Ben Franklin's Dirty Little Secret

Dedicated to all who say that our founding fathers were all christians.

It’s a well known fact that not all the founding fathers were Christians.

This post sounds like another attempt by: Let me guess: radical athiest? To be vindictive towards Christianity. These are the same people that preach tolerance yet protest the sight of the word “God” mentioned anywhere on anything public.

But hey, go ahead, be vindictive and bash Christ all you want. It only makes you look more like a vindictive, intolerant prick.

Atheists can afford some vindictiveness. We have much less throughout history and in the contemporary setting than religious folk :wink:

And many if not most of our Founding Fathers were not Christian, most preferring either Deism or Atheism or even agnosticism. That doesn’t mean they didn’t go to church on Sunday like everyone else.

tanhauser? Ahm, if anything:

  1. the video in itself doesn’t bash christianity even in the slightest?
  2. Religions are surely the intolerant pricks, the one reason those juicy “Hellfire” clubs weren’t particularly exposed?
  3. You are kinda aggressive in your tone, no one attacked you yet you strike preemptively?

I am extremely tolerant, but the one thing I won’t tolerate are the intolerant ones.

DEATH TO ALL THE RADICALS!!!

[quote]jlesk68 wrote:
Dedicated to all who say that our founding fathers were all christians.[/quote]

Anyone who says that is a moron.

Thomas Paine=Diest, was dubbed incorrectly by Teddy Roosevelt as “A dirty little athiest”. Such accusations were thrown at him most all his life.

Thomas Jefferson=Rewrote the bible with his own deistic slant.

Ben Franklin=Well known for his indulgencies, John Adams despised the man for his being a drunken hippocrite. He was absolutely at home in French parlors with a new woman each night. The early to bed, early to rise sage was rarely up before noon.

Alexander Hamilton=Cheated on his wife with Maria Reynolds.

Aaron Burr=Sexual rumors surrounded him more than any other founder. He was a well known rake and homewrecker.

The founders had tons of Christians and an inordinate amount of Diests. The bulk of pure atheism was grounded in the French Revolution. This caused a deep fear in American society of what influence the French had among their republican friends in Jefferson’s camp.

The fact remains that all these were still great men…well, except Burr-fuck him.

mike

The founding fathers were battling not only the British but also a catholic church that was more of a heavy handed political institution than it was a religion though it operated under the pretenses of being a religion in order to use fear of hell to control the world’s population.

The Church left it’s religious roots during the middle ages in pursuit of political power and wealth as can be seen in their selling of pardons (0 biblical references to selling pardons), inquisitions, “witch” burnings, political allies, war funding etc.

While taking power, they established themselves as dictators eliminating basic human rights in favor of submission to the church as an institution.

To call middle aged and rennesaince catholics christians is silly at best. The forefathers were not mocking christians nor shunning christianity as we know them today, but were mocking Stalin-esque rulers hiding behind a mask of religion as they fought a political war against the British while simultaneously fighting a cultural war (with the granting of freedom of religion), a very perverse idea in the world at the time. The move was more political in order to escape the Catholic oppression of the day than it was theological.

[quote]jlesk68 wrote:
Dedicated to all who say that our founding fathers were all christians.[/quote]

http://home.uchicago.edu/~ahkissel/papers/franklinreligion.html

Just something to think about.

mike

[quote]jlesk68 wrote:
Dedicated to all who say that our founding fathers were all christians.[/quote]

clears throat

I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho’ some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, etc., appeared to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern’d 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.

-The Autobiography of Ben Franklin.