Posted on 02/10/2005 8:00:51 AM PST by PresbyRev
The lesson the President has learned bestand certainly the one that has been the most useful to himis the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administrations current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent. Thus begins an article by Brooke Allen that was posted on the website of The Nation on February 3, 2005.1 Its obvious that Allen has not...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanvision.org ...
Didn't read the article, huh?
Didn't read the article, huh?
The author of this article agrees with you.
After 40 years of liberalism and the wild growth of "american pop culture", recent public opinion polling indicates that roughly 80% of Americans consider themselves Christian believers. I'd say that makes the USA a Christian nation.
I would venture to say that most true leftists are atheists
> Founded on Christian principles and founded as a Christian nation are not the same thing.
Indeed. The US was founded on *pagan* principles, more than anything. Pagan Greek democracy married to the pagan Saxon Common Law (by way of Brit Common Law), with an acceptance of dissent and differing religions (quite un-Biblical) built right in from day one.
yes, i see that now. knee jerk to the title.. and showing my own ignorance. lol
but in my defence.. if there is one, i keep seeing American history messed with.
i have some old (1800's) history books... and i can say with 100% accuracy that some are trying to re-write our history.. it's maddening..
Founding Fathers views on Religion:
Thomas Jefferson:
"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 Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes; fools and hypocrites. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
-I have examined all the known superstitions of the Word, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world.
James Madison:
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen 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."
Thomas Paine:
-I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
-Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins ... and you will have sins in abundance. I would not dare to dishonor my Creator's name by [attaching] it to this filthy book [the Bible].
George Washington:
-Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.
-To give opinions unsupported by reasons might appear dogmatical.
-There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country t
God spoke to the people through the prophet Samuel on the evils of monarchy and the tyranny of the State.
God condemned the rise of humanism, again represented by a totalitarian State, in the account of the Tower of Babel.
The spheres and offices of Priest and King were separate.
The people were part of the election of civil leaders in the Old Testament and we find checks and balances in the civil law regarding the State in the Old Testament.
Our Declaration of Independence explicitly finds our rights granted by and rooted in Not the State, nor a document, nor in the consent of the governed but in the Creator.
In the "godless" Constitution, above George Washington's signature is written, "In the Year of Our Lord." Whose Lord? The incarnate and virgin born, Jesus Christ. Given the times and popular sentiment (just look at the example of Enlightenment France - rights rooted in the State, granted to the people by an omnipotent State) the term, "Year of Our Lord" could have remained unused. That is was included is telling.
Enlightenment thought, with its latent humanism, bore its seed in the 20th Century under Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
We're a Judaeo-Christian people with a secular government of a few liberals trying to kill us.
You are no better than a left wing lunatic rewriting history to accord with your own wants and needs. Grow up.
Incribed in The Jefferson Memorial
Taken from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1777. The last sentence is taken from a letter to James Madison, August 28, 1789.
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.
Jefferson believed the job of government was to secure the liberties given to us as a gift of God.
The system of three branches of government and representative republicanism owes more to the legacy of Calvinism than to the pagan Greek idolization of the polis.
Further, our Common Law heritage is clearly, as it came to be used and applied, in Biblical Law.
parents need to be diligent and monitor what books are used in the schools - need to have a list to check
seems this author is operating just fine on big lie theory.
In fact the switch from christian to "enlightened" is very orwellian.
The author might as well say USA founded doublepluss ungood and crimethink.
Well in fairness old history books can be just as guilty of this as new ones.
National Reform Association
http://www.NatReformAssn.org
Chalcedon
http://www.chalcedon.edu
More good links to relevant articles on this subject.
Please see the CAIR website for more facts about the Founding Imams of America.
Which'un? Brooke Allen or Gary DeMar?
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