Reply #4: "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" ~John Adams

[Hekate]

One gets the feeling our Founding Fathers would approve of this omission.

Hekate

> John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study
> of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman.
> He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant
> achievments" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of
> some absolute dunces". Late in life he wrote: "Twenty times
> in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of
> breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds,
> if there were no religion in it!"
> It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified
> the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI
> that "the government of the United States of America is not in any
> sense founded on the Christian Religion."
> From: The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw,
> pp. 17 (1976, North CarolinaPress, Chapel Hill, NC)
> Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756,
> and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by
> James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY)
> Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19,1817, and in reference
> to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr.,
> pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to
> Dr.Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.
http://skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id9.html