804,
Its amazing to speak to tea party people and listen to them talk about the founding fathers and their love for christianity, and how they created this country to be a christian nation.
http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html Bite your tungue, there are many denomination's of Christians not just Catholic!!!!!!
Its unfortunate that they are wrong. I hear the tea party crowd talk about the founding fathers as if they have a special connection to them, however, if the founding fathers were alive today, they would have NOTHING to do with the right wing or moreover, the Tea party people.
Of the founding fathers who signed the constitution and bill of rights, only 2 were considered christians. John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. John Jay tried to pass legislation later making it a law that only christians could hold public office, but was shut down by the others. Hamilton, who Mocked christianity publicly and in political arenas later suffered when he was involved in a duel and was fatally wounded. As he lay dying, he asked for his last rights as was denied by the local bishop for his actions, it wasnt until he was forced to confess his love for god that his last rights were given to him.
The rest of the founding fathers were "free thinkers" who considered themselves "DEIST" and not christians. They were men of "the enlightenment" and did not follow christianity. They believed that the universe was created by something, but not a god, they believe there was a person named jesus, just not a man with divinity (or a regular person with reasonable teachings)
James Madison
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
John Adams
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
For the average Tea party person, they believe the founding fathers are on their side and invoke GOD at every tea party rally, but lets examine what the founding fathers had to say about religion from their own words:
James Madison writings:
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"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."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]-1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches[/FONT]
"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]-letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif].[/FONT]
"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."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785[/FONT]
Thomas Jefferson writings:
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814[/FONT]
"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."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- "Notes on Virginia"[/FONT]
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- to Carey, 1816[/FONT]
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif].[/FONT]
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
"We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication ."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, 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."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]-letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519[/FONT]
Thomas Paine writings:
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
"What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."
"Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."
"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. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."[/FONT]
Benjamin Franklin writings:
". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- Works, Vol. VII, p. 75[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif].[/FONT]
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself 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."
"I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."
"It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers"
There are tons of other writings specifically calling out christianity as a farce by the founding fathers and Im limited by both space and attention span by some readers so ill cut it short here.
Its guys like Glenn Beck who will spend months talking about the founding fathers and distort the historical record of them. Beck himself dressed up like Thomas Paine and paraded around like a buffoon on his show touting his works as a founding father, only to later realize Paine was an atheist. (DOH!)
Its remarkable how little people know about the founding fathers, and its more remarkable what kids are taught in schools about them. I hear the term "judeo-christian" from people and most cant explain what that really means other than to say it means the christian belief , which is not true.
Nonetheless, the right wing of this country, despite the clear and present position of the founding fathers and religion continue to invoke christianity into our political system as if it was intended to be there.
I think the founding fathers had it right.
Peace.
