[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
dhickey wrote:
You got it right above. There was no attempt to limit religious expression in gov’t, schools, public squares, etc. This what they were actually trying to protect. This is not what they meant by establishing a religion. I do not recall the phrase “seperation of church and state” appearing in any of the founders writings, but I certainly can’t recall all of what I have read, much less read all there is to read.
Ironically enough it was Jefferson who coined the very phrase.
And Madison wrote strongly on it too.
I don’t like speculating what they intended or not. It’s hard enough to garner proof on things that they actually said, much less what they would have thought of a current situation.
Well part of it was what they actually said. Part of it is understanding that they were not attempting to limit states activities within their own borders. Part of it is understanding that god and religion were a very strong part of the social fabric at the time. Can you imagine someone suggesting no prayer in school at that time? Certainly not in Salem.
Understood. But what I’m saying is that the Founding Fathers themselves apparently had a large disconnect with the people on that issue. While the masses were enamored with fiery sermons from the pulpit, the Founding Fathers were actually students of the Age of Enlightenment.
Which really, ironically, goes against the very people who invoke them so often now.
Franklin I’m admittedly a rookie at, but I have read Notes on the State of Virginia, and I don’t recollect him pushing any real type of religion.
He certainly didn’t push any religion. He also did rail against public displays of religion or public expressions of religion. There was one evangelical that he was taken with. I can’t recall who it was, but he was one of the first to hold sermans outside the church. He was actually forced to do this becuase churches would not welcome him into their church when he came to town. He would draw huge crowds.
I am just getting into Franklin. I have only read what others have written about him. I did just get his autobiography and will start it soon.
I have read parts of it. It’s a great, entertaining piece.
Not sure. Maybe I am not an athiest by others’ definition. I don’t actively beleive there is no god, I just see no evidense of a higher power. By the same logic, I cannot prove there is no god. I guess you could say my hunch is that there is no higher power.
My wife asks me quite often how I think we got here if there is no higher power. This to me is not a very good question. If we could not exist but by a higher power, how could a higher power exist but by an even higher power? And so on.
I am quite interested in religion. I’ve read the entire bible cover to cover in the last year. Listened to it on CD while on the road to be more precise. Painfull peice of literature but interesting. I had also studied portions of it in the past, especially during my stint at a baptist school in junior high. I have also read the Quran and some of the ahadith. I have touched very lightly on other religions, but am more interested in american history, economics, and politics at the moment.
I have not read much about religion I didn’t feel was majority fairy tale. Maybe the interest is just trying to understand what drives practitioners of any particular religion.
I have found that the deeper I delve into religion, the more I come up with answers that are derived from science. I’ve begun reading (very slowly, cause I hate the shit) about physics and the nature of universe. At some point, when reading about the possibilities of alternate universes, closed universes, open universes, and the like, you begin realizing that as much as humanity knows, we truly know nothing.
I think Albert Einsten said something along those lines.
I have also seen that the more intelligent the person, and the deeper the thinker, the more reservations they have about believing in any type of God. The Big 3 religions are so far out of the question as far as realism goes that they’re not even relevant, but the big question is what form does this mover of the universe take. The Assimovs, the Einsteins, the Hawkings… the great minds also tend to take this stance, that there is either no place for a God or that he is just a conjured up image from mumbling preachers.
That, I think, was a struggle that many of the great minds that formed the country took on, especially with the Age of Enlightenment and all of the ideals surrounding the American Revolution, immediately followed by the Romantics and the French Revolution. It was a good time to be allowed to think.
My question is still, of course, how the fuck did we fall so far backwards from this groundbreaking thought process that we actually started on? These questions are worth asking, and for all the bullshit religion vs. anti-religion threads that go on here, I have never really heard anyone question what it means to believe in God in the first place (as Pat said previously in this thread).
They are, in effect, putting the cart before the horse.
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The enlightenment was an incredible time. I don’t beleive people, in general, questioned the existance of god. They certainly took greater notice of the world around them. They started to truly understand physics (newtonian something or other back then), astronomy, botany, electricity, etc. Phenomonons that has been thought of as acts of god, were now understood and studied. Not that there wasn’t an after life, but that this life was more than some random set of events 100% controlled by a higher power. They started to find a natural order.
There was also a religious movement at the time that was pretty interesting. The Great Awakening.