Maine Dog, you said: "Swearing an oath by God means, basically, that you are accepting as fact that you will lose your Salvation and be damned to hell if you fail to do you(r) best in your enterprise."

Bullfeathers. ;-) It means that only if you think it means that, and it doesn't mean it if you don't. I have a certain concept in my mind about "God", but it does not include the notion of a heavenly judge who damns people to hell. It does not include the notion that anyone would EVER be denied "Salvation". I don't even believe in hell or denial of salvation.

You are assuming that everyone who would swear an oath to God MUST believe exactly (and only?) the specific things about God that you think they must. You are right, no doubt, in certain cases...yet totally wrong in others. You have no business assuming that everyone who believes in "God" must therefore believe in a God as stupid, vicious, and unlikely as would please your basic assumptions about the matter. No, they are not all as you imagine them.

And that's why I bother responding to these pathetic threads at all. I'm irritated by the very deep chauvinism of people who assume that other people's ideas about God must be just as stupid as they think they would have to be. That is stereotyping people for your own ego enhancement ("Oh, I'm soooo much wiser and more realistic than they are...."), and it's as foolish as the kind of chauvinistic stereotyping of people that religious fundamentalists commonly engage in when they are attacking people who are different in belief from themselves.

It stinks, going both ways. Both sets of intolerant jerks (the atheistic intolerant and the religious fundamentalist intolerant) are forever patting themselves on the back because..."Oh, well, I'm not an idiot or a fool like those--------- people who don't believe as I do. If ONLY they knew what I know! If only! Tsk, tsk! (shaking his head in pity)"

You haven't got a clue what other people believe in or don't. You never bothered to really try finding out. All you have is your habitual prejudice toward them and your enjoyment of it.