The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Eddie Tabash is a constitutional lawyer in Los Angeles. He graduated magna cum laude from UCLA in 1973. He graduated from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 1976. He is known for his expertise in demonstrating how the religion clauses of the First Amendment require the separation of church and state, which includes equality before the law for nonbelievers. He is an atheist who endeavors to secure a society in which no branch of government can treat people differently because of either accepting or rejecting any tenet of religious belief.

Shermer and Tabash discuss:

• the history of the relationship between church and state
• the founding framers of the U.S. Constitution and their arguments for separating church and state
• Madison and Jefferson on church and state
• how most of the 13 colonies had government-sanctioned religions and religious tests for office
• The Constitutional Convention and the First Amendment
• major cases in history that shaped current laws on church/state issues
• how the Moral Majority of the Reagan era 1980s shaped the SCOTUS of today
• The Federalist Society and how it shapes the selection of SCOTUS justices
• how the current religious right wing supermajority on the Supreme Court is drastically eroding the separation of church and state and how modern secular government is being weakened. We could be facing the beginning stages of an actual theocracy.
• the push by some Republicans to hold a new Constitutional Convention and redesign the entire U.S. Constitution in order to make America an officially state-sanctioned Christian country and government
• the religious beliefs and attitudes of the current SCOTUS:
  • Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
  • Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
  • Associate Justice Clarence Thomas
  • Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
  • Associate Justice Elena Kagan.
  • Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett
  • Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch
  • Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh
  • Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

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