A Sad Day

For context, you must first read this story.

Can someone please, please explain to me how "Congress shall not make any law respecting the establishment of a religion, nor preventing the free excercise thereof" has grown into such a monstrosity?

I believe in the Judiciary as a way of balancing the powers of the other branches of government by making sure that the laws that are passed and the actions that are carried out are governed by the laws of the land. But anyone watching one one-thousandth of cases going through court right now knows that things are crazy.

How do we have oversight on judges that will rule that a Biology textbook disclaimer reading "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered" and somehow discern that this statement constitutes the establishment of a religion?

Perhaps after hundreds of years of case law building on case law we have come to a point where the original law is mindlessly buried.

For the record, I am undecided on evolution as the manner in which life came to it's present state in the world. I believe that God created every living thing, but I do not know if the mechanisim by which He accomplished this is similar to the evolutionary framework set before us, if creatures were created essentially whole and as they are, or somewhere in between.

Truth be told, I do not care. I honor God as the source, the Intellegence, the Designer. I find discussion on the topic of "how" to be amazing. The more I see of the intricacies of life, the more amazed I stand of the One who put it all together. I think that to encourage "an open mind" in regard to such theories to be a sound scientific principle - theories work by giving us, not a full conclusion, but an idea that is continuously tested, refined as appropriate, discarded if need be.

Evolution I see as having taken the place of an article of faith for those who do not see a need or place for a higher power in the world. As such, it is seen as, to quote the Black Prince in A Knight's Tale, "beyond contestation." This should be an insult to every scientist. Science dies when a theory is moved to the sacred shrine beyond question.

Scientists everywhere ought to weep this day.