Dear Clyde (may I call you Clyde? maybe Reverend Clyde?):

You passed some Heavenly Nuggets on to us. I'd like to return the favor, Rev. One of my uncles was very concerned when I changed majors from music to mathematics and biology in college. Maybe he was right, I don't know. But I do know this.

Once you admit a proposition into an axiomatic system, you can't debate the truth value of the axiom within the system. That's a fancy way of saying that matters of faith aren't debatable within the system.

You apparently have as one of your axioms something like this:

"The Bible is the inerrant word of God, true in every detail. Its writers, copyists and editors were taking dictation from God."

That's fine, and I'm sure you can live a perfectly lovely life based on it and probably some others that I haven't sussed out yet. But here's the problem, Clyde. Why should you get to impose your axioms (or positions derived from them) on people like Teddy? Who decided you were omniscient?

Maybe an example from math will help. If we're playing geometry, then we need some primitive assumptions to work with. These are things like the existence of points and lines; that we can draw a line through any pair of points; if lines intersect they make something called an angle, etc. Euclid compiled all this stuff a long, long time ago. The last of Euclid's primitive elements was really complicated. It's called the parallel postulate. In imprecise form, it says that there is exactly one line through a point not on a given line which is parallel to the given line.

It's a real mouthful even in that imprecise form, and if I stated it precisely -- nah, we don't want to do that. Suffice it to say that we're pretty sure Euclid didn't much like it or trust it. He delayed using it as long as he could in his Elements, even though a number of his theorems and lemmas are more easily (and clearly) proven if you use it. But he finally ran into things that he just couldn't prove without it.

Folks made a cottage industry into the late 19th Century (actually, cranks are still doing it in the 21st Century, but I digress) of trying to prove the parallel postulate from the remaining axioms. Some people fooled themselves into thinking they'd done it, but it always turns out that they've used the parallel postulate in another version. That's called a circular argument, or as I like to say, the thing I like about tautologies is that they are always true. Assume your conclusion and you can "prove" anything

Now, here's the deal. You can ask, "What happens if I replace the parallel postulate with something else?" But that's reasoning outside the system. It is kind of like looking at the creation stories in the OT and asking, "Who did Seth and Cain and Abel marry, anyway? Was there some Nede (that's Eden backwards) downstream a ways?"

Anyway, back to Euclid. An Italian named Saccheri thought he was entirely too clever, and realized that there are three possibilities. (1) That Euclid was right, and there's exactly one parallel line; or (2) that there are no parallel lines through that point; or, (3) there are at least two distinct parallel lines through that point. If Saccheri could show that possibilities (2) and (3) lead to contradictions of the other postulates (or theorems proven from them), then all that's left is possibility (1). That is, he would have proven Euclid's parallel postulate by showing it's the only logically consistent possibility.

Saccheri took on possibility (2) first, that there are no such thing as parallel lines. He showed pretty quickly that if there are no parallel lines, then lines must have a finite length. One of Euclid's other axioms was that lines could be extended indefinitely. Bang! One down, one to go. So he took on the possibility that there are two (or more) parallel lines through that given point. Here's the thing -- you don't run into any logical contradiction when there are two or more parallels through that point. Ooops. But Saccheri convinced himself he had found a contradiction, and therefore thought he'd proven the parallel postulate.

Too bad, because he had hyperbolic geometry sitting right at his fingertips 200 years before Bolyai and Lobachevsky independently discovered it. Why was it so important to find a contradiction? Everybody thought Euclid must be right.

So, here's the deal. If you're going to do geometry, you basically have four choices:
1. Do what's called neutral geometry -- make no assumptions at all about the existence of parallel lines;
2. Do Euclidean geometry -- assume that there is exactly one parallel line through that pesky point;
3. Do Hyperbolic (really ought to Bolyaian or Lobachevskian) geometry -- there are at least two parallel lines through that point;
4. Do Riemannian geometry -- assume that there are no parallel lines and that lines have finite length.

Here's the thing. Neutral geometry is universal, in that anything you prove in it is always true in all three of the other systesm. It's kind of a universal geometry in that respect. But there's lots of stuff you can't prove in neutral geometry. Euclidean geometry is an ideal case, the geometry of things called planes that don't exist in our reality.
Hyperbolic geometry is the geometry of the surface of something called a pseudosphere, it kind of looks like two trombone bells stuck mouth to mouth. And Riemannian geometry is the geometry of the surface of spheres. We know that the other three geometries are consistent if Euclidean geometry is consistent.

So, in geometry, you have pick one. If you're using geometry as a model, you can ask if it's a good model or a bad one. If you're trying to navigate on the earth's surface, Riemann's geometry is more useful than Euclid's. (Funny thing: folks figured that out a long time before Riemann discovered the geometry named after him.) But you can't argue about whether there are no, one, or twelve parallels inside the systems.

So here's the deal. As long as you're carrying the axiom that the bible is inerrant, we can't have a meaningful discussion, because you get to retreat back to your axiom: the Bible says so, therefore it's true. But that's a circular argument. You believe the Bible is inerrant, so if the Bible says so, it must be true because the Bible's inerrant because the Bible says so. I feel like my dog chasing my tail right now.

So, if you want to have an intelligent discussion about it, I'd love to. But you can't apply Biblical inerrancy. Otherwise, we might as well join Frank Zappa and dance about architecture. We'd have more fun with that.

Until then, I'd appreciate it if you kept your religious beliefs out of our Constitution. Yeah, it doesn't say squat about separation of Church and State, but for sure Thomas Jefferson said it. So did Madison. If you have a problem with that, I want you to conduct a thought-experiment. Suppose that Mormons keep growing at the current (near exponential) rate. Suppose they become a majority of the US electorate and Mitt Romney IV gets elected President. Do you want them incoporating Mormon religious principles into our legal system? I didn't think so.