Wisdom from the Founding Fathers

[David Mauldin]

         "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his Father,
             in the womb of a virgin will be classed as a fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" 

                                             Thomas Jefferson


      "During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have 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."


                                            John Adams


"Of all systems of religion that were ever invented there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity"


                                Thomas Paine

[Oscar]

Dave,

Adams said a few other things that you may have overlooked:

1. “The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity…I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God.”
[June 28, 1813; Letter to Thomas Jefferson]

2. “We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!”
[April 18, 1775, on the eve of the Revolutionary War after a British major ordered John Adams, John Hancock, and those with them to disperse in “the name of George the Sovereign King of England." ]

3. “[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
[letter written to Abigail on the day the Declaration was approved by Congress]

4. "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --October 11, 1798

5. "I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen." December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson

6. "Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell." [John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817]

Notice that these quotes cover a period of 42 years of this man's life.  These were his settled convictions. 

Regarding number 6, he may have been speaking of the French Revolution which was the first attempt to establish a state on the basis of atheism.  If so, they proved him correct.  As did Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba later on.

Thomas Maddux

[Oscar]

Dave,

Thomas Paine was not a Christian.  No doubt about it.  He was, however, a Deist.

In our modern education and media establishments Deism is portrayed as mere assent to the existence of of some impersonal creator.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, this was not the case at all.  Deists believed in;

1. A personal almighty God who created and ruled the world.
2. A divinely instituted moral law.
3. The immortality of the soul.
4. Divine judgement in the afterlife on the basis of the moral law.
5. Reward and punishment as a result of judgement.

Paine actually wrote "Age of Reason" as an argument against atheism.  In the second part he said:

"Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. ... This is Deism"

Thomas Maddux

[Oscar]

Dave,

That Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian is not news.  But since you seem to think that in quoting him you are proving something, try this on for size:

Jefferson's letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823.


"Dear Sir, — The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `mon Dieu! jusque à quand'! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Dæmonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a dæmon of malignant spirit. "

It is evident that Jefferson did not think much of John Calvin.  It is also evident that Adams was a Calvinist!  Odd that you would quote him in an attempt to discredit the religion he professed.

But notice that his criticism of Calvin is that Calvin misrepresented God!   That the God Jefferson believed in was the God of the Bible is evident from his phrase, addressed to a Calvinist, "...the God whom you and I acknolege and adore".

You seem to think highly of Jefferson.  Do you acknowledge the God he adored?

Thomas Maddux

[Oscar]

Dave,

Since you are such an admirer of T. Jefferson, perhaps you will consider what the man actually believed.  This comes from one of his letters to Adams.

"On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis."

Notice that TJ is claiming that any man should be able to see this without the help of divine revelation.  I agree, and this is exactly what modern cosmology leads us to, if we are willing to honestly follow the evidence.

Are you willing?

Thomas Maddux

[Oscar]

Dave,

I notice that you have not replied to this post.

I ask you again.  Are you willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads?

Thomas Maddux

[David Mauldin]

Tom, honestly I posted these quotes because I found them amusing. I came across them while doing a paper on Thomas Paine. have you read "The Age of reason?"  I will attempt to mesh through this when I have time.