To re-hijack Iky's latest hijack attempt over in the politics forum, a few salient points:

The preamble of the Constitution invokes the people of the United States. It does not invoke any sort of God.

The Constitution forbids any religious test to hold office. A godless person is just as eligible as a godly one! (Article 6, Paragraph 3)

"When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some." Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Lee v. Weisman, 1992

Those who wrote the preamble were very clear. "In God we trust?" No, in the people they trust.

This country was founded on the consent of the governed, NOT divine will.

204 years after the Constitution was ratified.

In 1799, merely 11 years after the Constitution was ratified, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote the Court's opinion in Runkel v. Winemiller which included:

"Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people.

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty."





Hardly. Just because you spontaneously burst into flames whenever God and Christianiity are supported in posts, doesn't mean the thread was "hijacked".

This country was founded on the declared premise that all men are created equal by their Creator, a Creator who has endowed them with certain unalienable rights, whereas men have the right to alter or to abolish any government destructive to that premise.

Runkel v. Winemiller was a Maryland Supreme Court case, not a U.S. Supreme case, and Chase was a justice of the Maryland Supreme Court. His opinion may have be of great interest in Maryland in 1799, but it has no legal authority now, not even in Maryland.

Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.--Thomas Jefferson, 1808

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. --Thomas Jefferson, 1814

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." --Thomas Jefferson, 1816

Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live. --Thomas Jefferson, 1820

No, they have the right to alter or abolish any government which is destructive to them. How we came to be is in no sense relevant.

Don’t mean to play one-upsman on you but the Treaty of Tripoli was read into the Senate by John Adams and approved by the Senate in 1797 (May 26, 1797 to be exact).

I’m sure you know the language from the treaty that states “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”.

And yet fourteen years earlier John Adams signed the Paris Peace Treaty in which the British Crown recognized the United States to be independent, free, and sovereign.

Are you familiar with that preamble?

"The Definitive Treaty of Peace 1783

In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.

It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch-treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc., and of the United States of America,..."

Why do you think deists would sign such a monumental treaty between the US and Great Britain beginning with "In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity"?

Btw, the Treaty of Tripoli was rendered void, and its renegotiated replacement was ratified without Article 11.

Maybe because it was part of the salutation to the king of England, like the rest of your quote, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the nature or character of the government of the United States. A pathetic effort, Iky, really.



Actually it was only void because the Barbary Pirates broke it, and the "replacement" has a very similar but slightly differently-worded clause. Why would the actual Founding Fathers sign the original and ratify it unanimously if it wasn't true?