Logic problem: The founding principles of the U.S. and Christianity.

[Ziploc Surprise]

My understanding is that the 'founding fathers',who sailed on The Mayflower and landed at Plymouth Rock,were Puritans,you know, like Oliver Cromwell. The modern Christians who seem to compare the most accurrately with the Puritans seem to me to be good ole Fred Phelps and his spawn.

So I would not go around bragging that my country was founded by such a group of closed minded,superstitious bigots*,but hey,that's just me.

My point:who founded the country is irrelevant, as are the intentions of the writers of the Constitution. In a country (allegedly) "Of the people,by the people,for the people" it is the people who get to decide the kind of country they will have.

They may if they wish abolish the constitution and write a new one at any time,in fact that is effectively what they have done with the amendments.

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*the American puritans actually hanged a whole bunch of people they thought were witches.lymouth Rock;1620. Salem witch trials; 1692.

This brings up an interesting point and possibly a reason for the confusion of the founding principles of the U.S. Those who founded the original colonies are not the same people who founded the country. Many of the colonies were religious experiments as well as financial endeavors. The U.S was an effort to combine a small group of very different colonies into a nation. The nation had to have religious tolerance in order to survive. A separation of church and state was a way to ensure this.

When the religious yahoo's of our time spout off about how America ought to go back to it's religious roots, back to the intentions of the founding father's they are usually speaking of the beginning of the United States, not the original colonies, and they are also speaking of people like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas pane, and some even try to slap a form of Christianity on Benjamin Franklin and use him.

As for religious assholes like the puritans they didn't just kill witches there were others they killed for religious reasons. Take Anne Hutchinson for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson

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For so many separate colonies to come together to form one country there had to have been some sort of separation of church and state.

I disagree, Zip. All they really needed was a common enemy which the British thoughtfully provided.

The pressure from the British is what caused them to put down their differences and compromise instead of bicker about things until they all die. They had to work out solutions in a relatively short amount of time or face treason charges from the British. One of the main concerns of that time was the threat of one religious organization dominating or having the ability to dominate everyone else. Eliminating religion would not have been a viable option. Allowing both to exist within their own reasonable spheres of influence but not have the ability to dominate the other was the way to have nation full of religiously diverse people.

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This is a response to Kilic_mehmet's post:
I've addressed the confusion as to the definition of founding father in my recent response to another post so I won't repeat it here.

The bullshit about the founding father's being christian (which, oddly, if you listen to many fundies today talk about the founding of the U.S., oddly sounds a lot like modern Christian fundamentalism) is not my line of bullshit it's the fundies bullshit. Somehow in their little spiel they slap a religion on the founding fathers (they even manage to to this to Ben Franklin occasionally) and then make the assumption that since they were Christian they naturally did the Christian thing which was to create some flavor of a theocracy. Don't kill me I'm only repeating their bullshit. Over the decades I've heard several renditions of the "founding fathers/Christian country" spiel.

One more thing, although the population of the new nation was mostly Christian, it was not all the same flavor of Christian. These differences were important to them.

The horrors of the reformation were still fresh in the minds of the founding fathers. So also were the abusive powers of the oppressive governments of their time. The founding father's were children of the enlightenment. They believed that humans should be led by reason.

As for the overdramatising comment I'm actually not overdramatising this. I'm a bit of a history buff. I've read several church history books, books about the reformation and of United States history, even a biography (not his autobiography) of Benjamin Franklin. Religion and government were very oppressive back then. I't hard for us to imagine this today...unless you live in modern day theocracy of course.

My comment about the constitution deals with the spiel that the fundies usually use. I've actually had my ass reamed with this a few times. They say loudly that the separation between church and state is not in the constitution blah blah blah. It's just a twisting of words for them.

Godschild: I actually like your post (this does not mean that I agree with you though. I like the fact that you have taken the time to really think about things and I respect this). I don't have the time right now to address your post but I intend to do so soon.