[ThirdEye]

Sometimes, I wonder if I am.

People have given up on discussion and the evolution of ideas and instead simply hold on to the beliefs they've always had...ie taught through their environment. It's made it quiet difficult for me to grow through intelligent conversation with others. Maybe that's why I predict I will never be anything by agnostic. Aethesist and fundementalists alike... ruining the expansion of ideas and knowledge.

Our founding fathers represented people who were trying to reach a new level of reason.

[f.Christian]

Reason vs reality ... insanity !

[jwalsh07]

Our founding fathers were overwhelmingly Christian. Denying that does not advance rational discourse, it hinders it. Any cursory reading of the history of this nation makes it clear that the founding fathers were overwhelmingly Christian.

Yes Jefferson was a deist at one time in his life and yes he rewrote the Bible to accord with his belief system at that time.

But Thomas Jefferson was one man. Almost all of the remaining founders were Christian.

The evidence is quite clear on that and running around yelling "rational" will never change that fact.

Madison offered and passed a bill with criminal liability for breaking the sabbath.

Washington prayed for divine intervention, a notion unfamiliar to deists.

Fisher Ames, author of the 1st Amendment lived and worshipped in MAssachusetts which had a state established religion backed by AMes.

These things are not conjecture, they are facts.

[VOA]

Our founding fathers represented people who were trying to reach a new level of reason.

And they did. Some of them turned to political philosophers of history, including
one who reminded people to "render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's"...and early
enunciation of the separate kingdoms of the government and the human spirit.

Now, no human can read the inner recesses of the heart, soul and mind of the Founders.
Some who were publically religious may have been day-to-day bad-boys; fellows like Franklin
and Jefferson that were "off the scale" in terms of intellect may have
been much more religionally-oriented than they'd wanted their colleagues to realize.

I'll leave it here: whether it was the aspiration of pure human reason AND/OR
the guiding hand of Providence, the Founders did find a way to benevolently bridle the
good and evil found in governmental institutions and the minds of the citizens.

And most of the world has voted "Yes" to the results, by coming here, sometimes at risk of life.

[wardaddy]

Our founding fathers represented people who were trying to reach a new level of reason.

They were hardly messianic. They were theocentric with one foot in anthroprocentric thought or perhaps maybe viceversa. Except for a handful, they frequently referred to God or the Bible. The more radical leaders were admittedly influenced by the anthroprocentrists of the time.