Believing that requires that you reject what they wrote and stood for.
Religious requirements are specifically prohibited and here you are claiming that they meant the exact opposite (and ignoring every valid point brought up against this).
With such representations, I could make a far better argument that religious believers such as yourself should be barred from office long before atheists should.
The religious tests that were banned were intra-denominational tests. They simply assumed that anyone under consideration would be Judeo-Christian and believed in God.
No.
That is your assumption.
Why do you despise the actual words of the Constitution? Or is it you fear them?
Hahah, nice but silly try.
Todays interpretation of what the First Amendment means to protect the right to burn the flag or allow communists, atheists and such filth to hold high office would not be recognised by them as anything other than insanity and mass delusion, which it is.
From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves,
we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
--
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers, 1:545
What Jim believes- not what Jefferson believed.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods
, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
--
Thomas Jefferson,
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779), quoted from Merrill D Peterson, ed,
Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 347
And here- Jefferson explicitly notes that freedom of religion includes non-belief in religion- and notes that what Jim calls for undermines all of our civil rights.
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life,
freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and
force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as
well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.
--
Thomas Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists (1808) ME 16:320.
