I may be wrong here but it seems as though you feel that in spite of the good things that religion teaches, and in spite of how (some / many / most / all) of those concepts have shaped American society - religion is a failed concept as demonstrated by present day America / the world around you. Secondly - people are innately born with and understand what good principles and belief are, and the ones that don't - they're just shitty people. Is that all fair?
Can you work the problem backward? Start out at ground zero, there is no religion - where are these innate understandings of good principles and beliefs coming from? From the collective group? Based on? What is a Community Standard? As religious teachings have been manipulated by text, oration, and the almighty $ over time & people turned away, or toward something false - how did that impact the community standard? Which direction is mankind moving toward now - a greater or lesser understanding of religious teachings? In your estimation - has that been a positive or a negative for mankind?
All "original sin" is is a knowledge of good and evil. We know this because we are human and can identify what human is. We are islands, but have similar feelings and understand pain and pleasure not only in ourselves but in others. You know how you would like to be treated by others, but not everyone treats others as they want to be treated. We create laws based on morality, but not all of that morality is received. The bulk of it is innate and the same across cultures and religions. Even Plato and Socrates understood that the just man is just even when no one is looking.
Remaining on the surface and never going deeper is like a failure to launch adolescent who never leaves his parents house. Looking to the above truths will never get you further than superficial meaning at best. It is both intellectual and spiritual arrested development. A baby has no empathy and is innocent. A person who does not realize the spiritual warfare going on around them is like a baby who wants what it wants, but is unable to tell the difference between good and bad except for how it directly effects them. For those of us who do see this it's not some esoteric analogy or metaphor, but viscerally real. Good and evil aren't abstract concepts invented by man, but they are real forces that act like physical laws on us. Often, like particles or waves outside the range of our direct perception, we can only experience the results of these forces. At some point, when you become aware of them, just the fact that you cannot directly perceive them with your five senses becomes as unremarkable as not being able to see x-rays, or actually see thermal radiation when you can actually feel it. Now we can "see" heat with a thermal optic, but it existed since the dawn of the universe before that, and we could always feel it. Once you accept that there is a great deal going on that isn't within our direct perception, and we have no way of measuring or quantifying it, it raises all sorts of thorny questions, does it not? People seek answers, and there is no shortage of theories and ready made guides to navigating it. It is up to us to decide what makes sense and what doesn't to solve for this human condition. There is certainly metaphor, symbolism, and parable in the Bible. There has to be to get two kilograms of fat and electricity to even begin to understand some of the concepts it puts forth, and in lots of places it flatly states that we cannot understand within the confines of this reality. Saying that this is the only reality just because we're sharing it is as stupid as saying that because I can't perceive x-rays they don't exist.
The whole Old Testament is basically the same story over and over of the Jews being pious and kneeling before God, falling away from that, getting severely punished, coming back to great faith, and being blessed again. It's one of those concepts I call Hammer Concepts because the Bible beats you with it till even an idiot would get it. I think by the end of the book you get the picture that it isn't enough. That covenant to keep the law is insufficient to beat evil. There has to/had to be something much more earth shattering and severe to solve for the human condition. If you accept the premise that God loves us, like a father loves his children, then it had to be sacrifice and grace. What other choice was/is there? The Bible does not ask us to turn our brains off. Quite the opposite. It demands we turn them on, and consider the biggest questions that we can conceive of.
I've been reading the same book for decades and still get ah-ha moments. It's not because I'm a stupid man. It's because I am constantly asked to think outside my own reality, and consider concepts and a reality that is beyond the bounds of this one. It's like electric theory. It's a way to explain what's happening in a way you can understand it, but you have to actually experience it before you really understand and believe.
I believe that this age, or any age is no different. Our culture and our form of government are based on limitations and individual rights. That is our relationship to being a "Christian" nation. Just as our relationship with the Almighty is individual and personal, so to are our rights inherent to each of us as individuals. That's a belief and a statement of belief. When we cleave to this we are blessed, and when we fall away we get the stick till we come back. It goes to the very meaning of life. Our way of life is suited to only a moral and sober people. Our belief in liberty is rooted in that, and without it our form of government is insufficient, which is why imposing our beliefs on others almost always fails. If we want to last another 250 years or another 2000 years we have to keep the basis on which it is all built. That's what I think.
