[PieterCasparzen]

An “equal TOLERATION of Conscience,” Livingston wrote, “is justly deem’d the Basis of public Liberty in this Country.” To Madison, for whom America “offer[ed] an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion,” an established, official, obligatory religion, with dogmas you must profess, though it is seemingly “distant from the Inquisition, . . . differs from it only in degree.

There's the one loophole that heathens exploit, however, which can only be eliminated by either a) assuming that it is implicitly prohibited or b) amending the Constitution to add in an explicit prohibition. A religion or ideology that seeks to subvert the existing religions and eliminate them can not be logically tolerated without America being reduced to what is no better and most likely worse than what the original settlers fled from to come here.

[scott7278]

I wish I could go back in time and give the Founders a snapshot of our downgraded America, so that they could build in some safeguards.

All religions would be tolerated, so long as they conformed to the ideals of the U.S. Constitution. Any attempt to infringe upon another’s rights under the guise of religion - atheism, secular humanism, or agnosticism included - would be intolerable.