Without its guiding principles and the morality that is common among judeo Christian religious groups ( and other religious groups as well) prevented early Americans from killing each other in the quest for personal wealth and gratification.

I firmly beleive that an upstart country without those guiding principles would have failed from within due to out of control greed and self promotion!

Religion played a role in controlling the masses, true. But spirituality was completely excluded from the process. Neither is not what allowed America to form and prosper.
America formed and prospered in much the same way as the Mafia did; con men, kidnappers, murderers, theives, extortionists, and liars who banded together to take that which was not theirs from those who were too vulnerable to stop them.
Then, they went to church on Sunday.
Hard words, but true.

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"You'll Always Have The America You Deserve." Son Of Man

Are those the same guiding principles they used when they set about killing Indians in order to take their land and enslaving blacks in order to provide a cheap labor force for personal enrichment?

Some religion!

Buddhism captures this very well....

"desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering"

First of all, the indians set about attacking them and they retailiated! I am sure there was some expansionist aggression though. The blacks were enslaved before America ever came into being! England and a lot of other European nations enslaved them before. And one other point, were they better off enslaved, working and being fed, or free and starving to death in Africa? Don't get me wrong, I don't support slavery, buut slavery back in that day needs to be put in perspective. What were the blacks' other options?

Um, they weren't starving to death. Most of the people sold into slavery were either prisoners captured in war by competing kingdoms, or people kidnapped by slavers.

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Man up.

So you don't think warring factions caused famine and starvation? Of course it did, both then and even now.

Obviously religion was a large part of society during the foundation of our country and it's Constitution, but it was made clear the importance of separation of church and state. People need to understand that values need to catch up with our culture, not the other way around.

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The point is it's not the religion, but rather the principles that are important. People do all sorts of horrid things in the name of god and the mother land. At the same time, there are good people who live without religion. Fear of hell and hope for eternal reward are just good motivators that religion provides. The principles are what is important.

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True knowledge exists in being aware of what you don't know.

Yeah, except for the indians, right?