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quote:
but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
I assume you are not referring to the signatures. The above does not exactly make any claims about a God being Lord, and certainly no reference to Jesus or Christianity in general. Again, your argument is lame.
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"Yes the Constitution is the law of the land and the Declaration is the legal document justifying the Constitution. Both are considered our Founding Documents and both have baring on Constitutional interpretation by the S Court."
Please post a specific case of the Supreme Court using the Declaration as basis for law. The Declaration is a founding document, yes, but has no bearings on our laws, nor the language or meaning of the Constitution. The Declaration is a list of grievances, and makes no specific laws at all; it is an Official Document, as opposed to a Legal one. The governors of the first thirteen states created this document, before this country was even created. For those that may not have read the Declaration, here are the religious excerpts Christians are defending their right to “Clear Majority” and government funded and supported religion… quote:
…the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them…
…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
There are 1,330 words in the Declaration, excluding title and signatures, only 4 refer to any deity whatsoever, the first which has been described as deist by the writers of the Constitution and their contemporaries, and the remaining three are not exactly glaring references to a specific God. To repeat what I stated in another thread, it is clear that the Christian Majority of this country sees the removal of government and taxpayer supported Christian mottos, prayers, and references as an attack on their religion, and their “Clear Majority”. Many of this Nation’s Founders describe their intentions to a secular government in documents and private letters after the Constitution was created. A few quotes, from the “Father of the Constitution” himself, ladies and gentlemen, may I present James Madison… quote:
Speech to the General Assembly of Virginia, 1785, “During almost fifteen centuries, the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial. What have been the fruits of this trial? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; and in both, clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
From a document in Madison’s own hand and re-published in the William and Mary Quarterly of October 1946…
“Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”
“Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes.”
“The establishment of the chaplainship to Cong[res]s is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.”
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“Sorry belief and recognition of God, as both the Declaration and Constitution exhibit, is not the establishment of a religion - this issue is moot as it has already been settled by the S Court.”
The Supreme Court has not resolved anything, as the have refused six times to hear just the case of Ten Commandments on government property, 4 times since 2001 alone. Also, a case already heard by the Supreme Court has already made precedence, in Stone v. Graham, (449 US 39 (1980)) which stated that the law placing the Ten Commandments in Virginia Schools was unconstitutional, by a 5-4 decision. We are also waiting for you to post your mystery quote from the Constitution mentioning any recognition of any God.
If I were to provide all of the quotes available from our Founding Fathers themselves that clearly states their intentions of a secular government, the owners of this Forum would become very cross indeed. There are just too many. Christianity began a sharp rise in this country around the mid-1830s, reaching nearly 60% in early 1860 during the Civil War, which is the exact time in history we see the beginning of the encroachment of Christianity into the government with the Coinage Act of 1864, which effectively changed our nation’s motto. This was made official in 1956, some 169 years after the signing of the Constitution. An excellent article can be found at http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.html .
"Oops, it appears I have run over your dogma with my karma."
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OK what is the very last thing written in the Constitution.....? 
