|
Posted on Thu, Sep. 01, 2005 -- The State Newapaper --
Intelligent design efforts likely to fail
By E. RAY MOORE JR.
Guest columnist
The current Supreme Court interpretation of the separation of
church and state has allowed the public schools to ignore the
long-held belief by most Americans that God is the Creator.
Now the same separation views are used to limit the access of
intelligent design views to our public school children.
Many Christian families over the next few years will vacate the
government schools due to such intransigence and hostility toward
Christianity and toward traditional beliefs as advocated in the
column in The State on Aug. 8, “The Intelligent Design End
Run,” by Sheryl McCarthy.
Justice Hugo Black, a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan, authored
the Supreme Court’s Everson opinion in 1947, which first
used separation of church and state in Supreme Court jurisprudence,
a phrase not in the text of the Constitution. This phrase was
lifted from Thomas Jefferson’s letter of 1802 to the Danbury
Baptist Association to answer their concerns that the federal
government would sponsor a single Christian denomination.
There have been more than a dozen cases since 1947’s Everson
case based partially on Hugo Black’s reasoning. This case
has proven to be one of the most socially, academically and constitutionally
destructive cases in U.S. history. To use Ms. McCarthy’s
terminology, it was Justice Hugo Black who used this then-novel
interpretation of the separation of church and state to make an
“end run” around the Constitution.
This view has been used to make Christians’ beliefs such
as creationism or intelligent design second-class or unworthy
ideas in public education. It was also used to exclude prayer
and Bible reading in 1962 and 1963 Supreme Court cases.
Yes, all Christians believe that the government and church must
be administratively distinct, but neither the U.S. Constitution
nor the founders intended to set up a secular state that did not
acknowledge God. The Judeo-Christian cast of our laws and founding
is incontrovertible.
Many Christians view evolutionism not as science, but as religion
or dogma, and also the foundation for such destructive social
and political ideologies as racism, fascism and Marxism. Christianity
and creationism teach that all men are created equal and in the
image of God; all mankind has a common ancestor and origin, thus
rendering evolutionism as foundational to racism.
Readers should examine social Darwinism’s views to confirm
this. These views have been used to demean ethnic minorities for
centuries by dogmatic social Darwinians. Evangelical Christians,
traditional Catholics and orthodox Jews accept evolutionism as
neither a valid science nor as a beneficent social policy.
The evolutionary dogmatists are unlikely to bend since they have
the power, the media and Supreme Court decisions since the Everson
case to assure their continued control of public education. Orthodox
Christians are wasting time asking for equal time for intelligent
design in the public schools. George Bush cannot help on this.
Over the next decade, millions of children, with the assistance
of their churches, will relocate to a whole new Christian and
home-school system, where both evolution and creationism will
be taught fairly and objectively.
Mr. Moore is director of Exodusmandate.org, a ministry to assist
home-schooling and Christian schools. He lives in Blythewood.
|
