The first amendment of the Constitution reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...”
When considering this statement it is important to examine the definition of 'religion.' At issue is not what modern persons might consider religion to be, rather the issue is what this meant to the framers in the late 18th century. The framers thought in terms of natural law and an empiricist epistemology. They applied these ideas to their understanding of religion and also to their understanding of human governance. The framers would have understood all religions as addressing themselves in varying degrees to a few fundamental questions.
The first of these is the question of ultimate origin. Succinctly put, ‘Why is there something and not nothing?’ This is not the same as later questions of evolution which are concerned with processes of how one gets from point A to point B. Origin is more basic. It is the question of creation or beginnings. The framers believed in a Creator rather than an eternal material universe. For the framers this was a matter of religious belief.
A steady state theory of the universe was proposed in 1948 by Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle, The steady-state theory was based on a perfect cosmological principle. This principle held that the universe on its largest scale looks essentially the same from every spot and at every time.
For the universe to look the same at all times, there could not have been a beginning, nor any end. This was a theory of the eternal creation of matter. The steady state theory had many adherents in the 1950s and 1960s. Supporters of this theory balanced the ever decreasing density of the universe that results from its expansion by suggesting that matter was continuously created out of nothing. Given the vastness of the universe the amount of newly created matter required in any amount of space was undetectably small.
The steady state theory began to fall into disfavor among scientists in the 1960s. First, astronomers discovered quasars, the highly luminous cores of very distant galaxies. The vast majority of quasars are very far away, and their existence proved that the perfect cosmological principle cannot be true. The observable facts are that the distant and ancient universe is not the same as the nearby and younger universe. The theory began to collapse when radio astronomers Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, sometimes referred to as the echo of the theorized Big Bang. The steady state scientists had no reasonable way to explain this radiation. The final end of the steady state theory came with the astonishing discovery in the 1990s that the universe is not merely expanding, but accelerating in its expansion. This characteristic of stretching or exploding space is a further substantiation of the counter intuitive idea that space is not nothing, but space is actually something.
The framers believed in a Creator rather than an eternal material universe. For the framers this was a matter of religious belief. Today, one conclusion from modern science suggests that the universe is not eternal, but has a punctilliar beginning and an end. The discussion of the modality or agency of the creation of the universe is thus a subject of religion among men now even as it was in ancient times. The framers accepted the religious belief of Hugo Grotius and Robert Boyle, i.e. that God is the only true and efficient cause of all things.
The second great question which religion addresses is that of man. In its simplest form, who am I? This is the first question of self awareness. This is a question of personal being. Why am I me, and not someone else, or why am I at all? Religion defines personal being in relationship to Divine being and imputes meaning and value to individuals that goes far beyond the observable data of the physical individual. It suggests a presence beyond blood pressure, temperature, lung capacity, height, weight, age, and physical health. It goes beyond the observations of firing neurons and examines the nature of the soul.
There is an universal form to this question of man. If the first part of this question is about who I am, the second part of this question is about who we are. None of mankind live in perfect isolation. We are born to others, live in total dependency on others for a lengthy time, and associate with others in many differing ways throughout our brief lives.
Religion addresses questions of law. It provides answers to questions of our mutual existence and explains our obligations to others, as well as their obligations to us. Morals or ethics are answers to questions of personal law. These are the ways in which we personally address the question, ‘what should I do?’ The motivations and values of personal law are widely varied with no two persons having precisely the same understanding, belief, or practice.
In the universal form of the question of law there exist the problems of political organization and life. Forms of government chosen by mankind arise out of the religious disposition and the epistemological disposition of those who create it.. Those who rely on an understanding of natural law for their principles regard observed authority as superior to alleged authority. The nexus between religious belief and a political state of liberty occurs when the religious belief is that institutional reform is not a substitute for personal transformation. Liberty occurs when the state is not perceived as efficacious in imputing righteousness to the citizen. When the state is seen as efficacious in producing a new and better man (or a redeemed earth) the inevitable result is some form of oppression.
A punctilliar origin or Creation implies a punctilliar ending. In religion, endings deal with matters such as apocalyptic or eschatological events and the afterlife. The theories of science suggest an universe that ultimately succumbs to entropy as it inevitably becomes entirely diffuse, disorganized, and cold. That most religions have negative apocalyptic visions and that science also presents a negative end should not be ignored. These negative visions all stand in stark contrast to statist visions which are Utopian. This is because statists view government as salvic or redemptive.
With their focus on repeating cycles, eastern religions tend to de-emphasize or ignore origin and endings, but all four of these types of questions (Origin, Man, Law, and Endings) are dealt with in differing degrees by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Finally, the area in which there is a connection between science and faith is in the area of epistemology. How do we know the things which we claim to know? What is the source of the knowledge of man? How do we know what we should do? And so the questions about origin, man, law, and endings represent a development of the question of knowledge.
The rationalist merely alleges what he believes and asserts it as true. The empiricist weighs in with the evidence and makes a judgment of probability. The rationalist rushes to his dogmatic view while the empiricist is cautious. The rationalist has all the answers, while the empiricist is not so sure. The empiricist’s caution is well founded. It is a virtual certainty that what is regarded as established scientific fact today will be modified or overthrown in the future. The rationalist alleges authority in himself, while the empiricist observes authority in the natural universe. The conclusions of the rationalist are final and must not be questioned. The conclusions of the empiricist are tentative and represent only a temporary satisfaction in the sufficiency of the evidence.
The natural universe is the foundation of all knowledge. Suppositions and extrapolations on the observable reality are important as they provide points of departure for further investigations. Nevertheless, for all mankind, it is true that to embrace anything more than the natural is to embrace the supernatural. The values which we hold and espouse are religious to any extent in which they cannot be discovered in natural law. The claims one makes for the supernatural are a matter of personal conviction and cannot be imposed by political power without creating despotism.
Religion then, is that collection of answers to these deep and abiding existential questions: what is our beginning, who am I, who are we, what should I do, what should we do, what is the end of all things, and how do we know?
The sophistication of this answer stands in marked contrast to a typically ignorant Supreme Court ruling in which religion is defined as a posted copy of the ten commandments, or a prayer before a high school football game, when the truth is that the entire government education system rests on alleged authority of some public ‘values’ unsubstantiated in natural law and has an unmistakable religious foundation.
The framers of the Constitution saw and knew the dangers of state established religion. The first amendment on which they agreed was that the federal government would not venture into this hazardous arena. It would not establish religion, nor would it prohibit it. They resolved to build a federal state on a foundation of the observed authority of natural law rather than the alleged authority of princes or potentates, and left all issues of faith and virtue to the states.
“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...”
When considering this statement it is important to examine the definition of 'religion.' At issue is not what modern persons might consider religion to be, rather the issue is what this meant to the framers in the late 18th century. The framers thought in terms of natural law and an empiricist epistemology. They applied these ideas to their understanding of religion and also to their understanding of human governance. The framers would have understood all religions as addressing themselves in varying degrees to a few fundamental questions.
The first of these is the question of ultimate origin. Succinctly put, ‘Why is there something and not nothing?’ This is not the same as later questions of evolution which are concerned with processes of how one gets from point A to point B. Origin is more basic. It is the question of creation or beginnings. The framers believed in a Creator rather than an eternal material universe. For the framers this was a matter of religious belief.
A steady state theory of the universe was proposed in 1948 by Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle, The steady-state theory was based on a perfect cosmological principle. This principle held that the universe on its largest scale looks essentially the same from every spot and at every time.
For the universe to look the same at all times, there could not have been a beginning, nor any end. This was a theory of the eternal creation of matter. The steady state theory had many adherents in the 1950s and 1960s. Supporters of this theory balanced the ever decreasing density of the universe that results from its expansion by suggesting that matter was continuously created out of nothing. Given the vastness of the universe the amount of newly created matter required in any amount of space was undetectably small.
The steady state theory began to fall into disfavor among scientists in the 1960s. First, astronomers discovered quasars, the highly luminous cores of very distant galaxies. The vast majority of quasars are very far away, and their existence proved that the perfect cosmological principle cannot be true. The observable facts are that the distant and ancient universe is not the same as the nearby and younger universe. The theory began to collapse when radio astronomers Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, sometimes referred to as the echo of the theorized Big Bang. The steady state scientists had no reasonable way to explain this radiation. The final end of the steady state theory came with the astonishing discovery in the 1990s that the universe is not merely expanding, but accelerating in its expansion. This characteristic of stretching or exploding space is a further substantiation of the counter intuitive idea that space is not nothing, but space is actually something.
The framers believed in a Creator rather than an eternal material universe. For the framers this was a matter of religious belief. Today, one conclusion from modern science suggests that the universe is not eternal, but has a punctilliar beginning and an end. The discussion of the modality or agency of the creation of the universe is thus a subject of religion among men now even as it was in ancient times. The framers accepted the religious belief of Hugo Grotius and Robert Boyle, i.e. that God is the only true and efficient cause of all things.
The second great question which religion addresses is that of man. In its simplest form, who am I? This is the first question of self awareness. This is a question of personal being. Why am I me, and not someone else, or why am I at all? Religion defines personal being in relationship to Divine being and imputes meaning and value to individuals that goes far beyond the observable data of the physical individual. It suggests a presence beyond blood pressure, temperature, lung capacity, height, weight, age, and physical health. It goes beyond the observations of firing neurons and examines the nature of the soul.
There is an universal form to this question of man. If the first part of this question is about who I am, the second part of this question is about who we are. None of mankind live in perfect isolation. We are born to others, live in total dependency on others for a lengthy time, and associate with others in many differing ways throughout our brief lives.
Religion addresses questions of law. It provides answers to questions of our mutual existence and explains our obligations to others, as well as their obligations to us. Morals or ethics are answers to questions of personal law. These are the ways in which we personally address the question, ‘what should I do?’ The motivations and values of personal law are widely varied with no two persons having precisely the same understanding, belief, or practice.
In the universal form of the question of law there exist the problems of political organization and life. Forms of government chosen by mankind arise out of the religious disposition and the epistemological disposition of those who create it.. Those who rely on an understanding of natural law for their principles regard observed authority as superior to alleged authority. The nexus between religious belief and a political state of liberty occurs when the religious belief is that institutional reform is not a substitute for personal transformation. Liberty occurs when the state is not perceived as efficacious in imputing righteousness to the citizen. When the state is seen as efficacious in producing a new and better man (or a redeemed earth) the inevitable result is some form of oppression.
A punctilliar origin or Creation implies a punctilliar ending. In religion, endings deal with matters such as apocalyptic or eschatological events and the afterlife. The theories of science suggest an universe that ultimately succumbs to entropy as it inevitably becomes entirely diffuse, disorganized, and cold. That most religions have negative apocalyptic visions and that science also presents a negative end should not be ignored. These negative visions all stand in stark contrast to statist visions which are Utopian. This is because statists view government as salvic or redemptive.
With their focus on repeating cycles, eastern religions tend to de-emphasize or ignore origin and endings, but all four of these types of questions (Origin, Man, Law, and Endings) are dealt with in differing degrees by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Finally, the area in which there is a connection between science and faith is in the area of epistemology. How do we know the things which we claim to know? What is the source of the knowledge of man? How do we know what we should do? And so the questions about origin, man, law, and endings represent a development of the question of knowledge.
The rationalist merely alleges what he believes and asserts it as true. The empiricist weighs in with the evidence and makes a judgment of probability. The rationalist rushes to his dogmatic view while the empiricist is cautious. The rationalist has all the answers, while the empiricist is not so sure. The empiricist’s caution is well founded. It is a virtual certainty that what is regarded as established scientific fact today will be modified or overthrown in the future. The rationalist alleges authority in himself, while the empiricist observes authority in the natural universe. The conclusions of the rationalist are final and must not be questioned. The conclusions of the empiricist are tentative and represent only a temporary satisfaction in the sufficiency of the evidence.
The natural universe is the foundation of all knowledge. Suppositions and extrapolations on the observable reality are important as they provide points of departure for further investigations. Nevertheless, for all mankind, it is true that to embrace anything more than the natural is to embrace the supernatural. The values which we hold and espouse are religious to any extent in which they cannot be discovered in natural law. The claims one makes for the supernatural are a matter of personal conviction and cannot be imposed by political power without creating despotism.
Religion then, is that collection of answers to these deep and abiding existential questions: what is our beginning, who am I, who are we, what should I do, what should we do, what is the end of all things, and how do we know?
The sophistication of this answer stands in marked contrast to a typically ignorant Supreme Court ruling in which religion is defined as a posted copy of the ten commandments, or a prayer before a high school football game, when the truth is that the entire government education system rests on alleged authority of some public ‘values’ unsubstantiated in natural law and has an unmistakable religious foundation.
The framers of the Constitution saw and knew the dangers of state established religion. The first amendment on which they agreed was that the federal government would not venture into this hazardous arena. It would not establish religion, nor would it prohibit it. They resolved to build a federal state on a foundation of the observed authority of natural law rather than the alleged authority of princes or potentates, and left all issues of faith and virtue to the states.
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