Separation of Church and State means...

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Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It means that government should be secular on the whole, and government must let people practice whatever religion they subscribe to on their own.

Bingo!

I want someone to vote ALL OF THE ABOVE,
and mean it.

Churches need to lose tax exempt status.
Right off, this gives them some sort of official
imprimatur. They should be no more regulated
than any other corporate body. Moreover, unlike
other such bodies, they should NEVER receive
handouts from the government. Nor should they
be able to administer acts binding in law, such
as marriage (until the law sees that this is primarily
a religious matter, and revokes any legal status
based upon it).

It means that government should not subsidize, arbitrarily tax, or regulate religion and I might lump other moral beliefs in with religion as well.

I haven't gotten enough drugs in my system yet, just wait a bit longer and I will vote that and mean it. Also, a little technical question, can the state be considered to leave itself alone? If we assume all of the above does not include "some or none of the above" then a church that is the state or vice versa could logically qualify.

Sounds about right.

This is my motto:

"Keep thy religion to thyself!" -George Carlin

Vouching for this to.

I agree too. George Carlin is king.

The church should only make decisions regarding religious issues, and the state do the same for secular matters. The only exception is where dangerous cults are trying to subvert the populace with the intent of causing disharmony.

All the more reasont to ban churches outright and have COMPULSORY cult de-programming seminars for the entire world. Only then can we be rid of the violence and bigotry cased by religion. We could also have manditory abortions for poor women, as that has been statistically proven in the book Freakonomics to reduce crime.


While were at it, we could have worldwide gun-confiscation and compulsory voting. You see how much better of a place the world is under despotic rule?

The divide is difficult to make. Morality is inherently a matter of religion, it is not derived from data. Given that society is perceived as having a duty to make many moral decisions, it is hard to actually keep them separate. If you honestly believe that abortion is murder, why can you not cry out like someone else does about animal rights? If you honestly believe that evolution is false then why can you not call out like someone else might do for political incorrectness in texts? The very nature of the modern state and how we perceive it demands an equality of views that includes the ability of churches to tell the state what to do. Also, dangerous cults are hard to come to a conclusive decision on. Baptists have often considered Catholics to be a dangerous, evil cult, and the rest of us hate Scientologists.

Umm, time to re-read that book? They did link a drop in crime to a drop in the teenage population, which was linked to Roe vs. Wade. But that is rather different.

Well, they connected abortion and crime and that did draw controversy. The idea that this is proven isn't true as there is skepticism over those claims(a common thing throughout many studies, especially those on things with so many variables). I think that the entire point of that comment was criticism through promoting ridicule rather than seriousness.

Yes, it's time for you to re-read it. They alse spent several pages explaining the social disaster caused by Romainia's abortion ban.

Almost 1,000,000 Romanians are now clinical sociopaths due to being neglected in overcrowded orphanages.

I never made that comment on that book. Amend it now.

It's a quoting error. I'm sure no harm was intended.
If you look, it's been propagated from monty's post.