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The above was originally published March 31, 2009 at http://zalontheinsanitymage.blogspot.com/2009/03/lemon-v-kurtzman.html This is a general aside from my usual posts. The past few posts I have been working on have been about my TED talk on people vs animals and environment. As opposed to this we were required to read up on a particular court case. With great unfortunate being I ended up with a subject that I no doubt despise. However, this gives me a free chance of expression.

Now for those who do not know of Alton Lemon, he was basically a man whom sought charge against a particular act that allowed state superintendants to allocate funds to non-public schools. Which is in theory against the First Ammendment of the United States of America's Constitution. This act was definately and rightfully so deemed as an infringment. The Pennsylvania Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act would be felled in this courtcase, along with another challange that also went up with it.

I must say I agree 100,000% if I absolutely could. There is really no place for religion to be taught in public schools. There is a seperation of church and state for a reason and people pay for their kids to go into private schools for other reasons. Frankly, if a private school is going to be private it should keep private, that is to say if a parent wants a student to go to a religious school then that is the choice. That parent will be paying for their childs education totally as well as that of the public community.

I went to private school for a time, it was an awful experience by the time I got out of it I had no idea what evolution was and why their were social status'. In fact, I found it most annoying when i found that the Edwards vs. Aguillard problem happened during my birth year. This is an ongoing thing and people don't seem to understand that you can not teach religion in a public schools science classroom and call it science. If you want to debate about the arguement of religist pursuits of creationism as science go right ahead, but it can not and will never be capable to be science.

Science requires that someone be capable of testing and possibly disproving the theory. Evolution can be tested, I can seclude bugs to make them live better in the dark or the day and have them be considered completely different in nature, color, and activities. Creationism cannot be tested, Science cannot go up to a religious figure that does not exist as a humanbeing and ask, "How did you do this?" It just doesn't work that way. This makes creationilist furious if you ever explain that part of scientific theory, it does allow for a humourious laugh, but its quite odd that people can actually demand to put faith into the catagory of science.

I am by no means opposed to religion and frankly I enjoy keeping my religious pursuits to myself and to the people I feel comfortable with. The fact that this courtcase research project brought up so much that I disliked in education really turned me back to the "that was dumb" part of me. However, backing up to the court case to explain another reason why I deem it a good thing it was turned down. "If I was jewish, if I was scientologist, if I was aetheist, if I was agnostic, If I was catholic, methodist, hindu, budhist, taoist, or anything. I would not want my money going towards teaching something that I honestly could not believe in to be taught to my children or America's future children, unless it was mine." This however is not the case, me personally could not, and would not, -ever- accept teaching religion in a public setting.

I was greatly ammused when I found out about the Lemon Test. It was stated so perfectly to ensure that religion stay no where near government sections and that is the way it should be.