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InJesusItrust
Guest
Voucher schools will be no different because the government will fund them and assign a curriculum.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
I get the feeling that there are a few in this thread that would enjoy the movie “Christmas with a capital C”. It’s on Netflix.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
At the Constitutional Convention, 1787, James Madison recorded the following remarks made by Benjamin Franklin to the president of the Convention:
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel; We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Government by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
"I therefore beg leave to move – that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.”
So what was good with the Founders would not be good for school children today?
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel; We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Government by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
"I therefore beg leave to move – that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.”
So what was good with the Founders would not be good for school children today?
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SachieWhitby
Guest
Because the atheists will make a lot of noise about how they find people practicing any sort of religion offensive and will treat it as something that must be squished like a bug. They’re not content to just sit there quietly thinking about how there’s no afterlife or God while other people are praying in the same room.The culture of Atheism is nothing more than just that… It’s a culture, one out of many hundreds, or thousands of other cultures. What i don’t understand is why some people think that this culture should be allowed to dominate all others?
…also, there is no room for cultures that are intolerant of religion.These types of cultures are self destructive.
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
“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, CT., Jan. 1, 1802
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Roscoe
These remarks by Jefferson have nothing to do with school prayer, what we are discussing. What Jefferson opposed was the taxing of the public to support a state religion. Catholics, for example, being required to pay taxes to support the Church of England.
Study some history.
These remarks by Jefferson have nothing to do with school prayer, what we are discussing. What Jefferson opposed was the taxing of the public to support a state religion. Catholics, for example, being required to pay taxes to support the Church of England.
Study some history.
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
Do our taxes not pay for public school?
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Roscoe
**Do our taxes not pay for public school? **
Yes. They also pay for Congressional chaplains. And for military chaplains. and for printing “In God we trust” on our currency. Etc.
**Do our taxes not pay for public school? **
Yes. They also pay for Congressional chaplains. And for military chaplains. and for printing “In God we trust” on our currency. Etc.
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
The military or Congress are required to pray. As pointed out, students can have prayer groups that are extra curricular. So I don’t see your point.Roscoe
**Do our taxes not pay for public school? **
Yes. They also pay for Congressional chaplains. And for military chaplains. and for printing “In God we trust” on our currency. Etc.
“In God We Trust” was added in the 1950’s, so not an example of founders intent.
“E pluribus unum” Out of many One was the original. There is room for everyone.
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JamesCaruso
Guest
Yes, for everyone of good will.The military or Congress are required to pray. As pointed out, students can have prayer groups that are extra curricular. So I don’t see your point.
“In God We Trust” was added in the 1950’s, so not an example of founders intent.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Roscoe
"In God We Trust" was added in the 1950’s, so not an example of founders intent.
Then what is your answer to the question asked at the end of post # 44? Were the Founders, who voted in favor of Franklin’s resolution, not showing their intent?
"In God We Trust" was added in the 1950’s, so not an example of founders intent.
Then what is your answer to the question asked at the end of post # 44? Were the Founders, who voted in favor of Franklin’s resolution, not showing their intent?
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
Some. Men like Jefferson were Deists. Prayer isn’t looked upon as useful or nessisary.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Roscoe
**Some. Men like Jefferson were Deists. Prayer isn’t looked upon as useful or nessisary. **
I wonder if that is what he was saying to himself on his deathbed. We’ll never know.
But in my experience with dying people, unless they are fools, they almost all come around to prayer.
Even Jean Paul Sartre likely made his peace with God.
**Some. Men like Jefferson were Deists. Prayer isn’t looked upon as useful or nessisary. **
I wonder if that is what he was saying to himself on his deathbed. We’ll never know.
But in my experience with dying people, unless they are fools, they almost all come around to prayer.
Even Jean Paul Sartre likely made his peace with God.
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
I don’t understand. Because of vauge speculation on your part I’m to believe that Jefferson wasn’t a deist? I’m to discount all his writings?
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JamesCaruso
Guest
Deist or not, he was a great admirer of Jesus Christ.
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
Yes, many people who aren’t Christian are. Not sure what your point is.Deist or not, he was a great admirer of Jesus Christ.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Shortly before his death Thomas Jefferson penned this poem to his surviving daughter
A Death Bed Advice from T.J. to M.R.
Life’s visions are vanished, its dreams are no more,
Dear friend of my bosom, why bathed in tears,
I go to my fathers, I welcome the shore,
Which crowns all my hopes or which buries my cares.
Then farewell my dear, my loved daughter adieu,
The last pang of life is parting from you.
Two seraphs await me long shrouded in death,
I will bear them your love on my last parting breath.
Certainly Jefferson’s last sentiments were about his own immortality. The two seraphs referred to are his wife and other daughter who had died long ago.
(Excerpts, letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823)
“I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an atheist, which I could never be; or rather his religion was daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin…. (Here Jefferson goes on to talk about the French atheists.) The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say, then, that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may forever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary, I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and infinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters, and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, the generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite members of man who have existed through all time, they have believed in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis.”
Not sure what you meant about Jefferson being a Deist, but it’s clear from the above that Jefferson believes in a God who governs and sustains the universe of his creation.
A Death Bed Advice from T.J. to M.R.
Life’s visions are vanished, its dreams are no more,
Dear friend of my bosom, why bathed in tears,
I go to my fathers, I welcome the shore,
Which crowns all my hopes or which buries my cares.
Then farewell my dear, my loved daughter adieu,
The last pang of life is parting from you.
Two seraphs await me long shrouded in death,
I will bear them your love on my last parting breath.
Certainly Jefferson’s last sentiments were about his own immortality. The two seraphs referred to are his wife and other daughter who had died long ago.
(Excerpts, letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823)
“I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an atheist, which I could never be; or rather his religion was daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin…. (Here Jefferson goes on to talk about the French atheists.) The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say, then, that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may forever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary, I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and infinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters, and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, the generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite members of man who have existed through all time, they have believed in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis.”
Not sure what you meant about Jefferson being a Deist, but it’s clear from the above that Jefferson believes in a God who governs and sustains the universe of his creation.
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? …Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816
Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820
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
And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
He was an admirer of Jesus but didn’t think him God.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? …Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816
Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820
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
And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
He was an admirer of Jesus but didn’t think him God.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Roscoe
**He was an admirer of Jesus but didn’t think him God. **
So what is your point? That Jesus should not be taught in the public schools? Is anyone here arguing that? Is the Congressional chaplain always a Christian? No. Are all the military chaplains Christian? No. Is there any mention of Jesus on our currency? No.
Please explain your point.
“The people of France were running headlong into Atheism, and I had the work [Age of Reason] translated into their own language, to stop them in that career, and fix them in the first article of every man’s creed, who has any creed at all – I believe in God.” Thomas Paine
“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports." George Washington
“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity…. I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God.” John Adams
“I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.” Benjamin Franklin
“I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man.” Alexander Hamilton
“I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, or scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter between himself and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live.” Abraham Lincoln
**He was an admirer of Jesus but didn’t think him God. **
So what is your point? That Jesus should not be taught in the public schools? Is anyone here arguing that? Is the Congressional chaplain always a Christian? No. Are all the military chaplains Christian? No. Is there any mention of Jesus on our currency? No.
Please explain your point.
“The people of France were running headlong into Atheism, and I had the work [Age of Reason] translated into their own language, to stop them in that career, and fix them in the first article of every man’s creed, who has any creed at all – I believe in God.” Thomas Paine
“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports." George Washington
“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity…. I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God.” John Adams
“I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.” Benjamin Franklin
“I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man.” Alexander Hamilton
“I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, or scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter between himself and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live.” Abraham Lincoln
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Roscoe_Turner
Guest
You are making the argument that Prayer should be a requirement in Public Schools by trying to link it to the founding fathers. I’m pointing out that yes some were Christians, others held other views. It wasn’t universal.Roscoe
**He was an admirer of Jesus but didn’t think him God. **
So what is your point? That Jesus should not be taught in the public schools? Is anyone here arguing that? Is the Congressional chaplain always a Christian? No. Are all the military chaplains Christian? No. Is there any mention of Jesus on our currency? No.
Please explain your point.
As Adams States in the Treaty of Tripoli -
I like Jefferson’s thoughts in Notes on the State of Virginia * 1787
I feel it shows a lack of faith, if you the need the Government to prop it up.
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