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Nowhere in the Bible does it state that "all men are created equal" and have rights derived from God. Despite what Jefferson claimed in the D of I, it is not something self-evident. It is an idea that originated with Thomas Hobbes.

I never said the Bible stated anything. If you're saying that rights are not self-evident, and they don't come from God, then where do they come from? On what basis do we assert them and why aren't they subject to the whims of the government? The fact is, the founders asserted that those enumerated rights, among others, come directly from God and that they should be obvious to anyone reading the document. More than just stating an interesting bit of trivia, they used that assertion to justify their independence.

"We've given it some thought, and we think these are good ideas; that all men are created equal, that we think they should have the following rights..."

Now, you're free to believe this is all smoke and mirrors, but, it is how the founders asserted their right to separate from England, and established the grounds for defining a legitimate government. Congress reasserts this in a minor piece of legislation years later. What is wrong with that? Would you have prefered that Congress instead issued similar legislation denying the existance of God, and thus hacking out the foundation of our form of government. Sure, maybe you'd win out and reason would prevail. Then again, maybe the doctrine of the powerful over the powerless would win out, which, BTW, you can justify with reason, I'll bet.

Atheism is not a belief system, and certainly cannot be used as a basis for a constitutional republic. Never claimed it did. If you know someone is an atheist, that doesn't tell you what they believe, only what they don't. An atheist can be a person of reason or simply a cynical nihilist. What an atheist does believe outside the issue of the existence of God can be anything, just as a religionist's beliefs outside of the same basic issue can be anything -- which is why you can have atheistic monstrosities like the Soviet Union and religious monstrosities like the Taliban. Religion is no safeguard whatsoever against relativism. Every religious person who sincerely believes that there is a heaven and hell and that certain beliefs and actions will send you to one or the other, necessarily believes that those who don't believe as they do are going to hell. That's relativism. The only safeguard against relativism is reason and objectivity, which is anathema to religion. One believes because one has a subjective faith, not because one can point to some objective fact of reality to prove the existence of God. God is beyond reason, as the religionists say. Belief in God requires faith, not reason. It's subjective and relative.

You know and I know we're talking about Christianity here. The founders were Christian, their contemporaries were Christian, the audience of their documents was Christian. They didn't need to spell all of it out. Furthermore, there is a distinction to be made between a religion, and the behavior of its followers. Certainly, if you take any religion, over its entire history (which is sometimes millenia) you're going to find inconsistencies in the behavior of its followers. However I think its fair to say that the concept of the rights of the individual is certainly a Christian concept in the sense of what religion was most responsible for promoting and implementing it.

The founders and their contempories believed in God. They used that faith as the basis for creating this country. By definition, an atheist believes there is no God. Why he believes it is irrelevant. If we, as a country, believe there is no God, than the justification for our rights ceases to exist, as stated by the founders.

I don't buy that reason and religion are incompatible, at least not in the case of Christianity. Certainly, reason isn't a new invention. In fact, you can make a good argument that it was "invented" and nurtured by the Church, at least in the history of Western society. I don't think its altogether inaccurate to say that religion is the search for truth while reason is the search for rationality. The two need not be mutually exclusive, but they can be. Certainly most religions don't claim to have all the answers, only enough of the answers.

The most basic belief of our system of government is not a belief in God, but INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. Muslim terrorists also share a belief in God. What they DON'T share is a respect for individual rights. My right to voice my opinion about religion in America rests on a legal respect for individual rights -- not a belief in God.

Once again, individual rights can mean anything to anybody. You can make reasonable arguments to add or detract from any of them. The genious of the founders in asserting that they come from God is that they can then not be questioned, without admitting that God does not exist. Certainly no one of the time would have done so in public, even the King of England.

...I don't have contempt for religion or for any shred of religious sentiment in public life, only for those who seek to use it as a weapon of power over others. If you really trusted the strength and truth of your religion, you would feel no need to force it on others in any legal way.

How is acknowledging the beliefs of the founders being used as a weapon of power, or being forced on others? No one is required to hold those beliefs. No one is required to say the pledge of allegience. No on is forcing anyone into a church or a religion. God is asserted as the source of our rights. The preservation of those rights is the purpose of government. The congress is affirming that through some legislation. I don't see why this is so wrong.

The Founders believed that the United States couldn't possibly succeed if there weren't a moral populace, and the easiest way to instill morals was through religion. They knew that a forced belief would not be a sincere belief, and that if this country were to succeed, religion and morality would need to be freely and honestly chosen. Note that they could have chosen a religious motto for the U.S., but instead chose a SECULAR one. And if you read what was being discussed at the time of the formation of the Constitution, you would know that many were offended and thought it blasphemy that the framers chose not to acknowledge God in the Constitution (with the very minor exception of "...in the year of our Lord..."). There was a religious preamble drawn up for the Constitution, but it was rejected. And when it was suggested that the words "Jesus Christ" be put into Virginia's statute of religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson commented that "The insertion 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 Mohometan, the Hindoo and the infidel of every denomination." On what basis do you claim that "There is little doubt that this country was designed to be a Christian nation"? You count on Jefferson's words for one argument, but ignore him in another? Relativism anyone?

The constitution is predicated on the declaration. You cannot assert that the delegates had any right to gather for the purpose of writing that document absent the declaration. It was very enlightened and magnanimous of them to keep religion out of the formation of the government (though the right to form a government is asserted as coming from God).

A quote or two from Jefferson:

"How necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice."

"He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science."

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever"

John Adams:

"Statesmen...may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.

The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty"

"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government whith the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration...they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct"

Ben Franklin:

"The worship of God is a duty...Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature....I never doubted the existence of the Deity, that he made the world, and governed it by His Providence...The pleasures of this world are rather from God's goodness than our own merit...Whoever shall introduce into the public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world..."

Where do rights come from? "Rights" is a human concept, brought into the world the way any other concept is, through the power of the human mind to conceptualize, and its truthfulness depends on its correspondence to reality, not to any faith. Since rights are not mentioned in the Bible, how do we know that God gave them to us? It might be self-evident to you, but it certainly isn't self-evident to me or to many others. And if God did give us rights, did he give them only to men, since the D of I only says that it's self-evident that "all MEN are created equal?" If women are also created equal, are we then to assume that their rights are not self-evident?

"Now, you're free to believe this is all smoke and mirrors, but, it is how the founders asserted their right to separate from England, and established the grounds for defining a legitimate government."

I don't think it's smoke and mirrors. I believe the founders did the best that they could in the context of their understanding of the world at the time and what could reasonably be accomplished then. Saying that all MEN are created equal is HOW they asserted their right to separate from England and established their grounds, so why aren't we changing the Pledge to say "with liberty and justice for all MEN?" in line with the Founders? If what the Founders' stated in the D of I is to be treated as self-evident, then we have built a country on the self-evident premise that only MEN have rights derived from God. Where then do women's rights come from? Those rights, apparently, aren't self-evident.

"You know and I know we're talking about Christianity here."

You may be talking about Christianity here, but the Pledge inserted the words "under God," not "under Christ." Again, you cite Jefferson on the one hand to justify the idea of God-given rights, but ignore him when he explicitly states that religious liberty was meant not just for different sects of Christianity, but was meant to apply to all religions as well as infidels. This shows you need not be an atheist to be a relativist.

"The genious of the founders in asserting that they come from God is that they can then not be questioned, without admitting that God does not exist. Certainly no one of the time would have done so in public, even the King of England."

Really? Then explain this Jefferson quote: "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

You provided different quotes from Jefferson and others to prove their Christianity, but I know enough of the literature of the time to know that for every quote you can find to support your view, I can find one to support mine (my view being that the Founders were "Christian" only in the most general sense, and that many doubted the mystical elements of the religion - they had more in common with Deists than contemporary Christians). Notice even in your quote from Franklin, he refers specifically to "primitive Christianity." Why the need to qualify the principles of Christianity with "primitive" (hint: elsewhere Franklin calls himself a Deist)? Since you quoted it, please explain.

Someone once pointed out that when looking at quotes from the Founders, one should note whether the quote came from a private letter or a public statement. Certainly you wouldn't judge Bill Clinton's actual commitment to Christianity based on some public comments he might have made about it for political expediency. There's also the other little point that human beings, even the best of them, can be conflicted and inconsistent in their beliefs.