Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia believes in the devil.
You believe in heaven and hell?
Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?No.
Oh, my.Does that mean I’m not going?
[Laughing.] Unfortunately not!It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other.
But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it?
Of course not!Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?Can we talk about your drafting process—
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.No.
It’s because he’s smart.So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the Devil’s work?
I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.Well, you’re saying the Devil is persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.Right.
What happened to him?He just got wilier.
He got wilier.Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.
Jesus fucking christ. I’m speechless.
The power of speech returns to me. That interview by Scalia is pure religiously driven anti-intellectualism — he short-circuits reasoned thought about an issue to fall back on dogma, the doctrine of the Catholic church, and on popular opinion — hey, lots of good Catholics believe in the devil, therefore my belief is justified.
The Catholic church also believes witches should be killed. Does he believe in witches, then, and does he agree that they deserve the death penalty? If a million Catholics thought it was a good idea to strangle a puppy before breakfast, would Scalia be making daily trips to the animal shelter?
This view of Scalia’s is the antithesis of mine. When I was a church-going kid, the final straw for me was going through confirmation classes and being told that good Lutherans had to believe in every word of the Nicene creed. I did not say, “I’m a good Lutheran, therefore I believe this.” I looked critically at what I was asked to believe, judged whether it was true and reasonable, and decided, “I do not believe any of this, therefore I am not a Lutheran.” Or a Christian of any kind, for that matter.
Scalia is a mindless ape. Why is he on the Supreme Court again? Oh, yeah, he was appointed by that senile evil goon, Reagan.
Except in the House of Representatives.
He is a horrible little man.
He’s not quite right about what I do. I won’t get into particulars, but I do spend some of my time making
Antonin Scalia think he’s righteous, in the face of blistering evidence to the contrary. It isn’t easy.
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird, just because I don’t believe in in door plumbing. My God! Are you so out of touch. I mean, Jesus Christ shitted in a hole besides the road! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the superiority of an outhouse! Most of mankind has shit in buckets or holes on one kind or another, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have shit in holes before.
I somehow managed to miss the introduction to the blockquote and thought this was some imaginary dialogue in a tract distributed to soldiers or something. Imagine my horror when I scrolled back up.
And then they complain when you bring up the talking snake or flying horse…
So presumably, ‘the Devil made me do it’ would be a valid defense before this justice?
So, we don’t see the devil possessing people or making pigs run off cliffs “because he’s smart”? That kind of “reasoning” always reminds me of the old silly joke: “Have you ever seen an elephant hiding behind a tree?”
Actually Catholics believe that the only admission to heaven is to be canonized by the pope – ie become a saint. Only saints are in heaven. Or, at least the pope believes this. And of course the pope is infallible, therefore it must be right.
So, if someone fools the Pope into canonizing him (say, by giving the pope lots and lots of money), then even if god doesn’t want that person in heaven, they must still be there. In other words, it must be god that’s wrong, because the pope can’t be?
wcorvi, that’s a misunderstanding of the doctrine.
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/are-canonized-saint-the-only-people-in-heaven
I’m disappointed that the interviewer didn’t go on to ask Scalia about why *God* wasn’t doing much active stuff nowadays. If you think the Devil has been inactive in recent years, and that leads to more atheists – then what about the inactivity and massive drop-off in number of miracles that are supposedly done by God? Is God then trying to create more atheists?
Well, the part about “only admission to heaven is to be canonized by the pope” is a misunderstanding. Everyone who goes to heaven is thereby considered a saint. Including dear old granny.
As to whether or not one use the Pope to bypass God … I don’t want to spoil the next Kevin Smith movie.
The doctrine is: Saints are the only people in Heaven, because that’s the definition of “saint”. But canonization doesn’t make people saints — it’s just a formal recognition that they already are saints. As Scalia says, for most cases, we can’t judge; the recognized saints are just the people for whom we’re really, really sure that they made it in, because they meet a certain set of criteria.
Also, Scalia is right: most people do believe in the devil, even a great many very smart people. I don’t see where anything he said is surprising. Disappointing, maybe, but not surprising.
The Devil is a kind of anti-sockpuppet. Christians use him to almost define their opponents as evil. Don’t agree with Christianity? Well, the Devil tricked you. Have a bunch of evidence for the theory of evolution? Well, the Devil planted it. Don’t have any evidence that the Devil exists? Well, the Devil is really good at hiding. It’s on par with propositions such as “What if we’re all brains in a vat?” or “What if we’re in the Matrix?” except we’re being accused of being evil for not being able to detect the simulation.
Holy crap, that’s not parody? Wow.
You never hear of a Christian worrying about going to Muslim hell, or Nordic Hel, why should I worry about Catholic hell?
The Pope is only supposed to be infallible when making pronouncements ex cathedra, otherwise not.
Because more people believe in Catholic hell than any other hell. Why, it’s the very same hell that Pascal warned us about!
And if that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.
P.S. Truthfully, I’m not even disappointed, because hey, he said that a) non-believers could go to Heaven, and b) Satanic inspiration is not the only motivation to atheism. Think how few right-wing evangelical fundies would agree with either of those statements.
Now, as a non-believer in Heaven, you may wonder why I care whether he thinks I can go there. It’s because, if you’ve already condemned someone to Hell in your own mind, I think you’re less likely to treat them with respect in the here and now.
I’m surprised that Jennifer Senior, the interviewer, actually states she doesn’t believe in Heaven and Hell. Given how God besotted a lot of US workplaces apparently are you’d think she’d be a bit worried about pissing off her coworkers. Or bosses. At the very least she’s likely to get a lot of nasty emails from nincompoops.
The Devil isn’t really a biblical character anyway. Satan works for Yahweh as an agent provocateur(see the booke of Job) and the idea that the snake in Eden was Satan/Lucifer is 2nd century theology not supported by the earlier scripture. Lucifer specifically is only mentioned once ambiguously and was probably an oblique reference to Nebuchanesser, it’s not even clear whether the capitalisation in the KJV was an error.The whole fallen angel schtick is way later and re-inforced in the cultural imagination by Dante’s divine comedy.
However if you go back to 1000/1200 or so BC to Zoroaster, then you have a genuine evil deity in Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) which may have crept somewhat into Jewish theology during the Babylonian captivity and into Christianity via Augustine of Hippo who flirted with Manicheism (and by association Zoroastriansm) before converting.
I really, really wish the Constitution had term limits for SCOTUS judges. 20 years or something. The fact that a guy like this gets to interpret the Constitution is frightening.
Earlier in the article he says he thinks flogging is Constitutional, too. He’s so committed to his notion of originalism that he thinks that since flogging wasn’t considered cruel and unusual in 1789, then it must not be cruel and unusual. I can’t get my head around this, that he thinks we have to live exactly the way the founding fathers wanted us to 200 years ago based entirely upon their outdated worldview. Cruel and unusual has to be defined as what the writers of the declaration thought was cruel and unusual? This is an untenable legal doctrine. Oh wait, maybe since he believes in the devil as a literal person he also believes he can commune with the souls of the founders and discover their true intent….
Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse in a Supreme Court Justice, religious beliefs that demonstrate an inability to grasp reality or legal constructs that make no sense whatsoever. That this man has so much power is terrifying.
@mattand – With a twenty year term limit, Scalia’s replacement would have been selected by G.W. Bush.
Hey, speaking of the court, did you guys know that John Roberts appoints ALL of the FISA surveillance court judges. No one else, just John Roberts.
I need to stop reading this article:
The Washington Times? Fine, the Post is “liberal”, but the TIMES? The mouthpiece of the Moonies? And this man gets one of only nine votes in determining what is and isn’t constitutional? This alone is reason to go out and vote for whatever Democrat is running for President. Every. Single. Time. We really can’t afford another of these clowns getting onto the court.
Scalia’s belief in a pile of theological nonsense is unsettling, but to me it is ultimately less important than his adherence to the intellectually bankrupt doctrine of originalism. The main problem with originalism, the doctrine of interpreting the Constitution as the framers intended, is that it is self-contradictory, because there is no evidence that the framers of the Constitution intended the document to be interpreted in accord with their original intent. In short, by promoting originalism, Scalia is engaging in intellectual fraud. And because he is a Supreme Court Justice, this fraud has far-reaching consequences.
The Devil works through Scalia Y’all!
Originalism.
Not to mention that it’s pretty clear the founding fathers never intended anyone to vote except for white property-owning men. And that they either supported or tolerated slavery.
Under that definition of “Catholic”, there’s maybe one million Catholics in Europe.
Uh, wait, wait, wait. It probably took them till the 2nd Vatican Council, but the Catholic Church no longer believes in witches – and it is consistent enough in its “pro-life” stance to be against the death penalty, removing it pretty far from Scalia’s .
You know, you could fully accept his ludicrous position and amend the big-C Constitution.
It’s quite ridiculous that you still count your amendments after 220 years!
I really wish people would stop saying he’s a smart legal mind. to this outsider he looks like a hupocritical simpleton
Originalism sounds a lot like literalism in Biblical studies. Although we may have more commentary about the Constitution by the Framers than we do the Bible, any so-called “literal” interpretation is still just someone’s opinion. Anyone who claims to be using “only the words” in their original intent is self-delusional and probably prone to confirmation bias. But then this guy believes in gods and devils.
This quote from Scalia comes very close to an apt description of the mormon version of the Devil. As “The Adversary,” the mormon version sneakily turns people away from God by making them doubt the mormon church and its leaders. The mormon Satan also has a deep and abiding interest in deploying sex to dissuade mormon missionaries from accomplishing their tasks.
As for the way we imagine Satan, Milton’s Paradise Lost has a lot to do with that.
It’s incredibly hard to amend the Constitution. Not just incredibly hard like “it’s incredibly hard to play like Art Tatum.” More like “it’s incredibly hard to convince three-quarters of the American population of anything.” Remember that to get a Constitutional amendment passed, it requires 3/4ths of the states ratifying the amendment after a supermajority in both houses of Congress passes the amendment.
This is the country in which less than half of its population considers evolution to be true. The government is shut down because we have a house of the legislature which refuses to fund a law signed into law three years ago and found to pass constitutional muster. Shit, if you asked every American whether they preferred Coke or Pepsi, a third would say, “I don’t know.” The last Constitutional amendment with any measure of controversy was fifty years ago, with the end of poll taxes. We can’t even get 3/4ths of Americans to agree women are people (Equal Rights Amendment)!
–>But does Scalia believe in Kaiser Soze?
@robro: Originalism is just a tiny bit more nuanced than that, but not by much. Originalism asserts that we should interpret the Constitution using only the meanings that the framers intended its provisions to mean, but it is not a suggestion that we should only look at the bare words of the document. Instead, originalism asserts that we should look at the writings and accepted practices of the period to determine what words mean.
This is how Scalia gets to the position that flogging is Constitutionally permissible. At the time the Constitution was written, several states had flogging as an accepted judicial punishment. Therefore, Scalia reasons, the eighth amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment cannot prohibit flogging, because the people who wrote the document didn’t seem to think flogging was either cruel or unusual. Essentially, Scalia says we are locked into reading the document in a manner identical to the manner he presumes people would have read it in the 1790s. Given that there is no evidence that the framers intended this method of interpretation to prevail, making originalism entirely self-contradictory, it is a wholly fraudulent way of interpreting the document.
At an event in Colorado in July, Scalia talked about 1930s Germany in a way that caused some head-desking at the time … then everyone conveniently forgot about it:
This is the really bad part:
This is only true under the white european concept of history where “most of mankind” “for all of history” has been christian. It isn’t true on planet earth where there hasn’t been a single moment in “all of history” at which “most of mankind has believed in the devil.”
He really tries to have it both ways here, and ends up making no sense.
The core of it is that Scalia doesn’t give a shit about people or harm or the purpose of law, the law itself is it’s own goal and end.
He wants people to live for the law regardless of whether it’s healthy or makes sense
Whatever the Catholic Hell happened to extra Ecclesiam nulla salus?
Shit, Scalia’s not even well informed when it comes to Catholic teachings.
But you don’t have to be Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it?
Of course not!
When I was a kid my best friend was Catholic and she was most definitely taught that only Catholics got into heaven, period. And from here, the expanded explanation, which also should make PZ ashamed, ASHAMED, I SAY!!!, for using the body of Christ in a derogatory manner. Now, a rusty nail, a few ripped-out pages of the Qur’an and The God Delusion, some old coffee grounds and a banana peel are going to heaven. (If you don’t click links and read religious propaganda here’s the short version: “The Catholic Church is the necessary instrument by which one can know Jesus. Thus, without the Catholic Church no salvation is possible. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” If you don’t crunch the cracker, you don’t pass the pearly gates.)
I find it interesting that the Catholic church won’t give communion to anyone who isn’t Catholic, since they would be saving those poor souls from eternal damnation.
Please remember that Scalia said this back in 2002.
“He’s making pigs run off cliffs”
Now that’s truly embarrissing – it was Scalia’s personal saviour, who lived 2000 years ago and had that resurrection thing who made those pigs run off cliffs.
It’s an interesting story as it expressed the Hebrew wish to get rid of the Romans (who are the pigs). So at one hand Jesus didn’t care much about animal rights and at the other hand the story tells us Jesus was a failure – the Romans were there to stay for another couple of centuries.
Holy motherfucking shitballs!
Then again, why should I be surprised at this. It was, after all, Scalia, who said that, once convicted of a capital crime, a person should be executed, even if that person were later (but prior to the execution) found innocent)!
Mind you, in Canada, our federal minister of science is a creationist! (headdesk headdesk, waiting for the next election and Justin Trudeau).
I’ll have to disagree with the above interpretations of Scalia’s Originalism. What Scalia really and always means is that the framers have always agreed with what Scalia personally thinks and he will go through any verbal or intellectual contortions to prove it.
And wait until Scalia finds out about how the framers felt about papists (and the devil for that matter)….oh boy, is he gonna be disappointed.
Chief Justice Delusional.
I feel a strange urge to Find and Replace “the Devil” with “God” and laugh my ass off. Because the Devil didn’t even have many tricks to begin with, but the absence of God’s magic act is even more notable and even less logical.
Doesn’t Scalia sound like every other befuddled right-winger with a religious bent? Slightly more well spoken thanks to his education, but fundamentally a fundamentalist.
Here’s more on his anti-gay rhetoric:
Slate link.
Scenes From A Multiverse weighs in.
Obviously, he’s not a real judge, to accept something as hugely important as the existence of the christian god, based on such flimsy evidence.
I know, I know. Communist Yugoslavia having fallen, it’s the hardest remaining constitution in the world to amend.
That, too, is ridiculous.
what
*blink*
what
No, they made heaps and heaps of new laws. They didn’t interpret existing ones, they abolished them en masse. Back to middle school, Tony-boy.
Full of win.
Satan gets such a bad rap. As Steve Wells pointed out in Drunk With Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible, it wasn’t the devil slaughtering people left and right on a whim.
It’s amazing how the monsters under my bed and in my closet got so much more clever too when I grew up.
Here’s some good news from the Supreme Court:
It is possible to occasionally defeat the right-wingers. If we elect Republican Presidents who appoint more Scalia types to the Supreme Court, all bets are off.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/10/07/2742221/cuccinelli-sodomy-supreme-court-loss/
As Steve Wells pointed out in Drunk With Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible, it wasn’t the devil slaughtering people left and right on a whim.
Stephen Brust did a novel about that, in which Satan was cast as the loser in an authoritarian war about heaven and whatnot, history being rewritten by the winner to make the losing side look all evil and stuff. I thought the idea was very clever.
@Marcus Ranum, #55:
And of course, His Dark Materials. The least critical reading of the Bible and some of the later interpretations of it makes it quite easy to cast Yahweh as the villain and Satan/Lucifer as the hero. Even with all the works that have done it, there’s still a lot of rich material there. I mean come on, Yahweh wants his people to stay ignorant, never eat of the tree of knowledge, is jealous, wants to be worshiped and praised constantly, slaughters millions, hands down often bizarre sets of onerous laws, and plays manipulative games with his most loyal followers. Casting the Satan, Lucifer, and the Serpent all in one as the bringer of light, the dispenser of knowledge, and the adversary to an authoritarian God is much more interesting and thought provoking.
And one should never forget that Scalia (along with Rehnquist) very strongly dissented with the rest of the supreme court in the Edwards v. Aguillard court case by insisting that teaching “creation science” [sic, 1] to school children actually served a secular purpose. That way the children get “to decide for themselves how life began [sic, 2], based upon a fair and balanced presentation of the scientific [sic, 3] evidence”.
1. An obvious oxymoron that only the willfully ignorant could fail to detect.
2. Evolution is not abiogenesis.
3. There is no science in creationism. Interesting that Scalia and Rehnquist both ignored that “72 Nobel prize-winning scientists,[1] 17 state academies of science, and seven other scientific organizations filed amicus briefs which described creation science as being composed of religious tenets” at the original trial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_v._Aguillard
Scalia is profoundly scientifically illiterate, which makes it quite easy for him to embrace religious absurdities. Of course the latter may actually be the cause of the former.
Because more people believe in Catholic hell than any other hell.
If I may quote the inestimable Eddie Lee; “Chinese have a lot of hells.”
I wish the interviewer had asked him why, if Satan is so powerful a trickster, how can we know anything to be true? How do we know that Satan didn’t write the bible? How do we know Jesus wasn’t Satan in disguise, luring people away from the true faith of Judaism?
I’ll have to disagree with the above interpretations of Scalia’s Originalism. What Scalia really and always means is that the framers have always agreed with what Scalia personally thinks and he will go through any verbal or intellectual contortions to prove it.
That would actually be less damaging than the version he promotes. If Scalia adhered to that judicial philosophy, then no one would take originalism seriously. Instead, by painting over the shittiness of originalism with a verneer of respectability, they make it palatable and, as Scalia noted, get intellectual frauds who espouse it into the faculty of places like Harvard Law School.
Scaly, Scalia, Scalier.
My response to Scalia’s originalist dogma is, appropriately enough, taken from the words of a Mr. T. Jefferson, a Virginian who might have had some vague ideas of the intent of the founders of the USA:
Monticello (emphasis added by me)
So one of the founders said, “Don’t try and keep governing just the way we have just because we’re the ones who did it; laws must move with the times and the people’s will.” Answer, Mr. Scalia? I didn’t think so.
Confirmation and the Nicene Creed… That was exactly how it went down for me too. My family was nominally Catholic but rarely went to mass. I did first communion but have no memory of that. I do remember going to CCD (catechism) classes as a young teen. I couldn’t go through with it. I must have been the only person taking it seriously. One of my best friends begged me to ‘just do it anyway’ but I couldn’t. There was no way I could believe that stuff they asked me to believe. How can ANYONE believe it?
Even taking all of this into account, I still think Clarence Thomas is the most noisome justice.
God Is The Final Arbiter.
What function does Scalia think he is performing?
Hey, you know what else could make people not believe in God or the devil…?
As has been pointed out, that’s… not quite how that verse went down.
I’m about as far removed from a biblical scholar as you can get; but as far as I’m aware, despite getting blamed for all the ills of the world, Satan/the devil is only directly responsible for a few things in the bible —
* Depending how you look at it: either giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil, or just offering a persuasive dare to eat some fruit (And that’s only if you credit Satan as being the serpent, which isn’t actually clear)
* Being God’s poker buddy, in the bet over Job
* Tempting Jesus to get off his arse and do something
I guess he also features (at least metaphorically) in Revelation, but most of the horrible events in that acid trip are God’s work, not Satan’s.
Is there anything else specific that is actually attributable to the devil?
Err, shouldn’t we have a 200+ comment derail about PZ using a slur? *eyeroll*
What kind of person is Scalia, such that calling him an ape would be a slur?
And if you can’t answer that, then: Azkyroth, why are you passive-aggressively trying to start a fight?
This devil guy sounds like a pretty tricky bastard. I guess I’d better just do what he wants and not believe in him, then.
tsraveling @69, yes, the devil guy is a tricky bastard.
Cross-posted from the [Lounge] thread:
Shady Republican and Supreme Court Justice Scalia is looking for more ways to help his friends eat all the pie.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/08/2750331/the-shady-trick-justice-scalia-plans-to-use-to-inject-even-more-big-money-into-elections/
I’m bringing your new internet. Where should I put it? It’s heavy…
Mushroom trip. :-) Sliced mushrooms are, some think, even mentioned in the text (as “scrolls” which the narrator eats between the parts of the trip).
Not that I remember. Try the apocryphal Book of (H)enoch… assuming Azazel is Satan, anyway.
David Marjanović
If the US constitution weren’t so difficult to amend, we’d all be well and truly fucked. For every good idea, there are a hundred bad ones, and enough stupid Americans to vote in their favor. Which is really a sorry state of affairs.
In my opinion the US constitution is centuries out of date and needs to be completely rewritten, Even Jefferson expected that to happen every generation. Retain the good ideas such as separation of church and state, checks and balances, freedom of speech and so forth, but get rid of the antiquated and irrelevant text. and bring it up to date. It should be a living document and reasonable easy to ammend. Get rid of super majorities which are nothing but tyranny by the minority (witness Congress now). And definitely have term limits on Supreme Court justices.
Can it be that much worse than in other places?
Well, at present, some of the checks & balances lead to paradoxical situations like the current shutdown. Elsewhere, the government (the administration in US terms) depends on parliament, so when the government can’t get a law passed, it’s fired, and this triggers new parliamentary elections, according to the outcome of which a new government is formed. In the USA, you simply shut the state down instead and drift towards national bankruptcy.
74
David Marjanović
…I seriously want the Fire Them All solution.
We have the Fire Them All solution. We call it double dissolution. It has some caveats about when they’re able to actually do it, but it’s possible and has been done.
Of course we have mandatory preferential voting. And we still got the right wing in because Murdoch :( But they don’t control the Australian Senate.
@20/Steve Bowen
This. This this this. Knowledge is the antidote to fear. Spread this around!
And, as has been mentioned upthread several times, if anything Satan is Yahweh’s betting buddy. I wonder why so few biblical scholars or apologists concede the obvious here and admit that at best we’re the stakes in a Lovecraftian game of poker?
@56: FWIW, the Gnostics seem to have believed (hard to tell given how much of their beliefs were secret) that Yahweh *WAS* the Devil, basically. They called him the “Demiurge”. They believed that there was a different, good God, who didn’t create the universe, but that the universe was created by this evil God.
Weird, goofy belief system. Makes a lot more sense of the Bible than conventional Christianity does, though.
Regarding the US Constitution:
Yes.
It’s sufficiently bad that when American experts were sent in to advise on the drafting of the German and Japanese Constitutions after WWII, the first thing they said was “don’t copy the US Constitution!”
Among the major problems:
(1) The badly designed “checks and balances” system leads to gridlock and paralysis in Congress frequently
(2) Lifetime appointment for judges combined with an all-powerful Supreme Court which can overturn any law, even on a gross whim, leads to politicization of the court system
(3) Despite the “checks and balances”, it’s practically impossible to remove a dictatorial President, even if he announces that he’s going to murder people with robots with no oversight (which he has done), because impeachment conviction requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate, which is impossible.
(4) The Senate is grotesquely malapportioned — completely undemocratic — and yet it not only has the power to stop legislation, it acts as the only check against the President on treaties and executive branch appointments.
(5) Single-member first-past-the-post districts lead to a two-party system thanks to Duverger’s Law,…
(6) …and we don’t even have fair redistricting like the UK does, we have gross gerrymandering, which nobody has been able to stop, which makes the system even less democratic.
We’ve ended up with a system which is extremely nonresponsive to the public, very expensive, and tends to gridlock and shut down frequently. Due to the gridlock it is prone to dictatorial creep: when someone (President, Supreme Court) *does something* they often get away with it even if it’s grossly illegal because at least someone is *doing something*.
We could do worse but it would be hard. Presidential systems are defective compared to parliamentary, and we have Presidential. Single-member districts are defective compared to proportional representation, and we have single-member districts. Nobody in the world considers the US Senate to be democratic, and it is far more powerful than comparable upper houses, which makes the US blatantly less democratic. We have the worst structural aspects of most of the democratic systems ever tried; I suppose we could do worse by establishing term limits.
The Bill of Rights is a great thing. The structural parts of the Constitution? They suck. To be fair, they didn’t have much to compare it to in the 1780s, but we know better now.