photo taken from aceproject.org
Did the Founders of the United States have a religious motive?
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Nope. Not at all.
Well Jared, back then, the founders were even more corrupted by religion more than ever, so I'm sure there are a lot of motives behind our country's founding.
I am not sure what the meaning of motive is. But, their is not doubt that the founders felt that religion was an important part of society and believed it to be a conerstone of our democratic republic. All one must do is read the federalist papers and personal letters of the founders to know that.
Insofar as they believed in individual freedom of religion. The first amendment makes that abundantly clear.
What in our founding constitutes religion?
The United States of America was founded as a Constitutional Republic, not a Democratic Republic.
The statement Democratic Republic is an oxymoron as one conflicts with the other thereby canceling each out.
Since the earliest settlers on this continent were of the Puritan Persuasion, yes, religion did play a large part in the lives of our founding fathers and the framers of our Constitution.
However, they were intelligent enough to realize that not everyone belonged to the same religion and that having a national religion was not a good thing.
FYI – Most of our laws are based on the religious teachings of the times when the laws were adopted.
I assume you are referring to something like the 10 commandments in the form of basic moral laws (at least those referring to people). Those did not originate with the Bible, or the Old Testament. Hammurabi and the code of Lagash are a tad older in so far as codified precepts. It's more than likely that they're older still and in fact predate writing of any kind. In fact, it is likely that writing was invented as a means of tabulating property in the first place. So that pretty much tosses out theft, rape, and murder as coming from religious institutions.
Most of the rest of our laws which have had a strictly religious origin have been reinterpreted, Constitutionally rejected, or simply go unenforced today. I think we're down to the FCC and some locations having no Sunday alcohol sales. If you'd want to call that "most", I'd be happy to live in a state where that constitutes "most" of the laws.
They all mention the deity and obviously believed there was a higher power. That's pretty much common sense that there had to be a creator of the universe.
As far as them being born-again christians I dont believe that. They were normal skeptics who hoped that believing in God would help keeping the nation in peace.