The Founding Fathers were, by modern standards, non-believers

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Deism is, by modern standards, little more than philosophical agnosticism. Real or not, God makes little difference.

And the founders who denied the physical resurrection of Christ were not Christians by any reasonable standard.

Intellectual fashions come and go, and in the late 18th century the sophisticated view was that miracles were probably made up stories. I doubt more than a third of the founders accepted the reality of biblical miracles. Probably less.

Sorry... I just say a Huckabee defender on TV talking about what the Founding Fathers wanted, as if the concept had any meaning to him.

[Mythsaje]

1. They never get it, and never will.

PEOPLE are what matter. God can take care of himself.

[Double T]

2. The Founding Fathers were much smarter than the political idiots we have today.

[Essene]

3. correct. but no point arguing it for the most part

if you really want to tick onne of the bible thumpers off, mention how jefferson re-wrote the bible to take all the supernatural stuff out... and then explain deism to them.

[Muttocracy]

4. 3 things in Jefferson's epitaph

http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/biography.html

"It was Jefferson's wish that his tomb stone reflect the things that he had given the people, not the things that the people had given to him. It is for this reason that Thomas Jefferson's epitaph reads:

HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON
AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
BORN APRIL 2, 1743 O.S.
DIED JULY 4. 1826 "

[MannyGoldstein]

5. The Founders - All In Hell?

I used to entertain myself by visiting a nutty right-wing site, newsbusters.org. I'd put up quotes by the Founders - who all were flaming Jesus-haters by today's right-wing nut standards - and ask if that Founder was in Hell now. For example, John Adams wrote:

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"

So is John Adams in Hell now?

Faced with this kind of contradiction, the righties just melt down. Very entertaining. And very sad.

[Alcibiades]

6. Everyone should read Brooke Allen's book:

"Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers." It's a book I was going to write myself, but was pleased to have found had already been written. Probably the best book on the religious views of the leading founders. Lots of stuff you already know, stuff you didn't know, and stuff you forgot you knew because the religious right has been spouting their lies about the christianity of our founding fathers for over a generation now. My favorite fact: only 17% of people in the colonies were members of a church.

What I find most odd is that this bunch of deists, atheists agnostics and heretics have been made by the right into not only orthodox Christians, but orthodox Christians who believe what evangelicals believe today, despite the fact that their freaky doctrines were not developed until the last century!

Only a nation deeply ignorant of its own history could fall for a lie as big as this one. The 18th century may have been deeply religious, but the faithful didn't include the founders, in any way, shape or form. We are a product of the enlightenment, closer to Voltaire than Cotton Mather.

[robbedvoter]

7. Maybe he meant the Fundie Fathers....

"Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism - said Dawkins
referring to today's notions.
I agree that if we apply the time context, the funding fathers were heathens in the eyes of today's fundies.

[SecularNATION]

8. Non-believers

Many of the founders would today be drummed out of the Republican Party. Possibly the Democratic Party as well. It's sickening.