Wisdom of Our Fathers

I have heard so much propaganda over these last few years insisting that the United States of America was formed as a Christian nation - furthermore that the framers of our country were themselves Christians, thus literary interpretations should be taken in the context of that presumed bias. Should any of these assertions bear truth, they should certainly hold up to the scrutiny of the very "fathers" from whom they claim to have been birthed.

Below please find an ever growing sampling of quotes from the wise men who shaped our free land by literally ripping it from the heart of a Christian theocracy reviled by all those who first declared independence. Lets keep it that way.

With All My Love,

Pappy

"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

~ John Adams ~

1797 Treaty of Tripoli 

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"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

~ Benjamin Franklin ~ 

Toward the Mystery

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"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." 

~ Thomas Jefferson ~ 

Letter to Danbury Baptist Association

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every 

opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if 

there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of 

blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its 

consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find 

incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its 

exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you."

~ Thomas Jefferson ~ 

Letter to Peter Carr

August 10, 1787

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"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." 

~ James Madison ~ 

Memorial and Remonstrance 

Against Religious Assessments, 1789

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"It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes." 

~ Thomas Paine ~

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"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

~ Thomas Jefferson ~ 

Letter to John Adams

January 24, 1814

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"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But 

how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been 

blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the 

most bloody religion that ever existed?"

~ John Adams ~ 

Letter to F. A. Van der Kamp

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"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation 

and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger 

with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change 

them."

Abraham Lincoln

Letter to Judge J. S. Wakefield

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"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme 

Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

~ Thomas Jefferson ~ 

Jefferson's Works Vol. IV

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"The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense."

Thomas Paine

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"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, 

and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our 

citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or 

stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as 

ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we 

must believe?"

~ Thomas Jefferson ~ 

Letter to Dufief

April 19, 1814

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 "Democracy does not need the church, or the clergy."

James Madison

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"There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in nature, which those 

imposters and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood."

Thomas Paine

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