An Atheist Should Not be President of the United States

First I would like to ask my opponent to read my response two or three times before responding. He still does not get what is being argued and has not even tried to understand anything that I have written. I have never had this problem before and I have used this same argument with people over the internet before. That said, let us begin with my opponents "essential argument to the debate." It was asserted by Midnight1131 that "the supreme court and the constitution clearly state, and have reaffirmed, that you cannot hold religious requirements for people running for public office." This is absolutely true. But my argument is not that Atheists cannot be President of the United States. My argument is that they should not be President of the United States. In other words, I am fully aware that an Atheist can become President but in my personal opinion they should not be President because they do not believe in God given rights and in Objective Morality. I am not even trying to prevent Atheists from running. All I am saying is that if they run for President, they should not win because of the reasons I have provided. My opponent also believes that I believe that "simply because the American founding fathers were religious, we are now allowed to discriminate based on religion." I have never said this once. I believe that our President should believe in God given rights and should believe in objective morality. Atheists believe that everything is subjective and that is a problem. If there are no absolute moral standards or absolute rights, people can do whatever they want or people can take away rights and no one could get upset because there would only be opinions about what rights/morals exist. My opponent also says that "simply because the declaration of independence mentions God holds no importance to the topic at hand." Really? It is very significant that our founding fathers believe in God given rights. They did not believe that rights were subjective and created by the opinions of mere humans. The main argument in the Declaration was "that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (God given rights), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." And what did our founding fathers do? They created a government based on the religious principle of God given rights. When you read the constitution of a right that people have, the founding fathers believed that the right came from God. My opponent also keeps making the mistake by saying that the Constitution was a secular document. Synonyms for the word secular include the words nonreligious, areligious, lay, and etc. But the Constitution (according to the Declaration) was made to protect humans' God given rights. The Constitution mentions God, and lists rights that people have because of the existence of a God, and protects the right to be involved in any religion the people choose. The document is not secular by any means. In fact, it encourages religion and so did the founding fathers. A secular document would not have given people religious freedom. My opponent also asks (about the quote that mentions God) "How does this refute anything I've said? The main thing that makes the constitution a secular document is that it doesn't advocate for certain religions over others." My reference refutes your statement that God is not mentioned in the constitution. You said that in attempt to prove that the document is secular and you were wrong. The Constitution does mention God. And no, the fact that the document advocates religious freedom is proof that the document is not secular (nonreligious). The founding fathers included their nonsecular beliefs into the Constitution. They created the Constitution to give people their God given right and created it to give people religious freedom. There is nothing secular about the Constitution. Lastly, my opponent says that "until my opponent explains what any of this has to do with the resolution of an atheist becoming president, this argument holds no value." I have explained the importance twice already but I will do it a third time since it is still not understood. Our founders believed in God given rights, they created the Constitution to tell people they had these God given rights, and they did not believe that rights were subjective (like atheists). If rights were subjective, they could be taken away without any reason. No one could get upset with people taking away their rights because all that would exist would be opinions about what rights exist. That is a problem and thank God our founders believes in God given rights. Part Two: My opponent states that "And I gave my reasons why, the morals of one person can easily differ from those of another. For his rebuttal, my opponent doesn't even address this argument." Lets us take a look at what I said. Maybe he accidentally skipped this part in my last response. I said and I quote "Almost all people believe that murder is wrong, lying is wrong and etc...This is not to say that people do moral things all the time or that there aren't some people with completely different values (Hitler). After all, even though most people can walk, it doesn't mean that there aren't a few that can't. But most people agree on what is moral and on what is immoral." I did address my opponents argument. Almost every single person on the planet knows what is moral. Are their exceptions? Sure. Just as there are always people that cannot walk there are people that have no morals. My opponent also uses my example of Hitler to say that his morals were different than others. I do not disagree with this. Again, there are always people that cannot walk and there are always people that have no morals. Hitler was a sick demented person who believed in subjective morality. And by the way, if morals are subjective, no one could say that Hitler was wrong because he merely just had an opinion about what was moral. This is nonsense of course. But that is another topic. Also, it should be noted that Hitlers values were not in the majority. And no, the majority doesn't decide what is moral. According to our founding fathers, God decides what is moral and God decides what rights people have. If humans did, it would also be subjective and meaningless. Then my opponent goes on to misrepresent me yet again by saying "then he states that these reasons have nothing to do with fear, but with love instead. He then says that most religious people are moral because they love their God." I never said the reasons for being moral have nothing to do with fear. I said that fear is a reason for being moral but not the only one. Most Christians in the United States are moral because they love their God. My opponent also states that "Hell, eternal punishment, is given to those who do not follow, therefore the only reason to be moral is to avoid this terrible punishment." I do not have the time or the characters to go into this. But my opponent has misunderstood why 70% of the people in the United States are moral. I would invite my opponent to go to a Christian church and find out if people are singing to God out of fear or out of love. Due to character limits, I have to make this conclusion short. My opponent goes on to attack the Christians God's morals (wish I could get into this) and expects me to be aware of the same moral standard he uses. This is proof of objective morality. Finally he goes off topic to explain that people believe in God without any real evidence. This is false. The evidence for God is the Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological, Moral, Biblical, Mathematical, and etc arguments for God. Thanks for a great debate. I will look forward to your last response. http://www.archives.gov... http://dictionary.reference.com...