In their day, there were not as many distractions. There was a common learning basis of scripture and of a continued enlightenment afterglow of the period of the Renaissance.
Our Founders shared and discussed the ideas that swirled in Europe especially in France where the natives were growing increasingly restless at the heavier taxation meted out and despotism behaviors of courtesans of the Bourbon Kings. It is safe and accurate to say that the stirring events of France weighed a heavy influence on the American Revolution.
In the backdrop of disgruntled France grew a large educated class of philosophers and writers. One of the most historic of these was François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. Our Founders knew well and subscribed to the thoughts and views of the revolutionary Voltaire. Many of our ideas of liberty and freedom came through Voltaire.
I will be posting a thread dedicated to Voltaire and particularly his substantial remarks and observations of Muslims and Islam. But for now I will post this:
François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade.
But that a camel-merchant [Muhammad] should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him."
Note the disconnect between reference to Voltaire's advocacy of Freedom of Religion and his outrage at the 'religion' of Islam.
I will also for now leave a reference link and excerpt from March 2006 describing how even today Voltaire is hated by and continues to infuriate Muslims:
Blame It on Voltaire: Muslims Ask French To Cancel 1741 Play http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114161327867090087
SAINT-GENIS-POUILLY, France -- Late last year, as an international crisis was brewing over Danish cartoons of Muhammad, Muslims raised a furor in this little alpine town over a much older provocateur: Voltaire, the French champion of the 18th-century Enlightenment.
A municipal cultural center here on France's border with Switzerland organized a reading of a 265-year-old play by Voltaire, whose writings helped lay the foundations of modern Europe's commitment to secularism. The play, "Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet," uses the founder of Islam to lampoon all forms of religious frenzy and intolerance.
The production quickly stirred up passions that echoed the cartoon uproar. "This play...constitutes an insult to the entire Muslim community," said a letter to the mayor of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, signed by Said Akhrouf, a French-born café owner of Moroccan descent and three other Islamic activists representing Muslim associations. They demanded the performance be cancelled.
Against the historical backdrop of the founding of the United States, it is near impossible to believe that the Founders accepted the allowance of a subversive culture to nest itself as a trojan in the history of the American Republic. It should not be difficult at all to understand that Barack Hussein Obama is a liar to say that Islam was a contributor to the founding of the United States.
Let us all agree, therefore, to hold a non-politically correct debate on this 'thing' called Islam.
I think you mean "courtiers." Courtesans are high priced call girls.
John Quincy Adams on Islam
In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).
http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=7&article=1142
Obama is a liar, but Islam was the motivation for President Madison to change course and authorize the expansion of the US Navy. We needed a strong navy to stop Muslims from making slaves of our sailors and stealing our ships with their cargos.
Was it?