Should Religious Symbols be Displayed on Public Property?

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"Our nation was founded on faith-based principles!"

Clearly it was not. If this were so, matters of religious faith would be explicit throughout the U.S. Constitution with wording very reminiscent of certain religious documents some claim to be the basis of the founding of the United States and the writing of its supreme laws. As it happens, the highest values serving as the framework for our national constitution are inalienable individual rights and the liberty to exercise them. It is that fact of one's life that gives you rights and an understood social agreement of "liberty in return for liberty". Since the beginning, the individual has had primacy over government. This is evident in the wording of the Constitution restraining the powers of government, not the liberties of individuals. There is also no clearly defined role written into the U.S. Constitution for an alleged "deity" or for any religious prophets or "messiahs" general or specific in individual rights and liberties nor in the government they establish for themselves.

The U.S. Constitution, not any religious text, serves as the supreme law of the land. The highest values of the U.S. Constitution are respect for individual life, that individual life's rights within a civilized society and their liberty to exercise those rights provided their mutual respect for the liberties of others. The constitution expresses the value of restrained government and the most liberty for the most people.

At the very foundation of our nation, no deity, no specific or general religion, no religious texts, no religious authorities are granted rights or liberties above those of the individual and their chosen form of government. If our nation's foundation were "faith-based" as some claim, you would expect our originating documents and laws created afterward and rooted in their values to be incredibly and primarily oriented toward the explicit values, commandments, laws, guidances, practices or patterns of traditional western religions.

They are not.

On that last matter, I will say this: skepticism, critique and rebuttal related to your specific philosophy and set of practices isn't inherently hateful. In my view and in the views of many others, such expression is considered to be for the good of those who appear clearly under the spell of poor thinking rooted in traditions or habits they find hard to break, let alone hard to abandon.

The sign in Washington does you a favor. It's to be expected you would not see it as such. Nevertheless, it contains things that need to be said, even if those who hear them do not wish to. I saw it as a positive message and still do. To me, it is a message of hope that reason prevails over unreason. It is no different from the act of a mother or father assuring their child there are no monsters in the closet, so be at peace. If you need the child's security blanket or teddy bear to feel safe, so be it. Perhaps you will grow out of such dependence.

Perhaps not.