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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Secular Humanism" banned in the US Schools.
Message-ID: <1568@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 19:54:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1568
Posted: Wed Aug 21 19:54:23 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 14:00:41 EDT
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> Richard,
> 
> I can't give you a case title but in a 1961 decision the
> Supreme Court ruled that there are religions that have no
> deities.  Among those they described was secular humanism. [BROWN]

In 1961?  Anyway, the reason the Supreme Court applied Constitutional
rights to belief systems without deities is because they wanted to
ensure that the negligence of the founding fathers was not visited
on other beliefs:  they wanted to ensure rights for all belief systems,
even though the Constitution spoke of "freedom of religion" (I believe
they wanted it for all such systems).  Thus they labelled such beliefs
as religions for such purposes.  (What other purposes, other than
legal purposes, could they define?)  Another example of succumbing
to human laziness and carelessness with the words we use.
-- 
Popular consensus says that reality is based on popular consensus.
						Rich Rosen   pyuxd!rlr