Some Thoughts About Religious Liberty

This post was orginally put on Tea Party Patriots in response to this statement,which I agree with. I have added to it a bit.

"Someone wrote in an earlier blog, "I was always taught that we were a Christian Nation that tolerated other religions, not a non-Christian Nation that does not tolerate Christians."

The truth is that we are neither. We are actually a non-Christian nation that does tolerate Christians because we have freedom of religion. "

I actually agree with your statement here. I will try to elaborate and clarify later.

Robin, I strongly agree with this "Islam is where christianity was 5oo years ago" Actually it's closer to where christianity was --700, 800 or 1000 yars ago, during the era widely known as the dark ages. What, happened in between? The rebirth and reintroduction of reason into western thought. America was the first and only nation built on the values of the enlightenment.

A few quotes from the founding period might help. All references to "self-evident truths", "nature", "laws of nature", and "nature's god" were based on the idea of a rational world, with absolute laws which could be understood by everyone. Count how many times the word reason was used by our founders.

Writings from the Lock, Franklin, Madison, Adams and Jefferson are filled with references to Aristotle, Cicero, Greek and Roman history as well as science and economic history. If the nation were exclusively based on christianity, the primary references would have been to the bible.

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal 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."

Thomas Jefferson

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Thomas Jefferson

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

Thomas Jefferson

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

Thomas Jefferson

"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Thomas Jefferson

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

Thomas 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. "

Thomas Jefferson

"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way."

Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty."

Thomas Jefferson

"Information is the currency of democracy."

Thomas Jefferson

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God."

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Thomas Jefferson

"Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us."

Thomas Jefferson

"The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression."

Thomas Jefferson

"There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me."

Thomas Jefferson

"Distrust and caution are the parents of security." (as opposed to faith)

Benjamin Franklin

"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
Benjamin Franklin"

"He that lives upon hope will die fasting."

Benjamin Franklin

"Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her."

Benjamin Franklin

"If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins. "

Benjamin Franklin

"We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information. "

Benjamin Franklin

"In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
Benjamin Franklin"

Benjamin Franklin

While it is very true that many of our founders and the people who influenced them were Christians or at least believed in the probable existence of a "creator", this was not the defining characteristic they held in common. This element, above all others was a firm belief in a rational, knowable world and supreme commitment to reason.

It's hardly an accident that our country was born in the last decades of the period known as "The Enlightenment" which came after "The Renaissance". What was reborn during the these periods was not religion but a growing respect for the natural world, facts and the human ability to think and base decisions on rational judgement.

"Renaissance thinkers sought out learning from ancient texts, typically written in Latin or ancient Greek. Scholars scoured Europe's monastic searching for works of classical antiquity which had fallen into obscurity. In such texts they found a desire to improve and perfect their worldly knowledge; an entirely different sentiment to the transcendental spirituality stressed by medieval Christianity.They did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life."

The Enlightenment took this revolution further,and aimed at applying reason to all areas of life and politics. I think for example that a large part of the Reformation had to do with the idea that people could read and find truth in the bible on their own rather than listen to what the Pope said it meant.The rapid economic, scientific, medical and political benefits that came from thought became more and more obvious and cherished by society. This confidence in the minds ability to learn from nature and history gave true hope to our founders. Not a blind hope or "faith" that god would provide, but a faith in people's ability to learn and improve the world. This is why they believed in freedom.

Jefferson, for example was probably a Deist.

"Deism is a philosophical belief in the existence of a God on the basis of reason, and observation of the natural world alone. Deists generally reject the notion of supernatural revelation as a basis of truth and religious dogma. These views contrast with the dependence on divine revelation found in many Christian,[1] Islamic and Judaic teachings.

Deists typically reject most supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and tend to assert that God (or "The Supreme Architect") has a plan for the universe which that Architect does not alter either by intervening in the affairs of human life or suspending the natural laws of the universe. What organized religions see as divine revelation and holy books, most deists see as interpretations made by other humans, rather than as authoritative sources.

Deism became prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, mostly among those raised as Christians who found they could not believe in either a triune God, the divinity of Jesus, miracles, or the inerrancy of scriptures, but who did believe in one god. Initially it did not form any congregations, but in time deism strongly influenced other religious groups, such as Unitarianism and Universalism, which developed from it. It continues to this day in the form of classical deism and modern deism."

Statements From Potential Terrorists

If You strongly believe in these statements you are very likely oppossed to the policies of government today and might be a terrorist. How far we have come from the ideas the nation was founded on.

"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."

Thomas Jefferson

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. "

Thomas Jefferson

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. "

Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

Thomas Jefferson

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Thomas Jefferson

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Thomas Jefferson

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Thomas Jefferson

Delay is preferable to error.

Thomas Jefferson

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."

Thomas Jefferson

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. "

Thomas Jefferson

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."

Thomas Jefferson

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. "

Thomas Jefferson

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. "

Thomas Jefferson

"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master."

Thomas Jefferson

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. "

Thomas Jefferson



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"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive."

Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

Thomas Jefferson

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."

Thomas Jefferson

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. "

Thomas Jefferson

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

Thomas Jefferson

"In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue."

Thomas Jefferson

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."

Thomas Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. "

Thomas Jefferson

"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people."

Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

Thomas Jefferson

"Never spend your money before you have earned it. "

Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man. "