In today's United States, it seems that politicians are falling all over themselves to out god everyone else in order to remain elected...since this is a Xian nation and all, right? Well, all one has to do to put that misperception to rest is to look at the historical documents of this nation, like the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli.
ARTICLE 11.
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.
Happy 4th of July everyone.
5 comments:
One might think that an appeal to the founding documents of our nation, rather than to an obscure treaty with a Muslim entity, would be made. I do not necessarily defend the notion of a "Christian nation," although it depends on how you define that. But the nation was clearly founded on theistic, not atheistic, principles, and the founders of the nation were influenced enoromously by CHRISTIAN theism, as evidenced by their many citations of the Bible in public and in private writings and by the conduct of many of them in their personal lives. The founders believed that our rights were "inalienable" because they were given by "our Creator."
GCT, another excellent post. In fact, I had planned a similar 4th of July post, but the Sarah Palin and Daniel Radcliffe happened and I had to decide which I needed to write about. I went with Radcliffe. I'm glad you covered this.
mdeltoro, You made a lot of claims about things other people believed that you didn't back up. So essentially, you could have just said "nu-uh!"
tsk tsk.
However, even if you manage to dig up evidence of the personal religious beliefs of the founding fathers, that in no way says anything about the intentions they had for this nation.
AND even if they did have a theistic principal in mind, which there's no evidence of, they provided enough leeway for us to remove it when we decide we want a nation founded on reason.
While you're out there furiously looking to back up your point, you might want to start with Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. See what there thoughts on god were.
This country was founded on secular principles, not Xian principles. If anything, one could claim some deistic principles from the "Creator" comment, but that only comes into play with the Declaration of Independence, which is not a founding document of this country. No, for founding documents, one only need look at the Constitution, which does not lean on god for anything. The only mention of any divinity is in the date where they write, "In the year of our lord." They also put specific clauses in to separate religious ideas from government.
Now, one can also argue that some people did want to have a larger role for religion in government, but that would only be half the story. Sure, some people wanted that, but that view lost out to the secularist view that ultimately won.
Jefferson in his notes on Virginia...
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites."
LOL! *cuckoo*
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