re: #674 cantrecant

I took a look at Charles’ link to a decade-old article about David Barton. Rob Boston on Barton’s perceived negative consequences of removing prayer from schools: “it’s clear that Barton has never taken a course in basic statistics and doesn’t understand that correlation is not causation” like you have to “take a course” to know what correlation and causation are. Everyone knows the respect that’s owed to academic credentials, so if you don’t have them you are nuthin’. Right.

Snarky anti-intellectualism. How nice.

If removing prayer from schools was intended to help anything or anyone, where is the evidence that it has? Or was it removed for no reason at all?

It was removed because it entangled church and state by having a ritual observed by some but not all faiths officially provided for, and by doing so violated both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Forbidding prayer to God in the public square is contrary to the settled practice of the founding fathers who framed the constitution in accordance with their worldview. There is always a fine line to walk between allowing too much power to any side of a debate. The founders were clearly all men of prayer and didn’t intend that prayer should disappear from the public square. This wasn’t a matter of debate for them. So, clearly their bias was in favor of prayer. Nevertheless they did not intend that anyone should be forced to pray. However, it is illogical to expect a positive consequence or no consequence from changing a settled practice that has been in place from the founding. The anti-prayer side of the debate has gotten out of hand. When that happens, expect effort to be expended on swinging power the other way. On this issue I’m for the norm of the founding fathers which was that public prayer to God is good and to be encouraged.

Slavery and the denial of women to vote were also once settled practices that were in place from the founding. Our founders and framers were, for the most part, not Christians, but Deists. Thomas Paine was an open Atheist. Thomas Jefferson was the fellow who first referred to the 1st Amendment as establishing a ‘wall of separation between church and state’, in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists. They did not embrace what you have been led to think that they did. And anybody can pray in public if they wish, and even - silently - in school. But official school-organized prayer is quite properly forbidden.