Posted on 09/18/2009 9:22:24 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Ayn Rand was an Atheist.Name them OldSpice - go ahead name them, if you can.The prominent Founding Fathers shared her views.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
Some tradition. TJ thought Jesus was an illegitimate child and NOT the Son of God!
I think it is terribly, terribly wrong for environmentalists to stand in the way of the fulfillment of Darwin's dictum, "survival of the fittest!" Obviously a species isn't "fit" if it needs to be "protected." Just let it go.
I agree, protecting it is in fact an "illegal taking." All those farmers are due just compensation under the law. And how much compensation does it require to compensate a person for the total loss of their livelihood, just to protect a fish?
These people are simply raving, crazy — and obviously dangerous.
They are dangerous because, even though they are certifiable, they effectively wield power — for a purpose. The purpose is simple, pure destruction of the way of life of American citizens.
And that is why it is so important for us to support the "INDEPENDENT AMERICAN MOVEMENT FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RESTORATION."
Either problems like what's happening in the San Joachin Valley are justly redressed and resolved by constitutional means, or eventually there is going to be real Hell to pay....
Thank you, Jeff, as ever — for all that you do in support of the Constitution and the American Way of Life! These cannot be stolen from us with impunity.
Look up above, in the first few posts of mine here, with citations referring to the Founding Fathers. Simply scroll up and you’ll see them.
Here are the out of context and random quotes OldSpice uses to claim that “Ayn Rand was an Atheist. The prominent Founding Fathers shared her views.” Perhaps you can help educate the poster?
George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a Universalist who denied the existence of Hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
— George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
John Adams, the country’s second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers ‘noble and gallant achievements” but among the clergy, the “pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces”. Late in life he wrote: “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!”
It was during Adam’s administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
— The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.
Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” He referred to the Revelation of St. John as “the ravings of a maniac” and wrote:
“The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.”
— Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.
James Madison, fourth president and Father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense.
“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.”
— The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.
...
Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, “That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.” In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally “denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.” When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the “God” referred to was the “God of Nature”, and the laws those “written in the “Great Book of Nature.”
— Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968, Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, the Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY.)
TJ wouldn't have been able to have that opinion if the Tradition didn't first exist, that he could "criticize" it in the manner he did.
TJ may be a sort of god to you; but I recall that when he died, he did not free his hundreds of slaves — except for five of them, who were likely his own children by Sally Hemmings. Sally herself he never did emancipate. He died a bankrupt, or rather "in the hole" (no pun intended) with something like $200,000 of unpayable debts — a whole ton of money in those days. Thus I gather he found the moral requirements of the Ten Commandments rather inconvenient to his preferred manner of living....
I think it's reasonable to conclude that, for all his diverse genius and accomplishments, TJ had some "personal issues" of a moral nature. Of such kind that the Bible stood as a living rebuke to him in certain regards. This being the case, I can see how he'd be inclined to sneer at it.
Here is George Washington in his own words:
“What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.”
—George Washington in a speech to the Delaware Indian Chiefs May 12, 1779
“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible.”
“It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.”
Here is George Washington in his adopted daughter’s words:
“Is it necessary that any one should [ask], “Did General Washington avow himself to be a believer in Christianity?” As well may we question his patriotism, his heroic devotion to his country. His mottos were, “Deeds, not Words”; and, “For God and my Country.” {Quote by Nelly Custis-Lewis, Washington’s adopted daughter}
LOL, the “out-of-context” defense again. Pray, tell me, what can be the “context” of those rather independently standing quotes that can reverse the meaning?
Were the Founding Fathers and the others expressing the opinions of characters through dialogues in a multi-act play?
Then you would agree that our foremost founding father, Thomas Jefferson, did not live the Christian tradition?
What value does your denigration of the Founding Father’s as atheists have? It is clearly false to fact and an effort to harm this website. What are you doing here?
Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father, not the FOREMOST of them except to Democrats.
"In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss,” she wrote in 1959, “of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing.” According to the book, this inner turmoil, known by only a handful of her closest colleagues, lasted until her death in 1997."
Oh, I definitely do, OldSpice! Had Catholics written the Constitution, America as we know it would not exist.
I sure do wish you would stop trying to apply evidence from the mediaeval world to bear on the problems before us. It is simply irrelevant to current problems.
No human institution — and churches are human institutions — can ever be "perfect," or immune from what we Catholics call sin. It is in the nature of things that this should be so. And of course, "human institution" is a category that includes all States as well.
Thank you so much for writing, OldSpice!
Please let me know when you can match arguments with arguments; not threats.
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Threats? Point to them. And answer the question.
See #91.
See the reply in #93.
No threat, no answer. Try again.
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