RE: Misrepresenting our Founding Fathers (to include other notable free-thinkers)
July 24, 2013 at 5:20 pm
(July 24, 2013 at 4:38 pm)Gilgamesh Wrote: Whether they're out of context or fabricated aren't even where the problem begins. The problem begins with the notion that words spoken by these founding fathers are infallible on basis that they're founding fathers.
No one is saying 'infallible' - you are creating a strawman there.
What was said then, by them, informs us as to intent and meaning of the Constitution and to their vision.
e.g.
“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”
~John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” 1787-1788
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
Science is not a subject, but a method.