RANT ARCHIVE 6:
...or should it be 666?
RELIGION
Some of the material on this site is guaranteed to offend people that have never been exposed to the information, ideas, and links we have posted. Some people may feel uncomfortable or get angry at what they find. Others will feed off it, grateful that we exposed the information we have. Still others may not care at all. Our goal is to create a dialogue between and among these people. A dialogue that focuses on questioning conventions, and challenging Authorities and Elites.
freedom of information, freedom of thought, and freedom of speech and action
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"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
James Madison
Forth U.S. President and principal author of the Constitution and Bill of Rights
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Rather than offend on our site, we can direct you to sites that do a better job than we could ever do on the religion issue (though I'm sure we could give them a run for their money).
OUR RUN FOR THE MONEY:
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>DEISM and the "Founding Fathers" - This little thing was one of our site's first rants ever, enjoy.
Two Rants more meant for those that want to "save us:"
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Two more things: a look at two screwed up wackos.
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OFF-SITE $:
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Thomas Paine's Critique of the Bible and more: "The Age of Reason" the entire damned text www.positiveatheism.org/tochpain.htm
THE HARDCORE/PUNK GUIDE TO CHRISTIANITY
by Robin Banks
http://plusminusrecords.com/hcpguide/index.html
>>Why Women Need Freedom From Religion www.ffrf.org/nontracts/women.html
>>Dare To Question: Elizabeth Cady Stanton http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/elizabeth_stanton/dare.html
also see: http://religion.aynrand.org/
>>The Failure of Christianity by Emma Goldman http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/failureofchristianity.html
>>The Skeptical Review: www.theskepticalreview.com/
The Secular Web hosts the online version of past issues of the printed version of The Skeptical Review (www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/index.shtml) but is not responsible for editing its content. If you have questions or criticisms regarding specific contents of this periodical, please join the Errancy email list to discuss it, or write a letter to the editor. And please note that subsequent to the November/December 2002 issue, the Skeptical Review will be published in an online version, only, at www.theskepticalreview.com
>>Biblical Errancy: http://members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/ 2500 Punderson Drive; Hilliard, Ohio 43026
The issues raised in Biblical Errancy represent a challenge to Bible inerrantists, and religion in general.
>>Ever seen the artificial light and then then stepped over to the real light of rationalism? Ask the Ex-Christians: ExChristians.net: http://vanallens.com/exchristian/intro03.php
>>WAS THERE NO HISTORICAL JESUS? http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/jesus.html
also see http://vanallens.com/exchristian/2002_08_25_archive.php
>>THE PAGAN ORIGINS OF THE CHRIST-MYTH:
www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/index_FLASH.html
>>THE GOD MOVIE www.thegodmovie.com/clip-Trailer.php
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Where to find literature that is skeptical and critical of religion:
PROMETHEUS BOOKS: www.prometheusbooks.com
BIBLICAL ERRANCY book link
ROBB MARKS: RM Bookseller
SECULAR WEB:
DETOX WEBZINE: 
The Journal of Higher Criticism: 
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Searching for answers that question New Age sewage, paranormal phenomenot and religious frippery?:
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SKEPTIC PLANET SEARCH:
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The Skeptic's Dictionary:
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The Randi Paranormal Challenge
James Randi, a.k.a. The Amazing Randi, magician and author of numerous
works skeptical of paranormal claims, offers "a
one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper
observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or
occult power." His rules are little more than what any reasonable
scientist would require. If you are a mental spoon bender, you can't
use your own spoons. If you are going to see auras, you will have to
do so under controlled conditions. If you are going to do some remote
viewing, you will not be given credit for coming close in some vague
way. If you are going to demonstrate your dowsing powers, be prepared
to be tested under controlled conditions. If you are going to do
psychic surgery or experience the stigmata, expect to have cameras
watching your every move.
For more information on the James Randi Paranormal Challenge see
www.randi.org, or send e-mail to randi@randi.org or snail mail to
JREF
201 S.E. 12th St (E. Davie Blvd)
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815
U.S.A.
After collecting the million dollars, successful psychics should
contact B. Premanand of the Indian Skeptic, who will pay Rs. 100,000
"to any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic,
supernatural of paranormal ability of any kind under satisfactory
observing conditions." "Mr. Prabir Ghosh will pay Rs.
20,00,000 to anyone who claims to possess supernatural power of any
kind and proves the same without resorting to any trick in the
location specified by Prabir Ghosh." Also, the Australian
Skeptics will throw in an additional $100,000 (Australian), $80,000
for the psychic and $20,000 for anyone "who nominates a person
who successfully completes the Australian Skeptics Challenge." If
you nominate yourself, and are successful, you get the whole hundred
grand. Finally, the Association for Skeptical Inquiry (ASKE), a U.K.
skeptic organization, offers £12,000 for proof of psychic powers.
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All Those Opposed:
www.rationalist.org.uk/index.shtml
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get the entire anti-tract @ http://www.minitru.org/llf/wwjd.html
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No Morality Without the Bible?
FARRELL TILL
(Farrell Till was a Minister for The Church of Christ for twelve years and five of those were spent doing missionary work http://vanallens.com/exchristian/fartil.htm . He is the editor and frequent contributor to his magazine The Skeptical Review.)
Of all the arguments that fundamentalists resort to in their defense of the Bible, none is more ridiculous than their claim that the Bible is necessary for people to know how to live moral lives. They arrive at this conclusion through a series of assumptions. Their first assumption is that God exists, and onto this assumption, they pile another one: morality (and they even make it an absolute morality) emanates from the nature of God. Then, of course, they assume that their God, in verbally inspiring the Bible, revealed absolute morality to mankind. Hence, man must rely on the Bible to know what is moral and immoral. They envision life without the Bible as a moral chaos reminiscent of ancient Israel before the time of its kings when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).
The whole superstructure of this argument is built upon another assumption that is incredibly cynical on the part of a group that delights in condemning the pessimism of philosophies that question the existence of God. This assumption is that man is incapable of making moral decisions without divine guidance. In other words, man must have God's help or else he just can't determine for sure what is right and what is wrong.
Were it not for the seriousness of fundamentalist attempts to impose this belief on society in general, it would be too ridiculous to deserve comment. We have used human intelligence to cure diseases, split the atom, and invent a technology that has us reaching for the stars, yet Christian fundamentalists would have us believe that we are too stupid to discover that lying, stealing, and killing are harmful enough to the general welfare to be considered morally wrong. That view of life is about as pessimistic as any that can be imagined, infinitely more pessimistic than the mental action of a skeptic who questions the existence of an afterlife for which he can see no verifiable evidence.
This foundation belief of Bible fundamentalism is of course erroneous. It is even contradicted by the Bible itself. In Romans 2:14, the Apostle Paul said that the Gentiles, who had not received the law [of Moses] or, in other words, a revelation from God, had nevertheless sometimes done "by nature the things of the law" and were therefore "a law unto themselves." If this doesn't mean that Paul believed that the Gentiles who had no divine revelation had discovered morality on their own, then pray tell what does it mean? So even if the existence of the biblical god could undeniably be proven, how could bibliolaters, in the face of this statement from their much revered apostle to the Gentiles, justify their claim that man must have direct guidance from God in order to live morally?
The fact is that no one can prove the existence of God. Volumes have been written on the subject, but no theist has yet advanced an argument for God's existence that has not been adequately answered. Anyone who doubts this should read the information available on the subject, and a good place to begin would be with George H. Smith's Atheism: the Case Against God. In this book, one will find logical refutations of all the major theistic arguments.
What this means is that the fundamentalist claim that there can be no morality without a god to reveal it to us is just an empty shell. It begins with an unprovable assumption and ends with a conclusion that even the Bible contradicts. What kind of argument is that?
The fallacy of the argument is obvious from its flagrant appeal to wishful thinking. It is certainly appealing to think that we will live in another world after we die in this one, and so wishful thinkers spend their lives believing in religions that offer them the hope of gods and saviors who promise them eternal life in a great beyond. Few of these wishful thinkers ever bother to subject their otherworldly beliefs to rational examination. They want it, so they assume that they will get it just on the basis of their wanting it. Nothing could be more irrational than belief based on a premise no more substantial than this, yet this is exactly how many theists reason. "I want it, and so I know that I will get it."
If there is no God, fundamentalists are fond of saying, then there can be no standard of objective or absolute morality. Well, so what? What kind of argument is that? If there isn't, then there just isn't. What the fundamental- ists are really saying is that it would certainly be nice if everything on the subject of morality was already decided for us and neatly laid out in categories of black and white. This is right, and this is wrong, period, end of the discus- sion. But if it isn't that way, then it just isn't that way, and no amount of wishful thinking or praying or hoping will ever change the fact that it isn't that way. We (mankind) are just in the world on our own and will have to get by the best that we can.
The thought of that terrifies most theists, but it shouldn't. God wasn't much help to us in discovering how to cure or prevent smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid, whooping cough, polio, measles, and dozens of other diseases. We had to do it on our own. God wasn't much help to us in making the scientific discoveries that led to the technology that now makes life so comfortable for us. We had to do it on our own. So if we did all these things without God, surely we can make the moral discoveries that are necessary for society to function in an orderly, beneficial way.
To the fundamentalists, of course, this is all outrageous heresy. The Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God. It just is, and no amount of rational argumentation will remove them from their fantasy world in which everything is either black or white. There is one thing, however, that they cannot do. They cannot open their Bibles and demonstrate just how anyone can know what absolute morality is. They will say that the Bible provides us with a guide to absolute morality, but they can't show us exactly what absolute morality is.
Is it, for example, morally right for blood to be transfused from one person to another? Most religions permit it, but the Jehovah's Witnesses argue that biblical principles properly understood condemn it. Who is right? When the Bible was being written, the technology for transfusing blood didn't exist, so the Bible did not directly address this problem. The same is true of numerous other technologies now available to us. The transplantation of body organs (including even cross-species transplants), artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, genetic mapping, gene splicing--these are all technologies that were developed after the Bible was written, so what is the "correct"" moral position to take on these issues? Through processes of in vitro fertilization and embryo transplantations, a woman in South Dakota gave birth to her own grandchildren. Was it morally right for her to do this? What does the Bible say? Well, of course, the Bible doesn't say anything about this or any of the other technological procedures mentioned above. If we asked a hundred theologians to take their Bibles and resolve the moral dilemmas posed by these technologies, we would find ourselves hopelessly trapped in a maze of confusion when all of their answers were in.
Last summer, when the story about the Lakeberg twins first appeared in the newspapers, the article was clipped and mailed to several fundamentalist preachers known to believe in absolute morality. An accompanying letter asked them to explain what the Bible had to say about the dilemma that the parents of those twins were facing. The twins were joined at the chest and shared a common heart. Surgery would mean that one of the twins would have to die, and subsequently this was the decision that the parents made. The absolute moralists who received that letter were asked to state what their god of absolute morality has revealed to us in this matter.
Not a one of these preachers has yet answered that letter. Their silence shouts the inconsistency of their position. The Bible gives us a guide to absolute morality, so they say, yet they cannot tell us what absolute morality has to say about the difficult moral dilemmas that we must confront in our modern society.
Elsewhere in this issue, a debate on biblical morality begins. Before it is over, maybe Lindell Mitchell, the spokesman for the fundamentalist position, will try to explain to us how the Bible can be an absolute moral guide in problems that didn't even exist in biblical times. If he doesn't attempt to explain it, some of us just may suspect that he isn't nearly as sure of his position as he would like us to believe.
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DEISM and the "Founding Fathers"
June 25: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge finds the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional--thank god.
According to Bush, however: "The Declaration of God in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't violate rights. As a matter of fact, it's a confirmation of the fact that we received our rights from god, as a proclamation in our Declaration of Independence." The president said the country needs "common sense judges who understand that rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench." What about someone's freedom to be free from religion? As far as I can tell, the rights, and beauty of the rights of this country, were created by rational men, not a god. And many of those men were Deists. The pledge was created by Francis Bellamy in 1892. In 1954, the phrase 'under god' was added to the pledge during the Red Scare of McCarthyism. The following year our county's beautiful original motto: "from many comes one" (E Pluribus Unum) was changed to 'in god we trust' and the Treasury started branding our money with it as well. This may not be unconstitutional like the pledge, but why stop there. I feel sorry for some of the teachers that have recite the pledge daily, knowing that some of them don't agree with it, and others that know some of their students would rather not either. Ultimately, coercive worship of the flag is fascism, not patriotism, because patriotism is a voluntary act of freedom, not forced compulsion.
June 27: The U.S. Supreme court finds the use of school vouchers to divert public funds to private (including parochial) schools in Milwaukee to be "constitutional." So...what about that "Wall of Separation?"
Deism is a rejection of revealed religion or religion by the testimony of others, the foundation of Christianity. Theology can be divided into two classes: natural, which seeks knowledge of God through reason, and revealed, which requires faith in revelation (this is according to the Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, some theologians do not believe in the natural class). Deists reject belief in anyone else's accounts of 'talking to god' or being revealed visions or revelations of any sort from a god or gods. In Deism, knowledge is held more important than belief, reason more important than faith, revelations are ignored, and nothing is sacred enough to escape the light of inquiry and doubt. Meaning critiques of the Bible, Jesus, god theories, miracles and revelation are fair game and a tenet of Deism. The Deistic god is a god of nature that is not at all involved in this world or human affairs. Impersonal.
To let some Deists (which I am not) do some explaining, here is what they have to say: from www.Deism.com/:
Deism is defined in Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1941, as: "[From Latin Deus, God. Deity] The doctrine or creed of a Deist." And Deist is defined in the same dictionary as: "One who believes in the existence of a God or supreme being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason."
This common sense approach to God and a spiritual philosophy can not only bring a lasting profound sense of peace and happiness to the individual, but it also has the potential to go light years in eradicating religious fear, superstition and violence.
What is the basis of Deism? Reason and nature. We see the design found throughout the known universe and this realization brings us to a sound belief in a Designer or God.
Is Deism a form of atheism? No. Atheism teaches that there is no God. Deism teaches there is a God. Deism rejects the "revelations" of the "revealed" religions but does not reject God.
If Deism teaches a belief in God, then what is the difference between Deism and the other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.? Deism is, as stated above, based on nature and reason, not "revelation." All the other religions make claim to special divine revelation or they have requisite "holy" books. Deism has neither. In Deism there is no need for a preacher, priest or rabbi. All one needs in Deism is their own common sense and the creation to contemplate.
Do Deists believe that God created the creation and the world and then just stepped back from it? Some Deists do and some believe God may intervene in human affairs. For example, when George Washington was faced with either a very risky evacuation of the American troops from Long Island or surrendering them he chose the more risky evacuation. When questioned about the possibility of having them annihilated he said it was the best he could do and the rest is up to Providence.
Do Deists pray? Only prayers of thanks and appreciation. We don't dictate to God.
How do Deists view God? We view God as an eternal entity whose power is equal to his/her will. The following quote from Albert Einstein also offers a good Deistic description of God: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
Is Deism a cult? It's impossible for Deism to be a cult because Deism teaches self-reliance and encourages people to constantly use their reason. Deism teaches to "question authority" no matter what the cost.
Unlike the revealed religions, Deism makes no unreasonable claims. The revealed religions encourage people to give up, or at least to suspend, their God-given reason. They like to call it faith. For example, how logical is it to believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, or that Jesus walked on water, or that Mohammed received the Koran from an angel? Suspending your reason enough to believe these tales only sets a precedent that leads to believing a Jim Jones or David Koresh.
What's Deism's answer to all the evil in the world? Much of the evil in the world could be overcome or removed if humanity had embraced our God-given reason from our earliest evolutionary stages. After all, all the laws of nature that we've discovered and learned to use to our advantage that make everything from computers to medicine to space travel have existed eternally. But we've decided we'd rather live in superstition and fear instead of learning and gaining knowledge. It's much more soothing to believe we're not responsible for our own actions than to actually do the hard work required for success.
Deism doesn't claim to have all the answers to everything, we just claim to be on the right path to those answers.
SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS?
Many of them were Deists. And their Deism, that is non-Christian, ideology afforded America the pluralism it was founded on in order to obtain FREEDOM FROM GOVERNMENT IMPOSED DOGMA, including "under god."
The point is: a Secular State is the best method of insuring that we all have Freedom of Conscience as established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And luckily, the Enlightenment and the 'rationalism' of Deism, afforded the founding fathers with the common sense to separate religion and government so that we may all be free--the reason England was abandoned to begin with. They realized, no one should be bothered by or forced to acknowledge the ideology of someone else, and everyone should be free in their own place/space and time to think and do as they please as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others' freedoms. In other words, religious philosophies are a private, not public, matter.
The excerpts below are from
Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and
Thomas Paine. (taken from: “Quotations that Support the Separation
of Church and State” compiled by Ed and Michael Buckner, Published by
the Atlanta Freethought Society, 1993. A limited number of
changes and additions to the original compilation were made (they are
noted with this font)).
Thomas
Jefferson
(1743-1826;
author, Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for
Religious Freedom; 3rd U.S. President, 1801-1809)
Convinced
that religious liberty must, most assuredly, be built into the structural
frame of the new [state] government, Jefferson proposed this language [for
the new Virginia constitution]: “All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious
opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious
institution”: freedom for
religion, but also freedom from religion.
(Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 38. Jefferson
proposed his language in 1776.)
Where
the preamble [of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom] declares,
that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our
religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting the words “Jesus
Christ,” so that it should read, “A departure from the plan of Jesus
Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by
a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the
mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and
Mohammedan, the Hindu and Infidel of every denomination.
(Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography; from George Seldes, ed., The
Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
In
the Notes [on the State of Virginia] Jefferson elaborated his views on
government’s keeping its distance from all religious affairs and
religious opinions. “The
legitimate powers of government,” he wrote, “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.” (Edwin S.
Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 42-43. )
.
. . “shake off all the fears of servile prejudices under which weak
minds are servilely [sic] crouched. Fix
reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal for 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 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 it’s [sic] falshood [sic] would be more improbable than a
change of the laws of nature in the case he relates. . . .
Do not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of it’s [sic]
consequences. If it ends in a
belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the
comfort and pleasantness you feel in it’s [sic] 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 of his aid and love.
In fine, I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on both
sides, and neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person,
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 rightness but uprightness of the decision”.
. . . (Thomas Jefferson,
letter to his young nephew Peter Carr, August 10, 1787.
From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of
the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller,
1965, pp. 320-321.)
“I
am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a
legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26,
1799. From Gorton Carruth and
Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York:
Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499.)
Jefferson
and The Wall
“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 prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus
building a wall of separation between church and state.”
(Thomas Jefferson, as President, in a letter to the Baptists of
Danbury, Connecticut, 1802; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 369)
“All,
too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the
majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be
reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws
must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.”
(Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1801;
from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey:
Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.)
Jefferson’s
Mistrust of Clergy
“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.”
(Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813;
from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New
Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370)
“The
clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the
machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the
civil and religious rights of man.” (Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Saul K. Padover in
Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New York, 1946, p. 165, according to Albert
Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious
Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline
Press, 1991, p. 48.)
“In
every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in
return for protection to his own. It
is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by
deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to
all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.
(Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814; from
George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel
Press, 1983, p. 371)
Across
the ages, clergy have been interested [according to Jefferson] not in
truth but only in wealth and power; when rational people have had
difficulty swallowing “their impious heresies,” then the clergy have,
with the help of the state, forced “them down their throats.”
Five years later, he [Jefferson] wrote of “this loathsome
combination of church and state” that for so many centuries reduced
human beings to “dupes and drudges.”
(Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 47. According
to Gaustad, the first quotes are from a letter from Jefferson to William
Baldwin, January 19, 1810; the
second source is a letter from Jefferson to Charles Clay, January 29,
1815.)
The
University of Virginia
Jefferson
wanted to make William and Mary an institution of the state of Virginia,
but they would not break with the Church
so he started UVA. Furthermore, not even a class in theology was to be
offered at UVA: “A
professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the
University of Virginia]." (Thomas
Jefferson, letter to Thomas
Cooper, October 7, 1814. From
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.)
He
[Jefferson] rejoiced with John Adams when the Congregational church was
finally disestablished in Connecticut in 1818; welcoming “the
resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty,” Jefferson
congratulated Adams “that this den of priesthood is at length broken up,
and that a protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace American history
and character.” (Edwin S.
Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation,
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49.)
Jefferson’s
Deistic Rejection of Christianity
“And
the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme
being as his father in the womb of a Virgin Mary, will be classed with the
fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. . . . But we
may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United
States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding.”
(Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 11 April 1823, as quoted
by E. S. Gaustad, “Religion,” in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas
Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1986, p. 287.)
.
. . Jefferson expressed himself strongly on that larger apocalypse, the
Book of Revelation, in a letter to Alexander Smyth of 17 January 1825: it
is “merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of
explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”
Apocalyptic writing deserved no commentary, for “what has no
meaning admits no explanation;” therefore, apocalyptic prophecies
associated with Jesus deserved and would receive no attention from
Jefferson in his Life and Morals of Jesus.
(E. S. Gaustad, “Religion,” in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas
Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986, p. 287.)
To
conclude this discussion of the religious clauses of the First Amendment,
let’s talk some more about Thomas Jefferson and his “wall.”
Some TV preachers, as well as writers, politicians, and, worst of
all, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, have sought to pull down the
wall by disparaging Jefferson’s influence on the First Amendment.
A popular bit of historical revisionism that floats around these
days goes something like this: Jefferson
served as ambassador to France during the writing of the Constitution and
the Bill of Rights. He had no
hand in their preparation and passage because he was out of the country.
Therefore, his metaphor about the “wall of separation” is
misplaced and ill-informed because he was living in France and was out of
touch.
Tommyrot!
Thomas Jefferson was James Madison’s mentor.
Madison as the chief architect of both the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights drew heavily from Jefferson’s ideas and kept in regular
contact with his fellow Virginian even though the latter lived in France.
Volumes of correspondence exist between the two men as they
discussed the day’s crucial events.
Jefferson understood that the First Amendment created a separation
between church and state because he, more than most of the Founders, gave
form and substance to the nation’s understanding of how the two
institutions should best relate in the new nation.
Some politicians, lawyers, and preachers subject us to mental
cruelty when they disparage Jefferson’s interpretation simply because he
lived in France during the years of the Constitution’s framing.
(Robert L. Maddox, Baptist minister and speech writer and religious
liaison for President Jimmy Carter, Separation of Church and State:
Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing,
1987, pp. 67-68.)
Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
freedom of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances.
(Amendment 1,The Constitution of the United States.)
James
Madison
(1751-1836;
principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights;
4th U.S. President, 1809-1817)
“Religious
bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble
enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect.”
(James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774, as
quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 37.)
On
Feb. 21, 1811, Madison vetoed a bill for incorporating the Episcopal
Church in Alexandria and on Feb. 28, 1811, one reserving land in
Mississippi territory for a Baptist Church.
(James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents
[Washington, 1896-1899], I, 489-490, as cited in a footnote, Elizabeth
Fleet, “Madison’s Detatched Memoranda,”
William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4
[October, 1946], p. 555.)
Madison
and Military/Government Chaplains
Chaplainships
of both Congress and the armed services were established sixteen years
before the First Amendment was adopted.
It would have been fatuous folly for anybody to stir a major
controversy over a minor matter before the meaning of the amendment had
been threshed out in weightier matters. But Madison did foresee the danger that minor deviations from
the constitutional path would deepen into dangerous precedents.
He took care of one of them by his veto [in 1811] of the
appropriation for a Baptist church. Others he dealt with in his “Essay on Monopolies,”
unpublished until 1946. Here
is what he wrote:
“Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress
consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious
freedom? In strictness the
answer on both points must be in the negative.
The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an
establishment of a national religion.
The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for
the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion,
elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the
national taxes. Does this not
involve the principle of a national establishment . . . ?”
"The appointments,
he said, were also a palpable violation of equal rights.
Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain?
“To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his
sect is small, is to lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked
deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or
that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.”
The problem, said the author of the First Amendment, was how to
prevent “this step beyond the landmarks of power [from having] the
effect of a legitimate precedent.”
Rather than let that happen, it would “be better to apply to it
the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [the law takes no account of
trifles].” Or, he said
(likewise in Latin), “class it with faults that result from carelessness
or that human nature could scarcely avoid.”
“Better
also,” he went on, “to disarm in the same way, the precedent of
Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect them into a political
authority in matters of religion.”
. . . The deviations from constitutional principles went further:
“Religious
proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are
shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed.
Although, “recommendations only, they imply a religious agency,
making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers.”
(Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning,
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965, pp. 423-424.
Brant gives the source of “Essay on Monopolies” as Elizabeth
Fleet, “Madison’s Detatched Memoranda,”
William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4
[October, 1946], pp. 554-562.)
“And
I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has
done, in shewing that religion & Government will both exist in greater
purity, the less they are mixed together.”
(James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822;
published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. by Saul
K. Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.)
George
Washington
(1732-1799;
“Father of His Country;” 1st U.S. President, 1789-1797)
The
following year [1784], when asking Tench Tilghman to secure a carpenter
and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, he [Washington] remarked:
“If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or
Europe. They may be
Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.”
As he told a Mennonite minister who sought refuge in the United
States after the Revolution: “I
had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum
to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they
might belong”. . . . He was, as John Bell pointed out in 1779, “a
total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited
Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”
(Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion,
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 118.
According to Boller, Washington wrote his remarks to Tilghman in a
letter dated March 24, 1784; his remarks to the Mennonite--Francis Adrian
Van der Kemp--were in a letter dated May 28, 1788.)
.
. .Bird Wilson, Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, was one of the
first openly to challenge in public the pietistic picture of Washington
that was being built up by [Mason Locke] Weems and his followers.
In a sermon delivered in October 1831, which attracted wide
attention when it was reported in the Albany Daily Advertiser, Wilson
stated flatly, that “among all our presidents from Washington downward,
not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than
Unitarianism.” Washington,
he went on to say, “was a great and good man, but he was not a professor
of religion; he was really a typical eighteenth-century Deist, not a
Christian, in his religious outlook.”
(Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15.)
As
Bishop William Meade put it, somewhat nastily, in 1857: “Even Mr.
Jefferson, and [George] Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in
Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at
Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of
influence.” (William Meade,
Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, 2 vols.; Philadelphia,
1857, I, 191). (Paul
F. Boller, George Washington & Religion,
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 26.)
Unlike
Thomas Jefferson--and Thomas Paine, for that matter--Washington never even
got around to recording his belief that Christ was a great ethical
teacher. His reticence on the
subject was truly remarkable.
Washington
frequently alluded to Providence in his private correspondence.
But the name of Christ, in any correspondence whatsoever, does not
appear anywhere in his many letters to friends and associates throughout
his life. (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion,
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 74-75.)
.
. . if to believe in the divinity and resurrection of Christ and his
atonement for the sins of man and to participate in the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper are requisites for the Christian faith, then Washington,
on the evidence which we have examined, can hardly be considered a
Christian, except in the most nominal sense. (Paul F. Boller, George
Washington & Religion, Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 90.)
[on
Washington’s first inaugural speech in April 1789]
. . . That he was not just striking a popular attitude as a
politician is revealed by the absence of the usual Christian terms:
he did not mention Christ or even use the word “God.” Following
the phraseology of the philosophical Deism he professed, he referred to
“the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men,” to “the
benign parent of the human race.”
(James Thomas Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation
[1783-1793], Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1970, p. 184.)
Washington’s
religious belief was that of the enlightenment:
deism. He practically
never used the word “God,” preferring the more impersonal word “Providence.”
How little he visualized Providence in personal form is shown by the fact
that he interchangeably applied to that force all three possible pronouns:
he, she, and it.
(James Thomas Flexner, George Washington: Anguish and Farewell
[1793-1799], Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972, p. 490.)
As
President, Washington regularly attended Christian services, and he was
friendly in his attitude toward Christian values.
However, he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments.
Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he
waited for her outside the sanctuary. . . . Even on his deathbed,
Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed
no wish to be attended by His representative.
George
Washington’s practice of Christianity was limited and superficial
because he was not himself a Christian.
In the enlightened tradition of his day, he was a devout
Deist--just as many of the clergymen who knew him suspected.
(Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American
Symbol, New York: The Free
Press, 1987, pp. 174-175.)
John
Adams
(1735-1826;
major leader at Constitutional Convention in 1787; 2nd U.S. President ,
1797-1801)
In
his youth John Adams (1735-1826) thought to become a minister, but soon
realized that his independent opinions would create much difficulty.
At the age of twenty-one, therefore, he resolved to become a
lawyer, noting that in following law rather than divinity, “I shall have
liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested
myself.” (Edwin S. Gaustad,
Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation,
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 88.
The Adams quote is from his letter to Richard Cranch, August 29,
1756.)
“Let
the human mind loose. It must
be loose. It will be loose.
Superstition and Dogmatism cannot confine it.”
(John Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816.
From Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 88.)
“We
think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of
liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry
and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these
exalted privileges in fact! There
exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes
it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of
the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations.
In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or
the rack, or the wheel. In
England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot
poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts,
which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious
zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last
century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but
substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any
book of the Old Testament or New. Now,
what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or
imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine
authority of those books? Who
would run the risk of translating Dupuis*?
But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at
heart. I think such laws a
great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human
mind. Books that cannot bear
examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration
by penal laws. It is true,
few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also
true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from
them. But as long as they
continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy
progress in its investigations. I
wish they were repealed. The
substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and
unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed
with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and
they ought to be separated. Adieu.” (John
Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825.
Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of
the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. From
Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the
American Experiment and a Free Society,
New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 234.)
*Charles
F. Dupuis
wrote histories on comparative religion, and like all worthy comparative
religious scholars, he equated Christianity to a conglomeration of popular
pagan religions that proceeded it. (Dupuis, like many
religious scholars, also professed that the Jesus of the Bib
Benjamin
Franklin
(1706-1790;
American statesman, diplomat, scientist, and printer. Freethinker.)
[Benjamin]
Franklin drank deep of the Protestant ethic and then, discomforted by
church constraints, became a freethinker.
All his life he kept Sundays free for reading, but would visit any
church to hear a great speaker, no doubt recognizing a talent he himself
did not possess.
With
typical honesty and humor he wrote out his creed in 1790, the year he
died: “I believe in one
God, Creator of the universe. . . . That the most acceptable service we
can render Him is doing good to His other children. . . .
As to Jesus . . . I have . . . some doubts as to his divinity*;
though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never
studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I
expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.”
(Alice J. Hall, "Philosopher of Dissent: Benj. Franklin,"
National Geographic, Vol. 148, No. 1, July, 1975, p. 94.)
*Perhaps
he read Dupuis as well.
Thomas
Paine
(1737-1809;
author of Common Sense, the match that started the fire; key American
patriotic writer.)
Paine
on Religion
“As
to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to
protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other
business government has to do therewith.” (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. As quoted by Leo Pfeffer, “The Establishment Clause: The
Never-Ending Conflict,” in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An
Unsettled Arena: Religion and
the Bill of Rights, Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 72.)
“Persecution
is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the
strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by
law. Take away the
law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.”
(Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791-1792. From
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, pp. 499-500.)
“Toleration
is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it.
Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of
withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.”
(Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, p. 58.
As quoted by John M. Swomley, Religious Liberty and the Secular
State: The Constitutional Context, Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus Books, 1987, p. 7. Swomley
added, “Toleration is a concession; religious liberty is a right.”)
“All
national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish
[Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I
do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise;
they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.
But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
faithful to himself. Infidelity
does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in
professing to believe what he does not believe.
It
is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it,
that mental lying has produced in society.
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his
mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not
believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
He
takes up the profession of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to
qualify himself for that trade he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than
this?” (Thomas Paine, The
Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From
Paul Blanshard, ed., Classics of Free Thought, Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1977, pp. 134-135.)
Paine
on the Bible
“Whenever
we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and
torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than
half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called 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. (Thomas
Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book
of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494.)
“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.”
(Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.
From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of
American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494.)
Paine
and Deism
“The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.” (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494.)
Well, I think... they... have said enough. And how and the hell do some of our presidents get-off calling America a Christian nation? Despite the fact that this is a "melting-pot?" Oh, I forgot, it's a pot where the creme curdles together among the masses they bleed and ignore, and there are also those of which they like to skim off out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Something is rotten in the states of the united.
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For more on church state separation
www.infidels.org/library/historical/franklin_steiner/presidents.html
www.dimensional.com/~randl/founders.htm
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DEAR
BELIEVER. You ask me to accept
Jesus as my personal Saviour; yet
(1) While on the Cross Jesus said, "My God, my God, why hast
thou
How
could Jesus be our savior when he
(2) Jesus said, "whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in
danger
Shouldn't
he be in danger of
(3) Except for those of biased Christian writers, there isn't one writing
outside the bible in all of ancient history that clearly refers
(4) Isn't Jesus a false prophet since he wrongly predicted in Matt.
Friday
afternoon to early Sunday morning is
(5) Another prophecy by Jesus in John 13:38 ("The cock shall not
(6) How could Jesus be our model of sinless perfection when he denies
(7) In 1 Cor. 1:17 ("For christ sent me (Paul--Ed.) NOT TO
BAPTIZE,
So
how could Jesus be the fountain of wisdom?
(8) How could Jesus, whom the NT repeatedly refers to as the son of
(9) How could Jesus be god when he repeatedly said he was not God's
(10) While on the Cross Jesus said, "Forgive them Father they
know
(11) Jesus told us to "honor thy father and mother" (Matt.
15:4) but
(12) In John 3:13 ("And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but
he
(13) In Matt. 16:28 Jesus said, "There be some standing here,
which
(14) Jesus told us to "Love your enemies; bless them that
curse you"
(15) Even many of the staunchest defenders of Jesus admit that his
(16) The Messiah must be a physical descendant of David (Rom 1:3,
(17) Jesus told a man in Mark 8:34 that "whosoever will come
after me
(18) In Mark 10:19 Jesus told a man to follow the commandments.
Yet,
(19) In Luke 12:4 Jesus told his followers to "Be not afraid of
them
(20) In Luke 23:43 Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "Today
shalt
(21) For Jesus to be executed for our sins makes about as much sense
(22) And lastly, in Matt. 15:24 Jesus said, "I am not sent but
unto
These examples expose only a few of the many reasons I can't accept
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