Word: religion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once again, science and religion collided last week. This time the battleground was the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Justices decreed that a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught along with evolution in the public schools was unconstitutional. The 7-to-2 decision, strongly bolstering prior rulings maintaining the wall separating church and state, was a major setback for Fundamentalist Christians...
Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan declared that the Louisiana requirement ran afoul of the First Amendment's ban on laws "respecting an establishment of religion." He found that creation science "embodies the religious belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind." Therefore, he concluded, the statute's mandate that it be taught "advances a religious doctrine" and "seeks to employ the symbolic and financial support of government to achieve a religious purpose...
...most important Buddhist teachers of our generation," said David I. Rome, president of Schocken Books Inc., a New York City publishing company, and for many years secretary to Rinpoche, "because of the transitional role he played in transplanting this 2,600-year-old religion to the West -- without compromising the religion, the depth of the religion." And yes, said Rome, "we definitely expect him to come back and beseech him to come back, but just as in his life he did things in unexpected ways, we cannot expect him to mind a timetable...
...cite ethical lapses in officials in government, finance, religion and the military. You point a finger at businessmen, educators, physicians, lawyers and almost every other segment of our society except publishers and editors. If you spent time researching your own profession, you would surely find an equivalent or even larger portion of it involved in the same activities you condemn in other fields...
Harvard Professor Robert Coles, child psychiatrist and author (Children of Crisis), at St. Joseph College, West Hartford, Conn.: Now our children are witnesses to scandal in politics, scandal in business, scandal in religion, cheap sleaze all over our newspapers. What is wrong with a decent and honorable country that has to go through this kind of great depression? One can only hope and pray for all of us that we will yet again find our way and be worthy of what this country is all about: a decent respect for people, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...