今天的节目是关于宗教和世俗国家的。In our beloved more or less secular nation our thinking is anchored by the first part of the first amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The 14th amendment extends this to the states, many of which had established religions at the time of the constitution, as I remember --- I wasn’t there, but as I seem to remember from my American History classes.

What were the founding fathers worried about? The sort of Protestant versus Catholic or Anglican versus Puritan battles that made Europe such an unpleasant place? Or the rights Jews and Muslims and Buddhists? Or the rights of atheists and freethinkers?

以下是我对生活记忆中出现的一些问题的一些随机想法。敏锐的读者会注意到，他们没有用哲学论证来辩护，可能会非常不一致。它们是哲学磨坊的原料，而不是完成的哲学反思。与肯·泰勒和罗伯特·奥迪的一小时访谈将让我对这一切有一个更深刻的理解。

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

A big issue facing our nation is whether the Ten Commandments can be exhibited at court houses and in other public places. Well of course they can be, since they already are, most prominently, I understand, in the quarters of the U.S. Supreme Court. But is it constitutional? Is it right?

It seems to me that there is a pretty good argument that allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed does not violate the amendment. They do play an important role historically in the development of the idea of the government by law rather than the whims of individuals. Most of the commandments aren't all that controversial. It's rather nice to think of Justice Thomas looking out at the one about not covetting they neighbor's wife as he ponders deep issues. Of course, he tends to be a strict constructionist, and its dubious that any of the women on the porno flicks he liked to watch were wives of neighbors. So maybe it doesn’t bother him.

That commandment, for one, suggests that the placement of the ten commandments in a court house doesn't constitute a serious proposal that these commandments are a guide to the central priorities of American jurisprudence, much less behavior in the suburbs.

Why, one might ask, should the Ten Commandments be enshrined and not the Code of Hamurabi, which is also historically relevant to the very tradition that led to the conception f the rule of law as it developed in the West and eventually found its way into America's political system? Well, one reason is that the Code of Hamurabi has 282 Laws, so that it would be quite expensive, and use up a lot of space, to carve it into the walls of courthouses. About half of them end with “shall be put to death.” As a liberal response to the Ten Commandments, this probably isn’t a winner. If you want to read the Code of Hamurabi, you’ll find it at:
http://www.unesco.org/delegates/iraq/hamurabi.htm

事实上，我认为把所有的禁忌和诫命，也就是基督徒所说的“旧约”，刻在我们法院的墙上是个好主意。原因是我们的一些政治家和宗教领袖喜欢选择性地引用这些戒律和禁令。例如，几乎每个人都知道，在旧约中说，男人不应该像他们睡女人那样睡男人，如果他们这样做了，就应该被处死。但它也说，我认为在同一本书中，申命记或利未记，或我晚上哄自己入睡的书之一，如果一个女人抓住一个和她丈夫打架的男人的私处，为了阻止这场战斗，她的前臂应该被砍掉。所有的段落中，上帝不断地讨论，用来存放他的诫命的盒子的确切大小，形状和内衬，也会被有用地刻在墙上。人们希望，这将导致人们嘲笑那些将美国21世纪的社会政策建立在《旧约》中上帝的咆哮之上的企图。然而，考虑到我们的国会，这可能会导致很多一个武装妇女。

电视采访的一个白痴说，十诫必须以这样或那样的方式翻译，基督徒的翻译不同于犹太人，不同的基督徒教派的翻译也不同，所以这种翻译会违反政教分离。饶了我吧。

THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

I feel much differently about the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, by the way. That piece of hypocrisy was mounted in my living memory, during the Eisenhower years, as a way of showing that difference between Godless Communism and our American Way of Life. It was not only hypocritical but incoherent, since if there is a God, presumably all nations are under God, the Godless as well as the religious. We learned to add those words to the Pledge of Allegiance right at the same time we were learning to “duck and cover” in case of a Soviet attack on Lincoln, Nebraska. Maybe the U.S. is too far under God for him to stop Soviet Bombers.

效忠誓词本身并没有什么重大的历史意义;这只是一个旗帜制造商流行起来的营销噱头。我完全同情那个把这件事告到最高法院的家伙，他一直被媒体嘲笑为傻瓜。《纽约时报》的判决是，效忠宣誓问题是愚蠢的，法院应该忽略它，但我认为他们的推理是愚蠢的。任何人都不应该被要求在庄严地朗诵一种营销噱头时加上“上帝保佑”这几个字。我给《泰晤士报》写了一封信，解释了我的想法。

PEYOTE

Another issue that has come up over the years is whether religions that have traditionally done something that is against the law should be exempted from the law. One case was an Native American tribe that used peyote.

Now this principle would obviously have its limits. If a tribe of Native Europeans could show that it was part of their religion to rob people, or to murder them, or if Anglicans claimed that driving on the left was actually a British religious practice, we wouldn’t allow that on the grounds of the First Amendment and religious liberty. Where do we draw the line? When I ask this to those who think the religious peyote user should be exempted from the law, they say that the line should be drawn at those practices which are actually harmful. Harmless things that are illegal, or things that at most harm those who indulge in them, should be exempted. But then, why should such things be illegal in the first place?

POLYGAMY

美国宗教史上的一个神话是，有一场基于宗教原因的大斗争，导致摩门教徒不得不改变他们关于一夫多妻制的做法，以使犹他州成为一个州。我想情况并非如此。这场法律之战并非基于第一修正案;第一修正案中的宗教条款直到后来才成为自由主义法律学的支柱。摩门教徒在这个问题上被迫忍气吞声的原因是，海耶斯政府按照给他们带来了有争议的海耶斯-蒂尔登选举的妥协方案，结束了南方的重建工作。为了安抚北方选民，为了减轻南方的压力，他们不得不向美国第二大受辱骂的群体——摩门教徒施加压力。摩门教徒以“州权”为理由进行辩护;也就是说，宪法中没有任何东西赋予国会决定婚姻规则的权利。听起来是不是很熟悉?如果马萨诸塞州当时是一块领土，并允许同性婚姻，它可能不得不放弃它。

Well, those are my deep thoughts about Religion and the State. We'll dig deeper with Robert Audi soon.

John Perry