[Tfug] Another CC* weighs in....

[Joe Roberts]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 2:01 PM, keith smith <klsmith2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Interesting artifact.   I think this is being misinterpreted.  Our founders
> where for the most part Christians and their faith and Christian values
> effected how they did things and it is why we have been such a great nation.


Yeah?  Ever read any Thomas Paine, the American revolution's most notable
propagandist?  Here's a link to the Age of Reason.


http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/part1.html

4 paragraphs in he writes:

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this
life."

This is the Deism that Bowie alludes to.

7 paragraphs in, on the other hand:

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman
church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant
church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and
enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

Christians have contributed indispensably to this nation's political,
social, and moral culture, but the idea that Christianity is a foundational
basis of a nation founded on individual rights, reason, and most of all
freedom of (and from) religion, is revisionism: wishful thinking.

You will find many quotes by our founding fathers which confirm both a
belief in God, and a rejection of Christianity.  And yes, some were also
Christians.

I am not exactly sure how you take the life of Christ and directly tie it to
something like the bill of rights which is about freedom of speech, guns,
search and seizure, and somehow relate this back to biblical teachings of
how people ought to treat one another and relate to God.  People are rarely
specific about this.
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