Christian Founding Fathers based on Christian morals"

GOD I hate this argument.

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter, 1787

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
--Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
--Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."
--James Madison, letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774

8/13/2008 3:43:58 PM

"One Nation, under God"
--Francis Bellamy, August 1892

8/13/2008 4:01:36 PM

this nation was built by capitalism

8/13/2008 4:02:13 PM

Quote :

"Founding Fathers"

Quote :

"1892"

8/13/2008 4:02:21 PM

Not to mention that the "God" part wasn't added until much much later, 1950's I think.

8/13/2008 4:05:03 PM

Quote :

"GOD I hate this argument."

8/13/2008 4:07:12 PM

yeah, it shows a complete ignorance of Enlightenment thought and principles

[Edited on August 13, 2008 at 4:21 PM. Reason : capital]

8/13/2008 4:20:46 PM

The founding fathers, despite doing some pretty great stuff, are given a little too much credit.

Many of them were used to their positions of power under English rule, and pushed the commoners into a hasty war as a means to hold onto that power in the inevitable transition to independence.

Whether or not they held Christian, Deistic, Agnostic, or other beliefs is really beside the point. Separation of Church and State as an institution isn't about making sure nobody is offended. It was and still ought to be about keeping the two most dominant powers in mankind's universe (that of the Nation State and that of the Church leadership) separate. Keeping Government coercion out of the Church, and vice-versa.

When you make it about 3 letters printed on the dollar bill, one phrase spoken during the pledge of allegiance, or a plaque with 10 commandments printed on the wall... you cheapen both institutions and continue to help the current power structure to distract from the real issues at hand.

[/rant]

8/13/2008 4:28:08 PM

belief in God /= christian

8/13/2008 4:31:31 PM

Did you find this on an Angelfire home page? It just sounds like some shit you'd see there or in a chain e-mail.

8/13/2008 4:40:20 PM

no...i came about during a discussion on Golo/WRAL. this guy was all like "nobody is going to elect a muslim president, talking about Obama, because this is a christian nation founded on christian value, blah blah blah. it just makes me sick!!

[Edited on August 13, 2008 at 4:44 PM. Reason : ..]

8/13/2008 4:43:02 PM

Quote :

"--Thomas Jefferson, letter, 1787"

Man, back in the day... letters... they still used them.

8/13/2008 5:47:34 PM

Quote :

"this nation was built by capitalism"

well if there were any abstract force to truely believe in it would be economics

8/13/2008 5:50:39 PM

economics is only the study of something existing...

so yes, I believe in physics. Only problem is, there is no limit, whatsoever, as to the extent to which the laws can be revised in the face of new evidence. Really, this is saying 1=1

It comes down to
1. I believe that things follow rules.
2. I believe everything that we have so far proved to be true. To whatever certainty we have proved it with.

8/13/2008 5:56:20 PM

so who picked a bible for george washington to swear his oath on

8/13/2008 6:02:35 PM

american jesus

8/13/2008 6:27:47 PM

^9 Read David McCullough's 'John Adams' before you say that the founders were given "a little to much credit." They deserve all the credit in the world. They risked everything, (including their own executions as traitors), getting a war going that most people at the time believed had very little chance of succeeding.
I think you would have to really believe in an ideal to take make a decision like that.

8/14/2008 1:08:47 AM

THIS HAS NEVER

BEEN

DONE

BEFORE

8/14/2008 2:35:32 AM

^^ To quote McCullough himself:

Quote :

"I think it's important to remember that these men are not perfect. If they were marble gods, what they did wouldn't be so admirable. The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them."

I'm not claiming that they didn't risk a lot, some of them everything. Many of them had an awful lot to lose, but they also had a lot to gain. It seems when a lot of constitutionalists, myself included in this group, speak of these men they think of them as demigods, driven solely by an ideal in the equality of man and every individuals right to live their life as they choose.

I'm not saying they didn't believe that either, but if you read these individuals' writings as a whole, you see a group of men who had high ideals and some real hesitation to put the American people through the risks associated with declaring independence. You also see that there was a ton of conflict about how to structure the new Republic, and that a group who believed strongly in the need for a powerful Federal government pushed for the abandoning of the Articles of Confederation in favor of a much stronger Constitution without giving them even a full 7 years to make it work.

And the point, in the context of this thread, was not how much credit they deserve in the forming of the republic. It was that they, as the framers of our founding documents (which are all but abandoned now) had some supreme knowledge about God, or lack thereof about which every single decision they made hinged. This is the argument I see all over these threads (from both sides of the discussion) and it's simply not the case. Sure some of them were devoutly Christian, or Deist, or neither... but the ideals of the constitution weren't based on those beliefs so much as the ultimate sovereignty of the Individual.

8/14/2008 10:45:51 AM