[GunRunner]

IOW belief in a Creator, referenced in our Declaration of Independence, cannot be divorced from the freedoms we enjoy.

Even though the Constitution prohibits any religious test for public office, let's pretend for a moment that it doesn't.

The current President, all nine Supreme Court justices, and 534 out of 535 members of Congress all confess to believing in a Creator. Did belief in a Creator keep them from digging the country into a hole?

If you want to talk about the role of religious philosophy in the founding of the country, then there's no problem with that. But I see no evidence that our current out of control federal government will be tamed if more Americans just start going to church more often.

[Lexinom]

Conversely, you could make the case, as the author has, that it is in fact the decadence of the people who put them in office in the first place that has put forth the mess in which we find ourselves. Face it: We're pretty decadent and banal compared to the people who lived at the time of our nation's founding. We have no right to complain.

People create these false either/or dichotomies: Either it is man's doing or God's. I submit that it is both: the former on the micro level, the latter in the big picture. We are getting what we as a people deserve, because all said and done, everyone of those capacities you mentioned, in varying degree of directness, represents us.

I'll ask you a question: Why should the Creator bless us if we as a people spit in His eye?