Return to the Main Menu

WHO IS FOR LIFTING THE COURTS' BANS ON PRAYER?

Riley M. Sinder & John K. Lopker

forthcoming

FULL TEXT available from this link soon after publication

WHO IS FOR LIFTING THE COURTS' BANS ON PRAYER?

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The only speech that the federal courts have banned is religious speech. For example, in 1992, the Supreme Court upheld a federal court ban on a rabbi's speech at a public school graduation where the speech "opened with an appeal to a God, asked God's blessings, gave thanks to a Lord and concluded with 'Amen.'"

OBJECTIVE SCIENTISTS

By all empirical evidence, God, Lord, and Amen have no more supernatural power than Santa Claus or saying "Bravo." And a prayer is just a poem.

ATHEISTS

If God does not exist to make the rule on what is secular and what is non- secular, then all of religion was just invented by people. So perhaps religion is a form of politics. But, if the court does not ban the ever-coercive Pledge of Allegiance from public school graduations, then the court should not ban other political speeches merely because they contain the objectionable words God, Lord, and Amen.

THOSE WHO WISH TO SEPARATE CHURCH FROM STATE

If the separation of church and state means anything logical, it means preventing the state, including the courts, from banning a speaker's words merely because of the speaker's religious beliefs. For, by all secular measurements, there is no injury from merely hearing the words "God," "Lord," and "Amen"--no matter what magical sequence the speaker might contrive.

THOSE AGAINST COERCION

Political coercion can injure. But those who find no coercion from being in the middle of a class pledging allegiance to the flag can find no coercion from being in the middle of a class that is mumbling the Lord's Prayer--at least by only secular measurements.

BELIEVERS

Even if those who ban teacher-led prayer in school actually believe that prayer has some special power that will hurt them, still the believers have no right to establish their religious belief as law. For the Constitution surely forbids the federal government from establishing beliefs that are mere religious beliefs contrary to the known empirical evidence.

NON-BELIEVERS

Non-believers certainly have no empirical evidence--not even the unprovable subjective feelings of the believer--that prayer has some coercive power different from the political power of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

CIVIL LIBERTARIANS

Even if religion is superstition, still no self-respecting civil libertarian would sue to ban prayer. Instead of threatening suit to ban prayers, civil libertarians should insist that those who sue to stop prayer should prove their supposed injury by empirical evidence--as is required by any secular court.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

For all of the above reasons, someone should bring a case to bring prayer back to the schools.

Comments to Riley M. Sinder

The activist is blessed when she finds a society that asserts that all of the following are true: one and one is two, one and two is three, and one and one and one is two. For there are two possibilities. First, by asserting the "reality" that the society will not face, the activist might learn a lot about the instability between two and three. Or, the second possibility is that the society will learn a lot about reality.

The activist merely need carry around the examples of "three," such as three juicy oranges, three juggling balls, or three coins in a palm. One and one and one. What do you get?
-- Rednisme, Pre-Cambrian Poet.

The God I believe in would not care if you cursed her. Since she created us just as we are, she would not care if you said she did not exist. All God cares about is that we use her symbol and her being to solve the problems she has given us.
--Cutthroat Tom

The authors acknowledge Vivian Sinder-Brown for exceptional editorial advice and for ensuring that this Article allows the possibility that religion is as useful as any non-Euclidean geometry. The entire argument of this Article grew out of the authors' surprise at the vehemence of American scientists and eminent professionals in the Usenet groups alt.atheism and talk.origins for denouncing teacher-led prayer in public schools. The authors instinctively reject prayer as having any use at all, except perhaps as a superstitious sports ritual that succeeds in psyching the player up for the game. But the irrational vehemence with which otherwise rational persons denounced teacher-led prayer indicated that teacher- led prayer is important to the society in some way that the authors should discover. The entire record of arguments and counter-arguments in the authors' discovery is available on the World Wide Web at http://geocities.datacellar.net/Athens/6624/ArgumentsOfDiscovery.html. During that four year discovery, over a hundred unselfish persons bombarded the authors with email suggestions of "chess-plays" for the argument. And this Article is dedicated to those delightful intellects from both sides of the argument who surprised the authors with citations, references, and lines of "chess-play" which the authors readily adopted. So if you recognize your argument or suggestion in the following pages, this Article is to you.

November 30, 1999

Site sponsored by Geocities Athens