betty boop responding: "Absolutely not. Why should I?"
So, should I take you to mean you have no respect -- zero? -- for our Founding Fathers' religious views, that along with Kevmo you consider them to be "God Damned Heretics"?
You believe the United States was founded based on religious ideas of "God Damned Heretics"?
Are you sure?
You believe the United States was founded based on religious ideas of “God Damned Heretics”?
***It’s interesting that you try to steer the argument over here rather than to your own heretical beliefs. Heretical beliefs are heretical, regardless of who holds them. It is obvious that you hold heretical beliefs in denying that Jesus is God Himself, so are properly labelled a damned heretic, a God damned heretic. Yes, God properly damns you for holding such heretical beliefs.
That is evidently the conclusion you've been trying to drive me to, according to your twisted, specious logic.
First you lump all the Founding Fathers together into a "group," so to speak of "their" religious views. As if such were monolithic. Among the Founding Fathers are to be found Trinitarians, Unitarians, and/or Deists.
A Christian by definition is a Trinitarian. For a Christian to deny the divinity of Christ might be heretical. But it might also be the consequence of a certain "mental blindness," wherein one can read this scripture —
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.— and not notice that it declares Jesus Christ, the Word and Son of God, is "One" with the Father from the Beginning. That He is of the same divine substance as the Father, and thus Himself fully divine.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. — John 1:1–5
Evidently, BroJoeK, you need to see "Jesus Is God" spelled out for you in the Holy Scriptures in just so many words. Since that statement is not there (AFAIK "in so many words"), you feel you have reason to doubt.
And you seem to be here to promote that doubt. Or at least, to upset as many Christians as possible.
Do you suppose the Unitarians and/or Deists among the Founding Fathers took issue in any way with the Trinitarians? Or vice versa? Certainly, neither Thomas Jefferson nor Benjamin Franklin disparaged those who did not share their own particular religious views (whatever they may have been; that's not for me to say, it's a matter between them and God) — they were fully committed to John Locke's views on religious toleration. They didn't go running around trying to stir up trouble among the brethren as you do, BJK.
Anyhoot, the United States of America is not a "religious establishment." The Constitution was not conceived of by a band of priests, or a collection of Buddhist monks.
It was conceived of by a "band of brothers" with deep cultural roots in the ancient cities of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome.... [c.f. Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order.]
They were also deeply influenced by the intellectual revolution occasioned by the brilliant achievements of Sir Isaac Newton, who seemed to have "mechanized" the universe.... The Founders were all to some extent "children of the Enlightenment."
Point is, the Founders are irreducible to the convenient categories of your preference. So what is the point of your exercise, to "force" certain FReeper Christians to declare at least some of them "heretic?"
Christianity is not about what you know. It's about how you live. And God alone is sole judge of that, certainly not me.
Pace, my friend.