Quote Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat
I wrote, "Those Buddhist monks from Thailand are NOT qualified to speak for Americans. Their calling people that are in favor of separation of church and state 'evil' is ridiculous."

Just to clarify a little better:
The fundamentalist Christians that were opposed to the park's Hispanic religous statue would probably be in favor of mixing religion and government as long as the religion was their's. Possibly, the Buddhists were trying to say this, and it was misunderstood. In any case, religous statues, of any kind, do not belong in public parks.
Actually the monks I spoke with were referring to whether or not the statue itself was evil, not neccesarily about the fundemantalist Christians who oposed the statue. Nor was ther any discussion about the seperation of church and state as this really wasn't what the controvery was about. Queztacoatl is a symbol from ancient Mayan times and few people took it to have any religious signifigance at all. Just a few hard core Christians who were pissed because hundreds of years ago Mayans would offer sacrifices to it and therefore it was "evil".

What they meant is that an object can be neither evil or good until somebody labels it as so. The fundamentalist Christians labled the statue as evil therebye creating the evil. Kind of like the old "if a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" type of idea.

The monks themselves were actually American citizens. I interviewed them at a local temple, not in Thailand itself. So I would consider them qualified to discuss this issue.

Ironically most people in San Jose really hate the statue because it cost thousands of dollars of taxpayers money and literally looks like a pile of shit. See what I mean??
Fengzi Reviewed by Fengzi on . Judge: School Pledge Is Unconstitutional Judge: School Pledge Is Unconstitutional September 15, 2005 4:08 AM EDT SAN FRANCISCO - An atheist seeking to strike the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools has won a major battle in his quest to force the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue again. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton sided with atheist Michael Newdow in ruling Wednesday that the pledge's reference to God violates the rights of children in three school districts to be "free from a Rating: 5