[exmarine]

Anyone living in that time had no choice but to take the Bible seriously. Whether they interpretated the Bible the way you do is, I think, revealed more in their private correspondence than in their public speeches.

Sorry, but the founders took the bible seriously BY CHOICE. Even a cursory reading of their writings makes that clear. Even Franklin (probably not a Christian) called for prayer and believed that God won the revolutionary war for America. And you wrong, the public writings are very clear in that the founding fathers started the American Bible Society and American Tract Society - do you suppose they kept that a secret? 27 of 56 signers of the D of I had seminary degrees!

With all due respect, you need some study on this, and you need it from an objective historian that cites PRIMARY sources in their full context, not historical revisionism.

[js1138]

You misread my post. I specifically implied that they were public Christians. The question being raised is what they said in their private writings.

[js1138]

Let me clarify what I mean by private writings. Any google search will turn up buckets of skeptical quotes from the major league founding fathers -- the ones whose pictures are on our money.

I choose not to post these quotes because I don't have the ability to confirm their authenticity. I could, like some here, post any old quotation I find without being concerned whether it was made by Steven Gold or Stephen Gould, or whether it is in the correct context.

So rather than make a fool of my self like others have, I will simply say that I have seen quotes attributed to several founding fathers that indicates they were not at all what we now call fundamentalists. Some wrote extensively of their skepticism of the historical accuracy of the Bible.

These quotes may be false attributions. I am open to argument on this. But if the quotes are accurate, you are quite wrong.