From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Wed Aug 13 2003 - 05:19:24 MDT
The reason you have has been put forward and certainly contains elements of truth, although according to Jefferson and Madison, it was not intended so much to protect the church from the state as to protect one religion from another. Right up into the late 1800s the US was plagued with riots between Catholics and Protestants, which lead to large scale unrest and its usual messy consequences. It was not much different in the 1770s when fundamentalists in various states were proclaiming an assortment of "Official State Religions", but it should be noted that "scarce one in ten" was "churched" (i.e. a member of a conventional religion). This explains the response to Franklin's suggestion that Congress open with prayer (ignored) and the Treaty of Tripoli, Art 11, "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
All religions are fundamentally a mechanism permitting extended, non-genetically based tribal groups to form and work together against other groups. This is still very visable in many parts of Africa. As this is not only irrational but highly counterproductive in the modern context, when our greater interest is better served by minimizing the scale of conflicts, I think that most members of the CoV would likely advocate that religious exercises, like the equally messy processes of masturbation and the writing of poetry, be avoided in public forums.
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