The religious right in America likes to believe that America was founded on Christian ideas and is therefore a Christian nation. I must admit at the outset that I believe America was founded on Christian beliefs. America’s Founding Fathers were mostly Christians. Some may have been atheists. I believe it to be inherently impossible for a Christian to write the complex and far-reaching framework that defines this nation without inserting their Christian attitudes. At this time I would like to give my appreciation that they did this. I will attempt to explain this position.
Our Founding Fathers employed a set of values meant to foster tolerance of others and create a moral and ethical foundation to ensure fair and equal treatment to all. If this set of values can be claimed as being Christian, then so be it and I applaud it. However, this alone cannot be taken as positive proof that this nation is Christian or that the Christian religion should have any say in the governance of this nation.
An absolute belief in any system is fraught with fatal pitfalls, and I believe the Founding Fathers understood this. In their lifetime, and in the stories passed down from their parents as European citizens, they knew the trappings of allowing religious leaders to have a voice in government. And so, they took pains to ensure those pitfalls would not be allowed to occur in their creation of our new nation.
When Thomas Jefferson, as well as any other founder, spoke of God, it is in the context of the set of values I mentioned two paragraphs above.
God is the ‘miracle’ we humans have contrived to explain the ‘unexplainable’. The nature that we are all a part of cannot be fully explained with science so we embody the ‘answers’ in a deity we commonly refer to as God. Until scientific explanations can be applied to answer all that we cannot yet prove, ‘God’ will continue to exist in the minds of those who demand an answer now. Thomas Jefferson, with his scientific mind, recognized this simple attempt for what it was and he also saw that people can become so attached to this interim explanation that they turned it into a reality, even without firm foundation.
Any system built on fantasy will eventually fail. Religion in general only persists because science has not been able to dispel it. Unfortunately for common sense and atheists, there are too many people who buy into the argument that since science cannot explain it then this alone is ‘proof’ of God’s existence.
I am going to take this time to say that I believe there is a God. I may believe in this God within an entirely different framework than the reader, but that does not make his existence any more truthful or less truthful to me. He exists for me and I have the right to believe this if I so choose. The same right exists for you. Arguing about something that cannot be proven is an utter waste of time and only leads to hate and distrust.
I’m hoping that we can at least agree that religious zealotry is detrimental to any free society. Mankind has proven throughout history that he cannot be trusted if he makes the claim that his actions are motivated by God. Far too many people have lost their lives based on an idea that cannot be proven. As soon as mankind wields a weapon in the name of God we have destroyed all the ‘good’ that God is meant to embody.
The religious right choose to distort history to fit their own agenda. They have the right to believe in their distorted views. It is my hope they cannot build a large enough following to gain power anywhere in this country. For if they do, we will have headed down a path that can only lead to the end of the freedoms that our Founding Fathers spelled out for us and the death of this nation will soon follow.
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