No, they wanted a federal government without a state religion. Like the church of England. The founders saw it necessary that people have a religious based moral system. The same system and values that they based the government on.
The premise all men are created equal relies on religion to be true. Inalienable rights is a judao Christian idea. Try arriving there with reason. Otherwise the will to power is exploitation of man by man.
The French revolution was based on reason and had a Reign of Terror with a bloody guillotine.
>The founders saw it necessary that people have a religious based moral system. The same system and values that they based the government on.
In the system of government they created women were not able to participate in the body politic and slavery was legal. The suppression of women in society and slavery are both endorsed in the bible. Being superstitious has nothing to do with morality or ethics.
> The premise all men are created equal relies on religion to be true. Inalienable rights is a judao Christian idea.
This is demonstrably false. Christianity had 17 centuries before the French Revolution to setup a system of government based on these ideas but instead was aligned with Monarchy and Feudalism. Equality and inalienable rights are Enlightenment ideas.
But if you don't happen to believe in God then swearing on a book of (from the oath takers perspective) fairy tails is equivalently silly / virtue signaling.
I think it's better if someone calls out that they don't believe in the thing they are swearing on and substitutes it with something they do believe in? otherwise one is making a promise on top of a lie that they also believe in the contents of that book, so the whole stack is forfeit.
The whole swear in procedure is silly and is literal virtue signaling. Should the official be swearing in on the Bible anyway if they don't believe it?
For many people today swearing on the bible is just as silly as swearing on any scripture of a dead or newly invented religion is to you. Would swearing on a spaghetti monster be acceptable to you?
Isn't their choice a personal gesture? It could be that something in the book spoke to them and their using the book in this way means they will endeavour to hold to that message from the book.
This is just silly / virtue signaling.