From a letter to Dave Farber's IP List on a related topic:

"Some religionists, feeling one way or feeling another, are unwilling to keep their religions private. The commons of civic discourse may be fed by feelings but in the final analysis, it is best served by reason, and our Constitutional tradition is that that reason is bounded in its concerns to the secular—including the emotional, unavoidably, but placing religion behind a Jeffersonian "wall of separation".

There is reason for doing this which is both good and sufficient, since it is demonstrable that differing religious views are irreconcilable in their basic nature, and cannot be particularly tested. It is also historically true that the glib and irrational use of religious icons and notions to justify irrational courses of action is a peculiarly human pox.

Studying that religion exists, and what it does or does not say in a comparative framework is innocuous enough on the face of it, and your friend is right that Christmas deserves as much analysis as Kwanzaa or Ramadan. But whether one or another adherent of any given religion feels his non-secular, religious beliefs are given sufficient honor by those who do not share them is pretty irrelevant under the doctrine of separation. He/she may find solace in congregation, or meditation, or prayer in a private moment. Not in debate on the commons."


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