Just ... wow. Whatever your religious stance, the United States rests on a continent that was colonized with flight from religious persecution as one of its FOUNDING reasons. I'm surprised that such requirements are listed, period. It seems like they danced around http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_religious_test_clause with their wording by simply declaring an entire binding philosophy of people [a]theist and [a]gnostic (where the letter in []'s is optional). Wow.
It makes some sense. America was founded on the belief that we (or at that time at least white, male property owners) were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. It was only by appealing to a greater power that we could essentially describe human rights and the need for limited government and individual liberty.
