Constitution Protects From Religious Violation
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is America’s founding morality.
It’s a radical change from centuries of death-worship, sacrifice and suffering. It was the result of 400 years of radical cultural change from faith-based supernaturalism to rational naturalism. America’s founding culture, the Enlightenment, is the only basically individual rights culture in history. It was the least religious culture in the West’s 3000 years and one of only two basically rational cultures. Religion almost died.
America was founded by faith-despising, pop philosophers as a rational individualist culture. They knew that man’s independent mind needed political protection from religion, secular tyrants and democracy’s fragile, majority rule emotionalism.
John Pond’s faith (2/27/25 issue) in a religion-based founding of America is just that, faith, with zero evidence except an out-of-context, vanishing remnant of religion. The Declaration relies on “the course of human events,” not on the unfocused, empty, passive mind waiting for revelation. The Constitution’s divided government protects individual rights from secular and religious violation.
Rights are the focused mind’s moral approval of freedom of action in society. Rights are a need of man’s life because his mind produces the spiritual and material values needed for that life.
Faith doesn’t need protection. You can have faith in prison. Faith is not license to violate individual rights. The “free exercise [of religion”] is a protection of individual rights, not an establishment of religion. Crucifixion does not justify individual rights.
The rational Founders knew that centuries of religious tortures, murders and wars were an establishment of religion that violated the individual rights that protected man’s independent, focused mind in guiding his life, his liberty and the pursuit of his happiness.
Stephen Grossman, Fairhaven
•••
Click here to download the 3/13/25 issue: 03-13-25 TreeDown
Support local journalism, donate to the Neighb News with PayPal
