A comment that I made on the Facebook page of the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group which recently tried to made the Air Force Academy remove the words, So help me God, from a cadet plege: How is Saturns day or Freyas day any different from Christs mass? Why the hostility towards the latter designation but not towards the former two? If someone actually believes in paganism (its making a huge comeback in Europe) or panentheism (many Hindus would probably honor both Saturn and Freya as manifestations of the Brahman) then arent the designations Friday and Saturday as equally, actively religous as the designation Christmas? Why not be offended by the former two as much as by the latter one? Why not try to remove them from usage in the military as well? Are you being consistent in applying principle? Heres another thing to think about. If groups like the MRFF are successful in literally legislating that only Secular and Humanist viewpoints can hold place in the governmental discourse, how are they then not creating a national, respect towards religion of Secularism and Humanism? If someone believes nature created itself ex nihilo or through random chance, or if someone believes that rationally mankind is the measure or subjective judge of all things, how are they not then making their belief in nature or man their believed principal cause, influence and source of morality for the universe and humankind? And in exalting this belief over traditional beliefs about principle cause, influence and morality, how are they not ultimatley creating a natonal respect towards religion of Secular Humanism? Establishing Secular Humanism as the official (read: only allowed) belief structure of the military would be just as much a violation of the 1st Amendment as it would have been if Presbyterianism had been made the national belief denomination of the U.S. government in 1802. That is what the Danbury Baptist church feared, that we would adopt an offiical denomination like the Anglican Church of England or the Catholic Church of Spain. We had been legally under the Anglican church just 26 years before Jeffersons letter to the Danbury baptists. In the context of his letter - and of history and of the plain wording of the First Amendment - Jefferson intended the phrase wall of separation to mean no national denomination. The original letter contained an edit that Jefferson had written and then crossed through (common practice when composing letters back then). One of the things he was going to say was, ...I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church... The MRFF, on the other hand, would be the head of Secular Humanism as the only official belief system allowed expression in the U.S. military and would persecute (read: prohibit) traditional belief systems. This is exactly the type of thing that the 1st Amendment forbids.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 05:55:58 +0000