Thanks for the comment. I think that's an interesting point that the verbiage in the Constitution seems more benign at first reading.
But I think when it comes to actually interpreting that verbiage into law, and when we fully come to grips with the understanding that a person's religion is very literally just their set of core assumptions (and is therefore the basis for all of their other beliefs and actions), then it still eventually becomes apparent that the Constitution itself has issues.
The first problem is that the free exercise clause offers no clear stipulations or qualifications. It doesn't seem to have the recognition or foresight that some people's religious practices may directly infringe on other people's well-being, and may therefore require congress to make laws prohibiting those practices.
And the second problem is that, since a person's set of core assumptions (i.e. their religion) forms the foundation for all of their other beliefs and actions, then that means that all people, by definition, are quite literally putting their religion into practice in all times and places, in everything they do.
And so although the Constitution says that it will "make no law respecting an establishment of religion", in fact, our entire legal system, including the Constitution itself, is really just a hodge-podge of all the personal religions of all the citizens that helped create and ratify it. It may not make any claims about God, but even the assumption that God should be left out of the Constitution is itself a religious assumption.
It's a hard conversation to have, because most people grow up with a very narrow understanding of what a religion is, and that it must have something to do with "God" or "spirituality". But when you really get to the bottom of it, we use the word "religion" to refer to the things that a person believes that can't really be proven - which is to say, their core assumptions. And that's really the only definition that has enough rigor to have any value in any legal system, or any serious mental model of the world, and is therefore the only definition worth using in a serious conversation.
