Yahweh is all powerful, yet, my god is better than your GOD

[Epimethean]

I'm not saying he wasn't, and the point isn't really that important anyway. It's just you can find quotes about tons of historical figures to prove they were an atheist/deist/theist, so I try not to read too much into them.

He also said 'Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it' so it's difficult to be conclusive unless someone is extremely outspoken and explicit about their beliefs.

Edit: He also said this:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

There is a great difference between Lincoln as a public speaker and Lincoln as a private individual. In order to motivate the inert masses, some godspeak goes a long way. I sincerely doubt Lincoln was foolish enough to believe in a god. He was a realistic man in a surreal time.

[ElDinero]

You may well be right, and it may be comforting to think so. But I think my point stands that the evidence is inconclusive, with nobody more to blame than Lincoln himself. There are many more quotes from Lincoln that invoke the name of God. If he was doing it to be populist, I don't think that's a terribly commendable quality anyway.

[Justtristo]

Many US founding fathers held opinions about religion which would be considered beyond the pale for any US politician today. Imagine if Obama was an atheist and a full-on secularist, that is what some founding fathers (like say Thomas Paine) were like to the society of their day).

[Minimalist]

Jefferson was a deist.

He despised xtianity ( and with good reason ) but living before Darwin he can be forgiven for still looking for some sky-daddy to get things started.

The same cannot be said of theists today. That are just stubbornly clinging to foolish beliefs.

[IATIA]

is some info on Lincoln's stand as far as religion.

[Minimalist]

I always love this quote from Robert Green Ingersoll... reminds me of the bullshit that xtian shitheads tried to pull with Darwin and his supposed deathbed "conversion." Note the name of the work within which Ingersoll made this comment.

Orthodox Christians have the habit of claiming all great men, all men who have held important positions, men of reputation, men of wealth. As soon as the funeral is over clergymen begin to relate imaginary conversations with the deceased, and in a very little while the great man is changed to a Christian -- possibly to a saint.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Religious Belief of Abraham Lincoln"

[ElDinero]

There are probably very good reasons to imagine that living today, Jefferson, Paine, Lincoln, Madison, Franklin et al would be atheists. They may simply have been invoking God's name to avoid trouble, but they do it all the same and it's difficult to prove that populism is the only reason for it.

[Castle]

Is Atheism the new gay? Without the gay gene, and grand parades. Outspoken Atheists thinkers mainly tell me they do not want GOD believer imposing their Religion upon them. How do you drive a religious person MAD!!! Put them in a round world and tell them to preach in a corner. I do not fully understanding these kinds of extremes because I am not gay nor atheist nor Religious. I just live and let live.

Being a lover and not a fighter I’m merely sharing new ways of thinking.
Like the bad marriage on this forum yet many of you are well adjusted enough. Or like my Mother who was a closet atheist for 35 years and my Dad a Catholic and Brother a Pastor. From this extreme living condition my job was to find our family a loving middle grounds,. It worked! We all love each other very much... It would only work here on this forum if someone was truly sick and tire of endlessly putting down the other side way of thinking. and I had the time . One beautiful thing about my atheist Mother, she loved us 3 kids deeply and she did not put others down.

[frankiej]

It is not "the new gay"... You make it seem like both being gay and being an atheist is just some fad.

[Castle]

It is not "the new gay"... You make it seem like both being gay and being an atheist is just some fad.

Do you think religion has that much brainwashing power?

I mean atheist have finally come out of the closet and into the public eye, even as annoying as they are toward spiritual and God believer