[quote]steveo5801 wrote:
We were, in fact, founded upon Christianity – because those who fled England (Puritans) wished to practice their [Christian] religion in freedom. These are FACTS – the founding documents prove the point and that is that.
[/quote]
The Puritans–thank God–didn’t found our government.
Freemasonry had a much larger influence on the formation of our government than Christianity.
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/mashist.htm
Based upon the evidence of Masonic influences in the establishment of this nation, there is no doubt that the criteria necessary to classify the United States as a Christian nation were not met. An objective study of the Masonic affiliations of the founding fathers must cause Christians to reevaluate their own political philosophy. For if the United States is not a Christian nation then we must choose to whom we will commit “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” – our Lord or our country.
20 GREATEST NAMES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
* John Adams--Spoke favorably of Freemasonry--never joined
* Samuel Adams--(Close and principle associate of Hancock, Revere & other Masons
* Ethan Allen - Mason
* Edmund Burke--Mason
* John Claypoole--Mason
* William Daws--Mason
* Benjamin Franklin--Mason
* Nathan Hale--No evidence of Masonic connections
* John Hancock--Mason
* Benjamin Harrison--No evidence of Masonic connections
* Patrick Henry--No evidence of Masonic connections
* Thomas Jefferson--Deist with some evidence of Masonic connections
* John Paul Jones--Mason
* Francis Scott Key--No evidence of Masonic connections
* Robert Livingston--Mason
* James Madison--Some evidence of Masonic membership
* Thomas Paine--Humanist
* Paul Revere--Mason
* Colonel Benjamin Tupper--Mason
* George Washington--Mason
* Daniel Webster--Some evidence of Masonic connections
Summary: 10 Masons, 3 probable Masons, 1 Humanist, 2 Advocates of Freemasonry, 4 no record of connections.
SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Known Masons (8): Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, Robert Treat Payne, Richard Stockton, George Walton, William Whipple
Evidence of Membership And/or Affiliations (7): Elbridge Berry, Lyman Hall, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Nelson Jr., John Penn, George Read, Roger Sherman
Summary: 15 of 56 Signers were Freemasons or probable Freemasons.
It’s true that this represents only 27% of the total signers. But this 27% included the principle movers of the Revolution, most notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the primary authors of the Declaration. The former was a Freemason, the latter a deist and possible Freemason. If one were to analyze the Declaration, he would see the humanistic influences.
In any event, there is no evidence that even 27% of the signers were true Christians. In considering whether or not this is a Christian nation, it isn’t the number of Masons that is as important as is the number of founders overall who were non-believers.
SIGNERS OF THE CONSTITUTION
Known Masons (9): Gunning Bedford, Jr., John Blair, David Brearly, Jacob Broom, Daniel Carrol, John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, Rufus King, George Washington
Evidence of Membership And/or Affiliations (13): Abraham Baldwin, William Blount, Elbridge Gerry, Nicholas Gilman, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Lansing, Jr., James Madison, George Mason, George Read, Robert Morris, Roger Sherman, George Wythe
Those Who Later Became Masons (6): William Richardson Davie, Jr., Jonathan Dayton, Dr. James McHenry, John Francis Mercer, William Patterson, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer
Summary: 28 of 40 signers were Freemasons or possible Freemasons based on evidence other than Lodge records.
74 men were commissioned as Generals in the U.S. Continental Army from 1775 through 1783
33 (46%) were Freemasons
George Washington:
The first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
Thomas Jefferson speaking about George Washington:
[Washington] had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice
Thomas Jefferson:
I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.
Jefferson again:
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to [Jesus] by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great . . . corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.
More Jefferson:
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.
Jefferson wrote to John Adams, January 24, 1814 that the divine aspects of Christ were “the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”
Thomas Jefferson created his own version of the gospels; he was uncomfortable with any reference to miracles, so with two copies of the New Testament, he cut and pasted them together, excising all references to miracles, from turning water to wine, to the resurrection.
Jefferson:
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
Jefferson:
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
Jefferson:
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests.
Jefferson:
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 political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.
Jefferson:
It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism, he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.
Jefferson:
The priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, are as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.
Jefferson:
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
Jefferson:
They [preachers] 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.
Jefferson:
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
Jefferson:
We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication.
Jefferson:
Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law.
John Adams:
The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 states:
The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.
Adams:
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?
Adams:
God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world.
Adams:
Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?
Thomas Paine:
I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to that book (the Bible).
Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to ‘God’ to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare so dishonor my Creator’s name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the Bible).
It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.
Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins…and you will have sins in abundance.
The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.
More Paine:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of…Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Paine on the New Testament:
I hold [it] to be fabulous and have shown [it] to be false.
Paine:
The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.
Paine:
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Paine:
What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
Paine:
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
Paine:
The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Paine:
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.
James Madison:
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.
More Madison:
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.
Ethan Allen:
That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.
Allen admitted to usually being:
denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.
When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of nature.”
Benjamin Franklin:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion…has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.
Franklin:
… Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.
Franklin:
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
Franklin:
In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it.
