We have a high population of Christians in this country. If you want to get elected you have to be able to get votes. If you want votes you have to be able to say the things that will get you support from your base.

So if you happen to be a Christian running for public office all you have to do is proudly state that fact and people will do more than just vote for you. They will actually speak out in your defense if you should happen to do something like lie to the country to start a war.

We are supposed to have a separation of church and state but I honestly don't think an atheist will be president at any point during my life time.

yeah..true! this is why i want to move out of the country again.

we have "under god" on our money, in our pledge of allegiance which is recited every day in public schools, and the list goes on.

i live in a very religious area and feel i have to hide my atheism.

additionally, i wish the religious people around here would care for politics, other cultures, and what's going on in our world. they seem content to live in little bubbles, and when i try to talk about my love of indian food, or my interest in learning spanish, or the financial collapse, or traveling anywhere beyond a 2-3 hour drive, their eyes go dead.

complacency! that's all i see in the religious folk around here. sigh. that's my rant :devil:

America was born from rebellion. When they were writing the constitution they were trying to speak to the future. We have multiple writings from many of the countries founders expressing concern that this knew country they were creating would trample the rights of the people in the same way their own country had done with them. When speaking about this very topic Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "People should not fear their governments. Governments should fear the people."

When the original constitution was drafted it was rejected because it did not contain a bill of rights. When the bill of rights was drafted the first amendment granted freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and the right to petition the government for grievances. They put these in the first amendment as a reminder that government rules with the consent of the governed. There are certain rights that people have by default and the government must always respect those rights or it is overreaching its authority and therefor becoming a tyranny.

The second amendment is the right to bear arms because at that time the framers were concerned that if the people did not have any means to defend themselves then the government would simply revoke the aforementioned rights via force. They did not want future leaders who would take their place to subvert all their efforts to create a land of liberty for white land owners. I hate to have to add that last part but it is necessary. The constitution had to be amended so that its protections could apply to women and nonwhites. Anyways it was believed at the time that granting the people the right to bear arms would serve as a prophylactic measure against future would be usurpers. It is also mentioned that a country is far harder to take over if every single citizen is armed. This would serve as a deterrent against forces both inside and outside the country.

Let us not forget also that at that time there were many people who used hunting as a primary method of feeding their families. Protecting their right to bear arms gave them security in the knowledge that they would be able to have some level of self sufficiency in an otherwise trying and difficult time in history.

That is a brief history of how the second amendment ended up being put where it was and it is up to each individual to decide if these reason are now antiquated or if they still hold true. It is true that ever citizen does not have to hunt for their food to survive anymore. I think there is something to be said for the idea that in many ways the second amendment does protect the first amendment. For that reason I can understand why the ownership of a gun should be a protected right of every American citizen that has demonstrated a competence with its safety and respect for the rule of law and rights of the people around them.

This is my great-grandfather (times 10)'s story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Southwick He and his wife arrived here about 15+ years after the first Mayflower voyage (1620). They died trying to escape religious persecution and within 3 days of each other. They were persecuted, tortured, and almost had their younger children sold into slavery because they didn't attend Puritan church (because they were Quakers). Just so you get some idea that this has been a pervasive problem since inception. This country is founded on hardcore, religious, rigid ideology.

It won't be too long before America takes on a similar attitude. Many if not most of the atheists in this country identify because they grew away from a previously theistic upbringing. It will only be a matter of time that as these first gen atheists raise their children to be wise in their skepticism and exploration will it become a dying taboo. In my opinion.