Separation of Church and State?

Last week, we had an interesting discussion on whether to teach the theory of creationism or intelligent design in our public classrooms when discussing the theory of evolution. One person pointed out that creationism and intelligent design were both based upon religion, and thus, it was prohibited to teach in our public schools due to the legal standard of “separation of church and state”.

Of course, this is not what our constitution says. The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Now I am simply a layman, and not a constitutional expert, but what this tells me is that the government has no authority to tell anybody to practice a specific type of religion, or even to force people to practice a religion. It also means that the government has no authority to stop people from practicing a specific religion. Of course, I also assume this means that they cannot stop people unless they are infringing upon the rights of other people

However, we now have a double standard in our schools. Maybe instead of saying that the standard in use is “separation of church and state”, we should say the standard is “separation of the Christian church and state”.

In our schools, we openly (and at the taxpayers expense) teach about the paranormal/supernatural, “Mother Earth”, Greek/Roman mythology, astrology, etc.... all of which are directly connected to religion either past or present. In fact, some schools are even teaching the religion of Islam to students and hiding it behind the cloak of “cultural education”. These subjects are taught without anyone being concerned about the government “force feeding” religion to students.

So why is it that anything sounding remotely Christian, certain people clamor about the violation of their civil rights? Why can we have classes on voodoo, but not on the ten commandments (as a code of laws, not a religious edict)? Why can we cloak “other” religions under the guise of “culture”? Where are the civil right advocates when this happens?

Our schools are not only permitted, but mandated to teach courses that are completely contrary to my religion, however, I don't file a lawsuit to eliminate the course, I simply opt my children out.

What do you do when you don't agree with the school curriculum? Do you tell your children to walk out? Do you simply accept it and let your child make informed decisions? Or do you run to the nearest lawyer to file a lawsuit?

One last note... The most prominent religion taught in our schools today, is Humanism...