The Founding Fathers (warning: quotes are not taken out of context)

questions:

1. is satan the source of communism? does satan really actively do stuff like christ or does he just kinda give people subtle influences and nudges towards evil?

2. for the sake of argument lets just pretend i am a really good person. is the good in me coming from christ? if so i guess that makes christ a nice fella, because i mock him regularly.

3. if intelligent life is discovered on another planet, will those guys also be forgiven for their sins through jesus, even though they didnt do the killing of jesus so they could be forgiven? basically, dose the earth murder of jesus forgive people on other planets too, or just earthlings? since jesus was the only begotten son, i guess god cant send another kid to other planets to be crucified.

 

Sorry SaltyOne, but as I said before, even though many of the framers of the Constitution (of which Jefferson was not one - he was in France at the time) were Christian, they were not guided by their Christian principles in drafting the Constitution. They were more guided by the ideals of the Enlightenment that came from Europe. All those quotes you gave, which may or may not be valid, were certainly not made during the Constitutional Convention and had no influence in the drafting of the Constitution. The Constitution has always been a secular document, regardless of the religious feelings or philosophies of the drafters.

 

The quotes are actual statements made by the "founders" of this country. Question. How do you know their hearts anymore than I do? All we have to go off of is the statements of the individuals. Based on their statements, I'd say they were deeply religious men following Christ. Also, several of these quotes are from writings before, during, and right after the Constitutional Convention.

 

they were religious. Christians. The colonies were settled partly for religious freedom.

Salty,
The "new" tiger forums CSI crew would love nothing more than to prove the founding fathers were some liberal anti- judeo christian enlightened bunch of politicians ( smart jane fonda's in other words. )


to everyone else:

there is NO WAY, all the founding fathers got together in one room or otherwise and agreed to follow one religion, diest or otherwise. They formed the documents so that citizens could worship freely because THEY weren't all the same.
Give the guys credit for being smart enough to do that at least, after all you've entrusted your freedom to the documents they've penned. ( if not I guess you could leave that's an option ) :shock: :grin:

AND even though they were mostly CHRISTIAN, there were many types of Christianity as there is now. There was a very strong restoration movement going on during those early times. Not so many Catholics but many types of Protestants. There were also Prominant Jews in the early colonies. So at the very least they probably disagreed on doctrine.

These men KNEW they REPRESENTED many, not just one. which is why Thomas Jefferson did NOT want to emphasize his own religious affilation.

It actually doesn't make a huge difference whether they were seventh day adventists or Mormons, or branch davidians or jews... they wrote the documents in such a way where we can all enjoy religious freedom. They REPRESENTED those who sent them.

anyway, nice try salty, you've fought the good fight... unfortunately very few actually study, they just parrot what someone they like tells them.

 

No, but secular humanism is. The idea that men are created equal comes from Christ's teachings.

[QUOTE} 2. for the sake of argument lets just pretend i am a really good person. is the good in me coming from christ? if so i guess that makes christ a nice fella, because i mock him regularly. ][/QUOTE]

Yes. All good in the universe exists because of God. Anytime you do good you do God's will even if you don't know it. Christ is a pretty nice fella. He's forgivin me for some pretty rotten sins.

The sacrafice at Christ lifted the yoke of sin for all of God's creation. The act is not exclusive for humans. If there are other beings with souls Christ died for them as well.

 

so secular humanism was created by satan? (i am by no means a humanist, i hate humans, they are dullards and i wish most of them were dead)

dang that sucks that you did those sins. i am pretty much free from sin. i havent even lied since i was like 12 years old. the (jesus) force is strong in me.

i figure that if i live free from sin, i will. not need the forgiveness i would get by without believing in jeebus. i'll take the express to heaven.

so if there is an alien on the planet blorx, his sins have been forgiven, even if he has never heard of earth?

presumably god would reveal himself to any alien with a soul. i guess he would also reveal the reality of the crucifixion and all that forgiveness noise to them also. that must be sweet for them that they are forgiven for some crap that happened on some other planet and really had nothing to do with them. i would guess that god could have a son for each planet to kill and then subsequently be forgiven, but the bible explicitly says that god only had one son. i guess thats all you need and one son-sacrifice on earth can foot the sin-forgiveness bill for all the planets.

 

Salty, there are many documents & quotes where Hitler proclaimed that he was a Christian. Does that make it so?

 

I agree that this nation was, to an unmeasurable degree, inspired by the Christian religion. But if I remember correctly, it wasn't until far in the last argument that you phrased it as such. You argue as if you arguing for America being founded by the Christian religion, yet you say that is not what you are arguing about...

 

Some were getting wrapped around the word "founded". Since that word was confusing, I chose to word it differently. My meaning all along has been that we were "guided", "inspired", "directed", "motivated", however you want to say it, by religion and Christianity specifically. It is true that our founding fathers did not want a state religion. Their idea of a state religion would be like what was in Western Europe at the time. They did not want us to be a Protestant nation, or a Catholic nation, or a Orthodox nation.

We are, and always have been, a Christian nation and our founders had no problem with that. In fact, they wanted it to be so. For example, most if not all of our fist text books studied in schools used the Bible for it's content. Students learned to read using Bible verses. Students learned about history using the Bible to a large extent. The first educational books are easy to find online and most have at least the first few chapters there for you to read. Most of our first colleges were established as Christian universities. Harvard, Yale,......

Life at that time centered around the Bible. The Christian Bible.

 

Why do you even bother to address Martin's comments on your faith?