Thoughts at large

[ccbatson]

Contest and perspective...The Bible, and religion that follows, are/were incredibly ingenious and comprehensive stories loosely based on life experiences of some real people who lived thousands of years ago [[incomprehensible for a modern person to understand). This was the vehicle for conveying knowledge at the time, and it took the form of story telling [[and documentation of those stories in the Bible). These are moral/ethical homalies, not literal events, whose purpose was to generate a cohesive and "law" abiding society. The threat of supernatural punishment was the manner in which to enforce the "laws" of the time.

These laws were based on ancient man, prior to philosophical concepts such as right and wrong, and certainly way before economic paradigms like capitalism. With these limited resources, the Bible did a fantastic job of molding what would become our present day societal framework. Some of the lessons therein transcribed still have core values that can be applied to modern man [[others cannot). The point is that this was the foundation of what would become a "civil society". Based on these principles, but then greatly expanded upon in modern terms, is the philosophy that became the foundation of our [[US) society in the form of another incredible document[[s), the US Declaration of Independence, Preamble, and Constitution.

This led to the philosophical perspective that the core value, based on religious seed ideas, of individual liberty and property rights as the most important ethical principle and proper basis for the function of our government [[to protect individual liberty...at home and abroad).

G-d is not a sentient being, but a symbol representing the totality of reality...synonymous with, if not the same as, the world "existence [[or reality, if you like)". In this sense, the question of whether G-d exists, becomes the primary of does existence [[existents) exist....of course they do, and therefore, G-d exists. If, on the other hand, G-d is defined as a mystical sentient being, well, the only rational [[and therefore correct) answer to the question of whether G-d exists, is no....just as gremlins, fairies, and...gasp...Santa Claus do not exist when the question is framed by the absurd and mystical definitions of these entities/characters.

Apply this to the world around you, and things become very much clearer.

[Lorax]

I don't disagree with your perspective, as I share it as well, however, what America's governance is based on could be construed as a blending of these ideals with those of the pagan Greeks, whose democratic philosophy was the foundation for our own.

We even developed a government sanctioned imperative to copy classic Greco/Roman architecture as the official architecture of our capital city, it's monuments, offical buildings, museums, libraries, as well as most banks and court buildings across the land.