(November 1, 2011 at 5:12 am)lucent Wrote: This country was founded on judeo-christian values, and up until the 1960s (with some large exceptions), we followed them. It has been the loss of those values which has made America less great. It was those values that motivated us to bail you gits out, so you shouldn't knock themReally? I thought it was founded on secular grounds:
Jefferson: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State".
The 1796 Treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion". This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams.
And that the founding fathers were deists and NOT xtians:
"That Jesus did not mean to impose Himself on mankind as the Son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in the lore." -- Thomas Jefferson's letter to William Short, August 4, 1820
"But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its true light, as no imposter himself, but a great reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a materialist; he takes the side of spiritualism" -- Thomas Jefferson's letter to William Short, April 13, 1820;
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity." - John Adams
". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist." - Benjamin Franklin
"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion." - Thomas Paine
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison Ibid, 1785
Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself." -Thomas Jefferson writing about George Washington in his private journal, Feb. 1800
"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession." - Spoken by Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Joseph Lewis
Seems fairly clear to me. There seems to be a lot of revisionist twaddle from the xtian right, romanticizing that the US was founded on xtianity. I don't think those that founded it thought that and none of the laws they passed would in anyway suggest that. Certainly some European countries can claim there historic [/font]constitution was at least partly founded on xtianity, but the US, nah.
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"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence"...Doug McLeod.
