There are many Christians who try to argue that American law is based upon the Ten Commandments; therefore, posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings like courts is not only permissible, but perhaps necessary. We can show how wrong this view is by pointing out some of the logical implications which defenders don't (and hopefully won't) accept.

Newsday prints an article from Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals and David Gould, a former assistant United States attorney:

Justice Antonin Scalia noted that our government derives its authority and its laws from God. Perhaps it could be said that our government and our laws owe their creation to God in the sense that everything comes from God. But if Justice Scalia is correct, then people like himself who are from the "original intent" school of legal interpretation ought to be looking first not at our own Constitution, which was manmade and thus fallible, but at the documents that purport to contain God's actual words such as the Old Testament.

If God is the source of our laws, then why look at a document like our Constitution, which fails to mention God, and is thus godless? If we follow Justice Scalia's thinking, we will be asking: "What would God do?" - rather than what would the framers of the Constitution have done. And what about other religious texts putatively containing the word of God, such as the Book of Mormon and the Quran? Will they also have to take their premier place in the Scalia law library?

The treatment of religious texts as sources of our law has already greatly affected what should have been legal debates solely about our human-made laws. The debate on gay marriage focused less on what the framers intended than on what Jesus did or did not say about the issue and on the chapter in Leviticus that, in essence, called homosexuality an "abomination." Those people who felt that condemnation should be the cynosure of the gay marriage debate failed to point out that Leviticus also deemed eating certain seafood to be an "abomination." So why aren't the "our laws come from God" people like Scalia campaigning for a constitutional amendment to outlaw the rampant shellfish eating in this country?

The fundamentally religious nature of the Ten Commandments is demonstrated by examples like the above. If judges really did start ruling based upon what they thought "God wants" rather than what the law says, who couldn't reasonably conclude that America is becoming theocratic? If judges really did start arguing that "original intent" means "God's intent" or that religious scriptures should be used to determine how laws must be read, who wouldn't see that America's religious liberties are threatened?

Read More:

• Separation of Church and State 101
• Church and State News
• Ten Commandments
• Secularism 101