorporating the
Establishment Clause.  (I just read through his opinion in Newdow very
quickly; so I may be reading him wrong on this).  Thomas seems to be saying
that state disestablishment can be gotten through the free exercise clause,
which can be interpreted to mean that state power to curtail free exercise
is prima facie unjustified. This would mean that really egregious cases of
establishment--e.g., assessments that tax everyone to support a particular
church, indoctrinating students in public school classrooms, etc.--violate
free exercise. However, the Pledge of Allegience--from which kids can opt
out--violates no one's free exercise.

It does, of course, put the state in a position of claiming that the nation
is under God. But one could give a separationist account of this by
arguing that since the writer of the Danbury Letter (the sacred text of
separationism, so to speak), Jefferson, affirmed in the Declaration that our
rights, including religious liberty, are endowed to us by our Creator,
apparently he saw no inconsistency in maintaining both beliefs
simultaneously.  In this sense, we are under God.

Frank

On 6/17/04 3:48 PM, Steven Jamar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 bedrock.  Still, is there a reason why we should not concede that he
 is -- or, at least, MAY be -- correct?
 
 Best,
 
 Rick Garnett
 
 The Civil War Amendments rewrote the Constitution.  People are entitled
 to protection against establishment period. Limiting the states is what
 happened with our second Constitution.  Broadening the federal power
 happened then and again with our third Constitution (New Deal-Warren
 Court).
 
 While an academic may be excused for pondering parallel universes in
 writing, a Supreme Court Justice who does so in writing (as opposed to
 raising a point for discussion with law clerks and other judges) is
 perhaps not at the lunatic fringe, but is at at the very least near it.
 
 What we may toss around as ideas on our listserve or in our classes or
 in person or even in serious scholarship is different from published
 opinions of the court.
 
 Steve

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Re: The President and the Pope

2004-06-14 Thread Francis Beckwith

On 6/14/04 8:11 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

snip

It is fascinating to see Bush pick and choose which Catholic
 doctrine he likes;  I am sure, however, that His Holiness can see through all
 of this.

You're absolutely right. Picking and choosing Catholic doctrines one likes
is the exclusive prerogative of liberal Catholic office holders.  Bush
should have known better.

Frank

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Re: The President and the Pope

2004-06-14 Thread Francis Beckwith

 I was trying to make the same point as David, but with a little levity.
(The point was: this stuff cuts both ways, so let's move on).

You guys are wound up a little too tight for me.  So much for the stereotype
of laid back Californians.  :-)

Frank

On 6/14/04 10:48 PM, David Cruz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, Volokh, Eugene wrote:
 
  Now I don't want to constrain Paul's imagination, fascinat[ion], or
 sense of irony -- all three of which are fine things to have, and give
 ourselves a lot of pleasure.  But as best I can tell, Paul's posts are
 largely ways to express his contempt for the Bush Administration, and
 possibly for Republicans generally, and not terribly persuasive ways at
 that.  What's more, they seem to me to have precious little by way of
 argument about whether a President's appeal to religious leaders are
 unconstitutional (whether the question is justiciable or not) or
 illegal.
 
 If I'm not mistaken, the same (ir)relevancy conclusion is true of Frank
 Beckwith's latest contribution.  On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, Francis Beckwith
 wrote:
 
 On 6/14/04 8:11 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 snip
 
 It is fascinating to see Bush pick and choose which Catholic
 doctrine he likes;  I am sure, however, that His Holiness can see through
 all
 of this.
 
 You're absolutely right. Picking and choosing Catholic doctrines one likes
 is the exclusive prerogative of liberal Catholic office holders.  Bush
 should have known better.
 
 I actually thought that Marty's question was interesting (and that an
 answer to it did not at all necessarily answer the constitutional
 propriety of like behavior by Presidential candidates, who after all are
 not (necessarily, yet) part of government).  I for one would appreciate it
 if partisans of all stripes might re-steer this thread to the
 constitutional issue (or just let the whole thing go away quietly).  If
 that's not possible, perhaps some signal -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] maybe -- might be added
 to the subject lines of posts that just continue the political sniping?
 
 
 David B. Cruz
 Professor of Law
 University of Southern California Law School
 Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071
 U.S.A.
 
 
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Re: The President and the Pope

2004-06-14 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: The President and the Pope

Point taken.

Frank

On 6/15/04 12:02 AM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Frank, I think your point misses the issue. It is not about whether particular Catholics follow one rule or the next -- whether they use birth control in their lives, or support choice, or support the death penalty, or think toruture is a good public policy. My point is not about what the politiciians, liberal or consevative, think or do. it is about what the clergy -- especially the Pope -- might do.

But, I will exist from this discussion now, as it is clearly not longer legal or constitiutional.

Francis Beckwith wrote:
I was trying to make the same point as David, but with a little levity.
(The point was: this stuff cuts both ways, so let's move on).

You guys are wound up a little too tight for me. So much for the stereotype
of laid back Californians. :-)

Frank

On 6/14/04 10:48 PM, David Cruz [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, Volokh, Eugene wrote:

Now I don't want to constrain Paul's imagination, fascinat[ion], or
sense of irony -- all three of which are fine things to have, and give
ourselves a lot of pleasure. But as best I can tell, Paul's posts are
largely ways to express his contempt for the Bush Administration, and
possibly for Republicans generally, and not terribly persuasive ways at
that. What's more, they seem to me to have precious little by way of
argument about whether a President's appeal to religious leaders are
unconstitutional (whether the question is justiciable or not) or
illegal.

If I'm not mistaken, the same (ir)relevancy conclusion is true of Frank
Beckwith's latest contribution. On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, Francis Beckwith
wrote:

On 6/14/04 8:11 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

snip

It is fascinating to see Bush pick and choose which Catholic
doctrine he likes; I am sure, however, that His Holiness can see through
all
of this.

You're absolutely right. Picking and choosing Catholic doctrines one likes
is the exclusive prerogative of liberal Catholic office holders. Bush
should have known better.

I actually thought that Marty's question was interesting (and that an
answer to it did not at all necessarily answer the constitutional
propriety of like behavior by Presidential candidates, who after all are
not (necessarily, yet) part of government). I for one would appreciate it
if partisans of all stripes might re-steer this thread to the
constitutional issue (or just let the whole thing go away quietly). If
that's not possible, perhaps some signal -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] maybe -- might be added
to the subject lines of posts that just continue the political sniping?

David B. Cruz
Professor of Law
University of Southern California Law School
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071
U.S.A.

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Gay Activists Threaten Church Tax-Exempt Status

2004-06-03 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Gay Activists Threaten Church Tax-Exempt Status

Just got this from a friend. It is published by Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian outfit in Colorado Springs.

Frank

---

June 1, 2004

Church's Tax-Exempt Status Threatened
by Steve Jordahl, correspondent

Pro-homosexual group lodges complaint with the state against a Montana church that aired the Battle for Marriage satellite broadcast.

A Montana church, one of hundreds across the country to broadcast a pro-marriage TV special on May 23, has been threatened by a gay-activists group with removal of its tax-exempt status.

Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church in Helena showed congregants The Battle for Marriage a video simulcast featuring Focus on the Family Chairman Dr. James Dobson and other pro-family leaders and circulated a petition at the event calling for a state constitutional amendment supporting traditional marriage. Those actions rankled the gay-activist group Montanans for Family and Fairness, which lodged a complaint with the state's Commission of Political Practices.

The complaint alleges that what the church did may have implications for an organization's tax status. The commission has said it will investigate, but Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Gary McCaleb said the argument is without merit.

The letter that was sent out by these far-left activists is outrageous, McCaleb said. I think it's defamatory, and it's certainly an intolerant effort to suppress free speech.

Canyon Pastor B.G. Stumberg said his church is not intimidated. The commission is unable to affect a church's tax-exempt status on its own, but a decision against the church is the first step in stripping a congregation of its tax benefits.

I don't think it's scaring us at all, he said. It's sort of galvanized us, in one sense, (and) I think everybody's sort of saying, 'OK, let's go.'

The letter was also sent to several hundred other Montana churches, an obvious attempt to make them think twice about addressing the issue of gay marriage. McCaleb said churches should press ahead, anyway.

You certainly don't convert your church into a political committee, he explained, when you speak out in favor of marriage.

The ADF, McCaleb added, would be happy to consult with any church that has questions.

Copyright 2004 Focus on the Family
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
(800) A-FAMILY (232-6459)
Privacy Policy/Terms of Use http://www.family.org/welcome/aboutfof/a0013445.cfm | Reprint Requests http://www.family.org/reprints/

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Re: And proselytizing Re: religious indoctrination

2004-06-03 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: And proselytizing Re: religious indoctrination

Thanks Bobby. Its my fault for a bad choice of words.

Frank

On 6/3/04 9:42 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In a message dated 6/3/2004 9:05:59 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I dont think it was fair of you to isolate my last sentencewhich, admittedly, I poorly phrased--from the larger point I was making: we use terms like judgmental, dogmas, sectarian, etc. in ways that permit us not to carefully examine them.
Of course I agree with Frank's larger point. I took the last sentence--The one I particularly like is the guy who condemns being judgmental, which of course, requires a judgment--as equating being judgmental with judging in the same manner that some people equate rejecting intolerance with being intolerant. Further, the language [t]he one I particularly like suggested (to me) that the sentence I quoted was significantly different from the rest of his post. I agreed with the rest of the post but not this last sentence. That is why I responded by quoting it only. Moreover, I find the structure of the last sentence, one which too many people embrace especially when discussing intolerance, to be an obstacle to our understanding the nature of judgment or tolerance. I'm relieved that I misunderstood Frank, but I did not do so intentionally, and thus I think the charge of unfairness to be premature.

Bobby

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware

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Re: Religion Clauses question

2004-06-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

Robin:

I actually don't disagree with you in principle.  But what I was doing was
just speculating on what sort of tactic could be used to say that an
apparent neutral law really did target a religion.

Frank

On 6/2/04 10:50 AM, Robin Charlow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I know we've had related discussions on this list before.  To reiterate
 what others then said, I don't see why we should construe such an
 anti-homosexual view as only (necessarily) religious.  Even if it is
 often or usually based on religious motivation, a law that targets such
 a view is not presumptively targeting religion.  I suppose it's possible
 in a given set of facts that such a law might have been aimed at
 religion, but why should we presume so in the usual case?  According to
 this notion, would you assume a criminal prohibition of murder is a law
 that targets religion?  Not that we have to accept his view, but I doubt
 this is what Scalia meant in Smith when he spoke of laws targeting
 religion.  
 
 Robin Charlow
 Hofstra University School of Law
 Hempstead, New York  11549
 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 phone (516) 463-5166
 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6/1/2004 8:21:32 PM 
 Nathan:
 
 Since so many intellectuals--including Supreme Court justices--affirm
 that
 religion deals with issues of spirituality and moral virtue especially
 sexual ethics, it seems to me that any law meant to target an area that
 has
 been traditionally the domain of theology could be construed as not
 facially
 neutral at all.  A law, for example, that forbade meetings on Sundays
 in
 buildings owned by 501c3 organizations could be construed as targeting
 religion even if facially neutral.   Since it is only religious
 beliefs, or
 rich philosophical views of the human person that are religious is
 quality,
 that morally forbid homosexual acts between consenting adults, it is
 not
 unreasonable to argue that such an anti-discrimination law is
 partially
 motivated by an intent to expunge those religious understandings from
 the
 public square.  
 
 To employ the rhetoric of liberalism, one could say that religion is
 so
 personal, and one's views of sexual morality so deeply connected to
 one's
 view of the universe and human life, that it is beyond the competence
 of
 government, especially courts, to instruct employers, landlords, etc.
 on how
 to conduct their business concerning prospective employees on such
 delicate
 matters.  Capitalism, like copulation, is an act between consenting
 adults.
 
 Frank
 
 
 On 6/1/04 3:41 PM, Nathan Oman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 Steve,
 
 I don't understand how your claim that extending anti-discrimination
 laws to
 cover priests and pastors can be squared with the holding in
 Employment
 Division v. Smith.  It seems to me that such a law would be facially
 neutral
 and would not be singling out religion for any special disability.
 Of course,
 it is always possible for the Supreme Court to carve out a
 minister/pastor
 exception to Smith, but unless I am mistaken about the current shape
 of the
 doctrine no such limitation on the Smith neutrality position exists.
 
 Nate Oman
 
 -- Original Message --
 From: Steven Jamar [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Reply-To: Law  Religion issues for Law Academics
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 15:51:52 -0400
 
 Priests can be just men, right?  Mormons can and do exclude blacks
 from
 the upper ranks of the church hierarchy.
 
 Every anti-discrimination law that I have heard of exempts either
 religious organizations or certain religious offices (priests,
 ministers, certain other religious officials) from the reach of the
 law.
 
 Nonetheless, assuming that a law as unlikely as that posited were to
 be
 passed, I think a free exercise claim might well work to limit its
 effect to janitors and others not directly involved in the direct
 pastoral work.  (along the same lines as the distinctions are made
 now
 in statutes).  That is, I think the constitution may limit the reach
 of
 such a law.
 
 As to the latter, I think you would be into free exercise problems
 there as well -- ministers can refuse to marry people on any or no
 grounds now.  I can't imagine that changing.  Of course I would hope
 to
 never see the issue arise as a constitutional issue.  I would hope
 that
 legislators would respect the bounds well enough that it  would
 not.
 But dumber things are done by our elected officials regularly.
 Like
 yanking the tax exempt status of a Unitarian Universalist church in
 Texas because of a lack of mandated belief in god meant that it was
 not
 a proper religion.
 
 Steve
 
 
 On Tuesday, June 1, 2004, at 02:07  PM, Volokh, Eugene wrote:
 
 An interesting question from a Weblog,
 http://southernappeal.blogspot.com/
 2004_05_30_southernappeal_archive.htm
 l#108591655546056564; any thoughts about it?
 
 
 [Begin quote]
 
  . . . .  Suppose that same-sex marriage (SSM) gets codified into
 law
 (in MA or somewhere else) and the

Re: Religion Clauses question

2004-06-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Religion Clauses question

Paul:

I dont see it as a matter of like or dislike; in fact, I think that this mischaracterizes peoples objection to homosexuality. Clearly, some people dont like Christians and Jews, but that doesnt mean that one may not have arguments against the veracity of those religious points of view without disliking its members. I am, for example, friends with two gay men, one of whom has been a close friend for years. He know that I morally object to homosexuality, but we treat each other with respect. That is true tolerance: believing the other guy is dead wrong but nevertheless treating him as a moral agent entitled to all the dignity that goes with that status.

I think that the gay rights movement has corrupted our public discourse by the rhetorical trick of changing the topic from the plausibility of ones position to whether the one who embraces that position is a virtuous person. So, for example, if a concerned parent sincerely believes that homosexuality is immoral, and has informed himself of all the relevant arguments and remains unconvinced of the others position, that parent is homophobic. I am not convinced that is how adults ought to conduct their disagreements in public. Its just the youve got cooties rejoinder for grown-ups.

Thats my story and Im sticking to it.

Frank

On 6/2/04 11:58 AM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I think Robin is clearly right here; some people just don't like the idea of gay people; end of story. It is about homophobia. So, they will oppose same sex marriage and any other thing that helps or protects gay people. I am sure there are many people who don't attend any church, synagogue, temple, or mosque and are not religious but are nevertheless opposed to giving rights to gay people.

Similarly, a law is not religious in nature just because thre is some biblial or religious support for it. Cultures that did not recognize (or even know about) the Bible still had laws prohibited murder or theft or perjury. Thus, even though such behavior is proscribed in Exod. 20 and Deut. 5, the laws against such behavior are not religious in any way.

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Re: Religion Clauses question

2004-06-02 Thread Francis Beckwith

On 6/2/04 10:52 PM, Paul Finkelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Mr. Beckwith:
 
 It is hard to imagine how one can treat someone with respect and at the
 same time believe that such a person is not entitled to the same rights
 that you have.

Yes, it is hard to imagine that I would hold that belief, since I don't hold
it.  
 
 Quite frankly, your position reminds me of those southern whites who
 treated blacks with respect while segregating them, denying them full
 legal rights, and turning a blind eye to their persecution.  It is worth
 remembering that for more than 150 years Christians defended both
 slavery and segregation with religious and biblical arguments.

This is precisely the sort of disreputable tactic that I was talking about
in my last post.  Instead of engaging the modest case I put forth (which, by
the way, never dealt with the legal rights of gay citizens, but rather, the
legal rights of religious citizens), I am passive-aggressively compared to
someone who defended segregation and/or slavery.  Here's what I wrote: I
think that the gay rights movement has corrupted our public discourse by the
rhetorical trick of changing the topic from the plausibility of one¹s
position to whether the one who embraces that position is a virtuous person.
So, for example, if a concerned parent sincerely believes that homosexuality
is immoral, and has informed himself of all the relevant arguments and
remains unconvinced of the other¹s position, that parent is `homophobic.'
I am not convinced that is how adults ought to conduct their disagreements
in public.  All was I suggesting is that the parent's concern is legitimate
and ought to be treated with respect, since she, after all, has the same
rights as the rest of us.

Your slavery analogy, however, raises an interesting question that is
outside the scope of this listserv though relevant to your view on the
relationship between law and morality: why was slavery wrong? Was it wrong
because the slaves did not consent to their imprisonment, or was it wrong
because human beings are by nature the sorts of beings that are not
property? If the latter, then there are acts between consenting
adults--namely voluntary slavery--that the law could proscribe on clearly
moral and metaphysical grounds. On the other hand, if the former, then
slavery is not intrinsically wrong; it is only conditionally wrong,
depending on whether the prospective slave consented to his servitude.

Perhaps I was unclear in my posting, and for that I apologize. All I was
doing was trying to do was humanize the predicament of the serious, caring
citizen who feels under siege by cultural warriors who will call her names
and marginalize her perspective simply because she is thoughtfully
unconvinced that her critics are correct.

Frank



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Re: On topic discussion regarding homosexuality

2004-04-15 Thread Francis Beckwith

Eugene:

First, you don't have to call me Professor Beckwith. Call me Frank. In
light of what you said earlier about the use of formal titles on this
listserv, you're giving me the willies. :-) Second, and more to the point,
if marriage is limited to only two people of whatever gender combination,
isn't the bisexual--even if we accept the standard definition--constrained
by the state to choose a man or a woman to marry?  Why should he, especially
given his desires, be constrained by someone else's understanding of what
marriage is. Isn't that what is being argued right now against traditional
marriage?  Third, the purpose of my argument is to ask a question of
principle: if marriage is not something that is inexorably connected to a
particular understanding of the nature of men and women and their conjugal
union, then what precisely is it? If it is simply whatever we define it to
be (like the colors of traffic signals), then there is no standard outside
of our collective willfulness by which we can measure our definition of
marriage so we know that we have the right one. But then it is not clear on
what grounds someone could claim to be unfairly denied entrance into the
institution.  But suppose it is up to the autonomy of individuals to define
what marriage is, e.g., Bob, Fred, Ted, and Alice, with the blessings of
their priest, agree that they have a marriage.  Then to limit marriage to
only two people who are not closely related cannot in principle be
forbidden.  

Frank 


On 4/15/04 11:43 AM, Volokh, Eugene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 It seems to me that David Cruz is clearly right on this:  The
 standard definition, not just among experts but to my knowledge among
 most users of the English language, is that a bisexual is someone who is
 sexually attracted both to men and to women.
 
 It's true that people who want to have simultaneous
 relationships both with men and women are a subset of bisexuals, but
 it's equally true that men who want to have simultaneous relationships
 with two women are a subset of heterosexuals.  Would we say we do have
 [men] who claim that the wideness of their love cannot to limited to the
 narrow strictures of one-[female-partner]-ism. These individuals are
 called [heterosexuals], people whose [relationships] must include an
 ensemble of at least two (one at a time or simultaneously) [women]?
 Probably not.  We would say polygamous heterosexuals or polygynous
 heterosexuals or polyamorous heterosexuals (a less familiar term but
 one that lacks the connotation of having multiple *spouses*), to make
 clear that we're referring only to a narrow subset of heterosexuals.
 Likewise, what Prof. Breckwith is describing is not what ordinary
 English users would call bisexuals generally, but what they would call
 polygamous bisexuals or some such.  It seems to me helpful to stick with
 standard terminology, rather than to redefine terms idiosyncratically.
 
 More broadly, this reveals, I think, that Prof. Beckwith's
 argument really isn't about bisexuality, but more broadly polygamy or
 polyamory.  I take he would equally resist the Constitution's
 recognizing the union of a man and his two heterosexual wives as its
 recognizing the union of a man and his two bisexual wives (or two
 bisexual men and their heterosexual wife).  So why craft the argument as
 being about bisexuality, and especially an idiosyncratic definition of
 bisexuality?
 
 Eugene
 
 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
 Francis Beckwith
 Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 8:06 PM
 To: Religion Law Mailing List
 Subject: Re: On topic discussion regarding homosexuality
 
 
 Dear David:
 
 Clearly there must be someone on earth who does have these
 desires and describes himself or herself as a bisexual?
 Assuming there is, why should experts decide what is and is
 not a bisexual?  After all, weren't there experts in the
 1950s and 1960s who concluded that homosexuality is deviant,
 based on their studies, research, clinical experience, etc.?
 Yet it is these experts that were resisted and eventually
 defeated by the gay rights movement.  So, it seems to me that
 there is a double-irony in your citation of experts as to the
 correct definition of bisexuality when it was the rejection
 of the experts' correct definition of sexuality itself that
 was an important catalyst in the ascendancy of lesbian, gay
 and bisexual rights.
 
 BTW, I apologize for using the word copulations.  Sometimes
 I get into these rhetorical flourishes and what sounds clever
 to me sounds like I'm just being an a**hole to someone else. My bad.
 
 Take care,
 Frank 
 
 On 4/14/04 9:39 PM, David Cruz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Francis Beckwith wrote:
 
 Jim:
 
 I do think that the question you implicitly raise is an important
 question of principle. After all, we do have citizens who
 claim that 
 the wideness of their love cannot to limited to the narrow
 strictures

Re: Stomping out free speech

2004-04-14 Thread Francis Beckwith

He was probably singled out because he was a boy; that would make it a
gender-hate crime. 

But what if the boy were 18 and he had consented to the act knowing that he
would die but that at the penultimate moment before his demise he would
experience the most exquisite orgasm imaginable. Does the Constitution
protect that and why?

Frank

On 4/14/04 1:51 PM, Newsom Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I am sorry to hear of the case, and of the silent treatment of the
 press.  I would ask you, however, whether the killers cared whether the
 victim was straight.  I, of course, don't know.  But was the heinous
 crime a hate crime in the sense that the boy was deliberately singled
 out because he had a particular sexual orientation?
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Alan Leigh Armstrong [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 11:31 AM
 To: Law  Religion issues for Law Academics
 Subject: Re: Stomping out free speech
 
  (For example, beating up gay people happens, beating up straight
 people - by gays - doesn't happen, or if it does, it happens so seldom
 
 that I am hard pressed to recall a single instance of such physical
 violence visited on straights, because they were straights, by gays.)
 The rape and murder of 13 year old Jesse Dirkhising by 2 homosexual
 men. It happened a few months after the Matthew Shepard murder, but was
 generally ignored by the media.
 
 Alan
 
 Law Office of Alan Leigh Armstrong
 Serving the Family  Small Business Since 1984
 18652 Florida St., Suite 225
 Huntington Beach CA 92648-6006
 714-375-1147   Fax 714 375 1149
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 www.alanarmstrong.com
 KE6LLN
 On Apr 13, 2004, at 4:04 PM, Newsom Michael wrote:
 
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Stomping out free speech

2004-04-13 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Stomping out free speech



For some reason the linked forwarded by Rick Duncan didnt work. Heres one that does:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/jl20040412.shtml

Frank



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Re: FYI An Interesting Case

2004-04-09 Thread Francis Beckwith

One could say, in response to Michael, that his beliefs prevent him from
affirming the value of homophobes.  Of course, he thinks that judging
homosexuality as immoral is a mistaken point of view, a disorder one may
say.  But I don't recall ever coming across the argument that establishes
the unquestioned veracity of this conclusion.

It seems to me that to call someone a name in replacement of an actual
argument is uncivil and disreputable.  So, let me suggest that we refrain
from using terms that carry no intellectual freight, such as homophobe or
Christophobe.  Let's be a little less logophobic.

Frank



On 4/9/04 8:23 AM, Rick Duncan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 --- Newsom Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 No, I didn't miss the point.  The employee's
 religious beliefs prevent
 him from affirming the value of gay people.  I call
 that homophobia.
 
 It sounds like your ideological beliefs prevent you
 from affirming the value of Christians who believe
 that homsexuality is a serious moral disorder. I call
 that Christophobia and religious bigotry.
 
 Rick Duncan
 
 
 
 
 =
 Rick Duncan 
 Welpton Professor of Law
 University of Nebraska College of Law
 Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
 
 When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or
 Mordred: middle things are gone. C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
 
 I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or
 numbered.  --The Prisoner
 
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Judge Overton's Opinion in McLean v. Arkansas

2004-04-08 Thread Francis Beckwith

I believe that Ed Darrell (I apologize if I misspelled your name) said in a
recent message that Judge Overton's opinion in McLean v. Arkansas was
well-crafted.  For those who interested, I recently published a piece that
offered a critical assessment of this opinion:

Science and Religion Twenty Years After McLean v. Arkansas: Evolution,
Public Education, and the New Challenge of Intelligent Design. Harvard 
Journal of Law  Public Policy 26.2 (Spring 2003): 455-499.

You can obtain an adobe file of the article on my website:

http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/HJLPP.pdf

Take care,
Frank

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Re: Under God

2004-03-30 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Under God

Justification has to do with epistemology. Im raising an ontological question about the nature of rights. One can certainly be justified in believing that one has rights without ever having an argument or reasons. For example, my grandma was pretty sure she had rightsbut her inability to cite Dworkin or Rawl did not take away from her rationality in embracing this notion. What I was suggesting is that the phrase under God has a noble and storied pedigree from 1954 back to the Gettysburgh Address and further back to George Washington. The 54 rationale is instructive because it was the governments intent to announce to its citizens, and have them commit it to memory, that their rights are not grounded in the relative whims of governments or powerful factions, or even the dialectical materialism of our Cold War adversary, but rather, in the notion that we possess an irreducible cluster of properties that we have by nature endowed to us by our Creator.

It seems to me that you are offering a justification for Constitutional democracy: it decreases the degree of suffering and cruelty in the world. I do not dispute that is a necessary condition, but hardly sufficient. For it seems to me that Constitutional democracy is much more than the best bargain in a cost-benefit analysis. It is an agreement among citizens in a regime so that human flourishingin all its formsmay be nurtured under the rule of a government whose powers are real, though separated, so that our rights may be protected as well as they could. Why does Constitutional democracy usually result in these goods? Is it because it is the sort of arrangement conducive to the flourishing of creatures that have a particular naturepart angel, part beastthat need liberty, but justice and community as well? It seems that way to me.

Sorry for the digression from the initial point of my first salvo, which was that under God, though deniable ontologically, is a reasonable understanding of the grounding of our rights and that has more explanatory power in accounting for our intrinsic value as persons and our grasp of the immaterial, unchanging, rights that we believe we have by nature. Surely, this could be a wrong account, but it seems a lot more reasonable than under government fiat, matter plus time plus chance, sociobiology, or behind the veil ignorance in the original position, etc.

Take care,
Frank

On 3/30/04 9:10 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In a message dated 3/30/2004 8:50:27 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
So, it can put in the form of a question: If not under God, then under what?
Why must there be an under anything? Although the existential condition of being under nothing might generate a certain anxiety at (possibly) being alone in the universe, that only explains (for some) why the human spirit seeks such a reality. It does not explain why we must be under something rather than nothing. Additionally, I do not see how our being under anything is necessary for either morality or for constitutional government. Many of us seek constitutional government because we see it as better than most alternatives, where better has an appropriately modest meaning, namely, decreases the degree of suffering and cruelty in the world, and does so as judged from our perspectives or from our lights. As a first principle (again for some) decreasing the degree of suffering and cruelty in the world cannot be justified without circularity. However, with all due respect neither can the proposition that we should decrease suffering and cruelty (or adhere to any other moral code) because some independent reality deems that we should.

First principles, whether embracing the need for an independent reality to justify who we are and what we do or whether we reject such a reality, are just that first, and as Wittgenstein, and then others after him, have indicated, justification must come to an end at some point, and I would add it must come to an end for anyone and everyone.

Bobby

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware

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Re: Under God

2004-03-30 Thread Francis Beckwith

On 3/30/04 8:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 In a message dated 3/30/2004 7:08:25 PM Central Standard Time,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 
 Bobby Lipkin presents an argument that government can be humane, in the
 sense of not inflicting suffering or cruelty -- and, would he add, can
 recognize something called basic rights? -- without the government
 acknowledging that it is under some higher moral authority.  Perhaps that
 is true, but there are also arguments the other way -- for example, that
 basic rights are far more likely to be secure, especially in times of
 pressure, if they are grounded in government's recognition that it is a
 limited institution and is under some higher moral authority.  Even if Bobby
 raises enough questions to prove that government *need* not rely on this
 latter rationale to ground rights, that doesn't prove that the government
 *may* not determine to rely on this rationale.
 
 
 The U.S. government is expressly under a higher authority.  The Preamble to
 the Constitution is explicit that the government is ordained by the people.
 That word was not chosen lightly, or with disregard to the view that ordaining
 is something done religiously.
 
 Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that just governments derive their powers
 from the consent of the governed, not from God.  The Constitution reaffirmed
 that view.

But that same Jefferson said in that same Declaration that the people's
rights--apparently including their right to consent to be governed--are
endowed to them by their Creator, and that the powers of that government
cannot rightly trample upon the people's rights without tempting revolution.
Consequently, its the rights of the people--properties endowed to them by
their Creator--that are doing the heavy lifting here, for it is by those
rights, and whether they are being adequately protected, that we assess, as
Jefferson assessed, the justice of a government.

Frank
-- 
Francis J. Beckwith
Associate Professor of Church-State Studies
Associate Director, J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies
Baylor University http://www.baylor.edu
--
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
website: http://francisbeckwith.com
phone: 254.710.6464


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Re: Lofton/Bobby

2004-03-16 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: Lofton/Bobby

Bobby:

I dont know what thinkers you have been reading. But the sorts of arguments that you seem to attribute to ID advocates are not what dominate the literature. Let me recommend that you take a look at my work on this, which is published on my webiste: http://francisbeckwith.com. I provide a cursory overview of the literature.

Just as an aside, you may not realize it, but when you assess that some aspect of the world is not consistent with what is good, the warrant for your judgment depends on the premise that you in fact know the good. But if you know the good, that means that you have awareness of an immaterial reality, an ideal by which you judge other things. Now, if you deny that you know this, then your judgment of the world has no warrant, and thus the problem of evil is no problem since there is no good by which to measure the world and make that judgment.

Now, Eugene, what does that have to do with law? (I know youre watching from your Gods eye point of view) A lot, for it gets to the heart of how one may justify a law whose purpose is to remedy an injustice. What are the grounds for such a judgment? Must such a judgment be purely naturalistic in order to not violate the Establishment Clause? Or could one offer an ethical judgment based on some immaterial property had by human beings that cannot be verified empirically, e.g., equality, intrinsic value, etc. It seems to me that if one buys into whole naturalistic worldview, you cant borrow from resources that can only be gotten from a robust theism.

Take care,
Frank

On 3/16/04 5:36 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

The questions John Lofton asks have been examined ad nauseam by philosophers and theologians and have intrigued us ordinary people for generations. Thus, complete answers to John's questions are unlikely in this venue. Nevertheless, he deserves at least rough outlines of answers. Here they are:

The meaning of intelligence should be answered by those asserting the existence of an IDer. If the IDer is omniscient he or she must be intelligent. So, how does the proponent of ID theory understand 'intelligence'? My position attacks the compatibility of the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect IDer and the existence of evil and suffering. Without assigning a burden of proof here, I don't think it's fair to require me to explain these terms. Moreover, even barring the omni predicates. ID theory says there exists or could exist an intelligent designer. Presumably, the proponents of this theory are using the ordinary conception of intelligence which, I suppose, includes problem solving, being able to use means-ends reasoning, providing explanations and justifications, and if one is perfectly intelligent one knows what consequences follow from which actions, and so forth.

What is morally perverse, for me, is causing or contributing to the suffering of people or the indifference to their suffering when one has the capacity to eliminate it. (Of course, we will, as we should, disagree over which examples are true cases of suffering, but we all know paradigm cases of suffering and cruelty.)

The insistence that one answer the question of morality's origination confuses the context of discovery with the context of justification. I do not know where morality came from. However, two explanations are certainly possible. First, it was divinely inspired and, as Robert Bork insists, secular morality rests on the moral capital of religion. Or it arose when people realized that suffering and cruelty just wasn't compatible with survival or living a decent life according to the lights of the people living at that time). Then religion codified this morality and provided a narrative explaining the a source that certainly at one time and still today people found/find convincing. If this latter explanation is true, one can say religion rests on the moral capital of secular morality. But it is certainly beyond my expertise to engage seriously in this crude form of anthropology.

The problem is that when the idea of an IDer is combined with the omni predicates and moral perfection, this conception, in my view, is logically incompatible with the existence of evil and suffering. That is, there should not be evil or suffering in the world. But there is; hence, the problem.

These omni predicates disallow commonplace explanations of cruelty or the infliction of suffering, or more important, failing to act. In short, any human being might be excused for not alleviating suffering either because he or she lacked the knowledge, power, or moral character to alleviate the suffering or to eliminate suffering. An IDer described with the omni predicates and moral perfection, does not, in my view, have the luxury of being excused. The idea of excuse is inapplicable to such a being. We are often unforgiving of our brothers and sisters when their failure to act causes great suffering. In my view, I

Re: NRO Article

2004-03-15 Thread Francis Beckwith

Title: Re: NRO Article

Heres the portion of my book that deals with the Santorum Amendment. (Maybe this will clarify things a bit). I took it off of the pre-edited manuscript version, so I would appreciate if the members of this list not post it or send it to anyone. This is part of the Intro to the book where I introduce the reader the cast of characters, the nature of the debate, and the current political ranglings.

Thanks!

Frank

--
In March 2002, Senator Santorum and two Ohio Congressmen, Representatives John A. Boehner (Chair, House Education and Workforce Committee) and Steve Chabot (Chairman, House Constitution Subcommittee), inserted themselves into the Ohio controversy. Senator Santorum published an op-ed piece in the Washington Times in which he called upon the Ohio Board of Education to include the modifications to its science standards,[i] #_edn1 for students should be taught a variety of viewpoints in the classroom. Dissenting theories should not be repressed, but discussed openly. To do otherwise is to violate intellectual freedom. Such efforts at censorship abrogate critical thinking and will ultimately thwart scientific progress.[ii] #_edn2 He cites in support of this argument his amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. However, opponents of both the modifications as well as HB 481 maintain that the Santorum Amendment does not have the force of law because it was removed from the final version of the Act and appears only in the Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference.[iii] #_edn3 In reply, representatives Boehner and Chabot, in a letter to Board of Education members Jennifer L. Sheets and Cyrus B. Richardson, argue that the Santorum Amendment is part of the law and that opponents to the modifications and the House legislation are simply mistaken.[iv] #_edn4 The pro-ID Discovery Institute admits that while the Santorum statement may not have the `force of law, it is a powerful statement of federal education policy, and it provides authoritative guidance on how the statutory provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (such as state-wide science assessments) are to be carried out.[v] #_edn5 Although the Conference Report is not technically part of the Act, conference report language is relevant, and sometimes crucial, to assessing the purpose of legislation, interpreting a law as well as implementing it appropriately,[vi] #_edn6 for the report is the result of a committee instituted to fulfill the U.S. Constitutions requirement that in order for a bill to be presented to the President for signature, it must pass both the House and Senate in the exact same form.[vii] #_edn7 Thus, contrary to what ID opponents have claimed,[viii] #_edn8 the Santorum Amendment is a significant victory for opponents of the Darwinian paradigm.

#_ednref1 [i]Rick Santorum, Illiberal Education in Ohio, The Washington Times (March 14, 2002), available at http://www.arn.org/docs/ohio/washtimes_santorum031402.htm (April 22, 2002)

#_ednref2 [ii]Santorum, Illiberal Education in Ohio

#_ednref3 [iii]Ohio Citizens for Science web page, at http://ecology.cwru.edu/ohioscience/santorum.asp. The Conference Report is available at ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr334.txt (April 20, 2002)

#_ednref4 [iv]March 15, 2002 Letter to Jennifer L. Sheets and Cyrus B. Richardson from Representatives John A. Boehner and Steve Chabot. It is available at http://www.sciohio.org/boehner-chabot2.pdf (April 20, 2002)

#_ednref5 [v]The Discovery Institute, Biologist Ken Miller Flunks Political Science on Santorum, at http://www. discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?command=viewid=1149program=CRSC (April 22, 2002)

#_ednref6 [vi]See Stephen C. Meyer, Teach the Controversy, Cincinnati Eqnirer (March 30, 2002), available at http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?command=viewid=1134program=CRSC (April 22, 2002); and Discovery, Biologist Ken Miller Flunks.

[vii] #_ednref7 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Rules, Majority Office, Committees of Conference and Consideration of Conference Reports (Parliamentary Outreach Program), at http://www.house.gov/rules/ conf_rept_cons.htm (April 22, 2002)

[viii] #_ednref8 See, for example, Kenneth R. Miller, The Truth about the `Santorum Amendment Language on Evolution, at http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/santorum.html; and National Center for Science Education, Santorum Amendment Stripped from Education Bill, at http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2001/US/ 866_santorum_amendment_stripped_fr_12_21_2001.asp (April 22, 2002)

On 3/15/04 10:33 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I have two responses: First, no sense of the Senate resolution has the force of law, according to the U.S. Senate Counsel. U.S. Senate: Legislation Records Home Legislative Process Legislation, Laws, and Acts http://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/leg_laws_acts.htm#4 (see Simple Resolutions) Any suggestion otherwise is false. This is

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