Is it un-American to be an atheist or an agnostic?
As the rest of the world sees and stereo-types Americans: YES! An American who doesn’t believe in God is by their way of thinking as much a contradiction in terms as an American who hates hamburgers and football. Europeans especially see Americans as the most religious and the most patriotic of peoples. They have a name for Americans who are Atheistic, unpatriotic, soft-Left, soft-Green, are enthusiastic for the Metric System, and watch soccer: they’re called Canadians. And as a matter of fact, America was most definitely NOT founded on the principle of religious freedom. Massachusetts (Puritan), Pennsylvania (Quaker), and Maryland (Catholic) were all founded NOT on the principle of religious freedom, but on the principle that “We’re right, all other religions in England are wrong, and the place has gotten so bad and corrupting that we are going to go build a perfect Christian society in the New World to Glorify God, convert the heathen, and show those Godless carnal heretics in Britai
The answer Jack gave you here http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/2582043 is good up to 1776, but is misleading because it stops short of what happened when we adopted the U.S. Constitution in 1789. The Constitution is the basis for all American laws; even county and state law has to comply with it. At that time, as Jack notes, a couple of men wanted an official national religion. What he doesn’t note is how FIRMLY they were slapped down. Most people can quote the First Amendment, written by Thomas Jefferson and based on a Virginia law he had written earlier in his life: “Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” That is part of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. BUT the founders also put this in the body of the original Constitution itself, in Article VI: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Of
