^^^^i wasnt stating that.....sorry
I think people tend to forget that our country had immigrants (pilgrims) from Europe come here because of the religious governments (Catholic church) who were oppressing people.
We all learned this in elementry school, right?
So when we say "Freedom of Religion", in a sense, it means "Freedom from religion". This was written to protect the government from oppressing religions. Same with seperation between church and state. The early Americans who really started the country did not want the idea of God to run the country.
2-0 sixx Here are some quotes from presidents:
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." - John Adams
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" - John Adams
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." - Thomas Jefferson
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter." - Thomas Jefferson
"...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, 'Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,' which was rejected 'By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.'" - Thomas Jefferson
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man." - Thomas Jefferson
"Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together"[/I] - James Madison
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." - James Madison
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