As the brilliant debater you say you are, you have the same comprehension problem, as do many of your kind, regarding what was said: you twist something to mean what you think it should, then go off on a tangent as if you are correct. John didn't evade your question. His answer was direct and unequivocal: he's not going to discuss his religion or spirituality with you on this thread, and possibly nowhere else. And you know what? He doesn't have to. You are not in charge and you don't get to set any parameters.

Regarding my positions in this thread, I think they'd agree with me, either totally, or mostly and essentially. But I haven't spent very much time thinking about that. I remember at least a couple of major points that the founders seemed to be about: (a) they didn't want a king, and (b) they wanted "checks and balances". And of course they had some reasoning and experience behind those thoughts.

I remember reading the Declaration of Independence and I think I have the gist of what that document's about: it includes a justification of _why_ they declared independence, and a few of the wrongs they list are similar to some wrongs that still exist today even within the U.S. (so we haven't been totally successful at getting rid of all the wrongs). (I'm thinking in particular of unfair difficulties in taking matters to courts.)

The founders (or "Founding Fathers") had a kind of logic, and I think my logic mostly agrees with theirs, but there is at least one exception (maybe not relevant to this thread though): they probably wouldn't agree with some of my thoughts about taxation and ownership, and possibly not even about banking, and maybe not even about slavery, because a few of them may have not only owned slaves but even have been in favor of slavery. I believe there was a place in the Constitution that counted a black person as 3/5 the value of a white person, and I don't think that way.

There's also the matter of non-landowners and women and Native Americans -- the idea of who should have voting rights has changed over the intervening years.

The founders did allow for some change. They wouldn't have gotten _everything_ right; for example they probably didn't know women would later get the right to vote and hold office as men do, and I think we (most people in the developed world) are more correct in our views about women now than they were then (collectively). And they wouldn't know about the speed of air travel or the internet, and they wouldn't know as much as we do now about pollution, and at least one or two of these are important factors now.