Religion, Politics, and the Easter Beagle

A friend of mine at work sent me the following quote today after we had a rather heated debate the day earlier about the state of the judiciary and religious rights:

By Mark Alexander: "However, if atheists have standing because atheism is properly understood as a religion, then why is their demand that it be the only officially permissible public practice not itself a constitutionally banned establishment of atheism as the government's official religion? Either godlessness is or isn't a religious faith. To our way of thinking, either atheists cannot legitimately sue on religious liberty grounds, or atheism itself must be as constrained as other faiths."

This got me thinking about a bunch of things. Atheism is not a religion. The claim that they want atheism to be "the only officially permissible public practice" does not make any sense, because of course Atheism HAS no practices. There are no ceremonies, no religious texts, no anything. Its not a religion any more than, say, everyone you know named Bob or all the registered Democrats are a religion.

By the way, exact text of the First Amendment says, "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."

I read that and it says to me "Congress shall not pass a law that forces me to acknowledge one religion over a another" and "Congress shall not pass a law that forbids me from acknowledging one religion over a another". Both are in accordance with the way the courts have consistently applied the constitution (at least in my mind). School prayer is an excellent example. The courts have always ruled that you can pray in school. What you cannot do is have the teacher lead the prayer, because that would imply that the state somehow acknowledges what God you are praying to more than some other God. Again, they are never saying you cannot have a religion. You just can't have the government (federal or state) imply that one religion is better than the other.