@TheJebusFire
"That is how the Founders thought..."
I'll see your quotes, and raise you (to further emphasis your point):
'I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature'
'But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.'
'Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear'
'I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.'
-Thomas Jefferson
'Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect'
'In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people'
-James Madison
(emphasis added):
'For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.'
-George Washington
I love the smell of annihilated arguments in the morning. Smells like... victory.
If he were alive today, Thomas Jefferson would be a commenter here in FSTDT:
'The only way to combat ridiculous propositions is through mockery'
-Thomas Jefferson
And what more ridiculous propositions than anything a Religious Right Teabagger Neocunt Dominionist says and thinks? As demonstrated by savagesusie here.
Ergo, FSTDT. QED.