An American Ping.
“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. “
-Thomas Jefferson
This is perhaps the most important statement on religion ever made. It clarified the intent of the founders of the constitution irrespective of the attempts of modern day religious revisionists...
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802
another keeper.....
“To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams
another great one...
“And 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 with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
How did Jefferson feel about the people of his day who were the equivalent of our modern day “penecostals”? You know, those revelation reveling tongue speaking idiots...
It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherence’s of our own nightly dreams.... what has no meaning admits no explanation.
— Thomas Jefferson, to Alexander Smyth, January 17, 1825
He was a liberal ya know. He did create the faction which became the Democratic party. He was despised by the founders and framers from my state (among whom was the only man, Roger Sherman, who signed all 4 founding documents). No, he wasn't as bad as Thomas Paine, but he ...well...listen to what Fisher Ames wrote in reference to Jefferson and his faction in 1805. Doesn't the below sound just like the Democratic party of today?
Federalism was therefore manifestly founded upon a mistake, on the supposed existence of sufficient political virtue, and on the permanency and authority of the public morals. The party now in power committed no such mistake. They acted upon what men actually are, not what they ought to be . . .They inflamed the ignorant; they flattered the vain; they offered novelty to the restless; and promised plunder to the base. The envious were assured that the great should fall; and the ambitious that they should become great . . . we are descending from a supposed orderly and stable republican government into a licentious democracy . . .Ames also wrote that Jefferson's coalition was composed of a corrupt aristrocracy and an ignornant underclass propped up by a venal press.
The Obama coalition in other words.
In others of his writings he stated that Jesus "preached philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence," that "a system of morals is presented to us [by Jesus], which, if filled up in the style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man."
He wrote, "His moral doctrines...were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers...and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants, and common aids," which, Jefferson said, "will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others."
Comparing the Hebrew code which, according to Jefferson, "laid hold of actions only," "He [Jesus] pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head."
That Jefferson cut out the statements which he believed to be directly attributable to Jesus, pasted them into a little book which he kept by his bed and, by his own account, read from them daily, might lead one to conclude that his political philosphy probably was influenced by what he considered to be the superiority of the "philosophy" of Jesus.
It is unlikely that any person alive today has read the writings of as many of the great philosophers as Jefferson. His talents and abilities were legend. His devotion to liberty and to the ideas essential to liberty were based on simple principles, some of which, undoubtedly, came from his understanding of the basic law underlying all valid human law: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."