Furthermore, those who think the Bible should have influence on US laws fundamentally fail to understand the very basics of the first amendment of the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Allowing influence of a particular religious sect over laws is exactly akin to a state religion, which is expressly unconstitutional.

But doesn't this argument also mean "Allowing influence of religious people over laws (e.g. allowing them to vote) is unconstitutional"?

You might think that you're being completely neutral when you apply your atheist worldview to political questions, and that it is only those weird out-groups that are biased with their desire for laws that your in-group opposes, but from their perspective you are being just as biased by your religious beliefs (i.e. your beliefs about religions).

If you really think that the First Amendment was written with the intent to invalidate any policy which can be supported by some interpretation of the Bible, then you haven't thought through the consequences of that.

That’s fine but it’s not what we’re talking about, which is what keeps the democratic coalition together. Opposition to Christianity having a public role isn’t it.

This is kind of a vague opinion. The Bible says many things, many of them contradictory and some of them just outright ridiculous. Let's just pick one gem, Exodus 21:7-11 [1]:

> When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not satisfy her owner, he must allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. But if the slave’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave but as a daughter.

> If a man who has married a slave wife takes another wife for himself, he must not neglect the rights of the first wife to food, clothing, and sexual intimacy. If he fails in any of these three obligations, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.

Here we have slavery, selling your daughter into slavery and polygamy all in one. Should this influence the law?

If the answer is "yes", well you're crazy. If the answer is "no" then you've conceded the Bible isn't an authority and you can freely choose to ignore what pats of it you want.

There are others such as putting people to death who work on the Sabbath.

The issue of the Bible is most brought up when it comes to abortion (and gay marriage). The Bible is in fact silent on the issue. Up until the 1970s, white evangelicals didn't actually care about abortion [2]. Catholics had some opposition but it wasn't front and center.

What mobilized evangelicals against abortion was actually a deliberate political movement to opposed racial desegregation, as sparked by whites-only schools in Mississippi and Bob Jones University.

So my point is that I don't put a lot of stock on statements like "the Bible should have at least some influence" on US laws because it doesn't mean anything. The question itself is a form of manipulation. I mean the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" and murder is a crime. Does that meet the standard of "some influence?"

[1]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2021%3A7...

[2]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/abortion-h...

Actually a more neutrally phrased question to ask people would be "Does your opinion of the Bible have at least some influence on how you vote?", although there would be no point running that poll as the only possible answer to that question is "Yes". Either you think the Bible is a valid source of moral wisdom, in which case you are more likely to vote for policies which support that morality; or you think it isn't a valid source, in which case you vote for policies which (in at least some cases) oppose that morality. In both cases, the person is voting consistently with their opinion of the Bible, which means believers and non-believers aren't so different after all.

That is not how the Bible works. It is a book of history, stories, laws, information, and other things. No Christian denomination on the planet, not even the most straw fundamentalist fringe sect you can imagine, takes this reductive view that because it is in the text it is automatically a command to be followed by the modern day reader.

Failure to make that distinction when interpreting a volume of such history absent its context does not mean that distinction is nonexistent or arbitrary.

I would argue that all of western culture and civilization has been influenced heavily, almost exclusively by Christianity (including the Hebrew Bible), at least since Constantine.