OT - Judeo-Christian nation?"

Roughly half of what he said is historically incorrect.

The USA was founded on Enlightenment principles, not "Judeo-Christian" principles. At the time of the Declaration's signing, there was no principle of individual rights in Christianity. There was only obligation and obedience. The individual got his just due and his individual recognition in the afterlife. On Earth, he was a servant.

The Enlightenment, although its thinkers often couched their words in religious terms (in Locke's case, to avoid threatened prosecution; in Jefferson's case, for the sake of politics), was a contradiction of religious doctrine and was based on the individual dignity of man. No such concept was present in Christianity at the time the country was founded.

The truth is more the reverse, that religion adopted Enlightenment principles, starting late in the 18th century. In the US, Enlightenment principles were tossed into the blender with a revolutionary Christianity that rejected the whole church structure in favor of a new idea of man's role in the universe, which was mostly the same idea as that of Locke, Hume, and the other primary thinkers of the English Enlightenment.

One curiosity is the use of the term "Creator" rather than "God" in the Declaration of Independence. That fits well with the fact that roughly half of the Founders were not really Christians at all, but Deists. Thus, Jefferson "edited" the Bible to suit his beliefs by taking out all references to Jesus's divinity, to the virgin birth, and to miracles. His edited Bible was widely applauded at the time. To Jefferson, a Deist with a Unitarian bent, the mysteries of Christianity were nothing but superstition:

"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 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, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

To Jefferson, Christianity was a set of ideals larded with absurd superstitions. He admired Jesus but thought that Christians were absurd. Likewise to many of the Deists of the time; the intellectuals of late-Enlightenment Europe and America. And they were the ones who incorporated the Enlightenment principles -- founded on an abstract idea of "nature" and "natural rights," most definitely NOT Christian principles until Christianity adopted them in the decades to follow -- into our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights.

God was thrown in occasionally to keep the lid on.

-- Ed Huntress

And the Q is, or should be, irrelevant. If there were total separation of church and state, as there should be.

The real Q is, When did America become an effing irrational nation, with media and "entertainment" that could scramble the brain of a dead person?

I think that was about 1973...

The year, month and day you were born?

WAY long before that...

In the 50's Playhouse 90 and Hallmark Hall of Fame presented some excellent, literate material but few watched. By the early 60's the most intellectually challenging program was Rocky and Bullwinkle.

jsw

Ed I think you've missed the boat there. werent the founding fathers of america more attuned to freemason principles than religious principles. (they're not the same) have a look at the eye in the pyramid on your currency and many of the other unexplained symbols. that's freemasonry. Stealth Pilot

Sort of. FDR was a 32nd degree Mason yet he didn't recognize the significance of the reverse of our Great Seal until Wallace explained it to him. Annuit coeptis: He favors / gives the nod to / [our] undertaking. The all-seeing eye of God. The unfinished 13-step pyramid is a solid beginning with more to come. Novus ordo seclorum: literally a New Order of the Ages, fig. the new form of US government.

jsw

For some reason that post doesn't appear on my newsreader, so I don't know the full context.

But my response is, no. Those principles were more a matter of individual morality and relationships. There was no discussion of religion or politics allowed in the lodges -- I think that's still true. The only religious requirement is belief in a supreme being, the interpretation of which is left up to the member. Thus, there are Seikh Masons, and Hindu Masons. Deism, too, fits right into the requirement.

Aside from principles that are common to many sets of moral and religious beliefs, there isn't much of a doctrine in freemasonry that could be called a set of principles for organizing a society. That's the province of religions and broad philosophical schools of thought, such as those of the Enlightenment.

-- Ed Huntress

Rad it on Google Groups

Rad it on Google Groups

-- Ed Huntress

If you want some facts that liberals don't like, the library of congress has a couple of pages online.

LOL

Here's some other info on Thomas Jefferson you didn't mention. I realize he wasn't a real Christian, but he certainly did much that would upset the ACLU based on "separation of church and state". a.. "Thomas Jefferson was raised in an Anglican family. b.. He went to a Christian school and was taught by Christian pastors.

c.. Jefferson attended church regularly his whole life. d.. As an adult he served on the Vestry of the Anglican church. e.. He attended the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches. f.. Jefferson regularly tithed to the church. g.. While Washington & Adams ended their Presidential Papers with "In the Year of our Lord", Jefferson ended his Presidential Papers with "In the year of our Lord Christ 18__". h.. As President he attended the largest church in the nation which held their services in the House Chambers of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. i.. Jefferson was not pleased with the music, so he ordered the Marine Band to come to church on Sundays. Some of Jefferson's actions as president.

a.. Promoted legislative and military chaplains. b.. Established a national seal using a biblical symbol. c.. Included the word "God" in our national motto. d.. Established official days of fasting and prayer at the state level. e.. Punished Sabbath breakers. f.. Punished marriages contrary to biblical law. g.. Punished irreverent soldiers. h.. Protected the property of churches. i.. Required that oaths be phrased by the words "So help me God" and be sworn on the Bible. j.. Granted land to Christian schools. k.. Allowed government property and facilities to be used for worship. l.. Used the Bible and nondenominational religious instruction in the public schools. He was involved in three different school districts, and the plan in each required that the Bible be taught in our public schools. m.. Allowed and encouraged clergymen to hold public office. n.. Funded religious books for public libraries. o.. Funded salaries for missionaries. p.. Exempted churches from taxation. q.. Established professional schools of theology. r.. Wrote treaties requiring other nations to guarantee religious freedom, including religious speeches and prayer in official ceremonies. You will notice that in many cases Federal Treasury money was used to support churches.

Engraved on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. are the words of our third President: "God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?"

Jefferson wrote this warning on September 6, 1819: "The Constitution . . . is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

It is very evident from the record that Thomas Jefferson believed in God and felt that religion should play an important role in the government, and that government could and should support churches. Would Jefferson who added the word "God" to the National Motto, agree with the 9th Circuit Court, who stated that the word "God" in the Pledge of Alegance is Unconstitutional? The War that the Supreme Court has launched on people of faith, Jefferson would be totally against."

No, this isn't "info." It's mostly "misinfo," taken out of context, clipped to give incorrect impressions, and undocumented. It's doubtful that you have any idea where it came from or which parts are true and untrue, because you don't check your sources. If the advocates cram it down your throat, you just swallow it whole.

This would be very tedious to track down all of it, but I'll give a few examples, documented from legitimate sources:

Show us where in the Bible the "all-seeing eye" is used. It's an Egyptian symbol, adopted by the Freemasons and associated with the Deistic creator. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible.

The de facto national motto, established in the 1780s, was "E Pluribus Unum." ("From many, one.") "In God We Trust" was established as the national motto in 1956.

More crap from your unreliable sources, Roger.

Still more crap.

Read the law, co-authored by Madison. You'll be surprised at what it was about.

"A Bill Annulling Marriages Prohibited by the Levitical Law...". Leviticus

1. You can't marry your mother, your sister, your brother's sister, your dead wife's sister, or animals, clean or unclean. It could have been written by the CDC.

Nope. You're referring to the Judiciary Act of 1789, which contains the words "Which words, so help me God, shall be omitted in all cases where an affirmation is admitted instead of an oath." It neither required a Bible, nor required that it be sworn. A non-believer could simply "affirm."

That's what religious freedom does for you.

I think you can see the pattern, Roger. Jefferson was a Deist who believed in religious freedom. So were most of the Founders. Several of them openly disparaged the Christianity of the day, including its "principles." I've quoted some words about it for you, from Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison. I've been merciful in leaving out the words of Thomas Paine. And they said in several instances that our Constitution is not based on them.

Jefferson also said that the common law had no relation to Christianity. You probably haven't looked, but you can spend a lot of time trying to connect biblical Christian "principles" to the idea that men are equal before the law (each age and type of man, and woman, was worth a different number of shekels, as explained in Leviticus); you won't find free speech or freedom of religion in there; you'll look long and hard to find the idea that men are endowed with an inalienable right to pursue happiness.

It just isn't there. But you'll have no trouble at all finding those ideas in the writings of the Enlightenment philosophers.

As I said, the whole process really was reversed from what the Christian apologists would have you believe. The Enlightenment was essentially a Deistic system, in which a Creator set the clockwork running, established "natural laws" (which are antithetical to much of Christian belief), and then got out of the way, leaving it up to men to decide their own individual fate. After they die, they get a new lease with much more favorable terms.

Don't swallow that crap they're feeding you. There is an entire historical society at the Univ. of Virginia and Monticello that has documented Jefferson's writings. Go for the originals, not the interpretations by those people that Jefferson most despised -- the ministers of the church.

-- Ed Huntress

So all the pro Christian quotes from the founding fathers was not the true beliefs of the founding fathers, just something to sound good to the people of the nation? Sounds like they must have been speaking to a Christian Nation, just like Obama quoted from the "Holy Koran" when in the middle East speaking to Islamic nations.

RogerN

In a lot of cases, those quotes misrepresent the situation by selective extraction from their context. And the quotes I provided are equally accurate, at least; since I can document all of them, they're probably more accurate.

How do you account for the apparent conflict? If you actually study what the Deists of that era were all about, it wouldn't be such a mystery. They believed in God; they just didn't believe in a personal God, or in the trinity, or the divinity of Christ -- even those who, like Jefferson, admired his philosophy in the abstract, even while mocking Christianity as a religion, and as a set of ethical and behavioral principles.

Probably so. That's politics for you. But that's not where we got the ideas of free speech, freedom of religion, equality under the law, democratic government, etc., etc., etc. In other words, Christian "principles" had nothing much to do with our founding or our Constitution. But Enlightenment principles had everything to do with both of them. Christianity muscled in starting about three decades later, when it started to adopt Enlightement principles as its own.

You'll notice, however, that Christian leaders never make a real effort to resolve American Constitutional principles with the Bible, or with the Bible-derived teachings of Christianity. That's because they can't.

-- Ed Huntress

You ought to be thanking Ed for setting you straight, correcting your misinterpretations, and informing you with the facts. But I know you won't. You'll just go back to your Bible for comfort and will be silently cursing Ed for not agreeing with you.

Hawke

It seems we can't admit that Western democracy came from the Vikings.