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Okay AeroguyDC, I was looking in the wrong volume (there are 20). The quote that you provided was in vol 14. I checked and it is there. I stand corrected.
The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible.
These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in the "Age of Reason", a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as "the father of the American Revolution." To this day, many mistakenly consider him an atheist, even though he was an out spoken defender of the Deistic view of God. Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe.
You have a tendency to take spiritual or religious words that could just as easily be spoken by any number of traditions and extrapolate from them a direct connection to a specific religion. They don't really reveal much at all.
Blue, here's the reason why I refuse to analyze your quote, nor debate it with you. Because Jefferson also said this:
"I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others." Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, editor (Boston: Grey & Bowen, 1830), Vol. III, p. 506, to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803.
Yet another reference to his belief in Christianity. Yet your quote does not cast doubt on his beliefs. Does it show possible disgust with certain tenets? Sure. But it does not prove that he was not a Christian (which has been my point all along.)
This revolving door is getting us nowhere. Thomas Jefferson, and more importantly, many (if not most) of the Founding Father's were Christians. That was the challenge, I met that challenge, and I stand by my statements.
Good. Finally getting somewhere. If you read what I've written I've never made any attempt to deny Jefferson was a Christian in the "truest" sense, as you note above. I've actually argued that from the beginning.
Even what you quote above is intended, as the other quote you lean on, as an attack against Christianity. He is saying what Gandhi said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are nothing like your Christ."
As I've said, anyone who would go through the painstaking process of writing an entire version of the Bible is certainly looking for some form of Christian influence.
But - that's the big difference. If you really study Jefferson, and not just quote mine, you will find that he rejected the institution of Christianity outright and spent his life fighting against its attempts by fundamentalists of his day to override the young government as they are attempting to rewrite history today and override our government today.
At the same time, he embraced Christ. He sought to dig beneath alll the crap that drove him to say, "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man." and find a core of goodness.
That's a HUGE difference and fundamental to understanding the complex relationship the founders had in forming a government that both accepted religious expression and kept it at arms length. There's a lot of quotes on here from people who merely spoke about their religion, which doesn't really get us anywhere since, well, they were predominantly Christian even with the rise of Deism. They were, after all, fleeing a continent primarily because it was overrun with religious corruption in government.
This thread has no moral value..it is better suited in Dante's Inferno.
If you wish to engage, try challenging your own assumptions about our nation's founding and engage your mind rather than just your judgment. We are attempting to move people beyond these empty personal attacks and have a mature discussion on this thread.
Your own link illustrates my point perfectly about Jefferson's general rejection of Christianity in favor of the individual Jesus himself:
Jefferson believed in the existence of a Supreme Being who was the creator and sustainer of the universe and the ultimate ground of being, but this was not the triune deity of orthodox Christianity. He also rejected the idea of the divinity of Christ, but as he writes to William Short on October 31, 1819, he was convinced that the fragmentary teachings of Jesus constituted the "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man."
Keep in mind, also, these men had very limited exposure. Would he today rely on Christ simply because the guy had some good moral foundation to his teachings, or would he find such teachings in other religions around the world, including Christianity, as so many do today?
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
Thomas Jefferson:
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
"The Christian God is a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."
"If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"If we could believe that [Jesus]...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter."
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
"...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac."
"..our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry"
"A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written."
"We discover [in the gospels] a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication."
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education."
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church
... made of Christendom a slaughter-house."
John Adams
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
James Madison
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect."
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
George Washington:
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
Abraham Lincoln:
"My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
Wow, some interesting quotes there and I was aware of Thomas Jefferson's sentiments towards religion, but I admit, I hadn't read much on Madison.
You may enjoy this most fascinating article from the Washington Post.
Beliefs about God's personality are powerful predictors, according to the survey. Those who considered God engaged and punishing were likely to have lower incomes and less education, to come from the South and to be white evangelicals or black Protestants. Those who believed God to be distant and nonjudgmental were more likely to support increased business regulation, environmental protection and the even distribution of wealth.
Whew! All these high falutin' posts and quotes and stuff!
Doen't matter if our "Founding Fathers" were Christian or anything else.
They didn't "found" a religion....they "found" a NATION.
A nation where everyone should be FREE to be any religion they chose or no religion at all.
Their religion, or lack thereof, didn't/shouldn't/couldn't dictate the history of the United States. Common sense should be the only religion.....but I know how hopeless THAT idea is.
Whew! All these high falutin' posts and quotes and stuff!
Doen't matter if our "Founding Fathers" were Christian or anything else.
They didn't "found" a religion....they "found" a NATION.
A nation where everyone should be FREE to be any religion they chose or no religion at all.
Their religion, or lack thereof, didn't/shouldn't/couldn't dictate the history of the United States. Common sense should be the only religion.....but I know how hopeless THAT idea is.
lol...
Hopeless because "common sense" isn't that common at all. The Founders therefore espoused an educated citizenry which could function within their framework and utilize the safeguard "Separation of Church and State" to govern and REASON.
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