[PhilipFreneau]

>> I suggest you go back and read your original question, to which I responded. I would say that any civilization or culture that lasted at least five times the current age of the United States qualifies as successful.

I originally asked for secular, and you requested a change to any religion. That's okay. I will go along with that. Now we will get to my primary reason for the statement. Tell me which of those nations you listed that you would have wanted to live in, and why.

[js1138]

The original challenge was to:

...Give us an example of a successful, self-sustaining secular nation with reasonable longevity.

I asked for the modification of "secular" to "non-Christian" because I assumed you were not in favor of American schools promoting the worship of sun-gods and such. If you would like American schools to allow teachers to promote religions other than Christianity, then I will discuss that. I was not trying to weasel out of anything by changing secular to non-Christian.

My point is that there have been dozens of large, "successful, self-sustaining secular[non-Christian] nation[s] with reasonable longevity". I consider a thousand years to be a reasonable definition of longevity.

So what's your point. There is no one particular belief system required to sustain a nation or culture.

And this is not a particularly troubled or devisive time in America's history. We have been through much worse.