Th. Jefferson's opinion on the Bible's Book of the Revelation (souls, America)

[ParkTwain]

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Book of Revelation], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherencies of our own nightly dreams ... I cannot so far respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events, past or subsequent. There is not enough coherence in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas.... What has no meaning admits no explanation. And pardon me if I say, with the candor of friendship, that I think your time too valuable, and your understanding of too high an order, to be wasted on these paralogisms. You will perceive, I hope, also that I do not consider them as reveladons of the supreme being, whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to him a pretension of revelation, couched at the same time in terms which, he would know, were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, January 17, 1825

[Padgett2]

Smart man, that Jefferson!!

[ParkTwain]

"Every religion consists of moral precepts, and of dogmas. In the first they all agree. All forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, bear false witness &ca. and these are the articles necessary for the preservation of order, justice, and happiness in society. In their particular dogmas all differ; no two professing the same. These respect vestments, ceremonies, physical opinions, and metaphysical speculations, totally unconnected with morality, and unimportant to the legitimate objects of society. Yet these are the questions on which have hung the bitter schisms of Nazarenes, Socinians, Arians, Athanasians in former times, and now of Trinitarians, Unitarians, Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists, Quakers &c. Among the Mahometans we are told that thousands fell victims to the dispute whether the first or second toe of Mahomet was longest; and what blood, how many human lives have the words 'this do in remembrance of me' cost the Christian world! We all agree in the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus; but we schismatize and lose ourselves in subtleties about his nature, his conception maculate or immaculate, whether he was a god or not a god, whether his votaries are to be initiated by simple aspersion, by immersion, or without water; whether his priests must be robed in white, in black, or not robed at all; whether we are to use our own reason, or the reason of others, in the opinions we form, or as to the evidence we are to believe. It is on questions of this, and still less importance, that such oceans of human blood have been spilt, and whole regions of the earth have been desolated by wars and persecutions, in which human ingenuity has been exhausted in inventing new tortures for their brethren. It is time then to become sensible how insoluble these questions are by minds like ours, how unimportant, and how mischievous; and to consign them to the sleep of death, never to be awakened from it. ... We see good men in all religions, and as many in one as another. It is then a matter of principle with me to avoid disturbing the tranquility of others by the expression of any opinion on the [unimportant points] innocent questions on which we schismatize, and think it enough to hold fast to those moral precepts which are of the essence of Christianity, and of all other religions."

[ParkTwain]

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

-Thomas Jefferson

[ParkTwain]

From Th. Jefferson's letter to his nephew Peter Carr:

"Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. . . . [S] hake off all the fears, and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. 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 blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, etc. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. . . . You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, and the second by exile, or death [infurcâ....]

Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comforts and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief in his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudices on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the lightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well as those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics."

[ParkTwain]

From "Jefferson the Skeptic" by Brooke Allen in Hudson Review, Summer 2006
Jefferson the Skeptic Hudson Review, The - Find Articles

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As the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson secured himself a top place in the American pantheon despite personal principles that have been distasteful to Christians throughout our history. Defamed by the religious right of his day as the Virginia Voltaire, Jefferson, like Franklin, was a true Enlightenment philosophe in every sense of the word, a thorough skeptic who valued reason far above faith and subjected every religious tradition, including his own, to scientific scrutiny. Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale University during Jefferson's presidency, called him "the real Jacobin, the very child of modern illumination, the foe of man, and the enemy of his country." This was no rant from the lunatic fringe but a common opinion of Jefferson among practicing Christians then and later.

He had earned their enmity for three reasons: first, for writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a radical and groundbreaking document that would eventually serve as the model for the legal principle of church/state separation that still obtains in America today; second, as the first and most influential American advocate of the French science and philosophy that was so widely perceived at that time as atheistic; and third, as the author of Notes on the State of Virginia, a classic of eighteenth-century free-thinking. This 1784 document created an outrage among the religiously-minded that could sometimes reach hysterical levels. Consider one extract, which takes Locke's principles much further than Locke himself ever ventured to take them and whose language seems almost deliberately calculated to provoke the zealots of the time:

"
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. . . . 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 . . . reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. . . . They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.
"

If Jefferson intended to stir things up he certainly succeeded, and this passage soon became notorious. The response of the Reverend William Linn, a Dutch Reformed minister from New York, was typical: "Let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God, and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg but my neck. If there be no God, there is no law." Without having to agree with Linn that moral behavior or law and order depend on religion, we can understand why he, and so many of his kind, were offended. For those who believe that there is one true God and only one and that everyone who fails to worship him will be damned, such an apparent carelessness for the souls of others would seem not only flippant but downright cruel. A conclusion that many inevitably drew was that Jefferson was an atheist, although he did not define himself as one, at least not in writing. But it is safe to say that he was definitely not a Christian; for while Jefferson professed to revere Jesus Christ as a philosopher and moralist, he displayed nothing but contempt for the Christian religion as it had been practiced and preached for nearly two millennia.
...
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[MontanaGuy]

Jefferson was really a brilliant man. Back in those days it was common for even everyday people to write very long and thoughtful letters. He wrote a great many letters that tend to be very revealing of his true thinking and are probably not something he would have stated in a public speech.

[Visvaldis]

Thomas Jefferson was an intelligent man. We sure could use someone like that today.

[alvinabugeorge]

The revelation is perhaps the most significant book in the entire Bible. It speaks to us about how the world will come to an end and it warns us of the tragedies that we will face because of such ignorances of which I have just read above. How could such a smart man reject the most revealing book in the book of laws under which this great nation was founded upon. It is greatest shame to now call such an insolent insignificant insect one of my founding fathers after him having the foolish mind to contradict the God of such infinite power. Everyone is welcome to their own opinion but how incredibly stupid can you be to be so blind to not see the damage that mistakes like these are the ones that are bringing this nation to its' knees. And all of you have the nerve to call him smart??

[GldnRule]

Yeah, that Jefferson was incredibly smart...but his brilliance was infinitesimal compared to his malevolence.

Prolific slavemaster (HUNDREDS of slaves)...endorser of ultra chauvinism...and gave his sanction and authority to the massacre of nearly an entire race of people.

Few men that ever existed were as low-down as that dude.

He rates right there with Genghis Khan. Only worse...Khan didn't front like he was something other that what he was.