Reply #197: To grant it special status beyond that of other human endeavors is to establish it.

[PurityOfEssence]

Your premise seems to be that religion is more important than other human activity, and this is not sustained by the constitution.

How can taxing churches be a violation of the establishment clause? Expecting special status is a violation of the establishment clause.

It is not a special act to encumber other business ventures; for religions to have ANY business functions at all, they are no better than other enterprises in the eyes of the founders. They're selling a service, and they use communal resources to do so.

This concept of being more important than the shared endeavor of society is precisely the kind of aristocratic exemption that Article One was meant to preclude.

Maybe YOU cannot recognize any authority above your supernatural guess, but we, as a people, do not recognize that right to be expressed by the government as a summation of our collective belief. That's the point. Do it in your private life, but expecting collusion from the government is to expect aristocratic privilege.

God is NOT a fact. Period. There is no proof of such an entity, and demanding special status without explanation or proof runs contrary to the fairness intended by a pluralist society.

Personally, I feel that those who hold a greater allegiance to a belief system are LESSER members of society than those of us who swear our fealty to the government and its secular laws. They are out for themselves and their kith rather than the broad society as a whole and are not only not superior, but parochial, fractious and inflexible.

In short, the constitution is equating all human endeavors along the lines of their functions, with religion NOT being given a break for being "good". Many of us do not consider it "good", and regardless how much outrage that engenders from the legions of cosmic certainty, it is the protected right under law. Abridging it is an act of social arrogance.

The very act of granting certain human endeavors a selfish and fickle "right" to do as they please is in itself establishment. Talking down to others from a perch of self-defined moral superiority merely fans the flames, and picking and choosing those facts that suit one's pre-ordained specialness flies in the face of the very concept of pluralism.