Yes, we affirm instead of swearing. And the Constitution says No religious test for office - but try to get elected after people find out you'd be affirming instead. Y'all hear about that US Senator of 35 years who's come out as an atheist? Goes to church every Sunday, though!
And I reiterate - they can *think* whatever they want. What they shouldn't be allowed to do is make anyone else act as if it were true, just because they believe it.

No followers of different religions, even those who follow the same god but a different prophet, believe the other religion is true. (Note that the prophet, the human interpreter, is always necessary since the god isn't *really* there.) My hypothetical followers put up with each other, usually, until someone starts telling the other's children that their own interpretation is more true than the children's parents' own interpretation.

And it's having my kids in public US schools that's got my dander up. Or is that knickers in a twist? Anyway, I've lived in or had family live in Eastern (pre- and post-communist) and Western Europe, West, Central and South Africa, and Eastern Asia, and nobody's public school system taught religious doctrine (what I call mythology) as if it were reality the way they are trying, and sometimes succeeding (GO, Dover!)in doing here. My old ex-French colony in West African school (that the Ivorian rebels burned down a couple of years ago, remember?) took off for the Catholic and Moslem holidays, since adults weren't expected to be working, but we bloody well learned science in science class- and religion in philosophy class. The harm! It's the harm!

So again - this is a US rant, and I guess a Middle East rant too... Although I don't know if everybody would prefer their children learn reality (I do *not* call it "the truth") rather than mythology in public schools purporting to be teaching reality, but I think that as an American, with all that founded-to-keep-the-church-out-of-the-government and all, that *my* kids have lucked into actually legally having that right. Of course I think it's everybody's human right, but if individuals choose not to avail themselves of that privilege, that is their right too.