As a Christian, this is going to tick many a person of my faith off but fact is fact. We hear people like Rick Santorum and other hypocrits tell us over and over that we must return to our roots of the founding fathers. This entire country was based on values and Christian belief. This is a lie. Pure and simple. This is a lie. There are many faiths reading this and there are no faiths reading this. This is America. If anyone swallows this hogwash of agenda pushing based on our beginnings of the constitution, then either they have totally rewritten history or do not want to visit it. Hop below the little orange squiggly and pass this on to your right winged brother in law trying to shove beliefs down your throat and tell him to defend his position because he cannot.
When people ask if America was founded on Christianity, the answer is yes and no but mostly no. We must remember that the cultural of Europe was influenced by Christian faith and when our ancestors fled to what they thought was India, and turned out to be the country later named after Columbus's mapmaker, there was no faith based initiave involved.
The Catholic Church had a great deal of influence on the fleeing of the old world into the new world and the new bunch in which President Obama referred to quite recently as the Members of the Flat Earth Society would have you to believe that America was annointed the righteous Holy of Holy countries. President Obama did not say that, I did. He contributed the name for the ignorant new club though. The part about never has been or never was what they claim. It is not nor has it ever been. That is my opinion and of course, history's.
Bound up in the assertion that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” is an implied opposition to separation of church and state. That is, many of those who claim that the U.S. is founded on Christianity, and do oppose the idea that church and state should be separated, and argue very strongly that since no such separation is explicitly called for in the Constitution, this principle does not exist. While the words “church and state shall be separated” are — quite obviously — not in the Constitution or any amendment, two features are present, which are relevant:
Article IV section 3 says, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Where were these people during history class? Were they not paying attention to how the whole thing was set up in History ..6th grade 101?
Moving along to Jefferson...The one the tea party patriots love to quote about all that tree watering with blood and stuff, they don't know squat about him.
He said and is recorded and documented...
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Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82 (capitalization of the word god is retained per original)
[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779), quoted from Merrill D Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 347
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. We have solved ... the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries
The Declaration of Independence famously announces:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Mention of a Creator, in the eyes of the flat earth society, as used in the document, means the U.S. is founded on Christianity. But this is a stretch. First, the Declaration was written mainly by Jefferson, with assistance from Franklin and Adams. of what “the Creator” was, is certainly not the Creator of Christian dogma, but rather the incomprehensible being of Enlight thought. Their vision of “God” had much more in common with the beliefs of Socrates and Plato, than with the “Gawd” of modern fundamentalist preachers.
The term “Creator” was commonly used in the 18th and 19th centuries to speak of deity in an open, generic sense, especially when the author was bridging religions (as Paine did in Age of Reason).
Let us look at the founding fathers for just a minute. Let us look at James Madison
Article IV section 3 says, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Arguments over whether or not these constitute “separation of church and state,” have been going on for decades, never really getting anywhere; but what ends them are the words of James Madison, a key player in the Constitutional Convention and author of the First Amendment itself:
Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution.... Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative.
Madison used the example of Congressional chaplains to explain his intention behind the First Amendment. He wanted a clear wall separating church and state. Whatever quibbling we may do, now, over his words (i.e. the First Amendment) is beside the point: He told us what he meant, and a wall was what he had wanted. This is what I take away from the research on Madison.
Having said this, one can see that Madison’s motivation here has more to do with protecting religion, than anything else. For him and for most of the Founding Fathers, for religion to have any value or accomplish anything, it had to be individual and it had to be sincere. Anyone forcing religion on others was frowned upon and damaged the religion itself; Well Duh... how many real faith believers are a bit turned off today by even mentioning they are Christian ? Madison believed it ruined the religion’s integrity. In Madison’s view, the danger of state and church joined was that the state would alter the church and exploit it and Madison and the rest hoped to preserve the integrity of religion and its sanctity
This country is a republic and look at these facts. ( I did my homework).
While the U.S. is colloquially called a “democracy,” a better term for it would be “representative republic.” As such, it’s descended from the democracies and republics of classical Greece and Rome. Aspects of U.S. government, such as the name of the upper house of Congress (“Senate”) reflect this classical origin.
Nothing, however, in the history of Christianity or Judaism before ite bears any resemblance to a representative republic. The various forms of government described in the Bible as having been divinely-ordained are tribal confederations (i.e. the so-called Judges period) and monarchies (i.e. rule of Judea and Israel under Saul and other kings descended from David). Neither of these is a representative republic, nor did they contribute even philosophically to the notion of a representative republic.
This direct quote came from this link and was researched through
the studies of the founding fathers.
Links to research
Take a look at Thomas Jefferson. The right wing love to quote Jefferson and all that plant watered with blood...let us look at him. Jefferson was a deist
The country was founded on freemasonry and secret societies which have nothing to do with Christianity to many. A boys's club does not constitute a Revelation of Founding religious viewpoints to go forward. They were diverse. They had many faiths and no faiths, When did all of this go back to what our country was founded upon? I have no clue. I think when the religious right and the teleevangelists got their own show and took it on the road but they are selling their own form of snake oil and want power and not That old time religion. In ever single case of the Christian faith according to King James Version, there are choices. There is a choice to believe or not believe. There are fruits of faith and it has all to do with charity not hate and
oppression. The Bible Thumper up there on Sunday Morning damning you to Hell for not believing as he or she does is not following th Christian faith... AT ALL.
when the Architecture was set up in DC....What was representative was this..
Taken from research....right here,,,Free thought pedia
Tell me how are the wingers going to square all those statue of architecture at the Supreme Court
which has been my argument all along when people start yelling I want prayer in school. I always ask, " What prayer". Which one? here are the representatives on the Supreme Court building. What will Santorum do..Knock it down?
Some theists point out that the frieze above the Supreme Court shows Moses, the original law-giver of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Thus, religionists claim, the Supreme Court and its proceedings are “inspired” by Moses and the law propounded to him by JHWH. The problem here is that the frieze depicts a number of law-givers from history and legend, 18 in all:
Menes, the primeval Egyptian pharaoh
Hammurabi, ruler of Babylon, codifier of Babylonian law
Moses, already mentioned
Solomon, Hebrew king famed for wisdom
Lycurgus, shadowy law-giver in early Sparta
Solon, a magistrate and law-giver in early Athens
Draco, another Athenian statesman
Confucius, classical Chinese philosopher and moralist
Augustus, first emperor of Rome
Napoleon, post-revolution dictator of France
John Marshall, Supreme Court justice
William Blackstone, British jurist
Hugo Grotius, Dutch jurist
Louis IX, king of France
King John, king of England who promulgated Magna Carta
Charlemagne, Frankish king
Mohammed, founder of Islam
Justinian I, Byzantine emperor, codifier of laws
The presence of Moses and Solomon in this frieze hardly stamps “Christianity,” distinctively, on the U.S. government. Taken together the point of this frieze of 18 figures is reverence for laws and law-givers in history and legend; it is not necessarily an endorsement of any particular set of laws, let alone that one promulgated by JHWH to Moses. Also, some of these figures are quite legendary, little-known, and may not actually have been involved in establishing or codifying laws (among these are Lycurgus of Sparta and Draco of Athens). Their presence on the frieze cannot be construed as an assertion of the historicity of Lycurgus or Draco; only their metaphorical presence is required
And this is why Santorum does not want you or your kids in college and damn that google.
As for me. I am a believer. I believe on my on time and on turf. I don't want the likes of the religious right who is completely wrong to tell me what to believe. It is a choice.
A religious freedom worth dying over. One of my rights. The freedom to worship or not. That is the sum of the whole argument. As long as we know the true history and the true rights, then they are power grabbing and trying to turn this country into a place that is neither democratic or free.