Scalia: Law Shouldn't Write Off Christians

[Kadie]

Scalia: Law Shouldn't Write Off Christians

Friday, April 8, 2005


(04-08) 08:06 PDT Shreveport, La. (AP) --


The legal profession shouldn't write off traditional Christians as "simple minded," Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told fellow Catholics, and he urged a blend of reason and faith.


"One can be sophisticated and believe in Jesus as in some way a 'son of God.' But," Scalia said sarcastically, "to believe in traditional Christianity is something else. To believe Jesus was God and was born of a virgin ... surely those who adhere to those beliefs are regarded in educated circles — maybe in the South, it's different — are regarded as simple minded."

more...
"Faith with no rational thought is false. What is irrational is to reject (without question) the possibility of miracles," he told more than 300 people at a banquet on the eve of an annual Mass to honor and bless lawyers and people who work with them.

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/04/08/national/w080614D56.DTL

[saigon68]

1. Scalia = Right Wing Hateful NUT-JOB

He's a "Real Piece of Work"

[Voltaire99]

28. Yes. And what about his Opus Dei membership?

Can anyone who belongs to a blood cult be fit to render secular justice?

He's better suited, really, for a spot on the Inquisition.

[saigon68]

35. You hit it on the Head.

This Nut-Job belongs in a Red Robe, burning Heretics at the Stake for thinking the Earth is round.

[redqueen]

2. Whatever their personal opinions are is immaterial.

The law shouldn't regard religious beliefs one way or the other. The law is the law.

WTF is he yammering about, anyway?

[Voltaire99]

39. He's rationalizing why he imposes his superstitious prejudices.

I'm with you: keep religion out of secular law.

But Scalia is about as far from a secularist as you can travel; any further and you're in the Taliban. He is at war with modernity.

[Warpy]

3. Yeah, Tony, Christians are SO persecuted.

Cameras weren't focused on the Pope's body 24/7 over the past 6 days, so Christians must be getting cheated by the media. Churches are being shuttered with guards posted to make sure nobody goes in all over the country. The atheists are on the march, and making sure nobody ever gets to sit with eyes down, silently praying the way the bible instructs them to, ready to poke them in the ribs if they even suspect such a thing is occurring.

Yes, indeedy, Tony, Christians are terribly endangered and need all sorts of special legislation to make sure their holidays are national holidays so that they get to go to church on them.

The shape the poor, persecuted Christians are in here in America is a real crying shame. It's good we have you to look out for them.

[meow2u3]

7. Yo, Tony--if you think Christians are being persecuted in the US

Go to Pakistan, China, or Saudi Arabia--there you'll see real persecution of Christians!

[reprobate]

31. Some might think persecution of christians falls under just desserts.

Weren't they the ones usually doing the persecuting? At least in my experience.

[alphadog]

44. Well...

We're persecuted on this site, anyway. As I said on another thread, good way for our party to lose the next election...

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

4. what a psycho.

he is losing his mind. How can a supreme court justice make such out of the blue ludicrous comments all the times...orgies, christians...this man makes no sense

[RaleighNCDUer]

42. And this is our next chief justice. nt

[Triana]

5. LAW should have NOTHING TO DO with Christians...

...and vice-versa.

PERIOD.

[Demit]

6. No wonder he doesn't like coverage at his events. He babbles.

[Art_from_Ark]

41. Babbling is a prerequisite

for getting a "tony" job with a Republican administration

[htuttle]

8. Why is a supreme court judge giving a sermon?

Perhaps he would be more comfortable someplace like Iran where they have the institution of 'religious courts' and such?

[justjones]

10. Exactly. He's blurring the line between pastor/priest and judge. nt

[Kerrytravelers]

9. Scalia: Law Shouldn't Write Off Christians

The reverse is also true. "Christians" shouldn't write off the law. We are each created qually, but in the eyes of some "Christians" that certainly isn't true.

I can not believe these people. Hopefully, it is just them grandstanding, sincelt eh freeptart judical protest didn't go over so well yesterday. 3 people does not a wide-spred protest movement make.

[Fenris]

11. Christians shouldn't write off the law.

[tabasco]

30. What an amazing coincidence !

That a fundie protestor would just happen to have nazi battle flags on hand to display for his protest. I'm sure he wouldn't be a collector of stuff like that or anything.

[reprobate]

32. But Adolph was a devout christian.

[Danmel]

12. As Al Franken would say

OY OY OY OY OY !!!!!!

[Mandate My Ass]

13. "What is irrational is to reject (without question) the possibility of

miracles."

Well, I'm still waiting for one and it'll be a humdinger. :evilgrin:

[Laurab]

23. I'm waiting for one, too

and I'm guessing it might be the same one you're waiting for!

[wellst0nev0ter]

26. The One That Tops MY List

Is to have Fat Tony stop being a cafeteria Catholic and actually reject the death penalty as he does abortion.

Or does that count as a sign of the apocolypse?

[Toots]

33. That would make it rational to accept miracles without question

Don't question just believe. It is called faith. You must have faith because it can never be proved as fact. Faith makes for rationality whilke asking questions makes one irrational. Okay I got it. Now I know how to become a Republican Christian...Never Question anything except Liberals...

[reprobate]

34. The miracle I want is the Rapture. We'd be rid of the nutcases,

live under the rule of law again, andd besides, we could use he room.

[CO Liberal]

14. CO Liberal: We Shoule Write Off Scalia As a Hopeless Asshole

:-)

[July]

15. What laws "write off" Christians?

If he means that Christianity is not privileged in the law, would he also say that the law "writes off" other religions, as well?

[GOPBasher]

18. Exactly, July, you hit the nail right on the head.

They always like to claim "discrimination" when Christianity is treated like any other religion. Yeah, we can't have the ten commandments in public. You know what, people? We can't have the Buddhist 8-fold path in public either. All religions are treated the same.

[GOPBasher]

16. Earth to Scalia: The vast majority of Americans are Christians.

I'm so sick of right wing nut jobs acting like Christians (and I'm one of them) are somehow discriminated against. It's a bunch of hogwash. About 80% - 85% of Americans consider themselves Christians. (Of course, some right wing fanatics don't consider Catholics or non-fundamentalist Protestants to be Christians. But that's their problem.)

[kodi]

17. it is entirely rational to reject the possibility of miracles.

because rationality rejects magic and requires adherence to a set of principles that can be tested.

scalia's proposition if taken to its logical conclusion is the complete rejection of rationalism, logic and objective reality. it hurdles mankind back to the dark ages when faith alone defined the universe.

[wallwriter]

19. No miracles in the Constitution

Show me a court case in which a miracle had any relevance to the deliberation or verdict. I'm not a lawyer, but show me anything about miracles in case law. Actually, here's the real point: No miracles in the Constitution

[Johnny Noshoes]

20. Yes sir got it in one

All this talk of miracles and the power of prayer, yada yada, on and on we go. When the human race finally grows up and realizes that the only thing we can count on is US - that the great sky daddy is NOT going to save us maybe then THAT will be a "miracle". You know if I woke up tomorrow and all my debt was cleared up, I got a 50% raise, and I hit the lottery - now hot damn that would be a miracle - but it ain't gonna happen. So I'll trudge off to work again Monday morning and carry on hoping that maybe one day humanity will get its shit together. Hey a liberal can dream right?

[dave123williams]

21. I'm going to pray for Scalia, right now: Dear God, in your infinite grace

please cause a massive and fatal anal tear in Antonin Scalia; may he be blessed with exploding hemmeroids and nose maggots. May his love for people who disagree with him be matched in inverse proportions to your righteous wrath, and may he be afflicted with projectile butt leakage and the uncontrollable urge to jerk off in public, just like he does rhetorically at nearly every public appearance he makes.

Also, please also be merciful, and stop this stupid fucking war.

[Walt Starr]

22. I don't reject the possibility of miracles, I merely reject any miracles

that have been claimed to have happened due to a lack of supporting evidence for the claims.

[daleo]

24. Parsing the sentence, logically.

1 - "What is irrational is to reject...the possibility of miracles"

Miracles are, by definition, not rational (not events governed by natural law and subject to reason). Thus we can substitute "the irrational" for the term miracles.

2 - "What is irrational is to reject...the possibility of the irrational"

Making the "not" predicate more explicit.

3 - "What is not rational is to reject...the possibility of the not rational"

The two "not" predicates cancel (multiplication of two negatives, so to speak).

4 - "What is rational is to reject...the possibility of the rational"

This seems like a clear contradictory statement to me. It implies something can be rational and not rational at the same time. It is like saying something can be red and not red at the same time.

If you want, you can say this is what we mean by God (God isn't bound by the rules of logic). But, it isn't logical.

[0rganism]

36. Unfortunately, you've mis-inverted the structure in step 4

It would be nice to catch Scalia in such an obvious fallacy, but alas, he is quite smart -- insane and arguably evil, but smart.

See, you'd have to negate the whole structure.

Start with
3. "What is not rational is to reject the possibility of the not rational"

To make this easier to visualize, let's replace "the possibility of" with a functional "possible", and likewise with "to reject".

!rational = reject(possible(!rational))

!(!rational) = !reject(possible(!rational))

To negate the object, all we had to do was negate the "reject" function. You could take it a step further in the spirit of your earlier wordplay and say the negation of "reject" is "accept", so

rational = accept(possible(!rational))

Scalia's statement inverted:
4. "What is rational is to accept the possibility of the irrational."

Now this statement is arguable from any number of angles, including how we define the rational and with what degree of likelihood a rational being would regard the possibility of the irrational, but logically speaking it's not a total train wreck. Inverted it still says just what Scalia probably intends it to say.

This isn't a surprise, really. Big Tony may be an asshole, and many Supreme Court justices have been assholes over the centuries, but you don't get to be a SCOTUS justice by being stupid. Hell, you won't even make it out of law school these days without being able to crunch some symbolic logic. There are many people for whom ignorance and confusion can be said to be mitigating factors for their misdeeds, but SCOTUS judges are not among them. They know exactly what they're doing and why, and of all our public officials they're among the very few expected to explain their decisions on paper at every stage. Scalia is no different.

We may dislike him, but we should never, ever underestimate him.

[daleo]

40. Your formalism beats mine.

I was just playing around. You seem to have a deeper acquittance with this methodology. Still, there seems to be something intuitively wrong about the idea that it is rational to accept the possibility of the irrational - like logic swallowing its own tail. But systems of thought often seem to have this strange feature - I suppose Godel's Incompleteness Theorem has that sense about it too.

I take it you are also saying that Scalia can't claim any sort of innocent mistake when he makes a bad decision. Would you say, then, that the Bush/Gore decision was indefensible and deeply cynical on his part? A bit of a rhetorical question, I guess.

[JohnnyBoots]

25. Can we feed Scalia to the lions?

[barb162]

38. only if I can watch

[dave29]

27. The legal profession should not legislate religion

period. Believe whatever you want. It's a free freakin country.

[6000eliot]

29. I wonder if he was wearing his hair shirt as he made those remarks?

Hey, Scalia! Fuck off!!

[Trajan]

37. Yet another irrational conclusion ....

The law doesnt write off christians ....

The law views christians as CITIZENS .... not christians ....

You would think a SCOTUS jurist would realize this; unless he has some sort of sectarian agenda, that is ....

[mitchum]

43. The lions could eat VERY well...

if Fat Tony's faith was ever truly tested.
Fuck him and Opus Dei.