Answer: Perhaps the best way to answer the question is to look at those among us who are not religious. There are statistical measurements here. In the USA those people who are generally considered the elites are less religious in thinking and in practice than are small business owners. Novak says that only members of the military and professional athletes are more religious than business owners. Those of us who have started a business and run one today may think everyone in the country thinks like we do, but it just isn't so. While our children are in college listening to professors who are often not people of faith, we are running our businesses every day and praying that God will bless us.

Elites -- most often among the academics, the celebrities, and the journalists -- don't seem to need God. They've met with some success. They have money. They have a good paycheck. They are educated and can use reason to make decisions. Many of us who started something from nothing are emboldened by the belief that God will direct and provide during the struggle.

If you grow up reading the Bible and trying to follow its teachings, you are obligated to try to make things better. There is a scripture that says, "To those of us who have been given much, much is required." Within the community of faith, this means if you have talent, ideas and energy, you are supposed to do something with it to help others. In that effort, new products have been invented, buildings and bridges were built and the "West Was Won."

Also, going back to the discussion of very nature of God, Jews and Christians do not think that blasting a hole through a mountain to build a road is an act that defames God. There are religions which take the view that God resides in all of nature. Jews and Christians believe as Novak said, that we are called to be "co-creators with God" and that God gives us the ability to think of new ways to solve problems. If people need to get from one side of the mountain to the other, we think, let's build a road. We don't think, well, we'll just have to do without going to the other side of the mountain.

An agnostic himself, Stephen Ambrose wrote in his book, Nothing Like It in the World, about the strong faith held by the entrepreneurs who saw in their mind's eye a railroad crossing this country. These men put their hard-earned money and their lives on the line to make it happen. Ambrose quoted an American engineer as saying, "Where a mule can go, I can make a locomotive go." Ambrose concluded that the project was too hard and too scary to do without the leaders' belief that God was with them.

You think about it: We are certainly not evangelist for any particular faith statement, but, what would you try to do if you knew the creator of the universe was at your side to help you do it? Or what would you do if you felt God had called you to do it?