I think Rousseau's "Social Contract" needs to be mentioned as well, but when I read Locke I could see how what he wrote impacted Jefferson.

While the Founding Fathers certainly wanted to keep Church and State separate, Judeo-Christian ethics was a strong influence.

The following is a letter from John Adams to Jefferson dated June 28, 1813.

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were ... the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united, and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.

 

Sure...

And btw - there is nothing wrong with the core of that ethics; and it is not much different from the Buddhist (and similar philosophies') ethical ideas, anyway

 

A+ Thank you for noticing and not trying to create some new agenda that we all need to live by. I am more than happy with those same Judeo Christian values as something we should infuse back into society because if anything America is lost. If the last fifty years is any proof of the merits of liberalism I don't want it. :rose:And with Obama's stellar performance I don't believe the majority of American citizens do either.


"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company." ~George Washington

"The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality." ~John Quincy Adams

"It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time." ~Abraham Lincoln

 

Christianity contains more Eastern ideas than most Christians would care to admit

 

I like what G.K Chesterton said about Christianity.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

 

Why would you blame any religion per se or faith because of what any certain person's interpretations and actions are concerning that faith and or religion other than your own? THAT is why I laugh. If Christianity or any other religion is so wrong it is in the human interpretation and subsequent actions of such that might be wrong, not religion. +

 

Nevertheless, he was a freethinker, certainly for his time. It's wrong to judge him by today's standards. By that standard, you could judge ALL the framers of the Constitution as racists, because it maintained slavery, and you could accuse them all of sexism because they didn't allow women to vote.

 

I never said Christianity is wrong, nor did I blame Christianity for anything.

 

Everyone but you, I take it....well, at least I'm in good company.

 

Which religious minority are you talking about?

 

What did you not comprehend about everyone? really Kimiko? did I excuse myself? You can be the Queen here, no worries I will probably choose to sleep with someone else at 20,000 if and when I get that far, if ever. Is that ok? Your projection skills and once again patronizing manner shine through.

 

I'm not clutching at straws. You're over reaching based on an assumption with no basis of knowledge.

You seem to think the signers of the Constitution were obligated to use the phrase, "In the year of our Lord" to reference the date. They didn't have to do that. They could have used standard notation as they did when they dated the the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Including the phrase, "In the year of our Lord" with the word Lord capitalized was a deliberate reference to God.

HD

 

Keep it up, Hardrive. I admire your tenacity.

 

So....the framers of the Constitution are all sitting around one night, and James Madison says: "Hey, did you guys notice we don't have a single, solitary reference to God anywhere in this document?"

Jefferson shrugs and says: "So what?"

Madison: "Well, we have to slip in a reference to God SOMEWHERE, so that 200-odd years from now, people will know that we founded the country on Christian principles."

Jefferson: "Well...okay, but we'll have to make it pretty subtle. Hey! I know...we'll put the date in as "The Year of Our Lord" instead of A.D. That should do the trick...and besides, it sounds more high-falutin' that way, as befits a Constitution."

Yeah...I'm sure that happened.

 

You can be sarcastic and resort to all the silly speculation you want, but the fact is that you weren't in Philadelphia during the Constitutional convention and you have no idea what they discussed while drafting the Constitution. The only thing we know for sure is that the founding fathers did install a reference to God in the terminus of the U.S. Constitution. Case closed.

And it makes perfect sense. The founding father's knew they were making history with this document. I'm sure they reviewed every word and carefully considered what to include and what to discard. These were all religious men and the inclusion of a reference to God would not have been a casual decision nor would it have been out of character.

HD

 

Kimiko can't handle FACTS!
It fucks her up so she can't even think!

 

Please!
Don't contaminate Kimiko with FACTS!
She gets all fucked up and she can't function.

 

Well you weren't in Philadelphia either, and how much thought they gave individually, and/or collectively to the language they used when writing the date is purely speculative.
However, an opaque reference to the Lord, in what was common parlance for British legal documents of the time, is pretty thin.
Especially when put up against some of the explicit references to religion elsewhere in the document.
To wit, "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and members of the several state legislatures, and all executive, and judicial officers, both of the United States and the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.", as well as, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

It seems pretty clear to me that the framers believed that worship was, and should be, a matter of personal preference, and individual conscience, and that the State should remain neutral on the subject.

To say that they were all religious men is just flat wrong.
Benjamin Franklin, for example, was a deist, and if you are unfamiliar with that philosophy I highly recommend "The age of Reason" by Thomas Pain. (Yes, he did write something besides "Common Sense")
The fact is that they represented a wide variety of beliefs, and practices which is one of the reasons that they, wisely in my opinion, chose to leave religion out of government.

 

They were careful, all right. Careful to create an entirely secular government, with no state religion, one in which the rights of people to believe what they chose, including the right NOT to believe, were zealously protected. These were Renaissance men, men of the enlightenment, determined to free the United States from the religious conflicts that characterized Europe during the middle ages. It's too bad it didn't work.

 

Looks like you're having a little trouble functioning yourself.