I suppose now would be a good time to introduce you to why America is the way it is, despite trending heavily toward authoritarianism as Christian morality has decreased and secularism and immorality has increased: it's due to America's Christian foundation.
The founding fathers did view Biblical morality essential for a just and harmonious society. As John Adams stated, "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God."
Twenty-nine of the fifty six signers of the Declaration held what are today considered seminary or Bible school degrees in addition to their other accomplishments, and many others of the signers were bold and outspoken in their personal Christian faith. Significantly, not one of the Founding Fathers was atheist or secular in his orientation; even Thomas Paine (certainly the least religious of the Founders) openly acknowledged God and announced his belief in his personal accountability to God, and he also directly advocated teaching creationism in the public school classroom (See Paine's speech delivered in Paris on January 16, 1797).
Most were Protestants. The largest number were raised in the three largest Christian traditions of colonial America:
1. Anglicanism (as in the cases of John Jay, George Washington, and Edward Rutledge).
2. Presbyterianism (as in the cases of Richard Stockton and the Rev. John Witherspoon).
3. Congregationalism (as in the cases of John Adams and Samuel Adams).
Other Protestant groups included the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Lutherans, and the Dutch Reformed.
Minority positions included three Roman Catholics (Charles Carroll, Daniel Carroll of Maryland, and Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania) and a few deists with Thomas Paine being the most prominent.
The founding fathers were interested in a cooperation between church and state not state over church or church over state. U.S. historians refer to this as Jeffersonianism.
Unlike Jeffersonianism, atheism has no ultimately meaningful transcendent moral basis for anything including civil rights and criminal law; inalienable rights from the Creator are shed for the alienable rights of the creature who now exists to fight with others to spread their DNA.
No longer can natural law guide us for what is morally right has become the whim of a changing mob whose political body decides what is right, wherever it may be. With good reason the founding fathers rejected state atheism. In contrast, the early American system they chose allowed for a fruitful Jeffersonianism firmly rooted in an ultimately meaningful worldview.
Of course there are detractors, and more of them today than ever before. Charlie Manson, the Night Stalker, etc... there's a very long list of those who chose to exercise the ability to
BE the person they wanted to be
rather than the person they should have been.
But why not in atheism? For in the false worldview of atheism the most moral loving person that ever lived has no more reward or punishment than the most wicked evil person that ever lived beyond their brief existence here. The 20th century is a case study in state atheism which is responsible for the death of over 250 million people and the severe persecution of religious people over much of the globe.
But then why should the atheist care for it's not ultimately meaningful. They're just a smear of complex bacteria on a rocky planet fueled by a dying sun in a universe whose expansion is accelerating to the point all biological life is forever doomed and none will ever be possible again in it.
Now Christianity on the other hand...
