(February 12, 2014 at 9:22 am)Drich Wrote: When I quoted Jefferson I included a source for the quote. did you personally take that into consideration before you decided to call me out and try to make an example of me? Did you do your due diligence or were you uncritically circulating a lie for yourself because mini's pomp and pageantry really tickled your fancy? Do you really think he is who he pretends to be? Truthfully he seldom quotes anything besides articles containing conjecture and speculation that supports his personal world view. Which I will admit coincides with your own, but where is the critical thinking there? I quoted a historical source, that has no stake in atheism/theism at all. This society is only concerned with preserving all things Jefferson. Including his faith from people like you and mini who would pretend he was not a man of faith.Drich, you gave two links for the Jefferson prayer.
Since I was dragged into this calling out thread despite my efforts to stay away it's my turn.
.... But I think I'll pass. You know what you did.
The first one is found on the website for the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which exhorts visitors to "Become a Praytriot Member."
The second one is on a website called THENEXTRIGHT, and it explicitly states , "The goal of this post is to dispell those false notions and to firmly re-establish Jefferson as a Christian. "
In what universe are these "historical sources" which have "no stake in atheism/theism at all"?
My mistake was to assume once again that you might know a tiny bit about history. Sorry, about that, Min. I've learned my lesson now.
Do you remember,Drich, when I called you on it for naming Voltaire as your favorite atheist? I pointed out that Voltaire was not an atheist but a deist.
Get it through your head. With few exceptions skeptics in the 18th century were deists (or Unitarians) but not atheists. And most modern atheists know this. You could pile up hundreds of quotations in which Jefferson professed a belief in God, and it would not change my understanding of him at all.
On Religious Beliefs of the Founding Fathers Jefferson is quoted to this effect:
Quote:Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:Jefferson considered Jesus a great moral teacher, but he believed that right from the earliest days his teachings had been corrupted with doctrines about his divinity and his sacrificial death.
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
I guess you are blissfully unaware of Jefferson's Bible:
Quote:The Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was a book constructed by Thomas Jefferson in the latter years of his life by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's condensed composition is especially notable for its exclusion of all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels which contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages indicating Jesus was divineThis Wikipedia article contains a link to an online version of the complete Jefferson Bible.
I haven't checked lately, but when I was a pastor in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, we would have withheld the name of Christian from someone who denied the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of the atonement and the physical resurrection of Jesus, even if it was a nice Unitarian who thought Jesus was a great moral teacher.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
