Church and State should remain separate.

You mustn't wait long. I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy this debate a lot. Well on the effort to keep within the formalities of rebuttal I shall be attacking your points and rebuilding my own. I would like to point out your comment concerning the way "elected officials use religious based propaganda," is irrelevant to policy itself. Your quarrel should be with the politicians and voters themselves. The politicians get power because voters give them that power. It's the power of citizenship. If you have a problem with them electing a devout religious person then take it up with the voting body, but I'd imagine telling them how to vote wouldn't be looked at as constitutional. I would also like to ask for examples for your second argument concerning oppression. None are provided so I have nothing to respond to. Now onto my own case and your attacks thereof, I suppose I'll start at the top and go to the bottom. I feel it's unnecessary to dispute the definition of religion since mine is a summarized version of yours. If you don't feel that true then just take this as concession of your definition. However, I disagree with your statement, "you must first specify which of the million deities in the thousands of belief systems you are specifically arguing for." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't use a religious argument in my first post at all. I'm not arguing for a religion or theocracy. I'm arguing the the elected ought to vote on the basis of what they believe, because that's what they were elected for. I bear small disagreement to your response to my point on the first amendment. It's more of a disagreement on the way we should take it, not the literal wording. I won't spend time on that right now, as that will be included in my later arguments. You claim there is a universal morality or process of determining morality. However, you've ignored part of my argument concerning purpose. If there is no purpose or ultimate positive (the world will collapse eventually due to the second law of thermodynamics), then there's no lasting point to what we do. There's no ultimate way to determine whether or not life is even good if there's no point in life anyway. You also seem to be throwing in a personal bias when you state that morality shouldn't be made because of the fear in an afterlife. Shouldn't it be? The way I support my claim logically is that morals need to have some sort of grounding in something universally proven and something lasting. Everything in this world is dying, and nothing can be done about it. Nothing is ultimately lasting. What then is the point of morality? Morality, where God is not concerned, is created based on perception. Go ahead and tell me I'm wrong because of science and your personal convictions, but other people have different personal convictions (radical nihilism), so how do you ultimately prove who's right? Science doesn't work because the morals derived don't ultimately have a purpose. In the end, if there is no God, then it doesn't matter. Your point about arguing about a God's existence is irrelevant, especially to you. You wouldn't want a God to exist in any scenario on your side because then theocracy is justified. Yes you have to prove which one it is, but that still undermines your entire point. However, I'm arguing under the premise that God does not exist therefore rendering any sort of universal morality pointless. Concerning your last argument about my argument concerning the constitution, I feel it should be addressed that we have a representative government. We elect representatives from the start of our country and hold elections every two years for a majority of them. So this means that if the citizens aren't pleased with the representatives then they can be voted out. This means that the citizens are voting for these people. So why would you restrict what the citizens want? You're missing the point of my statement. Also I would like to thank you for this statement, "There is no specific set of beliefs that atheists follow, only a lack thereof." That statement is awfully helpful to my side (see above arguments concerning moral relativism). I was however making the point in my last post that when one is an atheist there is a premise, which is that religion shouldn't be included in the decisions. Therefore the premise is forced under your standard for the elected. In conclusion to this rebuttal: Your statements on morality aren't justified, as they don't account for the fact that without God we and our actions have no ultimate purpose. It's contradictory to allow citizens to vote a religious man into office then say he's not allowed to vote on certain issues the way he and his body of electors believes. Finally your original points so far do not stand. Thank you, and I'll be waiting for your response in the next round.