Replies

Noachian: "Just what basis for the Constitution do these so called "critics" think was the basis for that document? What is the "basis" of the Constitution if not the religious outlook of the men who wrote it?"

Mylo: "DEISM?"

Matchett-PI: "You need to get your facts straight. Check my profile page."

Mylo: Facts? OK. Ben Franklin claimed to be a Deist in his autobiography. Thomas Paine was also a Deist. Many claimed Thomas Jefferson was a Deist (those that didn't call him an atheist) however he considered himself a Christian (although he denied the trinity and the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ). Many other founders were greatly influenced by Deist (as well as Christian) thought; as evidenced by their referring to "Natural Law" and the "God of Nature" and the "Author of our Liberty" in their writings."

Two possibilities:

[1] You didn't read the facts on my profile page.

[2] You didn't comprehend what you read.

In addition to that, "...Thomas Payne and Ethan Allen, for example, were in no- wise intellectual architects of the Constitution. Rather, they were firebrands of the Revolution. Was that important? Sure, they made an important contribution, but they weren't Founding Fathers. Period. ..."

Two observations.

1) you cannot refute the facts I cited.

2) your profile page doesn't refute the facts I cited.

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737–June 8, 1809), intellectual, scholar, and idealist, is widely recognized as one of the

Founding Fathers

of the United States. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his powerful writings, most notably Common Sense, an incendiary tract advocating independence from Great Britain. An advocate for liberalism and constitutional republican government, he outlined his political philosophy in The Rights of Man, written both as a defense against Edmund Burke's view of the radical revolution in France and as a general political philosophy treatise. Paine was also noteworthy for his defense of

deism,

taking its form in his theology treatise The Age of Reason, as well as for his eyewitness accounts of both the French and American Revolutions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

Benjamin Franklin

From Franklin’s autobiography:
“Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself ”

“...Some books against Deism fell into my hands....It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”

Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: London, 1757 - 1775
"If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England, blamed persecution in the Roman church, but practised it against the Puritans: these found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England."

Ethan Allen

From Religion of the American Enlightenment:
“Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”

From "Reason: The Only Oracle of Man"
"Though 'none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection,' yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of."