...nothing. It would only be lost all over again. Everyone should understand that all governments are a convention we've made. It is in the same category as a religion, but one where we've set up the ground rules and requires no worship. There is no rule of nature that says common-sense principles cannot fail, or that you cannot be persuaded to go against principles you once held. The Bill of Rights will absolutely fail if you don't dislodge the notion that human rights can exist without a reference to God. It is axiomatic. Individual liberty is not a scientific law, or a math equation. When you remove God, you empower the tyrant element in all of us. This ultimately aggregates until you have a society that disdains liberty and is all about the "collective."
Even if you are a non-believer, try to appreciate the function of this thing. God, as a point of reference, simply establishes that we are all on equal footing. It requires no worship, nor establishes a religion. Human liberty and freedom under a government cannot exist any other way. Anything else is human-based, and therefore, relative (and given to the whims of whomever holds the most power).
No, you're okay. But my emphasis here is it doesn't, or it shouldn't (if you're wise or intelligent enough to understand), matter what you believe about God in your personal life. There's an analogy I use for this, so that people can visualize and understand I'm not simply pushing my credence or my religion. It's based on the equipment ballistic submarines use to maintain position while underwater. In a nutshell, it's an assembly of gimbals that uses a gyro in its center to establish a zero position when moored. During this, the gimbals are locked onto a star. Now, the star simply acts as a reference that is so far away it acts as a stationary point. It doesn't actually matter if the star is there or not. That's the analogy for God in reference to human rights that I try to make for atheists. It's absolutely necessary for the equipment to be accurate. While the sub moves away from the pier, the gimbals rotate (controlled by motors holding to that star) to maintain that distant stationary point - the gyro detecting movement through accelerometers allows the position to be known. If the stationary point was put onto something even within our solar system then the stationary point is moving that much too. So I say, God, as the source or inspiration or functional concept of human rights, is the only workable way to have equal human rights applied through government. Without it, we become relative.
It's not saying anything about God's power or justice on the earth, as another person mentioned. We are the ones who enforce and uphold it simply as a credence or a convention through our institutions, to justify the other credence of our personal liberty. That's the thing I think people don't understand, that liberty and freedom is simply a credence. If you're a materialist atheist, you have no basis to justify this. Something unseen must be invoked. That's God, plain and simple. It holds the place like a distant star reference point. It's not establishing anything or forcing worship of any kind. But the pride of the atheist can't help itself, I suppose.
Nicely put. That’s why I said this was an ideas level comment.
I took a sorta reflexive “non believer” position - routed in the argument and legal aspects of what you were saying, when I wrote my response simply because i consider it the plausible mean of the audience.
Outside constitutional studies or legal arguments I don’t often see this concept discussed or eluded to so it’s kinda hard to even access outside except those and philosophy. I see the deeper part you are getting at as well. It’s an important constant K if not not at least, as I was saying, legal doctrine.
Materialist atheist or collectivist authoritarianism - maybe one could even go as far as to equate the Chinese Communists as both - have no need nor concern for individual liberties and the very concept is often anathema to their manifest governance structures. Living there you can see the pervasiveness of collectivist thought and deference.
Your last statement though was also insightful - The pride of the atheist is often the very attitude which prevents them from going on another spiritual journey - The recognition that you, through your actions are an embodiment of your beliefs.... a terrifying proposition inside a worldview of nihilistic moral relativism or the tyranny of a majority of idiots.