I find it interesting that many on the Religious R. (and followers and ghosts) point to the founding fathers for a source for there belief that Christianity should be a BIGGER part of the government.

Two things

>They were the progressive radicals of their time. Why? Because the Constitution they wrote had very little reference to GOD. They were the first government to emphasize government over GOD.

>Religion is all about Morals. Do we want to follow the founding f’s in this category (slavery)? Morality is a slippery concept that is in mutation constantly. They had some mighty skanky ideas about personal behavior and occasionaly piss poor aditudes towards folks that didn't look like them.

I'd agree with your first point, but I disagree with your second. For one thing, I happen to think that the founding fathers of this country were about the most incredible group of progressive (largely young) intellectuals to ever come together for a single cause in the history of the world. That said, I don't hold any of their moral failings as much as against them as you seem to. I don't see how you can in one breath praise them for being progressive for their time about religion in government and in the next breath damn them for being products of the society they were born into regarding slavery. Those of them who were slave holders were to a man progressive slave holders, many of whom wished to outlaw slavery throughout the land at the time of the Constitutional Convention, but simply didn't have the consensus support that they needed at the time.

I think we should keep this thread confined to the stated subject, "The Founding Fathers and GOD". It's a much more interesting topic than to rehash the "our country was founded by white men who owned slaves" argument again, IMO.

I think the religious right is probably correct in that the founding fathers were God-fearing, but I think it is absurd to suggest that they wanted Christianity to play any significant role in government. I think there have been quotes cited here at RM from Adams and Jefferson expressing fear towards the idea of religion and state working together. They should also consider the reason New England was settled in the first place; that is, to escape church/state cooperation/oppression.

No - I don't damn them for being slaveowners.
I was trying to make the point that - folks were alot more religious in those days and the Religious R. folks amoungst us today point to that fact as a reason for suggesting the founding fathers wanted religion to play a bigger part in US government.
But you have to take the founding fathers attitudes in context of the time they lived. To take God out of the government in any meaningful way was huge given the times these men lived in. And it is this idea (less God in Government) that has made this country great.
I get tired of the talk of our country being founded upon Christian ideals. This is almost the reverse of what the founders really had in mind when they were creating the US.

I think this whole discussion is odd because it assumes the Founding Fathers were the only ones who had anything to do with "founding" what would become the United States. It also assumes that there was an "American consensus" in the beginning among the Founding Fathers and the 2,500,000 or so other people in the colonies.

I think the US can be traced back to the first two English colonies. Jamestown in Virginia was basically functioning as a base of capitalism and Plymouth was basically functioning as a religious center.

Christian capitalism.

God is a dick!

For better or worse, the Founding Fathers 'founded' the Constitution, which is supposed to be the most important part of what remains from that period. Basically, whether or not the other 2.5 million people agreed with Jefferson and Co. doesn't matter nowadays. Ideally, the Constitution trumps outside interests, be they religious or economic.

http://www.akashicbooks.com/presidentsTJ.htm

http://www.akashicbooks.com/presidentsJA.htm

http://www.akashicbooks.com/presidentsGW.htm


Additional reading folks in this thread might appreciate,... fyi.


Also:

http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.p ... =Jefferson

fyi,

c-

I'm rereading the bible again right now, this time the "New International" edition, and I'm catching on something I never focused on before. God specifying that A&E not eat from the tree of knowledge is interesting in itself, but that it was the knowledge of good and evil is really a fascinating primer for what follows. Setting up the idea that you ought not know the difference between those two is a good way to establish that whatever this book says is good, you need to accept as good.

That doesn't really help the discussion. I picked up an interesting book recently (I forget the title, for the life of me). It's really good (I'm on all of page 10), but it focuses on how Christianity and most other religions of its nature (ie Islam) will struggle/become a burden in a global economy, and why. The only argument I've read about so far is that it can be easily used to hate, and in a constantly competitive worldwide market this is dangerous.

We could get into a whole discussion over the first few chapters of Genesis, but let's just say that I don't believe that the moral of that story was that the knowledge of good and evil was a bad thing.

McParadigm, read Ishmael, Daniel Quinn's thoughts on Genesis are quite interesting. It is not so much that we should not know the difference between good and evil, as much as we don't have a full understanding of good and evil. Or at least that is how I interrpretted it.

This should fall into the favorite RM quotes thread.

I'm honestly not sure what you were trying to get at in your response. The Constitution is just a document and has been followed off and on since its inception. I'm sure there are a number of instances where the Founding Fathers themselves disregarded it. Two I can think of are the Sedition Act under Adams and possibly the Louisiana Purchase under Jefferson.

The Founding Fathers did not have the only ongoing influence in the US - so to put their views as supreme disregards the 2.5 million other people living in the colonies at that time. What about people who favored labor unions? What about people who saw the Africans as fellow people and not slaves? Those were certainly things opposed by the established order.

It always matters whether or not the remainder of the population is in sync with the supposed leaders. It is, in truth, an assumption to state that there is an "America" with uniform ideals and beliefs. It doesn't logically follow that just because Christianity wasn't formally written into the Constitution that the US was any less of a Christian nation by and large.

What about the state constitutions that did include references to God and Christianity? Wouldn't those have been more representative of their people since they were on a more local level?

Wasn't the whole point that following God is what constitutes good?



I can see the tendency to believe such a thing, but I doubt it to be the case. First of all, there is plenty of evidence in history of Christians and Muslims being able to live together under peaceful conditions. Secondly, I think both have adapted well to functioning in capitalist societies.

I think nationalism is a far bigger threat to the global economy than Christianity/Islam will ever be.

Even extremely religious people have to admit that it's true.

I don't care how Christian the nation was, or is. I care about how much God is written into the Constitution. That way, if a religious wackjob comes along and tries to do something unjust in the name of faith, I or somebody else could, ideally, go to the court for protection, by showing that the Constutition sees it otherwise. The first post of the thread was



The histories of Jamestown and Plymouth do not hold any sway in determining whether or not Christianity should be a bigger part of the goverment today. An interpretation of what the framers were saying when they said such and such... that is much more relevant to understanding how much Christianity is in government, and how much should be in our government. Earlier is this thread I think it was shown that the Framers meant for there to be very little God in our system of government, regardless of how Christian we were then or are now.

I don't at all believe in there is a uniform America with the same ideals, but I believe that if there are two differing parties with a dispute to settle, the best way to settle it is to look at the rules of governance that have been in place since the beginning. Part of the power that the Constitution has always had is that it can defend the interests of the few against the interests of the majority. If 60% of America believes God should be more heavily involved in this or this or this, that's just too bad for them (unless the Constitution agrees).

Its all in this book - extracted from the bible and cross referenced to his own written work, not the least of which would be those documents upon which the country was founded. Someone else has already done the research...

c-

So are you saying he used the Bible or he didn't use the Bible.