[boatbums]

But what if we are merely here to defend our Founding Fathers' religious ideas, and those of millions today, against false and often insane accusations: i.e., "God Damned Heretics"?

I'd wager that not one of the "founding fathers" expected his personal theological leanings to be defended as dogma just because he happened to believe it. I greatly respect what these men and women sacrificed to build the nation we have, but I don't presume that whatever they thought about God and the gospel MUST be what I also have to believe OR defend. Many of them WERE orthodox Christians and there isn't a hairs breadth difference in what they believed and what I do today, but they weren't religion builders. They had what I see as a God-given genius for the ideas they brought together and the founding documents are STILL relevant 200+ years later as they were when the nation was first founded.

Those of them that were not Christians were few and many combined philosophy with Biblical principles because those principles were true regardless if they accepted the ONE who created all things. I question why you see the need to defend the Founders' religious ideas outside of their application to the establishment of the rights and boundaries of a just government? If some were Deists and rejected the idea of a personal God, divine and infallible revelation, miracles or the Trinity, then, no matter how much I might respect their part in the founding of my country, I will proudly reject their erroneous beliefs because they weren't gods - they were fallible men.

Calling their false religious dogma heresy actually IS a correct accusation. Being a great man doesn't mean you are right about everything.

[Kevmo]

That’s about how I see things as well. But I didn’t have the time to put it down into such thoughtful, eloquent, rhetorical prose.

[BroJoeK]

boatbums: "Calling their false religious dogma heresy actually IS a correct accusation.
Being a great man doesn't mean you are right about everything."

FRiend boatbums, you are now the first poster I've seen in these 2,500+ posts to admit that you consider our Founding Fathers to be, in Kevmo's words, "God Damned Heretics."

Well, at least you're honest about it.

I think our Founders' religious views deserve more respect because:

1. Their understandings of the murderous intent of those who cry "God Damned Heretics" led our Founders to guarantee religious freedom in their First Amendment.
   We should thank God for that.

2. There's more, because their deistically influenced ideas can be found in Declaration of Independence references to "nature's God" and "Supreme Judge of the World".
   So, when you condemn such ideas, you also rock the core of America's Founding.

3. George Washington himself had no doubts that the Hand of Providence (a deistic expression) protected the Founders and our new-born republic.
   Seems to me that if we discard such ideas, we also throw away what first got us here.

Again, I'm here to request that they, and others likeminded, get treated with more respect than they've received on this thread.