Thursday, November 20, 2014

Somebody actually advocated revising the Preamble with the exact words I gave years ago

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are evolved equal, that they are endowed by evolution with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

It's bad enough that creationism is creeping up in public schools but it especially doesn't need to be in our own constitution. Just because our slave-owning, bigoted founding fathers were creationists doesn't mean that we should let our most important legal document reflect that. That has to be a violation of the separation of church and state clause that's also in the constitution.

Here's what I present years ago....as a reductio ad absurdum. 

11 comments:

Heuristics said...

The focus on having a constitution is itself a violation of church and state since it is just a mirror image of the protestant doctrine of sola scriptura.

Unknown said...

they are endowed by evolution with certain inalienable rights

chuckle

im-skeptical said...

This wording is indeed laughable. It is a parody of the equally ridiculous religious notion of omni-man granting favors to his little children, even as he inflicts their lives with the trials and tribulations of life on earth.

Unknown said...

You're really mad at God, aren't you?

im-skeptical said...

Sure. I go around ranting and raving at imaginary beings all the time.

Ilíon said...

"they are endowed by evolution with certain inalienable rights"

Yet, to be logically consistent with evolutionism, shouldn't that be "they are endowed by evolution with certain fully alienable rights"?

Ilíon said...

The focus on having a constitution is itself a violation of church and state …

Presumably, there was meant to be a “the separation of” in there.

So, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s” is *really* a command that governments – Caesar – should be theocratic? Or, is it a command that rulers are not to be expected to observe any limits to their authority to compel, under threat of violent death, their subjects to do this or not to do that? Or, is it the command that while rulers are indeed to be expected to observe some limits to their authority, where those limits lie is not to be publically promulgated and certainly not to be written down … where just anyone might read them?


"... since it is just a mirror image of the protestant doctrine of sola scriptura."

Oh, you mean that meta-doctrine that The One True Bureaucracy publicly repudiates and then turns around and smuggles into almost everything?

Ilíon said...

"… where just anyone might read them"

... and be able to judge for himself whether the rulers are adhering to their proper authorities.

Ilíon said...

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are evolved equal, that they are endowed by evolution with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Of course, that's not the Constitution; that's the Declaration of Independence.

Victor Reppert said...

Well, I wasn't going to point that out, but....

Ilíon said...

"That has to be a violation of the separation of church and state clause that's also in the constitution."

Of course, there is no "separation of church and state clause" in the actual US Constitution.

So, while misidentifying the document in which the Preamble is found, and misrepresenting what the Constitution *does* say about "religion", what our Brainiac is (ahem) arguing is that the Constitution itself is unconstitutional.