FOXNews.com - Politics - Court Rejects Challenge to Inaugural Prayer

The decision came down just a few minutes ago. Judge John D. Bates of the District Court for the District of Columbia has just ruled that Michael Newdow, who has been down this road before, not only has no standing to sue the government over prayers at the Inauguration (because he cannot possibly establish that he would suffer any injury from any prayers being given), but also expressed doubt that a Presidential inauguration would even come under any court's jurisdiction on such an issue. Now we all know that the case is likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court, so this is merely the first step. (The next step is the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the same Court to which President Bush has nominated Miguel Estrada--twice.)

In case you haven't figured it out, I find zero merit in Mr. Newdow's case, for two reasons:

1. Mr. Newdow would frankly have to prove that God does not exist--and he may think this is proved, but it isn't.
2. Newdow would have to prove actual persecution for his lack of faith--and not only does the government not have any such persecutory laws, but no Christian would ever--ever--propose or support such a thing. Holy Scripture gives no warrant to any merely human authority to force a person to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and personal Savior if he doesn't want to. Scripture says that its adherents are not to fight such battles in the flesh. Then there's the verse about having every soul subject itself to the governing authorities [Romans 13:1].

In sum, Newdow has no claim--and for him to say that "being an outsider" is injury enough simply will not serve. If he has a specific complaint against any person who has unlawfully threatened to deprive him of his life, or has deprived or threatened to deprive him of liberty or property, because of his lack of faith, let him bring that sort of complaint to a court of competent jurisdiction. (And in fact, I condemn in advance any such act or threat.) Until such a thing happens (and I repeat: I do not wish any such thing on him), he has no case. His claim, in fact, amounts to nothing more than that he is on the losing side of an argument or election--and I could have made such a claim during President Carter's term or Bill Clinton's two terms!

My personal advice to Dr. Newdow is to contact Antony Flew and ask him why he, Flew, could no longer insist with full confidence that God does not exist. Then I would ask him to use that seventeen-jewel brain of his and review the increasing body of evidence that the earth is young, not old. I would also ask him whether he knew that Francis Crick never believed in evolution, saying that the idea that DNA assembled itself by chance violates the Law of Averages. Crick then went on another tack, saying that an outside civilization seeded our planet with the germs that became the life we know today--but I'm quite prepared to show that both parts of evolutionary theory are flawed--the idea that the first cell assembled itself by chance, and the idea that more-complex organisms could ever "evolve" from simpler organisms without Deliberate Guidance of some kind--and how could that Guidance be anyting but Divine? (If it wasn't Divine, then where did the guide come from? Blank-out, as the Objectivists used to say.)

Unfortunately, he'll probably never take any advice from me or anyone else who knows the Truth. But stranger things have happened. Antony Flew is one example; Norma McCorvey is another, even more instructive example.