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This week’s Supreme Court decision on prayer before municipal meetings wasn’t really that surprising. Particularly given the make-up of the Court, it’s a fairly narrow decision that is based in large part on its particular facts. Yet while it got plenty of attention, one thing that went largely unmentioned is something I blogged about in 2005 and 2004 — Justice Clarence Thomas’ belief that the Bill of Rights allows states to establish their own religions.
In a concurring opinion in the case, Thomas reiterated and cited his prior opinions on this point. He agrees the First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom to exercise religion protects an individual’s right to practice religion. Yet he clearly believes the prohibition against government establishing religion does not protect individual rights; it’s intended to protect the states. Therefore, holding the Establishment Clause applies to state and local governments “eliminates their right to establish a religion free from federal interference, thereby ‘prohibit[ing] exactly what the Establishment Clause protected.'” (Emphasis added.) In fact, it seems he only grudgingly admits the Establishment Clause has any meaning, saying it “probably” prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion.
Fortunately, so far no other member of the Court seems to agree with these views. In fact, while the other true originalist on the Court, Justice Scalia, joined in Thomas’ opinion, it was not on this point. Still, the upshot of Thomas’ position is more than a bit frightening. We’ve seen the impact of sectarianism in other parts of the world. Now imagine each of the 50 states deciding what is the “true” religion.
The Court’s inattention to these doctrinal questions might be explained, although not excused, by the rise of popular conceptions about “separation of church and state” as an “American” constitutional right.
Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring opinion, Town of Greece v. Galloway
Bulletin Board
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Blog Headline of the Week
Lawsuit of the Week
- A Canadian woman whose SUV struck and killed a 17-year-old boy on a bicycle in 2012 is suing the boy’s estate for more than $1 million for the “great pain and suffering” and “severe shock to her system” the accident caused her
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
…loving and being loved back was a hard thing to get right, but when you managed it you could see forever.
Matt Haig, The Humans
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- What Michael Did (“Imagine emerging from a psychotic breakdown and realizing you’ve killed your mother, or your child, or your spouse.”)
- All The Fucks I Give (“The fact that I swear indicates nothing about how I was born or raised or educated. It speaks instead of the fact that I am angry.”)
- Post-operative check (“I’ve never seen someone lose their carotid pulse.”)
Blog Line of the Week
Legal Ruling of the Week
- The term “explosion” in a condo owner’s insurance policy “does not include a decomposing body’s cells explosively expanding, causing leakage of bodily fluids.”
Most Interesting Legal Defense of the Week
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
Better bring your own redemption when you come
Jackson Browne, “Barricades of Heaven”
This weekend again left me bewildered about how, in the 21st Century, American belief systems remain so knowingly blind to science and the exercise of reason. It’s almost as if the scientific revolution and the Age of Reason never really took hold.
The main impetus here comes from the results on science-related issues in a AP-Gfk poll taken last month. More than half (51%) of my fellow citizens have no confidence that the Big Bang was the origin of the universe. Meanwhile, 42% have no confidence that life evolved through natural selection. The flip side of the coin is equally discouraging. Only 21% and 31% of us, respectively, are extremely or very confident in those things. Likewise, only 27% of us are confident that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Perhaps any question this rejection of scientific knowledge stems from belief in the supernatural and not advocacy of some other physical cosmology is eliminated by the fact that 72% believe the only explanation for the complexity of the universe is “a supreme being.”
Also striking me was that, coincidentally, heaven was the subject of the biggest story on the front page of Sunday’s local daily. I know if was Easter (speaking of which, this is worth a look) but my views regarding heaven and nonfiction remain the same. Still, this is less egregious given it is more a matter of faith than something currently capable of proof or disproof like the items above.
Look, I’m not saying people who are religious are stupid. And despite my mention of heaven, I won’t complain (much) about the lack of evidence for many tenets. Yes, I understand what “faith” means but I simply can’t understand blind reliance on it in light of contrary objective evidence. What is most exasperating, though, is the extent to which such knowing rejection (or intentional ignorance) permeate American life and society.
I’m not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they’re called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.
Carl Sagan, Contact
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- America: Stupidly stuck between religion and science (“So on one hand we have atheists whose views would have seemed old-hat under Queen Victoria but who see themselves as representing the apex of progressive modern thought, and on the other we have a modern twist on religion that pretends to be ancient or traditional. Biblical fundamentalism as we know it today is essentially a 19th-century British invention that took root among white rural Americans much later than that.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Worst Irony of the Week
Dogs Are People Too
Legislative Idiocy of the Week
- The Louisiana House of Representatives scheduled floor debate for Monday on a bill to make the Bible the “official state book“
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951
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