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Do you think this country was founded upon Christianity?

Do you think the U.S. was intended to be a Christian Nation?

  • Yes

    Votes: 28 19.4%
  • No

    Votes: 99 68.8%
  • other

    Votes: 17 11.8%

  • Total voters
    144
No, it was founded on the ideal of individual rights and liberties. Just because many of the founding fathers were one flavor of Christian or another doesn't mean that we constructed a Christian theocracy. The goal was just the opposite in fact, a government free from the entanglements and entrapment of religion.
 
No, it was founded on the ideal of individual rights and liberties. Just because many of the founding fathers were one flavor of Christian or another doesn't mean that we constructed a Christian theocracy. The goal was just the opposite in fact, a government free from the entanglements and entrapment of religion.

FWIW, they were primarily concerned with a federal government free from the entanglements of religion.

The Constitution did not prevent individual states from setting up or maintaining policies that favored an official state religion or required some sort of religious adherence.
 
The Constitution did not prevent individual states from setting up or maintaining policies that favored an official state religion or required some sort of religious adherence.

And when those policies get challenged in the SCOTUS what happens?
 
And when those policies get challenged in the SCOTUS what happens?

Nowadays, the First Amendment has been incorporated against the states which would mean that none of those laws could stand. At the time, nobody thought much of it. Connecticut had an official state religion until 1818. Until 1833, Massachusetts required every citizen to pay a tithe to the church of their choice, or to the majority church if they failed to identify one.
 
Nowadays, the First Amendment has been incorporated against the states which would mean that none of those laws could stand. At the time, nobody thought much of it. Connecticut had an official state religion until 1818. Until 1833, Massachusetts required every citizen to pay a tithe to the church of their choice, or to the majority church if they failed to identify one.

So do you think a State's Constitution should take precedence over the federal one that calls for equality in religions??
 
So do you think a State's Constitution should take precedence over the federal one that calls for equality in religions??

I don't, but that's not what was going on. My point is simply that the framers did not believe that the First Amendment prevented individual states from favoring one religion over another or religion over irreligion. At drafting, the First Amendment limited the actions of the federal government, not the states. Several states chose to enact protections similar to those in the First Amendment. Others didn't.

The relevance of this information to today is not that it means states can create official religions now (they can't), but that it gives us a more accurate understanding of what the framers thought about the relationship between government and religion.
 
And those facts would be.............?
These (and there are hundreds more). Keep quoting your Christian revisionists - the facts will continue to annhilate them every time ;):

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America." -
Common Sense, January 10, 1776
-Thomas Paine

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man: Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution, Part the First, Conclusion

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
-- Thomas Paine, The Crisis

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
-- Thomas Paine, as quoted by Joseph Lewis in Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine (which contains no pagination or source citations)

I think the country was founded upon Christian morals and the rights we have are ours because the founders believed the Christian God gave them to us.
His statement is false, as the above quotes (among many others) prove. Many of the founders were not Christians - they were diests or atheists, and even those who claimed to be Christian considered Christian fundamentalism to be evil, and founded this country on the principles of the enightenment and the Age of Reason.

Please explain what is wrong with that statement and provide proof. Thank you.
Done. You're welcome. ;)

I'm sorry if our Founders and the values that they founded this great country on offend you and your fellow America-hating Christian revistionists. If you hate this country and it's values, you're free to move to Saudi Arabia or some nation that better reflects your "values".

Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves. (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children. (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)

Rape in the Bible
 
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I don't, but that's not what was going on. My point is simply that the framers did not believe that the First Amendment prevented individual states from favoring one religion over another or religion over irreligion. At drafting, the First Amendment limited the actions of the federal government, not the states. Several states chose to enact protections similar to those in the First Amendment. Others didn't.

The relevance of this information to today is not that it means states can create official religions now (they can't), but that it gives us a more accurate understanding of what the framers thought about the relationship between government and religion.


I think some of the founders would agree with you and I think others would disagree with you.
 
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This is ironic considering that your primary source in this thread is a discredited revisionist.

My primary sources are the words of the Founders. Surely you read the quotes and sources I gave? None of that was opinion from Barton. All of it was primary sourcing from the Founders.
 
I think some of the founders would agree with and I think others would disagree with you.

I'm sure that there were those who had a personal disagreement with the policy behind it, but my point is that it's indisputable that when the First Amendment was enacted, nobody in Congress understood it as actually preventing the things that were going on in MA or CT.

It wasn't until the 1870's that the religion clauses were even theoretically applied to the states, and it took until the 1940's before they were actually applied to the states.
 
My primary sources are the words of the Founders. Surely you read the quotes and sources I gave? None of that was opinion from Barton. All of it was primary sourcing from the Founders.

Hmm I sense evasion. ;)

BTW, none of the quotes you gave supported your "Christian nation assertions". They were just random quotes by Founders where "god" was mentioned in a general sense - which was the cultural norm for the time, and not remarkable at all. My quotes on the other hand would have been considered radically atheistic for that era:

---
Reposting so she can't dodge the truth:

These (and there are hundreds more). Keep quoting your Christian revisionists - the facts will continue to annhilate them every time ;):

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America." -
Common Sense, January 10, 1776
-Thomas Paine

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man: Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution, Part the First, Conclusion

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
-- Thomas Paine, The Crisis

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
-- Thomas Paine, as quoted by Joseph Lewis in Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine (which contains no pagination or source citations)


His statement is false, as the above quotes (among many others) prove. Many of the founders were not Christians - they were diests or atheists, and even those who claimed to be Christian considered Christian fundamentalism to be evil, and founded this country on the principles of the enightenment and the Age of Reason.


Done. You're welcome. ;)

I'm sorry if our Founders and the values that they founded this great country on offend you and your fellow America-hating Christian revistionists. If you hate this country and it's values, you're free to move to Saudi Arabia or some nation that better reflects your "values".

Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves. (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children. (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)

Rape in the Bible

---
Victory. B)
 
Look, can we all agree that sometimes, some of the founders said bad things about religion, while sometimes, some said things that were good?

Let's try to avoid the lengthy copy-pastes that just talk past each other.
 
These (and there are hundreds more). Keep quoting your Christian revisionists - the facts will continue to annhilate them every time ;):

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America." -
Common Sense, January 10, 1776
-Thomas Paine

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man: Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution, Part the First, Conclusion

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
-- Thomas Paine, The Crisis

None of this proves that "most Founders were atheists or Deists". You quoted Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. That's it. I've already said Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. Not sure about Paine. I'm thinking he was an atheist.

You have failed to say anything about.....
Washington
Adams
Madison
Franklin
Sam Adams
Hamilton
Hancock
Patrick Henry
John Jay
George Mason
Benjamin Rush
Daniel Webster
Noah Webster

I'll wait for your dissertation on the religions of these Founders as well.
 
Moderator's Warning:
There's fair use rules on this forum. I suggest everyone in this thread start reviewing them, and quick, because beyond this point action will be taken.
 
Look, can we all agree that sometimes, some of the founders said bad things about religion, while sometimes, some said things that were good?

Let's try to avoid the lengthy copy-pastes that just talk past each other.

I think it's important to let the Founders speak in their own words. Sure, some really didn't like "church" as it were. Many Christians nowadays don't like organized religion either. That doesn't mean they don't believe in God or the divinity of Christ.
 
My primary sources are the words of the Founders. Surely you read the quotes and sources I gave? None of that was opinion from Barton. All of it was primary sourcing from the Founders.

So you aren't quoting Barton on the Bible situation? Pay attention.
 
So you aren't quoting Barton on the Bible situation? Pay attention.

Um, no. I'm quoting Aitken's letter to Congress and what Congress said in approving of the publishing of the Bible.
 
FWIW, they were primarily concerned with a federal government free from the entanglements of religion.

The Constitution did not prevent individual states from setting up or maintaining policies that favored an official state religion or required some sort of religious adherence.

Indeed, but this was about the founding of the country right? I would take that to mean the Constitution and the federal government. Many of the States were left to do as they wanted, the Federal government wasn't to inject itself into it. Since the State governments are idealy more easily controlled than the federal government, more restrictions were originally placed on the federal government.
 
I think it's important to let the Founders speak in their own words. Sure, some really didn't like "church" as it were. Many Christians nowadays don't like organized religion either. That doesn't mean they don't believe in God or the divinity of Christ.
Most of the Founders did believe in a god, (it wasn't even socially acceptable back then to say you didn't, and for that matter, the theory of evolution and the Big Bang didn't even exist yet, so there was little other alternative). But I've proven sufficiently that the US was in no way founded on fundamentalist Christianity, nor was it intented to be a theocracy. Heh, if that was what the Founders' wanted, then why did they break away from the British Empire - a Christian theocratic govt?

And I'll research the other founders' you listed ASAP.
 
Um, no. I'm quoting Aitken's letter to Congress and what Congress said in approving of the publishing of the Bible.

And that's why you felt it was necessary to reference David Barton 3 or 4 times in that context?

ROFLmeow.jpg


pb, I read her article....I'm sure you can find it on her site....she doesn't "destroy" David Barton at all. She agrees that Congress approved the production of the Bible. Congress also knew it was being printed in order to use in schools.

I assume you're talking about when Glenn and David showed the Bible and said, "Congress printed this Bible". Well, of course government didn't print the Bible. They misspoke there. They meant Congress APPROVED the printing. Glenn read it right off the page in the Bible. He shouldn't have said "Congress printed this Bible."

I think she's grasping at straws in order to find just SOMETHING to complain about. And if you call that "destroying" David Barton....that's just ridiculous.
 
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Most of the Founders did believe in a god, (it wasn't even socially acceptable back then to say you didn't, and for that matter, the theory of evolution and the Big Bang didn't even exist yet, so there was little other alternative). But I've proven sufficiently that the US was in no way founded on fundamentalist Christianity, nor was it intented to be a theocracy. Heh, if that was what the Founders' wanted, then why did they break away from the British Empire - a Christian theocratic govt?

And I'll research the other founders' you listed ASAP.

Who is even saying it was intended to be a theocracy?
 
Some more about Barton, courtesy of Little Green Footballs, a rabidly leftist site:

Little Green Footballs - Glenn Beck Promotes Theocracy and Interviews David Barton - Speaker at Neo-Nazi Rallies

Responding to David Barton

A baptist rebuffing of David Barton: http://candst.tripod.com/bjcpa1.htm

There's a reason why Barton's bestselling book is entitled "The Myth of Separation." He's a Christian reconstructionist, who is selling an agenda of Christianizing our secular government. He's falsified quotes from founding fathers to that end, and he repeatedly and inaccurately spins history in order to promote his personal aims.

Gullible sheep listen to him on Glenn Beck and don't do their own research.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Barton

But then, you and I have discussed this ad nauseum on the religion boards, haven't we?
 
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Glenn Beck promotes theocracy? LOL!

The title is already wrong, but I'll look at your little site.

Edit: Huh? I see no quotes where David Barton says that our Founders wanted a theocracy.
 
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