“On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.”--Thomas Jefferson.
“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.”--Thomas Jefferson
“In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.”--Thomas Jefferson
“The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them”--Thomas Jefferson
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it”--John Adams
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion”--Treaty of Tripoli, John Adams; signer.
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence”-John Adams
“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”--John Adams
“The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity”--John Adams
“The Pythagorean, as well as the Platonic philosophers, probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity”--John Adams
“To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.”--Benjamin Franklin
"God helps those who help themselves.”--Benjamin Franklin
“I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason”--John Locke
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”--Treaty of Tripoli, George Washington; signer.
"And 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"--Thomas Jefferson.
"There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites"--Thomas Jefferson.(quoted by newspaper columnist William Edelen, "Politics and Religious Illiteracy," Truth Seeker, Vol. 121, No. 3, p. 33).
"Christianity...[has become] the most perverted system that ever shone on man....Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus."--Thomas Jefferson.
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....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 laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."--James Madison.
"My parents had given me betimes religious impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself."--Benjamin Franklin
"...Some books against Deism fell into my hands....It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."--Benjamin Franklin.
"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 of my own part, I disbelieve them all."--Thomas Paine
"It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible."--Thomas Paine.
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The founding fathers of the United States of America were Deists, not Christians.
Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this (and religious truth in general) can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for either faith or organized religion. Many Deists reject the notion that God intervenes in human affairs, for example through miracles and revelations. These views contrast with the dependence on revelations, miracles, and faith found in many Jewish, Christian, Islamic and other theistic 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 that is not altered either by God intervening in the affairs of human life or by 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 what is now the United Kingdom, France, United States and Ireland, 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. It included some of the Unitarian ideas that emerged with Socinianism around 1574. Initially deism did not form any congregations, but in time it strongly influenced other religious groups, such as Unitarianism and Universalism. Many ideas of modern secularism were developed by deists.
Some people argue George Washington was Christian because he attended church. His wife was Christian. All reports on record by the preachers at the church where George Washington attended say that Washington always left before communion and refused to participate in the sacraments. It was a hot button topic of the time and many reporters tried to pin Washington down to answer whether or not he was Christian, to which he evaded all answers affirming yes or denying no. I have never met a single Christian shy to say they were one.
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The founding fathers got almost all of their ideas from John Locke, who was a Christian.
"The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure."--John Locke.
"To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality."--John Locke.
John Locke developed the notion that people are individuals with subjective opinions on reality, that they are born without knowledge of any type and must be educated, and that religious tolerance should be practiced. I find it ironic that Deists took so many ideas on forming a government from a Christian.
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"I have only one question. Exactly whos God is blessing America?" --Sean Carrigan.
The god of victory obviously. For you will know that it is not the case if the US should lose its military during a war.
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