Superstition and Religion
Frank Wustner
> Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
> > >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
> > >perspective.
> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
> > support them - gods, for example.
> The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
> likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
Except that we don't believe that.
> We have to ask
> what kind of evidence we are talking about.
ANY evidence that is objective.
> I propose that you tell me what kind of evidence that there is no God.
I propose that you stop pretending that your strawman is our
real position. We lack all belief about all gods because
there is no objective evidence.
(snip rest)
--
The Deadly Nightshade
http://members.tripod.com/~deadly_nightshade
|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
|"Advice is a form of nostalgia. | Atheist #119 |
|Dispensing it means fishing the | Knight of BAAWA! |
|past from the disposal, wiping it |-----------------------------------|
|off, painting over the ugly parts, | Want to email me? Go to the URL |
|and recycling it for more than | above and email me from there. |
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g&g
Aleksandar Katanovic wrote in message ...
>
>Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
>
>> >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
>> >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
>> >perspective.
>> >
>> >Alex
>> >
>> No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>> support them - gods, for example.
>
>The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
>likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
Glenn R. wrote:
You are correct, one cannot provide evidence of the lack of something other
than there is no evidence that there is something. There is no
question-begging here at all. Although the lack of evidence is not proof
that something doesn't exist, it is a pretty good reason to withhold belief
that something exists. That is why atheists rather routinely say, show me
the evidence before I will believe. They rarely say that lack of evidence
is proof of anything.
James Veverka
method observes phenomena, tests, forms hypotheses, tests again. etc.
In the real world you have to prove something exists by testable
hypotheses. It would be madness if one was to prve smething did not
exist.
Our jury system here in the USA is also based upon this fundamental law
of science. The defense is not obliged to prove the innocence of the
accused, the prosecution is required to prove their guilt.
It is not surprising to me that you dont go by the same rules as the
rest of the world. You dont understand scientific methods and you dont
understand democracy either. Your ass backwards on this planet......jim
Aleksandar Katanovic
> >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
> >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
> >perspective.
> >
> >Regards,
> >Alex
> >
> No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
> support them - gods, for example.
The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God. We have to ask
what kind of evidence we are talking about. Is it historical, scientific, or
some philosophical reasons which would lead us to our respective views? I
propose that you tell me what kind of evidence that there is no God. The
reason for my suggestion is simply to see if you have some, and to evaluate,
according to your standards, if your belief is superstitious. In the case
you lack any evidence for your view about the non-existence of some sentient
deity, then your view is superstitious as well, unless your definition of
superstition is wrong. However, if it would be shown in the course of our
interesting discussion that you cannot give me any evidence for the support
of atheism, I would not regard your view as superstitious, but rather
suspect that your proposed definition of superstition is wrong. The point is
this: the criterion that some belief is superstitious cannot be that there
is lack of evidence for it. Otherwise would almost all our beliefs be
superstitious as well. My belief that the cabdriver is not a psychopath and
that I will not be killed cannot be supported by any evidence that will give
me an epistemic certitude. It could happen that he was indeed some pervert
sadist who enjoys to kill people, you never know. However, I have a simple
confidence that such case has a little probability, and consequently choose
to take the cab. However, according to your definition of superstition, my
belief would be superstitious, which is clearly not. Therefore, we have to
modify a little bit your definition, so that we do not characterise almost
all of our beliefs as superstitious, unless you will bite the bullet and
characterise even such simple daily beliefs as superstitious.
Regards,
Alex
Death
g&g wrote in message ...
>
>Aleksandar Katanovic wrote in message ...
>>
>>news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
>>
>>> >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
>>> >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
>>> >perspective.
>>> >
>>> >Regards,
>>> >Alex
>>> >
>>> No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>>> support them - gods, for example.
>>
>>The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
>>likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
>
>You are correct, one cannot provide evidence of the lack of something other
>than there is no evidence that there is something. There is no
>question-begging here at all. Although the lack of evidence is not proof
>that something doesn't exist, it is a pretty good reason to withhold belief
>that something exists. That is why atheists rather routinely say, show me
>the evidence before I will believe. They rarely say that lack of evidence
>is proof of anything.
Yes, the lack of ANY evidance is proof of nothing. Or rather,
only evidance is the proof for something.
Is your pocket empty? The lack of SOME evidance is proof
of something, A empty pocket.
For all the searching that man has done, no objective
evidance has every been found for God. The only place
God has every been "found" is in the subjectivity of
individuals who have a vested interest in it's truth
(it look really stupid to say you believe in God and then
deny it).
Is the lack of evidance for non-linear behaviour reason enough
to suppose linear behaviour. The lack of evidance for a God,
is the all the objective evidance that we have already collected.
Maybe we will one day find evidance, but MAYBE'S are not
proof. There is no proof for a God, there isn't even any
unbiased heresay evidance for God.
Using a pure abstraction to dismiss the very real objective
evidance of reality is a fallacy.
The false authority syndrome, is talking about a subject
that your not an expert in as an expert (saying "in my
professional opinion" when it's not your profession).
The reverse of the false authority syndrome is talking
about something you are an expert in "reality" (the
only expert in your field) and applying arbitary abstractions
to your field of expertise without clear referance to
that field, otherwise known as "applying concepts out of context".
You said.
"""They rarely say that lack of evidence is proof of anything."""
Which is a strawman ("they say") opinion ("rarely") cast
as fact, about an intangible ("lack of ANY evidance")
being applied out of context of reality ("lack of SOME
evidance" in a wealth of objective evidance) about
another intangible ("GOD") you have no authority
to discuss with any authority (unless your a theist).
This atheist says define God, that's tell me what it
is not and then at least we can start the ball rolling.
Michelle Malkin
Wustner) wrote:
>"Aleksandar Katanovic" <akat...@online.no> wrote:
>> Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> > >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
>> > >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
>> > >perspective.
>
>> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>> > support them - gods, for example.
>
>> The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
>> likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
My answer was not a question. But, since you've mad it into one, why
haven't you answered it? Since you are the one asserting that your God
exists, it is up to you to provide evidence of this. I see no evidence
at all of such a creature's existence. That is my answer to you.
>
>Except that we don't believe that.
>
>> We have to ask
>> what kind of evidence we are talking about.
Any evidence at all. You provide what you have and we'll give our
opinion as to its worth.
>
>ANY evidence that is objective.
>
>> I propose that you tell me what kind of evidence that there is no God.
I'd have to know what's everywhere. That is impossible at this point
in our history. But, from what I and others do know, there is no
evidence for your God at all. And, we aren't about to start making
silly guesses about gods, demons, heavens and hells in a place we have
no evidence for and call it 'truth'. Faith is merely giving up the
ability to think for yourself.
>
>I propose that you stop pretending that your strawman is our
>real position. We lack all belief about all gods because
>there is no objective evidence.
Yup.
snipped snip
Michelle Malkin (Mickey)
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
alt.atheism atheist/agnostic list #1 ULC minister #3
High Priestess Bastet of the Non-Church Temple of Si & Am
EAC Bible Thumper Thumper BAAWA Knight Who Says SPONG!
Lacking theistic belief since 1959
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by
those who have lost the power of reasoning.
--Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764--
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
M
> > support them - gods, for example.
"evidence" is such an elusive term. Take "existence" for that matter,
can it really be defined? However, if you are interested in general
conversation/debate alone, then the evidence for "sprirtual" (or
whatever term is applicable to you) lifeforms is everywhere. The mere
"existence" of lifeforms (eg. human, kangaroo etc) and is "evidence" to
that. Another is, that all of these lifeforms communicate with one
another and on an individual basis also. This individual based
communication, what is it, how is it possible, where does it come from,
why is it possible? There is something here, where ever "here" is, that
makes the things that all life forms experience happen. That is the
"evidence". What comes after that is for the individual...
Michael
Fabio
for atheists to
PROVE the non-existence of God.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, this is not possible.
Perhaps an example will clear this up in the minds of those confused by this
assertion:
A friend of mine claims that there is a species of eight-legged horse.
I, based on my previous experience of the world, am sceptical of this claim -
running counter, as
it does, to my knowledge regarding horses and mammals generally.
Therefore, I ask for proof of its existence, to which he testily replies "You
prove it doesn't
exist!"
In good faith then, I set off to prove the non-existence of the Sleipner Horse.
I traverse the globe looking for this horse and find no evidence of it anywhere.
Havbe I then proven its non-existence?
No, I have merely failed to find evidence of its existence.
My friend, already convinced of its existence, can simply argue that I have not
looked hard
enough or in the right places at the right times.
To PROVE, even to myself, that this animal definitely does not exist would
require my being
omniscient and therefore able to look for it in all places at all times.
Without this ability non-existence can never be proven.
The above does not, however, prevent me from gathering some forms of evidence
regarding
said beast. Specifically, I can test hypotheses regarding its behaviour as
described by my
friend.
If he claims it will always appear to aid a lesser horse in danger, for example,
I can arrange for a lesser horse to be in danger and await the Sleipner's
arrival.
If no such animal arrives have I then proven its non-existence?
No, not unless this behaviour is central to its definition.
Ie if a Sleipner horse, as defined by my friend, is an eight-legged equine that
always arrives to aid horses in danger then I can claim, without fear of
contradicion, that there is no such animal.
If, however, my friend is willing to admit that perhaps the aiding other horses
thing is just a
legend then I am still unable to claim to have proven its non-existence.
In general, the better defined the supposed being and its characteristic
behaviours, the more
readily evidence can be gathered regarding the the truth value of that
definition.
Applying this to the question of God's non-existence, one sees that the role of
an atheist is not
to try to prove His/Her/Its non-existence but rather to question the likelihood
of any given
definition of such a being given the evidence at hand.
This is the basis of the arguments regarding God and Evil wherein the definition
of God as
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent is argued to be
incompatible with the existence of evil in the world.
If these arguments are taken as being convincing, then one has evidence that
God, so-defined,
does not exist. This in no way, however, reflects on the question of whether
some form of God
exists.
The more loosely conceived and defined the God, the harder it becomes for an
atheist to
construct a test for it and, as each theist conceives of God in slightly
different ways, each
definition must be dealt with individually.
This seems the cause of much of the ill-feeling in this newsgroup (talk.atheism)
as the attacks made by atheists on each theist's definition of God are therefore
personal.
Well, I've said my piece.
Matthew.
"I couldn't find a witty quote" - me.
Michelle Malkin
Exactly, and religious 'faith' just doesn't hack it.
M
>
> On Wed, 02 Jun 1999 13:11:44 +1000, M <MKStr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> >> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
> >> > support them - gods, for example.
> >
> >"evidence" is such an elusive term. Take "existence" for that matter,
> >can it really be defined? However, if you are interested in general
> >conversation/debate alone, then the evidence for "sprirtual" (or
> >whatever term is applicable to you) lifeforms is everywhere. The mere
> >"existence" of lifeforms (eg. human, kangaroo etc) and is "evidence" to
> >that. Another is, that all of these lifeforms communicate with one
> >another and on an individual basis also. This individual based
> >communication, what is it, how is it possible, where does it come from,
> >why is it possible? There is something here, where ever "here" is, that
> >makes the things that all life forms experience happen. That is the
> >"evidence". What comes after that is for the individual...
> >
> >Michael
>
> Exactly, and religious 'faith' just doesn't hack it.
"religious faith", "atheist" etc, these terms don't mean anything.
Meaning is not in terminology. A child falls many times before it begins
to walk. Many things happen in this world and they will continue
happening.
>
> Michelle Malkin (Mickey)
Petteri Sulonen
<akat...@online.no> wrote:
[snip]
The burden of proof is on the positive existential claimant.
-- Petteri
> The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
--
"You know what? I'm happy." | EAC, Commissar
-- Droopy | a.a #1442. BAAWA!
Remove spamblock to reply by E-mail. |
James Veverka
have learned from science and reason what it indicates about our
universe. Not what it does not indicate, which is a hypothetical
byproduct of this reductionism.
We are FOR testable knowledge, we are only AGAINST theism because of
what we have discovered to be more reasonable explanations for the
workings of our universe. ....jim
Eric Gunnerson
news:T1_43.925$Ah4....@news1.online.no...
>
> Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
>
> > >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
> > >perspective.
> > >
> > >Alex
> > >
> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
> > support them - gods, for example.
>
> likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
Granting that that *is* the case, I have to say:
So what? Why should I care?
If one of my friends says that he has a cousin that's 14 feet tall, I'm not
going to put much thought or effort into it unless he can show me the cousin
(or trustworthy measurements of him).
Frankly, I think the assertion that there is god who is actively concerned
with my welfare but not really evident is a bit more ridiculous than my
example above.
You can believe whatever you like, but don't expect people to take you
seriously if you have no rational evidence.
> We have to ask
> what kind of evidence we are talking about. Is it historical, scientific,
or
> some philosophical reasons which would lead us to our respective views?
Objective evidence is what I require. Why anybody would accept other kinds,
given their poor trustworthiness, escapes me.
> I
> propose that you tell me what kind of evidence that there is no God. The
> reason for my suggestion is simply to see if you have some, and to
evaluate,
> according to your standards, if your belief is superstitious.
I tend to be a strong atheist towards certain gods; or to put it more
correctly, towards certain definitions of gods.
The christian god, for example seems to have some real problems in general
(free will, omni-attributes), but the one that always gets me is the
assertion that god wants me to believe, which is clearly at odds with
reality.
> In the case
> you lack any evidence for your view about the non-existence of some
sentient
> deity, then your view is superstitious as well, unless your definition of
> superstition is wrong.
I always enjoy the part where I get told that my language understanding is
wrong.
> However, if it would be shown in the course of our
> interesting discussion that you cannot give me any evidence for the
support
> of atheism, I would not regard your view as superstitious, but rather
> suspect that your proposed definition of superstition is wrong. The point
is
> this: the criterion that some belief is superstitious cannot be that there
> is lack of evidence for it. Otherwise would almost all our beliefs be
> superstitious as well.
I think you really mean "based on faith", not superstitious, though I agree
they are related.
> My belief that the cabdriver is not a psychopath and
> that I will not be killed cannot be supported by any evidence that will
give
> me an epistemic certitude. It could happen that he was indeed some pervert
> sadist who enjoys to kill people, you never know. However, I have a simple
> confidence that such case has a little probability, and consequently
choose
> to take the cab. However, according to your definition of superstition, my
> belief would be superstitious, which is clearly not.
You are confused. Above you propose that:
Lack of evidence <> superstition, because everything would be superstitious.
Then, you go on to give a good example of a situation where you have
wonderful evidence on which to base your conclusion - exactly the kind of
evidence that would support a god - which directly contradicts to your prior
proposal.
My guess is that you think the introduction of "epistemic certitude" is
significant, but by that standard, we can never know anything. Given that
philosophy has been trying to determine "what is truth" for well over 2000
years without much progress, I don't hold out on any revolutionary
developments there.
Eric Gunnerson
news:37551A5E...@bigpond.com...
> Michelle Malkin wrote:
> > Exactly, and religious 'faith' just doesn't hack it.
>
> "religious faith", "atheist" etc, these terms don't mean anything.
Religious faith typically means the type of faith that is advocated by
religions; "evidence for things not seen".
An atheist is someone who is not a theist.
They seem to have perfectly good meanings to me.
> Meaning is not in terminology.
"Meaning" is not the same as "mean". A term can "mean" something (be
understood) without having "meaning" (something important).
But so what?
> A child falls many times before it begins
> to walk.
The sun must set before it rises.
A running man may slit a thousand throats in a single night.
E Pluribus Unum
Are you going someplace with this, or do you want to continue down aphorism
alley?
> Many things happen in this world and they will continue
> happening.
Boy. You've got me there.
DJ Nozem
<akat...@online.no> wrote:
>Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
>> >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
>> >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
>> >perspective.
>> >Regards,
>> >Alex
>> No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>> support them - gods, for example.
>The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
>likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God. We have to ask
>what kind of evidence we are talking about. Is it historical, scientific, or
>some philosophical reasons which would lead us to our respective views? I
>propose that you tell me what kind of evidence that there is no God.
And were back to the old burden of proof wars. IPU's and everything,
blah blah reverse arguments blah blah you get it.
I, myself do not believe that there is no God, I don't believe there
is a God. I work with probabilities which become lesser when you give
a God more features.
>The reason for my suggestion is simply to see if you have some, and to evaluate,
>according to your standards, if your belief is superstitious. In the case
>you lack any evidence for your view about the non-existence of some sentient
>deity, then your view is superstitious as well, unless your definition of
>superstition is wrong. However, if it would be shown in the course of our
>interesting discussion that you cannot give me any evidence for the support
>of atheism, I would not regard your view as superstitious, but rather
>suspect that your proposed definition of superstition is wrong.
Nobody can give evidence that 'a' God doesn't exist, especially when
it's supposed to exist out of time space and therefore logical rules.
However it is possible to make people see their bible lies and doesn't
contain certain crucial information, which shows that it was made on
basis of what was known when it was made and not upon the infinite
wisdom of a divine being.
Simplified: God appears to know or reveal not a bit more than the Jews
already did at the time they wrote the bible, and that was
conciderably less than certain other 'Godless' civilisations.
>The point is
>this: the criterion that some belief is superstitious cannot be that there
>is lack of evidence for it. Otherwise would almost all our beliefs be
>superstitious as well.
And that's what they are.
>My belief that the cabdriver is not a psychopath and
>that I will not be killed cannot be supported by any evidence that will give
>me an epistemic certitude. It could happen that he was indeed some pervert
>sadist who enjoys to kill people, you never know. However, I have a simple
>confidence that such case has a little probability, and consequently choose
>to take the cab. However, according to your definition of superstition, my
>belief would be superstitious, which is clearly not.
It isn't belief, it is based upon probabilities. From evidence you see
that not many cab drivers are psychopathic murderers and from that
certainty you take your chances. You don't trust it completely or do
you?
> Therefore, we have to
>modify a little bit your definition, so that we do not characterise almost
>all of our beliefs as superstitious, unless you will bite the bullet and
>characterise even such simple daily beliefs as superstitious.
When I turn on the telly I expect to see something, but the cable
might be down, this and that...... I think you've got the defenition
of belief wrong. Superstition is believing in mysteries, in the
improbable. Such as believing that every cab driver is a psychopath.
>Regards,
>Alex
What's the fun if you already know the outcome?
DJ Nozem #1465
Colin R. Day
> Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
>
> > >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that by
> > >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
> > >perspective.
> > >
> > >Regards,
> > >Alex
> > >
> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
> > support them - gods, for example.
>
> The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
> likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
But Christians attempt to build a world view on their belief in God.
Atheists don't treat their denial of god as a basis of their philosophies.
--
Colin R. Day cd...@ix.netcom.com alt.atheist #1500
EAC Cheerleader RAH! RAH! RAH! Go, team, go! (of course, there
is no EAC team)
Michelle Malkin
>Michelle Malkin wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 02 Jun 1999 13:11:44 +1000, M <MKStr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>> >> > support them - gods, for example.
>> >
>> >"evidence" is such an elusive term. Take "existence" for that matter,
>> >can it really be defined? However, if you are interested in general
>> >conversation/debate alone, then the evidence for "sprirtual" (or
>> >whatever term is applicable to you) lifeforms is everywhere. The mere
>> >"existence" of lifeforms (eg. human, kangaroo etc) and is "evidence" to
>> >that. Another is, that all of these lifeforms communicate with one
>> >another and on an individual basis also. This individual based
>> >communication, what is it, how is it possible, where does it come from,
>> >why is it possible? There is something here, where ever "here" is, that
>> >makes the things that all life forms experience happen. That is the
>> >"evidence". What comes after that is for the individual...
>> >
>> >Michael
>>
>> Exactly, and religious 'faith' just doesn't hack it.
>
>"religious faith", "atheist" etc, these terms don't mean anything.
>Meaning is not in terminology. A child falls many times before it begins
>to walk. Many things happen in this world and they will continue
>happening.
>
Oblahdee Oblahdah, life goes on...
Cory Collins
Fabio <mbw...@psychology.adelaide.edu.au> wrote in article
<3754B233...@psychology.adelaide.edu.au>...
> Just thought I'd throw my two bits in regarding the demands I see posted
here
> for atheists to
> PROVE the non-existence of God.
> As has been pointed out repeatedly, this is not possible.
Demonstrable proof is not available either for or against God's existence
at the present time since He, as an omnipotent being, can and does withold
such proof.
He provides proof of Himself on an individual basis as He sees fit. Such
individual proof is of a nature as to be unsharable from one person to
another. I can tell you that I have all the proof I need for myself. But,
that proof is of a spiritual nature which cannot be passed to you by me.
Only God is capable of proving Himself beyond any doubt. For now, He
wishes us to accept Him on faith alone.
In Jesus' Name,
Cory
M
>
> M <MKStr...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> news:37551A5E...@bigpond.com...
> > Michelle Malkin wrote:
> >
> > "religious faith", "atheist" etc, these terms don't mean anything.
>
> religions; "evidence for things not seen".
>
> An atheist is someone who is not a theist.
>
> They seem to have perfectly good meanings to me.
Words are containers, put what you like in them. You misunderstand me.
This is what you think, I don't dispute what you think. You are free to
think it.
>
> > Meaning is not in terminology.
>
> "Meaning" is not the same as "mean". A term can "mean" something (be
> understood) without having "meaning" (something important).
>
> But so what?
This is where individual perception comes into it. Everything can be
interpreted/manipulated.
> > Many things happen in this world and they will continue
> > happening.
>
> Boy. You've got me there.
My "meaning", or what I "mean" in the context of the post, "religious
faith" and "atheism" may battle till the end of time. It won't solve
anything, because the battle ground is within the mind. The individual
has control or is controlled by all thoughts that congregate there.
Michael
John Popelish
> Demonstrable proof is not available either for or against God's existence
> at the present time since He, as an omnipotent being, can and does withold
> such proof.
> He provides proof of Himself on an individual basis as He sees fit. Such
> individual proof is of a nature as to be unsharable from one person to
> another. I can tell you that I have all the proof I need for myself. But,
> that proof is of a spiritual nature which cannot be passed to you by me.
> Only God is capable of proving Himself beyond any doubt. For now, He
> wishes us to accept Him on faith alone.
>
> In Jesus' Name,
> Cory
How do you know that this God in not your own personal God and does not
exist outside of your mind? If it were, it would have all the
properties of the God you describe. Eg. unavailable to others while
totally real for you. Think about it.
John Popelish
Eric Gunnerson
> Eric Gunnerson wrote:
> >
> > M <MKStr...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> > news:37551A5E...@bigpond.com...
> > > Michelle Malkin wrote:
> > > > Exactly, and religious 'faith' just doesn't hack it.
> > >
> > > "religious faith", "atheist" etc, these terms don't mean anything.
> >
> > Religious faith typically means the type of faith that is advocated by
> > religions; "evidence for things not seen".
> >
> > An atheist is someone who is not a theist.
> >
> > They seem to have perfectly good meanings to me.
>
> Words are containers, put what you like in them. You misunderstand me.
> This is what you think, I don't dispute what you think. You are free to
> think it.
Words are contracts for communication.
> > > Many things happen in this world and they will continue
> > > happening.
> >
> > Boy. You've got me there.
>
> My "meaning", or what I "mean" in the context of the post, "religious
> faith" and "atheism" may battle till the end of time. It won't solve
> anything, because the battle ground is within the mind. The individual
> has control or is controlled by all thoughts that congregate there.
I don't understand what you mean by this - by this argument, any "battle"
won't solve anything.
Gardiner
>
> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
> >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
>
> When it comes to religion, yes.
Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
believes in God:
Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
idiots! All believed in a deity.
Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
----
Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were few
decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
RG
Gardiner
>
> But these clods were all deluded, feeble-minded, gullible theistic
> religionist fools. For *real* smart people, please see...
>
> http://www.blasphemy.net/
Thanks for the tip. I took a look. What brainpower!! Those folks will
certainly make the next major advancement in quantum physics.
Aleksandar Katanovic
g&g <gri...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:Mi_43.693$tj6....@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net...
>
> Aleksandar Katanovic wrote in message ...
> >
> >news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
> >
> >> >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that
by
> >> >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
> >> >perspective.
> >> >
> >> >Regards,
> >> >Alex
> >> >
> >> support them - gods, for example.
> >
> >likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
>
> You are correct, one cannot provide evidence of the lack of something
other
> than there is no evidence that there is something. There is no
> question-begging here at all. Although the lack of evidence is not proof
> that something doesn't exist, it is a pretty good reason to withhold
belief
> that something exists. That is why atheists rather routinely say, show me
> the evidence before I will believe. They rarely say that lack of evidence
> is proof of anything.
In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately as
superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well, since
there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
Regards,
Alex
Aleksandar Katanovic
> >> Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> >> > >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that
by
> >> > >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
> >> > >perspective.
> >
> >> > support them - gods, for example.
> >
> >> The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
> >> likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
>
Of course that your answer is not a question, BUT it is a question-begging
answer, in the context of discussion between theists and atheists.
>But, since you've mad it into one, why
> haven't you answered it? Since you are the one asserting that your God
> exists, it is up to you to provide evidence of this. I see no evidence
> at all of such a creature's existence. That is my answer to you.
Well, of course that you do not see any evidence, since you can always
provide different interpretation of the same observation we have. But the
point is that these same observations can be compatible both with theism and
atheism.
> I'd have to know what's everywhere. That is impossible at this point
> in our history. But, from what I and others do know, there is no
> evidence for your God at all.
Historical testimony of Gospels' report about Jesus is for me a good
evidence that there is some God. (Note that "evidence" does not mean proof
in the general scientific practice. A point which I do not wish to dwell on,
since I have explained elsewhere).
Our complex biological structure that has a TELEOLOGICAL structure (do not
mix with the word "theological"), something which for me has significantly
small probability to come into genesis in a non-teleological evolutionary
process.
Cosmological consideration with observations of the genesis of one ordered
structure, that exhibits a high energy level, like life for instance,
coupled with not ignoring the thermodynamical law of entropy.
I can continue, but I am sure that you would always find some another
interpretations that could be compatible with our observations.
In other words, religion is a set of certain BELIEFS, which we can freely
choose, with good conscience, either to adopt or reject them.
>And, we aren't about to start making
> silly guesses about gods, demons, heavens and hells in a place we have
> no evidence for and call it 'truth'. Faith is merely giving up the
> ability to think for yourself.
Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
Regards,
Alex
Michelle Malkin
<akat...@online.no> wrote:
>
>g&g <gri...@gte.net> wrote in message
>news:Mi_43.693$tj6....@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net...
>>
>> Aleksandar Katanovic wrote in message ...
>> >
>> >Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>> >news:37583f39...@news.mindspring.com...
>> >
>> >> >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that
>by
>> >> >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
>> >> >perspective.
>> >> >
>> >> >Regards,
>> >> >Alex
>> >> >
>> >> No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>> >> support them - gods, for example.
>> >
>> >The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
>> >likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
>>
>> Glenn R. wrote:
>> You are correct, one cannot provide evidence of the lack of something
>other
>> than there is no evidence that there is something. There is no
>> question-begging here at all. Although the lack of evidence is not proof
>> that something doesn't exist, it is a pretty good reason to withhold
>belief
>> that something exists. That is why atheists rather routinely say, show me
>> the evidence before I will believe. They rarely say that lack of evidence
>> is proof of anything.
>
>In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately as
>superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well, since
>there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
>
>Regards,
>Alex
>
>
Provide evidence that your or any god exists and we'll talk. Right
now, you're doing nothing but shilly-shallying around.
Cory Collins
John Popelish <jpop...@rica.net> wrote in article
<3755D8...@rica.net>...
> Cory Collins wrote:
> > Demonstrable proof is not available either for or against God's
existence
> > at the present time since He, as an omnipotent being, can and does
withold
> > such proof.
> > He provides proof of Himself on an individual basis as He sees fit.
Such
> > individual proof is of a nature as to be unsharable from one person to
> > another. I can tell you that I have all the proof I need for myself.
But,
> > that proof is of a spiritual nature which cannot be passed to you by
me.
> > Only God is capable of proving Himself beyond any doubt. For now, He
> > wishes us to accept Him on faith alone.
> How do you know that this God in not your own personal God and does not
> exist outside of your mind? If it were, it would have all the
> properties of the God you describe. Eg. unavailable to others while
> totally real for you. Think about it.
Because I've talked to lots of others who have had similar experiences.
They have asked the same questions, and received like answers.
In Jesus' Name,
Cory
Michelle Malkin
<akat...@online.no> wrote:
>
>Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:376495f1...@news.mindspring.com...
>> On Tue, 01 Jun 1999 16:51:07 -0700, see...@for.email.com (Frank
>> Wustner) wrote:
>>
>> >"Aleksandar Katanovic" <akat...@online.no> wrote:
>> >> Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > >What is so superstitious in being a religious person? I take it that
>by
>> >> > >"superstitious" you mean some anti-intellectual attitude in one's
>> >> > >perspective.
>> >
>> >> > No, by superstition I mean belief in things that have no evidence to
>> >> > support them - gods, for example.
>> >
>> >> The problem is that such answer is a question-begging one; for I can
>> >> likewise say that you have no evidence that there is no God.
>>
In other words, you can't provide any evidence that your or any other
god exists. All the arguments have been gone over numerous times by
others who are better at such things than I am. Do you have a new
argument? The one glaring thing that stands out is that theists cannot
prove or provide evidence for the existence of their god.
>
>In other words, religion is a set of certain BELIEFS, which we can freely
>choose, with good conscience, either to adopt or reject them.
I'm glad that you were able to choose your beliefs. I wasn't. I simply
knew that I was an atheist. I came to this conclusion for simple
reasons when I was a child and for more and more complex reasons as I
grew older. It wasn't a choice.
>
>>And, we aren't about to start making
>> silly guesses about gods, demons, heavens and hells in a place we have
>> no evidence for and call it 'truth'. Faith is merely giving up the
>> ability to think for yourself.
>
>Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
>rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
When it comes to religion, yes.
>
>Regards,
>Alex
Dr Sinister
>Michelle Malkin wrote:
>>
>> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a
>> >quite rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
>>
>> When it comes to religion, yes.
>
>Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
>believes in God:
>
>Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the
>200's, simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think
>there, they were theists!
>
>Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
>
>Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
>idiots! All believed in a deity.
>
>Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
>
>Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological
>argument of Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
>
>Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein,
>Newton, Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
>
>Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin
>has discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
>----
>Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were
>few decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
>
>RG
>
More of Malkin's morons:
Anton Bruckner
Bach ("Te Deum" penned on all his works)
Beethoven,
Dietrich Buxtehude
Franz Liszt (who became an abbot near the end of his life)
Cesar Franck
Palestrina
Albrecht Durer
Ramanujan (quintessential "true" believer)
Socrates
William of Occam (atheists just love this Franciscan monk for some
reason)
Thomas Tallis
Roger Bacon
George Berkeley
Mohandas Gandhi
Buddha
Alfred North Whitehead (Russell's sidekick, believe it or not)
Tolstoy
Gogol
Dostoyevski
Hermann Hesse (Hesse, not Hess, you atheist idiot)
John Milton
Leonard Euler (greatest mathematician of them all)
Georg Cantor
William Olaf Stapledon ("I am a candle, Stapledon is the sun" - H.G
Wells)
But these clods were all deluded, feeble-minded, gullible theistic
religionist fools. For *real* smart people, please see...
--
Atheism makes you stupid.
M
Eric Gunnerson wrote:
>
> M <MKStr...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> news:375604CA...@bigpond.com...
> > Eric Gunnerson wrote:
> > >
> > > M <MKStr...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> > > news:37551A5E...@bigpond.com...
> > > > Michelle Malkin wrote:
> > > > > Exactly, and religious 'faith' just doesn't hack it.
> > > >
> > > > "religious faith", "atheist" etc, these terms don't mean anything.
> > >
> > > Religious faith typically means the type of faith that is advocated by
> > > religions; "evidence for things not seen".
> > >
> > > An atheist is someone who is not a theist.
> > >
> > > They seem to have perfectly good meanings to me.
> >
> > Words are containers, put what you like in them. You misunderstand me.
> > This is what you think, I don't dispute what you think. You are free to
> > think it.
>
> Words are contracts for communication.
OK, now we're getting somewhere.
>
> > > > Many things happen in this world and they will continue
> > > > happening.
> > >
> > > Boy. You've got me there.
> >
> > My "meaning", or what I "mean" in the context of the post, "religious
> > faith" and "atheism" may battle till the end of time. It won't solve
> > anything, because the battle ground is within the mind. The individual
> > has control or is controlled by all thoughts that congregate there.
>
> I don't understand what you mean by this - by this argument, any "battle"
> won't solve anything.
I did not say this, it is your intepretation. Like I said, anything can
be interpreted/manipulated. I said...
"It won't solve anything, because the battle ground is within the mind.
The individual
has control or is controlled by all thoughts that congregate there."
This is where it begins and this is where it will end.
Michael
Dr Sinister
>Dr Sinister wrote:
>>
>> But these clods were all deluded, feeble-minded, gullible theistic
>> religionist fools. For *real* smart people, please see...
>>
>> http://www.blasphemy.net/
>
>Thanks for the tip. I took a look. What brainpower!! Those folks will
>certainly make the next major advancement in quantum physics.
Thats right! Malkin's Morons are a pale shadow of genius! And just to
round out the list of gullible meme-infected morons...
Michelangelo
Leonardo da Vinci
Hans Holbein
Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)
El Greco
Giotto
Andrei Rubalev
Peter Paul Reubens
Hieronymous Bosch
Francisco de Zurbaran
Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto)
Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)
Fra Angelico
Annibale Carracci
William Blake
Albrecht Altdorfer
Andrea Mantegna
Frederick Copleston S.J.
Teilhard de Chardin S.J.
Nicholas of Cusa
Giordano Bruno
Marius Nizolius
Theophrastus von Hohenheim
Copernicus
Kepler
&c &c &c
--
Atheism is the opiate of the masses - Groucho Marx
David Johnston
> <akat...@online.no> wrote:
> >> Glenn R. wrote:
> >> You are correct, one cannot provide evidence of the lack of something
> >other
> >> than there is no evidence that there is something. There is no
> >> question-begging here at all. Although the lack of evidence is not proof
> >> that something doesn't exist, it is a pretty good reason to withhold
> >belief
> >> that something exists. That is why atheists rather routinely say, show me
> >> the evidence before I will believe. They rarely say that lack of evidence
> >> is proof of anything.
> >
> >In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately as
> >superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well, since
> >there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
Those other words do not accurately convey the meaning of the original words.
You do have an interesting line of reasoning. Since I do not believe that the number
13 is unlucky, I am therefore, according to you, superstitious.
g&g
Gardiner wrote in message <37574A0C...@pitnet.net>...
Glenn R. wrote:
Now that you have made an absolute fool of yourself by making an issue
totally different from the comment upon which it was based, and have chosen
to use ugly sarcasm to do so - - - - - your point is?
g&g
Cory Collins wrote in message <01beae37$09da7a60$8f43170c@corycoll>...
Glenn R. wrote:
Well, I actually think that virtually none of them have "received" like
answers. They have, in all likelihood, been told how to interpret scripture
or an event in the same way. They have been told the emotions they
experience in church, for example, are because the spirit is moving, or
something like that. So, of course, they would all say that "I experienced
the spirit moving" and that would be enough for most believers to convince
themselves that everybody felt the same thing I felt so it has to be the
spirit.
Just what questions were asked that received the same answer?
maff91
wrote:
>Michelle Malkin wrote:
>>
>> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
>> >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
>>
>> When it comes to religion, yes.
>
>Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
>believes in God:
>
>Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
They were all mavericks.
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Mathematics/Mathematicians/Newton__Sir_Isaac__1642_1727_/>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Philosophy/Philosophers/Leibniz__Gottfried_Willhelm__1646_1716_/>
>simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
>
>Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Philosophy/Philosophers/Descartes__Rene__1596_1650_/>
>
>Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
>idiots! All believed in a deity.
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/People/Presidents/Jefferson__Thomas__1743_1826_/>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/18th_Century/People/Franklin__Benjamin__1706_1790_/>
Have you read what the founding fathers said?
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html
>
>Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Mathematics/Mathematicians/Pascal__Blaise__1623_1662_/>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Music/Genres/Classical/Composers/Classical_Period/Mozart__Wolfgang_Amadeus__1756_1791_/>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Philosophy/Philosophers/Spinoza__Benedict__1632_1677_/>
>
>Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the
universe]", but the quote is purposely taken out of context by theists
in order to mislead and lend credence to their religion.
Einstein recognized Quantum Theory as the best scientific model for
the physical data available. He did not accept claims that the theory
was complete, or that probability and randomness were an essential
part of nature. He believed that a better, more complete theory would
be found, which would have no need for statistical interpretations or
randomness.
His "God does not play dice..." comment in his debate with Niels Bohr
was a simple reflection of this sentiment. A better quote, which
refers to Einstein's refusal to accept some aspects of the most
popular interpretations of quantum theory would be:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony
of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and
actions of human beings."
(Note: Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677), was a Dutch
philosopher and pantheistic theologian. Pantheism is a doctrine
equating a deity with the universe and its phenomena.)
Further, according to the book "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"
(edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press,
publisher), Einstein wrote in a March 24, 1954 letter:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it."
He also said in his autobiographical notes (translated from German):
"Thus I came -- despite the fact that I was the son of entirely
irreligious (Jewish) parents -- to a deep religiosity, which, however,
found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of
popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in
the stories of the bible could not be true. The consequence was a
positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression
that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies;
it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of
authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards
the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment
... "
Go to <http://www.westegg.com/einstein/>, page down to the "In His Own
Words" section, and follow the link labeled "Einstein on Science and
Religion" to the URL <http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/ESR.html>
where more of Einstein's comments on religion can be found.
>Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
>
>Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
>Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
>
>Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
>discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
You are talking about a period of history when to be an atheist was
dangerous.
>----
>Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were few
>decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
>
>RG
Slavery, segregation and the Bible
<http://x6.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=439145525>
<http://www.mindspring.com/~israel/NEWS2.HTML>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/Slavery/>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/By_Subject/Slavery/Atlantic_Slave_Trade/>
Hitler and 1,700 years of Christian anti-semitism
<http://www.hemisfear.com/wcs/hitler.htm>
<http://cnn.co.uk/WORLD/9803/16/vatican.holocaust/index.html>
<http://www.hearnow.org/caljp.htm>
<http://www.flash.net/~twinkle/psycho/DARK/recreational/luther.html>
<http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/antiholo.html>
Murder of Hypatia and the burning of the Great Library at Alexandria
<http://www.weber.edu/physics/carroll/cosmos.htm>
<http://hypatia.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/>
<http://www.geocities.com/~pandoracvi/>
<http://www.exovedate.com/ancient_timeline_two.html>
<http://cosmopolis.com/people/hypatia.html>
<http://cosmopolis.com/alexandria/hypatia-bio-suda.html>
<http://cosmopolis.com/alexandria/hypatia-bio-john.html>
<http://kalypso.cybercom.net/~hypatia/hypatia.html>
Crusades, Inquisition
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Regions/Europe/Arts_and_Humanities/Humanities/History/By_Time_Period/Middle_Ages/>
Black Death
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Regions/Europe/Arts_and_Humanities/Humanities/History/By_Time_Period/Renaissance/>
A Distant Mirror : The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345349571/>
Persecution of Galileo
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Astronomy/Astronomers/Galilei__Galileo__1564_1642_/>
Murder of Giodarno Bruno
<http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_kessler/giordano_bruno.html>
<http://www.aracnet.com/~atheism/tochist.htm>
Italian philosopher Lucilio Vanini tortured and burnt alive
<http://www.turnpike.net/~mscott/sthom1.htm>
<http://www.gocreate.com/History/ra17.htm>
<http://www.atheism.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impostors.html>
Criminal activities by various Popes
<http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tmanc.htm>
Prelude to genocide of Native Americans and others
<http://www.omen.com.au/~staffy/cook.html>
<http://www.sru.edu/depts/artsci/ges/lamerica/treaty.htm>
<http://www.liverpool.k12.ny.us/Whacked/IntranetCurr/SocialStudies/AmazonAdventure/tordesillas.htm>
<gopher://spinaltap.micro.umn.edu:70/00/Gutenberg/Histdocs/iroquois-constitution.readme>
<gopher://spinaltap.micro.umn.edu:70/00/Gutenberg/Histdocs/iroquois-constitution>
<http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/NAPSnEoD7586.html>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Author=Weatherford%2C%20Jack/>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Subject=Indian%20influences/>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Subject=Indians%20of%20North%20America/>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Subject=Native%20American%20Studies/>
<http://www.danwinter.com/yarrow/grtlaw.html>
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Cultures/American__United_States_/Native_American/>
<http://www.nationalwildlife.org/nwp/tvprograms/buffalo.html>
<http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/news/sorry.htm>
<http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.shtml>
<http://www.chickasaw.net/museum/gifts.htm>
<http://indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/food/plants.html>
<http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/indices/NAknowledge.html>
<http://www.channel-e-philadelphia.com/natchronology.html>
<http://history1700s.miningco.com/msub11.htm>
The Age of Enlightenment
<http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html>
<http://tlc.ai.org/enlight.htm>
Salem Witch trials
<http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/Colonial_America/Salem_Witch_Trials/>
Witch burnings
<http://www.silvermoon.net/catala/burning/times.htm>
<http://www.celticcrow.com/basics/burning.html>
Religious hate
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/negative.htm>
The "Burning Times Award"
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/burn_awd.htm>
Religiously-based civil unrest and warfare
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/curr_war.htm>
Cults
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/cultmenu.htm>
Hot religious topics
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/conflict.htm>
Other Important Essays
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/other_es.htm>
Evolution of Religion
<http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=481072529>
<http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Cullen.html>
<http://x38.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=478883107>
<http://www.godpart.com/>
Gardiner
> >Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were few
> >decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
> >
>
> Now that you have made an absolute fool of yourself by making an issue
> totally different from the comment upon which it was based, and have chosen
> to use ugly sarcasm to do so - - - - - your point is?
Well, Ms. Malkin's pointed out to a person who asked her about it, that if she
believes in God she has lost her ability to think well (if you have been
following the thread you would know this).
My point is that she has accused the world's most respected minds of not being
able to think well.
My point is now, also, that you don't have a very good ability to see a clear
point. Didn't do well on the GRE I guess, huh?
RG
Richard E Reboulet
<akat...@online.no> wrote:
>
>In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately as
>superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well, since
>there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
>
>Alex
>
You are correct! There is no more evidence for any religion than
there is fo atheism. The only rational position is agnosticism.
>
>
Gardiner
>
> On Thu, 03 Jun 1999 22:38:01 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Michelle Malkin wrote:
> >>
> >> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
> >> >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
> >>
> >> When it comes to religion, yes.
> >
> >Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
> >believes in God:
> >
> >Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
>
> They were all mavericks.
I guess that means they were dumb?
> >simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
> >
> >Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
> <http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Philosophy/Philosophers/Descartes__Rene__1596_1650_/>
Is this link supposed to prove anything?
> >Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
> >idiots! All believed in a deity.
>
> <http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/People/Presidents/Jefferson__Thomas__1743_1826_/>
> <http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/18th_Century/People/Franklin__Benjamin__1706_1790_/>
>
> Have you read what the founding fathers said?
> http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html
Nice job of picking and choosing various quotes. If the readers want a more
comprehensive look at what the people who developed this nation said,
believed, understood, and cared about, see the massive collection of primary
sources at http://www.universitylake.org/primarysources.html
It overshadows the "infidels" collection cited above to the point that it
isn't funny.
> >Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
>
> Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the
> universe]", but the quote is purposely taken out of context by theists
> in order to mislead and lend credence to their religion.
Einstein made that quote in response to the Copenhagen interpretation which
implies that their are indeterminant events that occur on at the quantum
level. Einstein was a Spinozist and he believed that all things are caused.
Which leads directly to the "cosmological" argument set forth by Spinoza.
> A better quote, which
> refers to Einstein's refusal to accept some aspects of the most
> popular interpretations of quantum theory would be:
>
> "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony
> of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and
> actions of human beings."
>
> (Note: Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677), was a Dutch
> philosopher and pantheistic theologian. Pantheism is a doctrine
> equating a deity with the universe and its phenomena.)
Since we agree that Einstein approved of Spinoza's theology, let's take a look
at what that entails:
Spinoza, ETHICS
"PROP. XI. God... necessarily exists. Proof.--If this be denied, conceive, if
possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve
existence. But this (by Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists."
That, my friend, is known as the Ontological proof for God's existence,
attributed most frequently to St. Anselm, the English scholastic, but later
refined by DesCartes. Moreover--
Spinoza, ETHICS
"Of everything whatsoever a cause or reason must be assigned, either for its
existence, or for its non-existence--e.g., if a triangle exist, a reason or
cause must be granted for its existence; if, on the contrary, it does not
exist, a cause must also be granted, which prevents it from existing, or
annuls its existence... either nothing exists, or else a being absolutely
infinite necessarily exists also. Now we exist either in ourselves, or in
something else which necessarily exists (see Ax. i. and Prop. vii.) Therefore
a being absolutely infinite--in other words, God (Def. vi.)--necessarily exists."
This is what has been traditionally referred to as the "Cosmological Proof"
for God's existence. It has been most often attributed to the combination of
Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, but it is common sensical enough for most
kindergartners to understand.
Spinoza continues--
"In this last proof, I have purposely shown God's existence a posteriori [that
means with empirical data]... God's existence also follows a priori [that
means from just thinking about it]... For inasmuch as his essence excludes all
imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning
his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given.
This, I think, will be evident to every moderately attentive reader."
I guess Einstein was a "moderately attentive reader." I think I am a
moderately attentive reader, too. Apparently Ms. Malkin and Maff are not a
moderately attentive readers.
Thanks for pointing out that Einstein followed Spinoza's theology. I think it
is all clear to us now what his views on God's existence were.
> Further, according to the book "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"
> (edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press,
> publisher), Einstein wrote in a March 24, 1954 letter:
>
> "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
> convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
> believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
> expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
> religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
> world so far as our science can reveal it."
What he is alluding to is what's called the "teleological proof" for God's existence.
> He also said in his autobiographical notes (translated from German):
>
> "Thus I came -- despite the fact that I was the son of entirely
> irreligious (Jewish) parents -- to a deep religiosity, which, however,
> found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of
> popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in
> the stories of the bible could not be true.
A person who doesn't trust the literal historicity of the Bible isn't
necessarily an atheist, is he? If you think so, please explain that logic to me.
> The consequence was a
> positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression
> that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies;
> it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of
> authority grew out of this experience,
What's wrong with suspicion against the authorities. I think Jesus had a
little problem with the Pharisaical authorities who ran his world, too. Does
that mean Jesus was an atheist?
> Go to <http://www.westegg.com/einstein/>, page down to the "In His Own
> Words" section, and follow the link labeled "Einstein on Science and
> Religion" to the URL <http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/ESR.html>
> where more of Einstein's comments on religion can be found.
Thank you. He was clearly not an atheist, was he?
> >Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
> >
> >Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
> >Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
> >
> >Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
> >discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
>
> You are talking about a period of history when to be an atheist was
> dangerous.
Oh, I see, these guys were all liars. All that stuff Spinoza wrote in his
ETHICS, which philosophers have considered brilliant and complex.... it was
all a big hoodwink so that the police wouldn't get him.
Do you realize exactly how you compare in the shadow of a Newton or a Leibniz?
Have you read these guys? Do you realize how foolish it is too imply that they
were not entirely and sincerely committed to their insights about the divine nature?
BTW, the fact is that Einstein left Germany for America because it was a
period of history to be a person of his RELIGIOUS background, not because it
was dangerous to be an atheist.
God bless,
Rick
William
>Michelle Malkin wrote:
>> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
>> >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
>>
>> When it comes to religion, yes.
>
>Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
>believes in God:
>
>Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
>simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
>Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
>Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
>idiots! All believed in a deity.
>Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
>Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
>Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
>
>Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
>Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
>
>Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
>discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
>
>Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were few
>decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
Very interesting.
Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727)
Leibniz (1646-1716),
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Blaise Pascal (1623-62)
Mozart (1756-91)
Spinoza (1632-77)
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The only person in the above who lived anywhere near the 20th century
was Einstein and he didn't believe in a personal God.
The other's were most definitely the leading thinkers of their time;
but they were also products of their time.
It's a sad reflection on chistianity that the only leading thinkers
you can point to for support of theism are long dead ones who lived at
a time when the existence of God was considered virtually self
evident. At a time when the church had a strangle hold on knowledge
and beliefs, and at a time when science appeared to support the
biblical notion of a creator (long before Darwin, or the big bang or
evidence for an ancient universe etc).
The truth is, of course, that quoting leading scientists, singers, or
TV personalities as support for any religion is futile. For every
one quoted in support another one can be quoted who takes the opposite
view.
Religious people quote scientists with some sort of implication that
because a scientist believes then it must be a rational belief. It
doesn't work like that. Take a hundred scientists and ask them for
their beliefs about the nature of electricity and you'll get about 99%
concurrance. Ask the same hundred scientists for their beliefs about
deities and you'll get about 99 different views - with over 50%
admitting they don't believe they exist at all. Appealing to the
odd scientist who believes in any particular theistic doctrine may in
fact be counter productive.
William
g&g
Gardiner wrote in message <3757E739...@pitnet.net>...
>g&g wrote:
>>
>> Gardiner wrote in message <37574A0C...@pitnet.net>...
>> >Michelle Malkin wrote:
>> >>
>> >----
few
>> >decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
>> >
>>
>> Now that you have made an absolute fool of yourself by making an issue
>> totally different from the comment upon which it was based, and have
chosen
>> to use ugly sarcasm to do so - - - - - your point is?
>
>Well, Ms. Malkin's pointed out to a person who asked her about it, that if
she
>believes in God she has lost her ability to think well (if you have been
>following the thread you would know this).
>
>My point is that she has accused the world's most respected minds of not
being
>able to think well.
>
>My point is now, also, that you don't have a very good ability to see a
clear
>point. Didn't do well on the GRE I guess, huh?
>
>RG
Glenn R. wrote:
You are lying. She never referred to any other people and she said the
fuzzy thinking only applied to the religious stuff in their lives. Here is
the sum-total of her response that you so dishonestly snipped out of this
post.
Here is the original question, "Does my faith indicate that I have lost my
ability to think in a quite rational and intelligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?"
And here is the Michelle's response. "When it comes to religion, yes."
So, you then proceeded with your childish attempt at sarcasm to ridicule
her. You started it off by saying, "Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually
saying about our friend here who believes in God:" and went off on your
delusional comments. You put words in her mouth that were clearly not
there, you made huge assumptions that couldn't possibly be based on the
information you had. And you made yourself to be the fool while trying to
make her one. You are a dishonest despicable person to do such a thing.
Then, you try your little testy sarcasm on me, too. Actually I never took
the GRE. Folks who graduate at the top of their class are called
Valedictorians and they are generally excused from taking the GRE. I know
it isn't fair, but that's just the way it is.
James Veverka
What, is this your first day at school? Jefferson NOT Adams NOT
Einstein NOT Hawking NOT Lincoln NOT Franklin NOT Monroe NOT Madison
NOT. They ALLdiscounted the existence of a personal god. All these men
were deists (closet atheists?) agnostics or just plain atheists You have
been brainwashed. Shit... you want quotes to make licorice out of? I
got em for all your lies. Are you deceptive and lying right through
your fucking teeth for the lurkers, or you are just plain stupid. Or a
phony.
It is dfficult to fathom the christian ethic when such misrepresentation
and distortion of the facts are mainstream. Anything for a convert.
.....................jim (Swords and lies, what an ethic!!)
"PUPUPUPRAISE JUJUJESUS, I am lying for YOU Lord!!!"
Gardiner
Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
smartest kids in the class.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
James Veverka
it straight. Lying for Jesus again?
God according to Einstein
"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider
ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority
behind it."
"I cannot imagine a god who rewards and punishes the objects of his
creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a god who is but a
reflection of human frailty."
"The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of
religion and science lies in the concept of a personal god."
"Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his
body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or
ridiculous egotism."
James Veverka
James Veverka
atheists.....jim
James Veverka
have the incredible history and soures of knowledge we have. How could
you expect them to be able to do much reductionism (as science does) if
there was no real abundance of facts. Considering that they were in the
dark compared to us, they did fine enough to raise the ire of
authorities anyway.
And consider this: ANY 10 year old on earth can learn more science than
most of them knew on their dying day......jim
Gardiner
The point you have missed, Mr. Valedictorian, is that according to the
geniuses whose names I listed, they believed that their most profound and
accurate thinking was with regards to religion and theology. What works do you
think Leibniz was most dedicated to? Theodicy? Monadology? Spinoza's Ethics,
Descartes' Meditations, Newton's Commentaries, Locke's REASONABLENESS OF
CHRISTIANITY, etc.
These men saw their work with algebra, calculus, physics, politics, etc., as
entirely peripheral and subordinate to their thinking about God. They would
all say, with a resounding chorus, "if I have lost my ability to think in a
rational intelligent manner about religion, then the rest is meaningless."
You simply don't have a handle on understanding these geniuses'
self-evaluation and my use of them which directly contrasts what Ms. Malkin
was saying in this post.
> So, you then proceeded with your childish attempt at sarcasm to ridicule
> her. You started it off by saying, "Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually
> saying about our friend here who believes in God:" and went off on your
> delusional comments.
Am I deluded in believing that DesCartes' Meditations claims to prove God's
existence, or am I deluded in believing that DesCartes was a high-level genius
who gave us linear algebra, etc?
> You put words in her mouth that were clearly not
> there,
She repudiated her opponent's "rationality and intelligence" with regard to
her "thinking about God" simply because the person believes. She would have to
do the same thing with a Leibniz or a Newton. The point is clearly on topic.
> you made huge assumptions that couldn't possibly be based on the
> information you had. And you made yourself to be the fool while trying to
> make her one. You are a dishonest despicable person to do such a thing.
Questioning a person's intelligence and rationality seems to me to be less
than charitable.
> Then, you try your little testy sarcasm on me, too. Actually I never took
> the GRE. Folks who graduate at the top of their class are called
> Valedictorians and they are generally excused from taking the GRE. I know
> it isn't fair, but that's just the way it is.
What college were you the Valedictorian of? Oh, that's right, you never said
that directly. Only played a little word game here to try to make yourself
look smart. Say you were the valedictorian, and I'm willing to put a little
wager on it that you weren't, as long as the college graduated more than 5 students.
RG
Brian Westley
What, your unsupported assertions?
Got ANY figures to back you up?
---
Merlyn LeRoy
John Popelish
Or to paraphrase, since some other people have the same ability as you
to imagine God, God must not be imaginary. If this works for you, I
have no argument for you. It doesn't for me.
John Popelish
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
g&g
Brian Westley wrote in message ...
Glenn R. wrote
No, he does not have any figure to back up his assertions. He just throws
this stuff out in hopes that some of it may find an sympathetic ear. He is
going in my killfile as soon as I finish reading today's posts. He sounds
like he is pretty well read, but his ability to argue logically or
intelligently is nil.
g&g
Gardiner wrote in message <37583257...@pitnet.net>...
>g&g wrote:
>>
>The point you have missed, Mr. Valedictorian, is that according to the
>geniuses whose names I listed, they believed that their most profound and
>accurate thinking was with regards to religion and theology. What works do
you
>think Leibniz was most dedicated to? Theodicy? Monadology? Spinoza's
Ethics,
>Descartes' Meditations, Newton's Commentaries, Locke's REASONABLENESS OF
>CHRISTIANITY, etc.
>
>These men saw their work with algebra, calculus, physics, politics, etc.,
as
>entirely peripheral and subordinate to their thinking about God. They would
>all say, with a resounding chorus, "if I have lost my ability to think in a
>rational intelligent manner about religion, then the rest is meaningless."
>
>You simply don't have a handle on understanding these geniuses'
>self-evaluation and my use of them which directly contrasts what Ms. Malkin
>was saying in this post.
>
I have a fairly good grasp of what each of these people you are so enamored
with accomplished during their lifetimes. I also have a reasonably good
grasp of the general history of the human condition for the last 1500 years
or so. The folks you chose to list were nearly all living at a time when
there was no evidence of lots of things that we now know to be true. During
the time most of them were alive, belief in god was not only good for your
health because to deny such a belief could buy you a lot of trouble, but
many of the questions in science at the time could only be answered by
including some supernatural force or entity in the equation. So, when you
say these folks, geniuses that they were, were clear thinking about
religious issues sorta misses about 99% of the picture. If your statement
were anywhere close to true then we would still have today's geniuses
stating their belief in god or gods. Since the overwhelming majority of
today's scientific geniuses are agnostics or atheists, I think your point is
rather off the mark.
>
>Questioning a person's intelligence and rationality seems to me to be less
>than charitable.
>
Glenn R. wrote
But it was OK for you to do so?
g&g
William wrote in message <37587525...@news.clara.net>...
> Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote:
>
<big snip>
>
>Religious people quote scientists with some sort of implication that
>because a scientist believes then it must be a rational belief. It
>doesn't work like that. Take a hundred scientists and ask them for
>their beliefs about the nature of electricity and you'll get about 99%
>concurrance. Ask the same hundred scientists for their beliefs about
>deities and you'll get about 99 different views - with over 50%
>admitting they don't believe they exist at all. Appealing to the
>odd scientist who believes in any particular theistic doctrine may in
>fact be counter productive.
>
Glenn R. wrote
William, you are right on in your comments. I find it really interesting
that christians like to point out scientists who supposedly are believers as
though scientist are really great thinkers. Then when someone mentions
evolution all of a sudden all scientists and all fields of science are
worthless heaps of turtle dung. Also, according to a poll taken last year,
only about 15% of scientists professed any belief in a personal god.
maff91
wrote:
>maff91 wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 03 Jun 1999 22:38:01 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Michelle Malkin wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
>> >> >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
>> >>
>> >> When it comes to religion, yes.
>> >
>> >Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
>> >believes in God:
>> >
>> >Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
>>
>> They were all mavericks.
>
>I guess that means they were dumb?
It was from a different time in history. To be openly against religion
would have meant persecution and in many cases death.
>
>> >simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
>> >
>> >Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
>> <http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Philosophy/Philosophers/Descartes__Rene__1596_1650_/>
>
>Is this link supposed to prove anything?
Just to show you have to go 16/17th century to find supporters.
>
>> >Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
>> >idiots! All believed in a deity.
>>
>> <http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/People/Presidents/Jefferson__Thomas__1743_1826_/>
>> <http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/18th_Century/People/Franklin__Benjamin__1706_1790_/>
>>
>> Have you read what the founding fathers said?
>> http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html
>
>Nice job of picking and choosing various quotes. If the readers want a more
>comprehensive look at what the people who developed this nation said,
>believed, understood, and cared about, see the massive collection of primary
>sources at http://www.universitylake.org/primarysources.html
>
>It overshadows the "infidels" collection cited above to the point that it
>isn't funny.
Readers can go to the primary sources to find out who is telling the
truth. References to primary sources are indicated at the Internet
Infidels site.
>
>> >Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
>>
>> Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the
>> universe]", but the quote is purposely taken out of context by theists
>> in order to mislead and lend credence to their religion.
>
>Einstein made that quote in response to the Copenhagen interpretation which
>implies that their are indeterminant events that occur on at the quantum
>level. Einstein was a Spinozist and he believed that all things are caused.
>Which leads directly to the "cosmological" argument set forth by Spinoza.
He said much more than Spinoza.
.
Go to <http://www.westegg.com/einstein/>, page down to the "In His Own
Words" section, and follow the link labeled "Einstein on Science and
Religion" to the URL <http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/ESR.html>
where more of Einstein's comments on religion can be found.
>
He superficially referred to Spinoza. He was greater than Spinoza. He
further clarified his thoughts elsewhere.
See the above links and
http://x42.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=451944873
He knew of apologetics like you in his life time.
>
>> Further, according to the book "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"
>> (edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press,
>> publisher), Einstein wrote in a March 24, 1954 letter:
>>
>> "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
>> convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
>> believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
>> expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
>> religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
>> world so far as our science can reveal it."
>
>What he is alluding to is what's called the "teleological proof" for God's existence.
Nope. You aren't paying attention.
>
>> He also said in his autobiographical notes (translated from German):
>>
>> "Thus I came -- despite the fact that I was the son of entirely
>> irreligious (Jewish) parents -- to a deep religiosity, which, however,
>> found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of
>> popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in
>> the stories of the bible could not be true.
>
>A person who doesn't trust the literal historicity of the Bible isn't
>necessarily an atheist, is he? If you think so, please explain that logic to me.
Who said he was an atheist?
>
>> The consequence was a
>> positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression
>> that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies;
>> it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of
>> authority grew out of this experience,
>
>What's wrong with suspicion against the authorities. I think Jesus had a
>little problem with the Pharisaical authorities who ran his world, too. Does
>that mean Jesus was an atheist?
Who knows?
>
>> Go to <http://www.westegg.com/einstein/>, page down to the "In His Own
>> Words" section, and follow the link labeled "Einstein on Science and
>> Religion" to the URL <http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/ESR.html>
>> where more of Einstein's comments on religion can be found.
>
>Thank you. He was clearly not an atheist, was he?
Who said he was? Agnostic and Pantheist were much polite words to
express skepticism in those days.
"If god is taken to be synonymous with nature or some aspect of the
natural universe, we may then ask why the term "god" is used at all.
It is superfluous and highly misleading. The label of "god" serves no
function (except, perhaps, to create confusion), and one must suspect
that the naturalistic theist is simply an atheist who would rather
avoid this designation." - George H. Smith in _The Case Against
God_.
>
>> >Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
>> >
>> >Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
>> >Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
>> >
>> >Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
>> >discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
>>
>> You are talking about a period of history when to be an atheist was
>> dangerous.
>
>Oh, I see, these guys were all liars. All that stuff Spinoza wrote in his
>ETHICS, which philosophers have considered brilliant and complex.... it was
>all a big hoodwink so that the police wouldn't get him.
It was not just because it was dangerous (It was a factor too). But at
that time there was no plausible scientific explanation for the first
cause.
>
>Do you realize exactly how you compare in the shadow of a Newton or a Leibniz?
>Have you read these guys? Do you realize how foolish it is too imply that they
>were not entirely and sincerely committed to their insights about the divine nature?
>
>BTW, the fact is that Einstein left Germany for America because it was a
>period of history to be a person of his RELIGIOUS background, not because it
Religious and ethnic background coincided.
>was dangerous to be an atheist.
>
>God bless,
>Rick
Slavery, segregation and the Bible
William
Yes. When I used the 50% example I was being generous to prevent nit
picking responses. The sobering point is that the original poster was
trying to argue from a 300 year old world view to a current one. The
counterparts of Newton (and the others) today are even less likely to
believe in God than the average person.
William
maff91
> Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote:
>
>>Michelle Malkin wrote:
>>> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
>>> >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
>>>
>>> When it comes to religion, yes.
>>
>>Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
>>believes in God:
>>
>>Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
>>simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
>>Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
>>Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
>>idiots! All believed in a deity.
>>Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
>>Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
>>Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
>>
>>Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
>>Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
>>
>>Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
>>discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
>>
>>Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were few
>>decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
>
>Very interesting.
>
>Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727)
>Leibniz (1646-1716),
>René Descartes (1596-1650)
>Blaise Pascal (1623-62)
>Mozart (1756-91)
>Spinoza (1632-77)
>Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
>
>The only person in the above who lived anywhere near the 20th century
>was Einstein and he didn't believe in a personal God.
>
>The other's were most definitely the leading thinkers of their time;
>but they were also products of their time.
>
>It's a sad reflection on chistianity that the only leading thinkers
>you can point to for support of theism are long dead ones who lived at
>a time when the existence of God was considered virtually self
>evident. At a time when the church had a strangle hold on knowledge
>and beliefs, and at a time when science appeared to support the
>biblical notion of a creator (long before Darwin, or the big bang or
>evidence for an ancient universe etc).
>
>The truth is, of course, that quoting leading scientists, singers, or
>TV personalities as support for any religion is futile. For every
>one quoted in support another one can be quoted who takes the opposite
>view.
>
>Religious people quote scientists with some sort of implication that
>because a scientist believes then it must be a rational belief. It
>doesn't work like that. Take a hundred scientists and ask them for
>their beliefs about the nature of electricity and you'll get about 99%
>concurrance. Ask the same hundred scientists for their beliefs about
>deities and you'll get about 99 different views - with over 50%
>admitting they don't believe they exist at all. Appealing to the
>odd scientist who believes in any particular theistic doctrine may in
>fact be counter productive.
According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
polled claimed to believe in a personal God. That is, approximately
93% of
the scientists polled were either atheists of agnostics.
See:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm
>
>William
William
wrote:
Yes, I agree. I gave the 'over 50%' example to prevent a nit picking
response. The modern equivalents of Newton - and the philosophers -
are less likely to believe in any God than the average person in the
street, so the original poster's point rather backfires.
William
maff91
wrote:
>Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
>Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
>reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
>smartest kids in the class.
>
>Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Nope.
According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
polled claimed to believe in a personal God. That is, approximately
93% of the scientists polled were either atheists of agnostics.
See:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm
Intelligence is inversely proportional to intensity of religious
faith.
http://anytime.cs.umass.edu/~danilche/intelligence.txt
Gardiner ineffectually crosses swords with Jim Alison.
<http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/qs.xp?ST=PS&QRY=Gardiner+AND+%7Ea+%28jalison*%29&defaultOp=AND&DBS=1&OP=dnquery.xp&LNG=ALL&subjects=&groups=&authors=&fromdate=&todate=&showsort=date&maxhits=100>
Gardiner
>
> Gardiner,
>
> What, is this your first day at school? Jefferson NOT
Not what? You imply that he was an atheist. Are you at all educated? You're
showing a tremendous lack of information about Jefferson.
Let me teach you a few lessons in history and philosophy, James, my friend.
There's something among philosophers and theologians called the "teleological
proof of God's existence." I'm sure it's a concept which is often critiqued in
this group, as it is an argument used by theists to refute atheists.
Let me give you a famous version of this theistic argument:
"I hold that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general or
particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a
conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of
it's composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in
their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the
structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and
atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest
particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or
mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible,
I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design,
cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from
matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in
their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see,
too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the
Universe in it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new
ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul
of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of
animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences
might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a
shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and
powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all
time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in
the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that
of a self-existent Universe."
--THOMAS JEFFERSON, To John Adams, 4/11/1823
Let me highlight something for you, James: "it is impossible, I say, for the
human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and
effect, up to an ultimate cause."
At the beginning of this letter, Jefferson says, "I can never be an atheist."
Why did you say "Jefferson NOT"? Perhaps youre on my side, perhaps you meant
Jefferson NOT AN ATHEIST :)
> Adams NOT
Why are you doing this to yourself, James? Have you read through 15 volumes of
Adams' works? I have. Page Smith has. Do you know what Adams said about
Voltaire and the leaders of the French Revolution?
Read through his 15,000 letters, James, he sqaurely CONDEMNED them for their ATHEISM!!
I guess what you meant to say was Adams NOT AN ATHEIST.
> Einstein NOT
Which Einstein? The one who referred to himself as a "deeply religious man"?
or do you mean Jeff Einstein, the guy who delivers my morning paper (cause
he's a believer too).
Do you mean the Einstein who agreed with Jefferson on the ease at which a
person of good sense can easily apprehend the deity in the design of the
universe, the one who spoke of
"That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning
power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe"
I guess what you meant to say was Einstein NOT AN ATHEIST.
> Hawking NOT
I don't think I mentioned this guy. From what I've read of him, he thinks once
he finds a unified field theory he'll know "the mind of God."
> Lincoln NOT
I didn't mention him, either. But you don't even know how bad you're putting
your foot in your mouth on this one. You fly in the face of every Lincoln
scholar who has written. And here were not only talking about a believer, but
a BIBLE-BELIEVER. You better do a little reading on this fellow before you say
any more.
Of course, who you meant was Rodney Lincoln, the guy who works at the gas station.
> Franklin NOT
Not what?
"I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his
Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service
we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is
immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its
conduct in this."
-BEN FRANKLIN
sounds like an Atheist to me.
> Monroe NOT
Marilyn actually was quite the spiritual person.
> Madison NOT.
Do you mean the James Madison who attended the seminary at Princeton with
intentions of becoming a clergyman, then changed over to law and became the
father of the Constitution and the fourth President?
> They ALLdiscounted the existence of a personal god. All these men
> were deists (closet atheists?) agnostics or just plain atheists
Oh, I see. I thought this was the alt.atheism group. Why do you folks always
skirt around all these geniuses by simply trying to qualify their theism with
"not personal"?
Is this an atheist's newsgroup or is this alt.deism? I thought I was arguing
with atheists. I was claiming that Jefferson was a theist, not an atheist. And
you say NOT??
Furthermore, you'll have to come up with a little evidence to show that deism
is closet atheism. That may be your wishful thinking, but if you read the
likes of Jefferson's letter above, he despised atheists.
> You have
> been brainwashed. Shit...
But you sure haven't been mouthwashed much.
> you want quotes to make licorice out of? I
> got em for all your lies.
Give me the quotes that show these guys were atheists. That's your claim;
prove it. Good luck.
> Are you deceptive and lying right through
> your fucking teeth for the lurkers, or you are just plain stupid. Or a
> phony.
I'll continue to post the historic documents and let the lurkers decide for
themselves, while you rant and rave, curse and swear.
> It is dfficult to fathom the christian ethic when such misrepresentation
> and distortion of the facts are mainstream.
Check the sources out yourself. Your list of atheists betrays you.
> Anything for a convert.
Christianity is entirely too reasonble for this group. I don't expect many
converts among unintelligent folks.
RG
Gardiner
>
> Dr Sinister wrote:
>
> > Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote in <375756D3...@pitnet.net>:
> >
> > >Dr Sinister wrote:
> > >>
> > >> But these clods were all deluded, feeble-minded, gullible theistic
> > >> religionist fools. For *real* smart people, please see...
> > >>
> > >> http://www.blasphemy.net/
> > >
> > >Thanks for the tip. I took a look. What brainpower!! Those folks will
> > >certainly make the next major advancement in quantum physics.
> >
> > Thats right! Malkin's Morons are a pale shadow of genius! And just to
> > round out the list of gullible meme-infected morons...
> >
> > Michelangelo
> > Leonardo da Vinci
> > Hans Holbein
> > Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)
> > El Greco
> > Giotto
> > Andrei Rubalev
> > Peter Paul Reubens
> > Hieronymous Bosch
> > Francisco de Zurbaran
> > Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto)
> > Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)
> > Fra Angelico
> > Annibale Carracci
> > William Blake
>
> How does being an artist confer an expertise in
> such areas?
Generally prodigious artists such as a Mozart or a Beethoven have extremely
high IQ's. High IQ's generally aren't associated with people easily hoodwinked
into believing nonsense.
> > Marius Nizolius
> > Theophrastus von Hohenheim
> > Copernicus
> > Kepler
> >
> > &c &c &c
> >
>
> Again, do they all agree?
Heck no. Copernicus liked peanut butter and jelly, Kepler prefered tuna fish.
Gardiner
>
> your "experts" disagree on the nature of
> God, so some of them at least must be wrong.
Expert Physicians and Doctors in the AMA disagree on the nature of the human
body. Does that mean that humans don't exist?
RG
Alan Sindler
>
> William wrote in message <37587525...@news.clara.net>...
> > Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote:
> >
> <big snip>
> >
> >because a scientist believes then it must be a rational belief. It
> >doesn't work like that. Take a hundred scientists and ask them for
> >their beliefs about the nature of electricity and you'll get about 99%
> >concurrance. Ask the same hundred scientists for their beliefs about
> >deities and you'll get about 99 different views - with over 50%
> >admitting they don't believe they exist at all. Appealing to the
> >odd scientist who believes in any particular theistic doctrine may in
> >fact be counter productive.
> >
>
> William, you are right on in your comments. I find it really interesting
> that christians like to point out scientists who supposedly are believers as
> though scientist are really great thinkers. Then when someone mentions
> evolution all of a sudden all scientists and all fields of science are
> worthless heaps of turtle dung. Also, according to a poll taken last year,
> only about 15% of scientists professed any belief in a personal god.
Furthermore, to the great scientists (like Einstein) who *do* talk about God,
it's not anything like the biblical, wrathful, ego driven god that fundie's
rant about. But hey, that's just a technicality, right? I am especially amused
when the fundagelicals point to the founding fathers, most of whom were
deists, and many of whom had a disdain for "mainstream" Christianity. They
hate it when you point that little tid bit out to them, however.
:)
Alan S.
--
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
-Trip Uhalt
Gardiner
>
> On Fri, 04 Jun 1999 15:12:16 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
> >Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
> >reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
> >smartest kids in the class.
> >
> >Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
>
> Nope.
>
> According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
> magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
> God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
> polled claimed to believe in a personal God.
Ah, I see you use the "personal" qualifier. Now tell the whole truth about the
poll survey. The question asked to the scientists was "do you believe in a God
who exists in the form of a person?"
If you really want tried and true poll results, you have to look at Gallup. I
believe his last survey continued to show a 92% belief in God... and that was
in America, where atheism abounds.
> That is, approximately
> 93% of the scientists polled were either atheists of agnostics.
93% of those polled were also either UFO's or homosapiens, too! (it's
wonderful what you can logically do with an "or")
The biggest question here is what qualifies someone as a scientist? If they
teach 7th grade biology, are they scientists?
As Henry Margenau, Yale University Scientist has said: your average high
school science teacher may tend to poo poo religion, but when you get up to
the high-powered scientists' level, the schroedingers, the einsteins, the
heisenbergs, paul davies, et al, there is a profound respect for theism.
Gardiner
>
> Furthermore, to the great scientists (like Einstein) who *do* talk about God,
> it's not anything like the biblical, wrathful, ego driven god that fundie's
> rant about. But hey, that's just a technicality, right?
The folks I have been responding to have been promoters of ATHEISM. Einstein
aint in their corner, as much as they want to claim him.
> I am especially amused
> when the fundagelicals point to the founding fathers, most of whom were
> deists,
Whether one is a fundamentalist or not doesn't change the indisputable fact
that the majority of the founding fathers were not deists. That's just not a
matter for dispute. Dr. Miles Bradford of the University of Dallas did a
conclusive study on this question. Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson may have
toyed with deism. Among the other several hundred founders, deism was a small minority.
maff91
wrote:
>James Veverka wrote:
>>
>> Gardiner,
>>
>> What, is this your first day at school? Jefferson NOT
>
>Not what? You imply that he was an atheist. Are you at all educated? You're
>showing a tremendous lack of information about Jefferson.
>
>Let me teach you a few lessons in history and philosophy, James, my friend.
>
>There's something among philosophers and theologians called the "teleological
>proof of God's existence." I'm sure it's a concept which is often critiqued in
>this group, as it is an argument used by theists to refute atheists.
>
>Let me give you a famous version of this theistic argument:
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826; author, Declaration of Independence and the Statute of
Virginia for Religious Freedom; 3rd U.S. President,
1801-1809)
Convinced that religious liberty must, most assuredly, be built into
the structural frame of the new [state] government, Jefferson
proposed this language [for the new Virginia constitution]: "All
persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor
shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious
institution": freedom for religion, but also freedom from religion.
(Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation,
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 38. Jefferson
proposed his language in 1776.)
I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover
health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own
judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
(Thomas Jefferson, notes for a speech, c. 1776. From
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p.
498.)
Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own
will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to
their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and
manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it
altogether insusceptible to restraint; that all attempts to influence
it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil
incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness,
and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of
our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to
propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty
power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that
the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well
as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired
men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting
up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and
infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others,
hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part
of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to
furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which
he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; ... that
our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any
more than our opinions in physics or geometry; ... that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its
jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his
powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or
propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is
a dangerous falacy [sic], which at once destroys all religious liberty
... ; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to
herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error,
and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human
interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and
debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted
freely to contradict them. We the General Assembly of Virginia do
enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support
any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be
enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or
goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions
or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by
argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that
the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil
capacities ... (Thomas Jefferson, "Bill for Establishing Religious
Freedom in Virginia," 1779; those parts shown above in italics
were, according to Edwin S. Gaustad, written by Jefferson but not
included in the statute as passed by the General Assembly
of Virginia. The bill became law on January 16, 1786. From Edwin S.
Gaustad, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in
America, Vol. I (To the Civil War), Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1982, pp. 259-261. Jefferson
was prouder of having written this bill than of being the third
President or of such history-making accomplishments as the
Louisiana Purchase. He wrote, as his own full epitaph, "Here was
buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of
American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious
Freedom, And Father of the University of Virginia.")
Where the preamble [of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom]
declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of
the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by
inserting the words "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "A
departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our
religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof
that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection,
the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan,
the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination. (Thomas Jefferson,
Autobiography; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded.
The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of
Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to
their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several
books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopedie. I think
it will produce considerable good even in those
countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of
body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the
mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be
hoped. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Wythe from
Paris, August 13, 1786. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment
and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 311.)
The Virginia act for religious freedom has been received with infinite
approbation in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I
do not mean by governments, but by the individuals who compose them.
It has been translated into French and Italian; has
been sent to most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best
evidence of the falsehood of those reports which stated us to
be in anarchy. It is inserted in the new "EncyclopŽdie," and is
appearing in most of the publications respecting America. In fact,
it is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected,
after so many ages, during which the human mind has been
held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable
for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the
courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the
formation of his own opinions.... (Thomas Jefferson, letter to
James Madison from Paris, Dec. 16, 1786. From Lloyd S. Kramer, ed.,
Paine and Jefferson on Liberty, New York:
Continuum, 1988, pp. 87-88.)
... Justly famous among these important bills [written or revised by
Jefferson for Virginia's legislature] in the revisal of 1770 was
the Bill for establishing religious freedom, a bill called by Julian
Boyd "Jefferson's declaration of intellectual and spiritual
independence." Unlike some of his other great bills, this one was at
long last enacted into law in 1786, the first piece of
legislation ever to provide expressly for full religious freedom. In
this contribution alone, Jefferson advanced far beyond his
revered John Locke whose philosophy of toleration "stopped short," as
Jefferson said, of the full freedom required by the
independent intelligence and conscience of man. (Adrienne Koch, ed.,
The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the
American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller,
1965, p. 280.)
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can
stand by itself. (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782;
from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey:
Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?
Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as
well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce
uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more
than of face and stature. (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782;
from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and
children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt,
tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards
uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To
make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To
support roguery and error all over the earth. (Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on Virginia, 1782; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p.
363.)
No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs,
for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for
consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty;
but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in
ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar. (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
Virginia, 1782; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.)
In the Notes [on the State of Virginia] Jefferson elaborated his views
on government's keeping its distance from all religious
affairs and religious opinions. "The legitimate powers of government,"
he wrote, "extend to such acts only as are injurious to
others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are
twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor
breaks my leg." (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and
the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987,
pp. 42-43. )
Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications. Among the most
valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind,
sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health. (Thomas
Jefferson, letter to James Madison, February 20, 1784.
From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of
the American Experiment and a Free Society, New
York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 305.)
[W]e have solved by fair experiment the great and interesting question
whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in
government and obedience to the laws. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to
James Madison, December 16, 1786, according to Albert
Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious
Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p.
47.)
... shake off all the fears of servile prejudices under which weak
minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and
call to her tribunal for 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. You will naturally examine first the religion of your
own country. Read the bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus.
The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor in one
scale, and their not being against the laws of nature does not weigh
against them. But those facts in the bible which contradict
the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a
variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of
the writer to inspiration from god. Examine upon what evidence his
pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so
strong as that it's [sic] falshood [sic] would be more improbable than
a change of the laws of nature in the case he relates.... Do
not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of it's [sic]
consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will
find
incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in it's
[sic] exercise, and the love of others which it will procure
you. If you find reason to believe there is a god, a consciousness
that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you,
will be a vast additional incitement. If that there be a future state,
the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to
deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a
belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat that you must lay
aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject any
thing because any other person, or description of persons
have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given
you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the
rightness but uprightness of the decision.... (Thomas Jefferson,
letter to his young nephew Peter Carr, August 10, 1787. From
Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the
American Experiment and a Free Society, New York:
George Braziller, 1965, pp. 320-321.)
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about
a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. (Thomas
Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799. From Gorton
Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of
American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499.)
To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the
press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to
martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we
think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
(Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Green Mumford, June 18, 1799.
From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment:
The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York:
George Braziller, 1965, p. 341.)
"I know," Jefferson had written, ... "that Gouverneur Morris, who
pretended to be in his [George Washington's] secrets &
believed himself to be so, has often told me that Genl. Washington
believed no more of that system [Christianity] than he himself
did." (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 85. Jefferson's
comments were written in his journal, Anas, in February, 1800,
according to Boller, p. 80.)
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 laws must protect, and to violate which
would be oppression. (Thomas Jefferson, "First Inaugural Address,"
March 4, 1801; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.)
... And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that
religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and
suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political
intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and
bloody persecutions. ... error of opinion may be tolerated where
reason is left free to combat it. ... I deem the essential
principles of our government . ..[:] Equal and exact justice to all
men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; ...
freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under
the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries
impartially selected. (Thomas Jefferson, "First Inaugural Address,"
March 4, 1801. From Mortimer Adler, ed., The Annals of
America: 1797-1820, Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements, Vol.
4; Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, pp.
144-145.
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American
people which declared that their legislature should make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free
exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between
church and state. (Thomas Jefferson, as President, in a letter to the
Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802; from George
Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel
Press, 1983, p. 369)
I will never, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or
admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
(Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803. From Gorton
Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper
Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499.)
It behoves 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,
letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803. From Daniel
B. Baker, ed., Political Quotations, Detroit: Gale Research, Inc.,
1990, p. 189.)
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume
authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the
General Government. It must then rest with the States, as far as it
can be in any human authority. But it is only proposed that I
should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and prayer. That is,
that I should indirectly assume to the United States an
authority over religious exercises, which the Constitution has
directly precluded them from. It must be meant, too, that this
recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by
some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine
and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription, perhaps in
public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the
penalty make the recommendation less a law of conduct for those to
whom it is directed? I do not believe it is in the best
interests of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its
exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious
societies,
that the General Government should be invested with the power of
effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them.
Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act
of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine
for itself the times of these exercises, and the objects proper for
them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right
can never be safer than in their own hands, where the Constitution has
deposited it. (Thomas Jefferson, just before the end of
his second term, in a letter to Samuel Miller--a Presbyterian
minister--on January 23, 1808; from Willson Whitman, arranger,
Jefferson's Letters, Eau Claire, Wisconsin: E. M. Hale and Company,
ND, pp. 241-242.
But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer [Jesus]
of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed
from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted
into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing
their oppressors in Church and State. (Thomas Jefferson, in a letter
to Samuel Kercheval, 1810; from George Seldes, ed., The
Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370)
History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest
grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious
leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.
(Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813; from
George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New
Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370)
The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted
into the machine of government, have been a very formidable
engine against the civil and religious rights of man. (Thomas
Jefferson, as quoted by Saul K. Padover in Thomas Jefferson on
Democracy, New York, 1946, p. 165, according to Albert Menendez and
Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on
Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 48.)
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his
abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire
wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them,
and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever
preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all
mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes. (Thomas
Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814; from George
Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel
Press, 1983, p. 371)
Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be
sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to
dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the
measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a
priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves,
set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what
we must disbelieve? (Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief,
Philadelphia bookseller, 1814, on the occasion of
prosecution for selling De Becourt's "Sur le CrŽation du Monde, un
Syst me d'Organisation Primitive"; from George Seldes,
ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983,
p. 371)
If M. de Becourt's book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false
in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely
hear both sides, if we choose. (Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G.
Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814, on the occasion of
prosecution for selling De Becourt's "Sur le CrŽation du Monde, un
Syst me d'Organisation Primitive"; from George Seldes,
ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983,
p. 371)
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of
America, a fact like this can become a subject to inquiry, and of
criminal inquiry, too, as an offence against religion; that a question
about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil
magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? (Thomas Jefferson,
letter to N. G. Dufief, April 19, 1814. From Gorton
Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.)
... If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that
it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the
Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We
have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we
act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in
support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in
Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of
the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to
Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have
been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue,
then, must have had some other foundation than love of God. (Thomas
Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. From
Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the
American Experiment and a Free Society, New York:
George Braziller, 1965, p. 358.)
Across the ages, clergy have been interested [according to Jefferson]
not in truth but only in wealth and power; when rational
people have had difficulty swallowing "their impious heresies," then
the clergy have, with the help of the state, forced "them
down their throats." Five years later, he [Jefferson] wrote of "this
loathsome combination of church and state" that for so many
centuries reduced human beings to "dupes and drudges." (Edwin S.
Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 47. According to
Gaustad, the first quotes are from a letter from Jefferson to
William Baldwin, January 19, 1810; the second source is a letter from
Jefferson to Charles Clay, January 29, 1815.)
A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution
[the University of Virginia]. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to
Thomas Cooper, October 7, 1814. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene
Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.)
I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives.... It is
in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be
read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not
satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared
assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there
would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a
priest. The artificial structures they have built on the the purest of
all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence
and power, revolt those who think for themselves, and who read in that
system only what is really there. (Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith: Mrs. M. Harrison, August 6, 1816.
From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The
Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p.
492.)
"I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another,"
Thomas Jefferson once remarked, adding that he had "ever
judged" the religion of others by their lives "rather than their"
words. (Richard B. Morris:Richard B., Seven Who Shaped Our
Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, Harper & Row, 1973,
p. 269. The Jefferson quote is from his letter to Mrs.
M. Harrison Smith: Mrs. M. Harrison, 1816.)
He [Jefferson] rejoiced with John Adams when the Congregational church
was finally disestablished in Connecticut in 1818;
welcoming "the resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty,
Jefferson congratulated Adams "that this den of priesthood is at
length broken up, and that a protestant popedom is no longer to
disgrace American history and character." (Edwin S. Gaustad,
Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49.)
In 1820 as he described his plans for the University of Virginia to
his former private secretary, William Short, Jefferson
acknowledged that his plan for the first truly secular university
would have opposition: weak opposition (in his view) from the
College of William and Mary, but strong opposition from "the priests
of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the
human mind its improvement is ominous." (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of
Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 48. The letter to Short was dated 13
April 1820.)
Jefferson bemoaned the pattern of church life that gave the
unenlightened and bigoted clergy "stated and privileged days to
collect and catechize us, opportunities of delivering their oracles to
the people in mass, and of moulding their minds as wax in
the hollow of their hands." Despite this enormous advantage, however,
Virginians are liberal enough, reasonable enough, to
"give fair play" to a university [the University of Virginia] set free
from dogmatisms and fixed ideas. (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of
Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987, p. 48.)
This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human
mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it
may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat
it. (Thomas Jefferson, to prospective teachers, University of
Virginia; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New
Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.)
If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can
ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public
opinion, [then and only then will truth] prevail over fanaticism.
(Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our
Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987, p. 49. Jefferson's words are, according to
Gaustad, from his letter to Jared Sparks, 4 November 1820.)
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the
supreme being as his father in the womb of a Virgin Mary,
will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the
brain of Jupiter.... But we may hope that the dawn of reason
and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all
this artificial scaffolding. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to John
Adams, 11 April 1823, as quoted by E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in
Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 287.)
... Jefferson expressed himself strongly on that larger apocalypse,
the Book of Revelation, in a letter to Alexander Smyth of 17
January 1825: it is "merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy,
nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our
own nightly dreams." Apocalyptic writing deserved no commentary, for
"what has no meaning admits no explanation";
therefore, apocalyptic prophecies associated with Jesus deserved and
would receive no attention from Jefferson in his Life and
Morals of Jesus. (E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson,
ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 287.)
... our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and
prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to
the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others
later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst
the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had
persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings
and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted,
restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of
reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the
rights of man. The general spread of the light of science
has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass
of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,
nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,
by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for
others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day [Fourth of
July] forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an
undiminished devotion to them.... (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger
C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 [Jefferson's last letter,
dated ten days before he died]; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American
Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p.
372.)
Jefferson wrote voluminously to prove that Christianity was not part
of the law of the land and that religion or irreligion was
purely a private matter, not cognizable by the state. (Leonard W.
Levy, Treason Against God: A History of the Offense of
Blasphemy, New York: Schocken Books, 1981, p. 335.)
So much is Jefferson identified in the American mind with his battle
for political liberty that it is difficult to entertain the
possibility
that he felt even more strongly about religious liberty. If the
letters and activities of his post presidential years can be taken as
a
fair guide, however, he maintained an unrelenting vigilance with
respect to freedom in religion, and an unrelenting, perhaps even
unforgiving, distrust of all those who would seek in any way to
mitigate or limit or nullify that freedom. (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith
of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1987, pp. 46-47.)
... Jefferson, who as a careful historian had made a study of the
origin of the maxim [that the common law is inextricably linked
with Christianity], challenged such an assertion. He noted that "the
common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet
pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ
pronounced or that such a character existed .... What a
conspiracy this, between Church and State." (Leo Pfeffer, Religion,
State, and the Burger Court, Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1984, p. 121.)
... The most revealing writings concerned the commonly repeated maxim
that Christianity was part of the common law. In two
posthumously published writings, an appendix to his Reports of Cases
Determined in the General Court and a letter to Major
John Cartwright, Thomas Jefferson took issue with the maxim. He traced
the erroneous interpretation to a seventeenth-century
law commentator who, Jefferson argued, misinterpreted a
fifteenth-century precedent. He then traced the error forward to his
favorite b te noire, Lord Mansfield, who wrote that "the essential
principles of revealed religion are part of the common law."
Jefferson responded with a classic, positivistic critique: Mansfield
"leaves us at our peril to find out what, in the opinion of the
judge, and according to the measures of his foot or his faith, are
those essential principles of revealed religion, obligatory on us
as part of the common law." (Daniel R. Ernst, "Church-State Issues and
the Law: 1607-1870" in John F. Wilson, ed., Church
and State in America: A Bibliographic Guide. The Colonial and Early
National Periods," New York: Greenwood Press, 1986,
p. 337. Ernst gives his source as Thomas Jefferson, "Whether
Christianity is Part of the Common Law?")
It was what he did not like in religion that gave impetus to
Jefferson's activity in that troublesome and often bloody arena. He
did not like dogmatism, obscurantism, blind obedience, or any
interference with the free exercise of the mind. Moreover, he did
not like the tendency of religion to confuse truth with power, special
insight with special privilege, and the duty to maintain with
the right to persecute the dissenter. Ecclesiastical despotism was as
reprehensible as despotism of the political sort, even when
it justified itself, as it often did, in the name of doing good. This
had been sufficiently evident in his native Virginia to give
Jefferson every stimulus he needed to see that independence must be
carried over into the realm of religion. (E. S. Gaustad,
"Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986,
p. 279.)
... If this [extending religion's influence on the basis of "reason
alone"] is the path chosen by Omnipotence and Infallibility, what
sense can there possibly be in "fallible and uninspired men ...
setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only
true and infallible"? No sense at all, argued Jefferson, who found
compulsion in religion to be irrational, impious, and tyrannical.
If such compulsion is bad for the vulnerable citizen, its consequences
are no more wholesome for the church: "It tends also to
corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage,
by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and
emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it." (E.
S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed.,
Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1986, p. 280.)
A final example of Jefferson's separationism may be drawn from his
founding of the University of Virginia in the last years of his
life. Prepared to transform the College of William and Mary into the
principal university of the state, Jefferson would do so only
if the college divested itself of all ties with sectarian
religion--that is, with its old Anglicanism now represented by the
Protestant
Episcopal Church. The college declined to make that break with its
past, and Jefferson proceeded with plans for his own
university well to the west of Anglican-dominated tidewater Virginia.
In Charlottesville this new school ("broad & liberal &
modern," as Jefferson envisioned it in a letter to [Joseph] Priestly
of 18 January 1800) opened in 1825 with professorships in
languages and law, natural and moral philosophy, history and
mathematics, but not in divinity. In Jefferson's view, as reported in
Robert Healey's Jefferson on Religion in Public Education, not only
did Virginia's laws prohibit such favoritism (for divinity or
theology was inevitably sectarian), but high-quality education was not
well served by those who preferred mystery to morals
and divisive dogma to the unities of science. Too great a devotion to
doctrine can drive men mad; if it does not have that tragic
effect, it at least guarantees that a man's education will be
mediocre. What is really significant in religion, its moral content,
would be taught at the University of Virginia, but in philosophy, not
divinity. If Almighty God has made the mind free, one of the
ways to keep it free is to protect young minds from the clouded
convolutions of theologians. Jefferson wanted education
separated from religion because of his own conclusions concerning the
nature of religion, its strengths and its weaknesses, its
dark past and its possibly brighter future. (E. S. Gaustad,
"Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A
Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, pp.
282-283.)
Moving well beyond the traditional deistic triad of God, freedom, and
immortality, Jefferson revealed his strongest feelings and
convictions with regard to the ecclesiastics. On two counts he found
them critically deficient. In the realm of politics and power,
they were tyrannical; in the realm of theology and truth, they were
perverse. Jefferson's strongest language is reserved for those
clergy who, as he said in a letter to Moses Robinson of 23 March 1801,
"had got a smell of union between church and state"
and would impede the advance of liberty and science. Such clergy,
whether in America or abroad, have so adulterated religion
that it has become "a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to
themselves" and a means of grasping "impious heresies, in
order to force them down [men's] throats" (letter to Samuel Kercheval,
19 January 1810). In his old age, Jefferson softened his
invective not one whit: "The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the
most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and
ambitious, ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be
obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in
this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin
consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not find in his
Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and
one is three." And if they cannot revive the holy
inquisition of the Middle Ages, they will seek to mobilize the
inquisition of public opinion, "that lord of the Universe" (letter to
William Short, 13 April 1820). Jefferson, the enemy of all arbitrary
and capricious power, found that which was clothed in the
ceremonial garb of religion to be particularly despicable. Even more
disturbing to Jefferson was the priestly perversion of simple
truths. If "in this virgin hemisphere" it was no longer possible to
burn men's bodies, it was still possible to stunt their minds. In
the "revolution of 1800" that saw Jefferson's election to the
presidency, the candidate wrote to his good friend Rush that while
his views would please deists and rational Christians, they would
never please that "irritable tribe of priests" who still hoped for
government sanction and support. Nor would his election please them,
"especially the Episcopalians and the
Congregationalists." They fear that I will oppose their schemes of
establishment. "And they believe rightly: for I have sworn
upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of man" (23 September 1800). It was this
aspect of establishment that Jefferson most dreaded and most
relentlessly opposed--not just the power, profit, and corruption
that invariably accompanied state-sanctioned ecclesiasticism but the
theological distortion and intellectual absurdity that passed
for reason and good sense. We must not be held captive to "the
Platonic mysticisms" or to the "gossamer fabrics of factitious
religion." Nor must we ever again be required to confess that which
mankind did not and could not comprehend, "for I suppose
belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition"
(letter to John Adams, 22 August 1813). (E. S. Gaustad,
"Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986,
p. 291.)
I take to heart Jefferson's aspiration that the idea of church-state
separation "germinate and take root among [the American
people's] political tenets." (Kenneth S. Saladin, "Municipal
Church-State Litigation and the Issue of Standing," in the "Church
and State" issue of National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Winter,
1988, p. 23.)
To conclude this discussion of the religious clauses of the First
Amendment, let's talk some more about Thomas Jefferson and
his "wall." Some TV preachers, as well as writers, politicians, and,
worst of all, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, have
sought to pull down the wall by disparaging Jefferson's influence on
the First Amendment. A popular bit of historical revisionism
that floats around these days goes something like this: Jefferson
served as ambassador to France during the writing of the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had no hand in their
preparation and passage because he was out of the country.
Therefore, his metaphor about the "wall of separation" is misplaced
and ill-informed because he was living in France and was
out of touch. Tommyrot! Thomas Jefferson was James Madison's mentor.
Madison as the chief architect of both the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights drew heavily from Jefferson's
ideas and kept in regular contact with his fellow Virginian even
though the latter lived in France. Volumes of correspondence exist
between the two men as they discussed the day's crucial
events. Jefferson understood that the First Amendment created a
separation between church and state because he, more than
most of the Founders, gave form and substance to the nation's
understanding of how the two institutions should best relate in
the new nation. Some politicians, lawyers, and preachers subject us to
mental cruelty when they disparage Jefferson's
interpretation simply because he lived in France during the years of
the Constitution's framing. (Robert L. Maddox, Baptist
minister and speech writer and religious liaison for President Jimmy
Carter, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of
Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, pp. 67-68.)
Jefferson was a deist. It was a reasonable position at that time since
there was no plausible scientific explanation for it.
Thomas Jefferson, American president, author, scientist, architect,
educator, and diplomat (1743-1826).
Deist, avid separationist.
"Question boldly even the existence of God."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that
the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they
are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot
reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of
materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian
church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked
atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus
told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined
what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient
fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and
thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter." [letter to John
Adams, August 15, 1820]
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction
of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and
imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What
has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of
the world fools and the other half hypocrites." [Notes on Virginia]
“History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest
grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious
leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.”
[1813]
“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.” [Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823]
>
>Let me highlight something for you, James: "it is impossible, I say, for the
>human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and
>effect, up to an ultimate cause."
>
>At the beginning of this letter, Jefferson says, "I can never be an atheist."
>
>Why did you say "Jefferson NOT"? Perhaps youre on my side, perhaps you meant
>Jefferson NOT AN ATHEIST :)
Deist is a reasonable position. It's not aligned with any organized
religion.
>
>> Adams NOT
>
>Why are you doing this to yourself, James? Have you read through 15 volumes of
>Adams' works? I have. Page Smith has. Do you know what Adams said about
>Voltaire and the leaders of the French Revolution?
>
>Read through his 15,000 letters, James, he sqaurely CONDEMNED them for their ATHEISM!!
>
>I guess what you meant to say was Adams NOT AN ATHEIST.
So?
John Adams
(1735-1826; major leader at Constitutional Convention in 1787; 2nd
U.S. President , 1797-1801)
In his youth John Adams (1735-1826) thought to become a minister, but
soon realized that his independent opinions would
create much difficulty. At the age of twenty-one, therefore, he
resolved to become a lawyer, noting that in following law rather
than divinity, "I shall have liberty to think for myself without
molesting others or being molested myself." (Edwin S. Gaustad,
Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987, p. 88. The Adams quote is from his
letter to Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756.)
We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all
religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal
chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will
be made in the human character and the state of
society. (John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, as quoted by Albert
Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on
Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 1.)
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first
example of governments erected on the simple principles of
nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse
themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition,
they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the
detail of the formation of the American governments is at
present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it
may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be
pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews
with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of
Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in
merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be
acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use
of reason and the senses.... (John Adams, "A Defence
of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America"
[1787-1788]; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free
Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 258.)
Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the
natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of
miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern
part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point
gained in favor of the rights of mankind. (John Adams, "A Defence of
the Constitutions of Government of the United States of
America" [1787-1788]; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and
a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 258.)
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose.
Superstition and Dogmatism cannot confine it. (John Adams, letter
to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816. From Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith
of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation,
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 88.)
We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so,
of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of
free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we
from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I
believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it
blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the
books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In
most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the
stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by
boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it
is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon
the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as
most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last
century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but
substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any
book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free
inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or
imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the
divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating
Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I
have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great
obstructions to the improvement of the human mind.
Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be
established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few
persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also
true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to
depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the
human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress
in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and
essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and
unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed
with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear
examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu. (John Adams,
letter to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was
90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following
year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American
Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p.
234.)
>
>> Einstein NOT
>
>Which Einstein? The one who referred to himself as a "deeply religious man"?
>or do you mean Jeff Einstein, the guy who delivers my morning paper (cause
>he's a believer too).
>
>Do you mean the Einstein who agreed with Jefferson on the ease at which a
>person of good sense can easily apprehend the deity in the design of the
>universe, the one who spoke of
>
>"That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning
>power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe"
>
>I guess what you meant to say was Einstein NOT AN ATHEIST.
So?
Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the
universe]", but the quote is purposely taken out of context by theists
in order to mislead and lend credence to their religion.
Einstein recognized Quantum Theory as the best scientific model for
the physical data available. He did not accept claims that the theory
was complete, or that probability and randomness were an essential
part of nature. He believed that a better, more complete theory would
be found, which would have no need for statistical interpretations or
randomness.
His "God does not play dice..." comment in his debate with Niels Bohr
was a simple reflection of this sentiment. A better quote, which
refers to Einstein's refusal to accept some aspects of the most
popular interpretations of quantum theory would be:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony
of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and
actions of human beings."
(Note: Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677), was a Dutch
philosopher and pantheistic theologian. Pantheism is a doctrine
equating a deity with the universe and its phenomena.)
Further, according to the book "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"
(edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press,
publisher), Einstein wrote in a March 24, 1954 letter:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it."
He also said in his autobiographical notes (translated from German):
"Thus I came -- despite the fact that I was the son of entirely
irreligious (Jewish) parents -- to a deep religiosity, which, however,
found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of
popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in
the stories of the bible could not be true. The consequence was a
positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression
that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies;
it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of
authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards
the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment
... "
Go to <http://www.westegg.com/einstein/>, page down to the "In His Own
Words" section, and follow the link labeled "Einstein on Science and
Religion" to the URL <http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/ESR.html>
where more of Einstein's comments on religion can be found.
>
>> Hawking NOT
>
>I don't think I mentioned this guy. From what I've read of him, he thinks once
>he finds a unified field theory he'll know "the mind of God."
>
>> Lincoln NOT
>
>I didn't mention him, either. But you don't even know how bad you're putting
>your foot in your mouth on this one. You fly in the face of every Lincoln
>scholar who has written. And here were not only talking about a believer, but
>a BIBLE-BELIEVER. You better do a little reading on this fellow before you say
>any more.
Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).
In 2000 Years of Disbelief by James A. Haught, Lincoln is mentioned on
pages 125 through 127. From the material presented
it would seem that Lincoln as a young man was an avid anti-christian
and most likely an atheist. In his later years, he came to
believe in God, but still was anti-religious in the sense that he
rejected organized religion. Some selections from Haught:
John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner: "He was an avowed and
open infidel, and sometimes bordered on Atheism...He went
further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than
any man I ever heard."
Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York: "The Bible
is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I
could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of
Christian dogma."
Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie
Lincoln: "My earlier views of the unsoundness of the
Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures
have become clearer and stronger with advancing years,
and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
As a young man Lincoln apparently wrote a manuscript that he planned
to publish, which vehemently argued against the divine
origin of the Bible and the Christian scheme of salvation. Samuel
Hill, a friend and mentor, convinced him to drop it, considering
the disastrous consequences it would have on his political career.
William H Herndon, a former law partner, wrote a biography on Lincoln
titled: "The true story of a great life". In it Herndon
discusses Lincoln's religious views extensively.
Gordon Leidner has collected some quotations from Lincoln's later
years in which he invokes God, and he makes the argument
that Lincoln became a sincere believer. It seems to me he did come to
believe in God, but he never accepted organized
Christianity. Perhaps this change was partly because he felt a need to
align his beliefs with the majority in the country he was
leading.
>
>Of course, who you meant was Rodney Lincoln, the guy who works at the gas station.
>
>> Franklin NOT
>
>Not what?
>
>"I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his
>Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service
>we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is
>immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its
>conduct in this."
>
>-BEN FRANKLIN
>
>sounds like an Atheist to me.
Nope.
Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790; American statesman, diplomat, scientist, and printer)
I am fully of your Opinion respecting religious Tests; but, tho' the
People of Massachusetts have not in their new Constitution
kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that People were
100 Years ago, we must allow they have gone great
Lengths in Liberality of Sentiment on religious Subjects; and we may
hope for greater Degrees of Perfection, when their
Constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian
Preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did,
without Salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine Tests would
never have existed; for I think they were invented, not so
much to secure Religion itself, as the Emoluments of it. When a
Religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it
does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so
that its Professors are obliged to call for help of the Civil
Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. (Benjamin
Franklin, 1706-1790, American statesman, diplomat,
scientist, and printer, from a letter to Richard Price, October 9,
1780; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment:
The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York:
George Braziller, 1965, p. 93.)
[Benjamin] Franklin drank deep of the Protestant ethic and then,
discomforted by church constraints, became a freethinker. All
his life he kept Sundays free for reading, but would visit any church
to hear a great speaker, no doubt recognizing a talent he
himself did not possess. With typical honesty and humor he wrote out
his creed in 1790, the year he died: "I believe in one
God, Creator of the universe.... That the most acceptable service we
can render Him is doing good to His other children.... As
to Jesus ... I have ... some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a
question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and
think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an
opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble." (Alice J.
Hall, "Philosopher of Dissent: Benj. Franklin," National Geographic,
Vol. 148, No. 1, July, 1975, p. 94.)
Though himself surely a freethinker, Franklin cautioned other
freethinkers to be careful about dismissing institutional religion too
lightly or too quickly. "Think how great a proportion of Mankind," he
warned in 1757, "consists of weak and ignorant Men and
Women, and of inexperienc'd Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the
Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to
support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it
becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its Security." (Edwin
S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 61.)
>
>> Monroe NOT
>
>Marilyn actually was quite the spiritual person.
>
>> Madison NOT.
>
>Do you mean the James Madison who attended the seminary at Princeton with
>intentions of becoming a clergyman, then changed over to law and became the
>father of the Constitution and the fourth President?
James Madison
(1751-1836; principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights;
4th U.S. President, 1809-1817)
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for
every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect.
(James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774, as
quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion
and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 37.)
Who does not see that the same authority which can establish
Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with
the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all
other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen
to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any
one establishment may force him to conform to any other
establishment in all cases whatsoever? (James Madison, "A Memorial and
Remonstrance," addressed to the General Assembly
of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785; from George Seldes, ed., The
Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel
Press, pp. 459-460. According to Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our
Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 39 ff., Madison's "Remonstrance" was
instrumental in blocking the multiple establishment of all
denominations of Christianity in Virginia.)
... Congress, in voting a plan for the government of the Western
territories, retained a clause setting aside one section in each
township for the support of public schools, while striking out the
provision reserving a section for the support of religion.
Commented Madison: "How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign
to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of
public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could
have received the countenance of a committee is truly a
matter of astonishment." (Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our
Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries,
Harper & Row, 1973, p. 206. The Congress here referred to was the
Continental Congress; the Madison quote is from his
letter to James Monroe, May 29, 1785, according to Morris.)
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of
oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the
majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is
chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government
contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the
Government is the mere instrument of the major number of
the constituents. (James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, October 17,
1788; from Michael Kammen, The Origins of the
American Constitution: A Documentary History, 1986, pp. 369-370. )
"In a free government," Madison declared, "the security for civil
rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in
the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the
multiplicity of sects." (James A. Henretta, The Evolution of
American Society, 1700-1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis, Lexington,
MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1973, p. 136.
According to Henretta, the quote is from Number 51 of the Federalist
Papers.)
Here [in the Virginia statute for religious liberty] the separation
between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of
Man excepted from the grant on which all authority is founded, is
traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the limits to this
authority established with as much solemnity as the forms of
legislation can express. The law has the further advantage of having
been the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a
deliberate sanction of a vast majority, comprizing [sic]
every sect of Christians in the State. This act is a true standard of
Religious liberty; its principle the great barrier agst [against]
usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected &
no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them
short of this principle, will be found to leave crevices, at least
thro' which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster, that
feeding & thriving on its own venom, gradually swells to a size and
strength overwhelming all laws divine & human. (James
Madison, "Monopolies. Perpetuities. Corporations. Ecclesiastical
Endowments," as reprinted in Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's
Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol.
III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-555. The
"Detatched Memoranda" is a manuscript, written sometime after Madison
left office in 1817, in Madison's own hand, with
notes he made in preparation for the arrangement and publication of
his public papers, a task he did not complete before his
death in 1836.)
Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the
Constitution of the United States the danger of
encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents
already furnished in their short history. (See the cases
in which negatives were put by J. M. on two bills passd by Congs and
his signature withheld from another. See also attempt in
Kentucky for example, where it was proposed to exempt Houses of
Worship from taxes. (James Madison, "Monopolies.
Perpetuities. Corporations. Ecclesiastical Endowments," as reprinted
in Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda,"
William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October,
1946], p. 555. The parenthetical note at the end, which
lacks a closed parenthesis in Fleet, was apparently a note Madison
made to himself regarding examples of improper
encroachment to use when the "Detatched Memoranda" were edited and
published, and seems to imply clearly that Madison
supported taxing churches. )
On Feb. 21, 1811, Madison vetoed a bill for incorporating the
Episcopal Church in Alexandria and on Feb. 28, 1811, one
reserving land in Mississippi territory for a Baptist Church. (James
D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents
[Washington, 1896-1899], I, 489-490, as cited in a footnote, Elizabeth
Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William &
Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], p.
555.)
Chaplainships of both Congress and the armed services were established
sixteen years before the First Amendment was
adopted. It would have been fatuous folly for anybody to stir a major
controversy over a minor matter before the meaning of
the amendment had been threshed out in weightier matters. But Madison
did foresee the danger that minor deviations from the
constitutional path would deepen into dangerous precedents. He took
care of one of them by his veto [in 1811] of the
appropriation for a Baptist church. Others he dealt with in his "Essay
on Monopolies," unpublished until 1946. Here is what he
wrote: "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress
consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure
principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both
points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S.
forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The
law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for
the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of
religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid
out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a
national establishment ... ?" The appointments, he said, were
also a palpable violation of equal rights. Could a Catholic clergyman
ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? "To say that his
religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to
lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine
that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major
sects have a right to govern the minor." The problem, said the
author of the First Amendment, was how to prevent "this step beyond
the landmarks of power [from having] the effect of a
legitimate precedent." Rather than let that happen, it would "be
better to apply to it the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex
[the law takes no account of trifles]." Or, he said (likewise in
Latin), class it with faults that result from carelessness or that
human nature could scarcely avoid." "Better also," he went on, "to
disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for
the army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in
matters of religion." ... The deviations from constitutional
principles went further: "Religious proclamations by the Executive
recommending thanksgivings and fasts are shoots from the
same root with the legislative acts reviewed. Altho' recommendations
only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the
trust delegated to political rulers." (Irving Brant, The Bill of
Rights: Its Origin and Meaning, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc., 1965, pp. 423-424. Brant gives the source of "Essay on
Monopolies" as Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's
Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol.
III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-562.)
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past
one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will
both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together. (James
Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822;
published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. by Saul K.
Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.)
The only ultimate protection for religious liberty in a country like
ours, Madison pointed out--echoing Jefferson;--is public
opinion: a firm and pervading opinion that the First Amendment works.
"Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect
separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of
importance." (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the
New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 56. Madison's words,
according to Gaustad, are from his letter of 10
July 1822 to Edward Livingston.)
Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and
observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine
origin, we cannot deny equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet
yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If
this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man:
To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be
rendered. (James Madison, according to Leonard W. Levy, Treason
Against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy,
New York: Schocken Books, 1981, p. xii.)
This assertion [that Madison was committed to total and complete
separation of church and state] would be challenged by the
nonpreferentialists, who agree with Justice Rehnquist's dissent in the
Jaffree case. Contrasted with the analysis set forth above,
Rehnquist insisted that Madison's "original language Ônor shall any
national religion be established' obviously does not conform
to the Ôwall of separation' between church and state which latter day
commentators have ascribed to him." Rehnquist believes
Madison was seeking merely to restrict Congress from establishing a
particular national church. There are three problems with
this contention. First, nothing in Madison's acts or words support
such a proposition. Indeed, his opposition to the General
Assessment Bill in Virginia, detailed in the "Memorial and
Remonstrance," contradicts Rehnquist directly. Secondly, all of
Madison's writings after 1789 support the Court's twentieth-century
understanding of the term "wall of separation." Third, the
reference to Madison's use of "national" simply misses his definition
of the word. Madison had an expansive intention when he
used the term national. He believed that "religious proclamations by
the Executive recommending thanksgiving and fasts ... imply
and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion." He
commented in a similar way about chaplains for the House
and Senate. Historical evidence lends no support to the Rehnquist
thesis. And clearly Jefferson, even though absent from the
First Congress, seems a far more secure source of "original intent"
than Justice Rehnquist. (Robert S. Alley, ed., The Supreme
Court on Church and State, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p.
13.)
Late in his life [therefore in the 1830s?] he [Madison] wrote to his
friend Robert Walsh with whom Madison conducted a
steady correspondence: "It was the Universal opinion of the Century
preceding the last, that Civil Government could not stand
without the prop of a Religious establishment, and that the Christian
religion itself, would perish if not supported by a legal
provision for its Clergy. The experience of Virginia conspicuously
corroborates the disproof of both opinions. The Civil
Government, tho' bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy,
possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions
with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the
morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have
been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from
the State." (Robert L. Maddox, Separation of Church and
State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing,
1987, p. 39.)
At age eighty-one [therefore, in 1832?], both looking back at the
American experience and looking forward with vision
sharpened by practical experience, Madison summed up his views of
church and state relations in a letter to a "Reverend
Adams": "I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every
possible case, to trace the line of separation between the
rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as
to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The
tendency of a usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting
coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded by
an entire abstinence of the Government from interference in any way
whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order,
and protecting each sect against trespass on its legal rights by
others." (Robert L. Maddox, Separation of Church and State:
Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad, 1987, p. 39.)
>
>> They ALLdiscounted the existence of a personal god. All these men
>> were deists (closet atheists?) agnostics or just plain atheists
>
>Oh, I see. I thought this was the alt.atheism group. Why do you folks always
>skirt around all these geniuses by simply trying to qualify their theism with
>"not personal"?
>
>Is this an atheist's newsgroup or is this alt.deism? I thought I was arguing
>with atheists. I was claiming that Jefferson was a theist, not an atheist. And
>you say NOT??
He was a deist.
>
>Furthermore, you'll have to come up with a little evidence to show that deism
>is closet atheism. That may be your wishful thinking, but if you read the
>likes of Jefferson's letter above, he despised atheists.
At that time there was no plausible explanation for the first cause.
>
>> You have
>> been brainwashed. Shit...
>
>But you sure haven't been mouthwashed much.
>
>> you want quotes to make licorice out of? I
>> got em for all your lies.
>
>Give me the quotes that show these guys were atheists. That's your claim;
>prove it. Good luck.
>
>> Are you deceptive and lying right through
>> your fucking teeth for the lurkers, or you are just plain stupid. Or a
>> phony.
>
>I'll continue to post the historic documents and let the lurkers decide for
>themselves, while you rant and rave, curse and swear.
Promises, promises!
>
>> It is dfficult to fathom the christian ethic when such misrepresentation
>> and distortion of the facts are mainstream.
>
>Check the sources out yourself. Your list of atheists betrays you.
>
>> Anything for a convert.
>
>Christianity is entirely too reasonble for this group. I don't expect many
>converts among unintelligent folks.
LOL
According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
polled claimed to believe in a personal God. That is, approximately
93% of the scientists polled were either atheists of agnostics.
See:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm
Intelligence is inversely proportional to the intensity of religious
faith.
http://anytime.cs.umass.edu/~danilche/intelligence.txt
>
>RG
austus
wrote:
>maff91 wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 04 Jun 1999 15:12:16 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
>> >Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
>> >reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
>> >smartest kids in the class.
>> >
>> >Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
>>
>> Nope.
>>
>> According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
>> magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
>> God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
>> polled claimed to believe in a personal God.
>
>Ah, I see you use the "personal" qualifier. Now tell the whole truth about the
>poll survey. The question asked to the scientists was "do you believe in a God
>who exists in the form of a person?"
>
>If you really want tried and true poll results, you have to look at Gallup. I
>believe his last survey continued to show a 92% belief in God... and that was
>in America, where atheism abounds.
>
>> That is, approximately
>> 93% of the scientists polled were either atheists of agnostics.
>
>93% of those polled were also either UFO's or homosapiens, too! (it's
>wonderful what you can logically do with an "or")
>
>The biggest question here is what qualifies someone as a scientist? If they
>teach 7th grade biology, are they scientists?
>
>As Henry Margenau, Yale University Scientist has said: your average high
>school science teacher may tend to poo poo religion, but when you get up to
>the high-powered scientists' level, the schroedingers, the einsteins, the
>heisenbergs, paul davies, et al, there is a profound respect for theism.
profound respect for deism or perhaps pantheism, but not usually
theism. And if theism usually not Christianity. Be honest.
Austus
dotcom
>
> Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
> Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
> reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
> smartest kids in the class.
>
> Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Sorry, no. I don't do drugs, and I don't care to become delusional like
you. That's right, you can bogart the whole thing yourself.
dotcom, off...
yes, I am an atheist, and no, I don't want to hear about jeeezus
There is no god worth our worship.
Martin Schlottmann
Gardiner
>
> On Fri, 04 Jun 1999 20:08:24 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
> wrote:
>
> >James Veverka wrote:
> >>
> >> Gardiner,
> >>
> >> What, is this your first day at school? Jefferson NOT
> >
> >Not what? You imply that he was an atheist. Are you at all educated? You're
> >showing a tremendous lack of information about Jefferson.
> >
> >Let me teach you a few lessons in history and philosophy, James, my friend.
> >
> >There's something among philosophers and theologians called the "teleological
> >proof of God's existence." I'm sure it's a concept which is often critiqued in
> >this group, as it is an argument used by theists to refute atheists.
> >
> >Let me give you a famous version of this theistic argument:
>
> Thomas Jefferson
> (1743-1826; author, Declaration of Independence and the Statute of
> Virginia for Religious Freedom; 3rd U.S. President,
> 1801-1809)
>
> Convinced that religious liberty must, most assuredly, be built into
> the structural frame of the new [state] government, Jefferson
> proposed this language [for the new Virginia constitution]: "All
> persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor
> shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious
> institution"
Does that proved Jefferson was an atheist?
> I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover
> health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own
> judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
Jefferson disliked orthodox Calvinists, does that prove he was an atheist?
Where does he say he's an atheist?
> Where the preamble [of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom]
> declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of
> the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by
> inserting the words "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "A
> departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our
> religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof
> that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection,
> the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan,
> the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination. (Thomas Jefferson,
> Autobiography; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
> Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
I still can't find the atheism?
> Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded.
> The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of
> Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to
> their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several
> books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopedie. I think
> it will produce considerable good even in those
> countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of
> body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the
> mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be
> hoped. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Wythe from
> Paris, August 13, 1786. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
> Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment
> and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 311.)
>
> The Virginia act for religious freedom has been received with infinite
> approbation in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I
> do not mean by governments, but by the individuals who compose them.
> It has been translated into French and Italian; has
> been sent to most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best
> evidence of the falsehood of those reports which stated us to
> be in anarchy. It is inserted in the new "Encyclop*die," and is
> appearing in most of the publications respecting America. In fact,
> it is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected,
> after so many ages, during which the human mind has been
> held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable
> for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the
> courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the
> formation of his own opinions.... (Thomas Jefferson, letter to
> James Madison from Paris, Dec. 16, 1786. From Lloyd S. Kramer, ed.,
> Paine and Jefferson on Liberty, New York:
> Continuum, 1988, pp. 87-88.)
>
> ... Justly famous among these important bills [written or revised by
> Jefferson for Virginia's legislature] in the revisal of 1770 was
> the Bill for establishing religious freedom, a bill called by Julian
> Boyd "Jefferson's declaration of intellectual and spiritual
> independence." Unlike some of his other great bills, this one was at
> long last enacted into law in 1786, the first piece of
> legislation ever to provide expressly for full religious freedom. In
> this contribution alone, Jefferson advanced far beyond his
> revered John Locke whose philosophy of toleration "stopped short," as
> Jefferson said, of the full freedom required by the
> independent intelligence and conscience of man. (Adrienne Koch, ed.,
> The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the
> American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller,
> 1965, p. 280.)
Atheism? Where?
> It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can
> stand by itself. (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782;
> from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey:
> Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
Isn't that the truth. That's why these atheist insist on laws keeping religion
out of the public square. "It is error alone which needs the support of the
government."
Go baby!!
> Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?
> Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as
> well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce
> uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more
> than of face and stature. (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782;
> from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
> Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363)
Right On.
> Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and
> children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt,
> tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards
> uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To
> make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To
> support roguery and error all over the earth. (Thomas Jefferson,
> Notes on Virginia, 1782; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
> Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p.
> 363.)
Atheism? Not yet.
[massive snip of a boatload of quotes showing that Jefferson was in favor of
separating church and state, not one showing he was an atheist. No argument
here. Is this the atheism newsgroup or the separation of church and state
group? What the heck are you arguing?]
Jefferson was a Unitarian. At least that's what he said about himself.
Is there a plausible scientific explanation for why things exist, now?
> Thomas Jefferson, American president, author, scientist, architect,
> educator, and diplomat (1743-1826).
> Deist, avid separationist.
> "Question boldly even the existence of God."
Yes. Question away. Why? Because the truth has a power of its own, and it can
hold it's own. You don't have to legislate in favor of it the way the atheist
want laws to prevent religion from getting a voice.
> "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
But with regard to Jesus, he also wrote:
"His moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends were more pure and
perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and greatly more
so than those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in inculcating
universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and
countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family under the bonds
of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this
head will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others."
> "Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
Religious institutions, right? Doubt it? Make my day.
> "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that
> the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they
> are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot
> reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of
> materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian
> church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked
> atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus
> told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined
> what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient
> fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and
> thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter." [letter to John
> Adams, August 15, 1820]
Are you alleging that Jefferson based his atheism in a quote from Jesus? Absurd!
> >Let me highlight something for you, James: "it is impossible, I say, for the
> >human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and
> >effect, up to an ultimate cause."
> >
> >At the beginning of this letter, Jefferson says, "I can never be an atheist."
> >
> >Why did you say "Jefferson NOT"? Perhaps youre on my side, perhaps you meant
> >Jefferson NOT AN ATHEIST :)
>
> Deist is a reasonable position. It's not aligned with any organized
> religion.
Youre not an atheist. What are we arguing about?
> >> Adams NOT
> >
> >Why are you doing this to yourself, James? Have you read through 15 volumes of
> >Adams' works? I have. Page Smith has. Do you know what Adams said about
> >Voltaire and the leaders of the French Revolution?
> >
> >Read through his 15,000 letters, James, he sqaurely CONDEMNED them for their ATHEISM!!
> >
> >I guess what you meant to say was Adams NOT AN ATHEIST.
>
> So?
I thought I was posting in the alt.atheism group. <shrug>
"The Christian religion is, above all religions that ever prevailed, the
religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity. Let blackguard [thomas]
Paine say what he will."
Adams, DIARY 7/26/1796
"You and yours have become the dupes of your own atheism and profligacy"
Adams, regarding Condorcet and the French Revolution.
Adams pronounced the three "blockheads": Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume
> >> Einstein NOT
> >
> >Which Einstein? The one who referred to himself as a "deeply religious man"?
> >or do you mean Jeff Einstein, the guy who delivers my morning paper (cause
> >he's a believer too).
> >
> >Do you mean the Einstein who agreed with Jefferson on the ease at which a
> >person of good sense can easily apprehend the deity in the design of the
> >universe, the one who spoke of
> >
> >"That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning
> >power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe"
> >
> >I guess what you meant to say was Einstein NOT AN ATHEIST.
>
> So?
>
> Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the
> universe]", but the quote is purposely taken out of context by theists
> in order to mislead and lend credence to their religion.
Einstein made that quote in response to the Copenhagen interpretation which
implies that their are indeterminant events that occur on at the quantum
level. Einstein was a Spinozist and he believed that all things are caused.
Which leads directly to the "cosmological" argument set forth by Spinoza.
> A better quote, which
> refers to Einstein's refusal to accept some aspects of the most
> popular interpretations of quantum theory would be:
>
> "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony
> of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and
> actions of human beings."
>
> (Note: Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677), was a Dutch
> philosopher and pantheistic theologian. Pantheism is a doctrine
> equating a deity with the universe and its phenomena.)
Since we agree that Einstein approved of Spinoza's theology, let's take a look
at what that entails:
Spinoza, ETHICS
Spinoza, ETHICS
Spinoza continues--
> Further, according to the book "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"
> (edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press,
> publisher), Einstein wrote in a March 24, 1954 letter:
>
> "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
> convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
> believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
> expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
> religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
> world so far as our science can reveal it."
What he is alluding to is what's called the "teleological proof" for God's existence.
> He also said in his autobiographical notes (translated from German):
>
> "Thus I came -- despite the fact that I was the son of entirely
> irreligious (Jewish) parents -- to a deep religiosity, which, however,
> found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of
> popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in
> the stories of the bible could not be true.
A person who doesn't trust the literal historicity of the Bible isn't
necessarily an atheist, is he? If you think so, please explain that logic to me.
> The consequence was a
> positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression
> that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies;
> it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of
> authority grew out of this experience,
What's wrong with suspicion against the authorities. I think Jesus had a
little problem with the Pharisaical authorities who ran his world, too. Does
that mean Jesus was an atheist?
> Go to <http://www.westegg.com/einstein/>, page down to the "In His Own
> Words" section, and follow the link labeled "Einstein on Science and
> Religion" to the URL <http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/ESR.html>
> where more of Einstein's comments on religion can be found.
Thank you. He was clearly not an atheist, was he?
> >> Hawking NOT
> >
> >I don't think I mentioned this guy. From what I've read of him, he thinks once
> >he finds a unified field theory he'll know "the mind of God."
> >
> >> Lincoln NOT
> >
> >I didn't mention him, either. But you don't even know how bad you're putting
> >your foot in your mouth on this one. You fly in the face of every Lincoln
> >scholar who has written. And here were not only talking about a believer, but
> >a BIBLE-BELIEVER. You better do a little reading on this fellow before you say
> >any more.
>
> Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).
> In 2000 Years of Disbelief by James A. Haught, Lincoln is mentioned on
> pages 125 through 127. From the material presented
> it would seem that Lincoln as a young man was an avid anti-christian
> and most likely an atheist. In his later years, he came to
> believe in God, but still was anti-religious in the sense that he
> rejected organized religion. Some selections from Haught:
> John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner: "He was an avowed and
> open infidel, and sometimes bordered on Atheism...He went
> further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than
> any man I ever heard."
Lincoln's law partner who was burned by Lincoln and later published a load of
nonsense in retribution.
Give me a quote from Lincoln. You can't, huh. Well, here's one:
"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to men. All the good
from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book."
> Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York: "The Bible
> is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I
> could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of
> Christian dogma."
1924??? Good grief, who was he quoting, the ghost of Lincoln?
> Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie
> Lincoln: "My earlier views of the unsoundness of the
> Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures
> have become clearer and stronger with advancing years,
> and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
> As a young man Lincoln apparently wrote a manuscript that he planned
> to publish, which vehemently argued against the divine
> origin of the Bible and the Christian scheme of salvation. Samuel
> Hill, a friend and mentor, convinced him to drop it, considering
> the disastrous consequences it would have on his political career.
> William H Herndon, a former law partner, wrote a biography on Lincoln
> titled: "The true story of a great life". In it Herndon
> discusses Lincoln's religious views extensively.
> Gordon Leidner has collected some quotations from Lincoln's later
> years in which he invokes God, and he makes the argument
> that Lincoln became a sincere believer.
Yes. He did.
More on separation of church and state. Congratulations.
What have you proved: Franklin and Jefferson, like Martin Luther, thought the
civil and the ecclesiastical ought to be separated.
Does this prove Luther was an atheist?
> [Benjamin] Franklin drank deep of the Protestant ethic and then,
> discomforted by church constraints, became a freethinker. All
> his life he kept Sundays free for reading, but would visit any church
> to hear a great speaker, no doubt recognizing a talent he
> himself did not possess. With typical honesty and humor he wrote out
> his creed in 1790, the year he died: "I believe in one
> God, Creator of the universe.... That the most acceptable service we
> can render Him is doing good to His other children.... As
> to Jesus ... I have ... some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a
> question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and
> think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an
> opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble." (Alice J.
> Hall, "Philosopher of Dissent: Benj. Franklin," National Geographic,
> Vol. 148, No. 1, July, 1975, p. 94.)
Sounds like he was expecting there was an afterlife.
> Though himself surely a freethinker, Franklin cautioned other
> freethinkers to be careful about dismissing institutional religion too
> lightly or too quickly. "Think how great a proportion of Mankind," he
> warned in 1757, "consists of weak and ignorant Men and
> Women, and of inexperienc'd Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the
> Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to
> support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it
> becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its Security." (Edwin
> S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San
> Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 61.)
Yeah, Franklin urged people to attend church.
> >> Monroe NOT
> >
> >Marilyn actually was quite the spiritual person.
> >
> >> Madison NOT.
> >
> >Do you mean the James Madison who attended the seminary at Princeton with
> >intentions of becoming a clergyman, then changed over to law and became the
> >father of the Constitution and the fourth President?
>
> James Madison
> (1751-1836; principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights;
> 4th U.S. President, 1809-1817)
>
> Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for
> every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect.
> (James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774, as
> quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion
> and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 37.)
Add Madison to Luther's views about separating civil and ecclesiastical.
Atheism? No way.
[huge snip on Madison and separation of church and state. I thought this was alt.atheism]
Roger Williams was a hard-core puritan who believed in separation of church
and state. What is the relationship of separation of church and state and
atheism? There is no necessary relationship.
You have blown a lot of smoke.
> >> They ALLdiscounted the existence of a personal god. All these men
> >> were deists (closet atheists?) agnostics or just plain atheists
> >
> >Oh, I see. I thought this was the alt.atheism group. Why do you folks always
> >skirt around all these geniuses by simply trying to qualify their theism with
> >"not personal"?
> >
> >Is this an atheist's newsgroup or is this alt.deism? I thought I was arguing
> >with atheists. I was claiming that Jefferson was a theist, not an atheist. And
> >you say NOT??
>
> He was a deist.
I'm arguing that these wise men were not atheists. That's my point.
if you are defending atheism, don't claim Jefferson for your band.
> >Furthermore, you'll have to come up with a little evidence to show that deism
> >is closet atheism. That may be your wishful thinking, but if you read the
> >likes of Jefferson's letter above, he despised atheists.
>
> At that time there was no plausible explanation for the first cause.
Sure there was. God.
> According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
> magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
> God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
> polled claimed to believe in a personal God. That is, approximately
> 93% of the scientists polled were either atheists of agnostics.
Look at the reputable pollster: Gallup.
Gardiner
>
> Gardiner wrote in message <37587C4F...@pitnet.net>...
> Whew! What a solid retort that one is!
Thank you. I thought so myself.
> I mean, comparing differences in belief in
> god with differences of opinion on the the human body works really makes no
> sense now, does it?
You have a problem reading. The point was that great minds such as Newton,
Pascal, Einstein, and Franklin all agreed that God exists; they disagreed
about his nature.
Physicians agree that the body exists, they disagree on such things as
pathology of certain diseases, causes of certain deformities, inter alia.
I realize that you didn't do well on the SAT analogies section, but if you
take a course with Princeton Review or Kaplan you might improve a little bit.
RG
Gardiner
>
> Which shall it be? Is a deist an atheist or is a deist a
> theist? It's one or the other, right? Make up your minds, if you can find
> them.
I, too, feel a little lost. I thought I was posting in alt.atheism. I thought
I was interacting with a bunch of true atheists.
Come to find out, these guys are all defenders of the deists among the
founders; men who believed in a creator God, an afterlife, following the
charitable example of Jesus, etc.
Where are the atheists? Wherever they are, why aren't they calling those
historical figures idiots?
Could it be because Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, & co. probably had a number of
geniuses among 'em? Could it be that Ms. Malkin's theory that "a religious
person is of lower intelligence" just wont hold a glass of water?
Gardiner
> someone out to deliberately deceive them?
1) I haven't said a thing about "a group of researchers."
2) I haven't made any exclusive claim; I used the word "generally" twice.
3) I'll bet its generally easier for people with low IQ's to be fooled than
people with high IQ's (that's why there's so many atheists in this group)
> http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~ggilbey/para4.html
>
> "It is fairly easy to fool a scientist because he thinks very
> logically. Scientists can cope with nature because nature doesn't
> change the rules. But an alleged psychic changes the rules. He takes
> advantage of the way you think and leads you down his path of
> deception."
Gardiner
>
> Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote in <37589A60...@pitnet.net>:
> dogma preaching automaton. But you will soon.
I was starting to get that sense when there was so much irrelevant material
here that was clearly a cut-and-paste from some webpage.
I've also began to see that some of these "atheists" post the same exact
responses as if they were their own original thoughts??!!
What's up with that? I thought atheists championed "free-thinking" and freedom
from conformity?
So much for original thinking. Where are these "heavy-hitters" I was told about?
RG
Gardiner
>
> On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 01:43:18 +0200, "Aleksandar Katanovic"
> <akat...@online.no> wrote:
> >
> >In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately as
> >superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well, since
> >there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
> >
> >Regards,
> >Alex
> >
> You are correct! There is no more evidence for any religion than
> there is fo atheism. The only rational position is agnosticism.
The prodigy, Pascal, fervently disagrees--
234. [One might say] "If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to
act on religion, for it is not certain." But how many things we do on an
uncertainty, sea voyages, battles! I say then we must do nothing at all, for
nothing is certain, and that there is more certainty in religion than there is
as to whether we may see to-morrow; for it is not certain that we may see
to-morrow, and it is certainly possible that we may not, see it. We cannot say
as much about religion. It is not certain that it is; but who will venture to
say that it is certainly possible that it is not? Now when we work for
to-morrow, and so on an uncertainty, we act reasonably; for we ought to work
for an uncertainty according to the doctrine of chance which was demonstrated above.
Alan Sindler
>
> Alan Sindler wrote:
<snip>
> > I am especially amused when the fundagelicals point to the founding fathers,
> > most of whom were deists,
>
> Whether one is a fundamentalist or not doesn't change the indisputable fact
> that the majority of the founding fathers were not deists. That's just not a
> matter for dispute. Dr. Miles Bradford of the University of Dallas did a
> conclusive study on this question. Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson may have
> toyed with deism. Among the other several hundred founders, deism was a small
> minority.
Well, this is what some of our founding fathers had to say:
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"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."
"...If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief
that is pleasing to him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist?
It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have
the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit:
their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I
have observed, indeed, generally that while in Protestant countries
the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to
Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot,
D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet are known to have been among the
most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other
foundation than love of God."
John Adams wrote:
"The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover
for absurdity."
Ben Franklin wrote:
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I
absented myself from Christian assemblies."
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you
particularly desire, I think the system of morals
and his religion, as he left them to us, the best
the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I
apprehend it has received various corrupting
changes, and I have, with most of the present
dissenters in England, some doubts of his
divinity."
Thomas Paine wrote:
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the
voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous
executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with
which more than half the Bible is filled, it would
be more consistent that we call it the word of a
demon than the word of God. It is a history of
wickedness that has served to corrupt and
brutalize [hu]mankind."
"People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word
of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that
the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt
it, and they carry the ideas they formed of the benevolence of the Almighty
to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his
authority. Good heavens! It is quite another thing: it is a book of lies,
wickedness and blasphemy -for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe
the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?"
Sir Francis Bacon wrote:
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to
laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral
virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all
these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men...the
master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to
practice, in a reverse order."
Hardly makes a case for fundamentalism, does it?
Alan Sindler
>
> Alan Sindler <als...@earthlink.net> wrote in
> <375881F1...@earthlink.net>:
>
> >g&g wrote:
> >>
> >> William wrote in message <37587525...@news.clara.net>...
> >> > Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote:
> >> >
> >> <big snip>
> >> >
> >> >Religious people quote scientists with some sort of implication that
> >> >because a scientist believes then it must be a rational belief. It
> >> >doesn't work like that. Take a hundred scientists and ask them for
> >> >their beliefs about the nature of electricity and you'll get about
> >> >99% concurrance. Ask the same hundred scientists for their beliefs
> >> >about deities and you'll get about 99 different views - with over 50%
> >> >admitting they don't believe they exist at all. Appealing to the
> >> >odd scientist who believes in any particular theistic doctrine may in
> >> >fact be counter productive.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Glenn R. wrote
> >> William, you are right on in your comments. I find it really
> >> interesting that christians like to point out scientists who
> >> supposedly are believers as though scientist are really great
> >> thinkers. Then when someone mentions evolution all of a sudden all
> >> scientists and all fields of science are worthless heaps of turtle
> >> dung. Also, according to a poll taken last year, only about 15% of
> >> scientists professed any belief in a personal god.
> >
> >God, it's not anything like the biblical, wrathful, ego driven god that
> >especially amused when the fundagelicals point to the founding fathers,
> >"mainstream" Christianity. They hate it when you point that little tid
> >bit out to them, however.
>
> countless times that atheism/theism form an all-inclusive dichotomy such
> that ~A = T and A union T = everyone. Here are just a few examples of the
> thousands of times you idiots predicated this fallacious argument:
Ha, look who's calling other folks jerkoffs, the master baiter himself, Dr. Sinister.
I haven't said any such thing, shit for brains, and quoting other people who
have doesn't make your case. My only point, which you may feel free to
continue missing, is that the founding fathers were hardly the proponents of
fundamentalist Christianity that you ninnies keep insisting they were. If you
personally are not making that claim, then tell us, what are you stumbling to
say in your ever so convoluted way?
<snipped your quotes of people other than g&g and myself>
> But now you are saying that the founding fathers were DEISTS. Ok fine.
> But atheism/theism forms an all inclusive dichotomy in your feeble
> brains. So which shall it be? Is a deist an atheist or is a deist a
> theist? It's one or the other, right? Make up your minds, if you can find
> them.
A deist is a theist, and I've never said differently. As for "finding your
mind", wasn't it you who just recently tried to prove that God exists by using
math? LOL. Big words and a spooky sounding name can't hide the fact that
you're a buffoon.
So Sinister, how is it that you still won't profess what *you* believe with
regards to God? It seems obvious that you're an intellectual coward, on top of
being a pompous ass. You've stated ad nauseum that atheists are stupid, just
what do you believe in that maniacal, but tiny little mind of yours?
Taking bets that Sinister avoids the question...as always. That's what cowards do.
austus
>--
>Atheism makes you stupid.
Dear Sinister,
You don't seem to have the balls to proclaim your beliefs. Apparently
you're a theist (to no credit of theism) What are your beliefs?
I formally request you find some new material. Your redundant usage of
the word "idiot" reveals the fact that you're projecting. In
addition, I recommend you make more effort to understand the position
of atheism rather than assume falsely an air of superiority and tone
of condescension. I've yet to see you introduce any original thought
to alt.atheism whatsoever, so your attitude is unjustified. I have,
however, noticed that you continually take a predictable stance of
evasiveness by arguing semantics rather than actually debating. You
work very hard at disagreeing with very well-established fundamental
philosophical definitions in order to be evasive. Again I recommend
you cease being redundant and get some new material.
In your defense, if you actually make an attempt to understand some of
our logical arguments then you **may** not be interpreted as an angry
teenage child. I'll give you a hint that may free your mind somewhat.
Avoid overgeneralization at all costs. That includes when you're
implementing insults. Not all Christians are stupid. Not all
atheists are stupid.
But if you don't come up with some new material, you're going to be
universally interpreted as extremely stupid. You seem to have decent
grammar which undermines the belief that you're completely stupid, but
honestly that doesn't mean a whole lot. It's very possible that
English grammar may have always been the focus of your intellect.
Austus
Charlie the Tuna
Gardiner wrote:
>
> Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
> Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
> reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
> smartest kids in the class.
>
> Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Um, if you can tell me where to find the tobacco, so to speak.
Reference? Or perhaps I should ask, since believers are still the majority
inthe population, at least in the U.S., one wouldn't expect a huge
demographic difference, although such numbers as I have seen show a
decreasing correlation in the hard sciences with increasing educationa
attainment.
The numbers in the "soft" subjects not reflecting quite such a marked
decline, although "fundamentalis" seems to decline I'm not aware of any
hard data on the subjects.
Cheers!
Charlie the Tuna
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point
than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The
happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
-- Preface to Androcles and the Lion, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Charlie the Tuna
Gardiner wrote:
<snip<
>
> Give me the quotes that show these guys were atheists. That's your claim;
> prove it. Good luck.
>
Hmm.
To the best of my admittedly haphazard lay understanding, the modern
consensus is that David Hume was an atheist, or darn near, yet if you read
the "Enquiry" (the only work I actually own), he never says so. One can get
a sense of him sort of keeping his fingers crossed behind his back, but he
is very careful to never flat out say even that Christianity is definitely
so much nonsense, and spends the last few paragraphs of section ten putting
up either a real defense, or a smoke screen - "plausible deniability" I
think would be the modern term.
Dennet, in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" quotes Hume's "Dialogs Concerning
Natural Religion" where Hume knocks down theistic arguments one after the
other, but in the end retreats (or seems to), apparently because he cannot
himself conceive of how life could have arose in all its complexity via the
operation of only "natural law".
Given the limitations of physical/biological science of the 18th and early
19th century, it was probably reasonable to be profoundly suspicious of
anyone who, in the face of the complexity of life, made the pronouncement
that it all "just happened" without any divine help.
However, here moving into the 21st century, the domain metaphysics can try
to claim is substantially reduced. To sum up where were at in my opinion,
life is no more a miracle than a gas cloud above a certain mass condensing
into a star. Gas clouds being more very common, stars themselves are very
common in the universe. The specific set of physical conditions that allow
the chemical reactions we recognize as life to occur are probably a good
deal rarer than hydrogen clouds (since the chemicals themselves have to be
formed in the heart of a star, some of them only in a supernova explosion -
not the most common event), but for all the scarcity of the proper
conditions being met, it rather appears that "life" is just as inevitable
as stars lighting off, once those conditions ARE met.
In other words, we now do have the knowledge to support the hypothesis
that life does indeed "just happen". It's just a whole lot harder to spot
across thousands of light years than a star.
And with physicists working on a "theory of everything", it has become
quite possible to rationally reject the need for a "metaphysics" above or
in addition to physics
Whether the case is strong enough to compel a rejection of metaphysics, is
of course yet still open to debate.
But I must wryly note that in an culture where being an atheist could be a
death sentence, or at least inflict civil disabilities (the Poet Shelly
lost custody of his children directly because of his atheism), one can't
really expect, except by stroke of luck in a very candid private
communication, to find many "smoking guns" from the early 19th and prior
centuries.
Nuff rambling for now.
Don Kresch
space-time continuum
>
>
>John Popelish <jpop...@rica.net> wrote in article
><3755D8...@rica.net>...
>> How do you know that this God in not your own personal God and does not
>> exist outside of your mind? If it were, it would have all the
>> properties of the God you describe. Eg. unavailable to others while
>> totally real for you. Think about it.
>
>Because I've talked to lots of others who have had similar experiences.
>They have asked the same questions, and received like answers.
What sense did they use to detect said god?
Don
alt.atheism atheist #51, Knight of BAAWA, DNRC o-
Atheist Minister for St. Dogbert.
"No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another"
Picard to Data/Graves "The Schizoid Man"
Aleksandar Katanovic
Michelle Malkin <malk...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:376043f6...@news.mindspring.com...
> Provide evidence that your or any god exists and we'll talk. Right
> now, you're doing nothing but shilly-shallying around.
>
But Michaele,
I am not interested to give some obvious evidence for God's existence, since
you would always interpret it in an atheistic way (I suppose you are an
atheist).
What I was interested in was just to discuss the relation between RELIGION
and SUPERSTION, caused by your highly inspired remarks of the superstitious
nature of religion.
Regards,
Alex
Colin R. Day
> Michelle Malkin wrote:
> >
> > >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a quite
> > >rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
> >
> > When it comes to religion, yes.
>
> Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
> believes in God:
>
> Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the 200's,
> simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think there, they were theists!
>
Oh yeah, Newton's attempts to use astronomy to date events in the
Bible, that was a triumph of human reason, NOT!
>
> Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
>
>
> Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
> idiots! All believed in a deity.
>
> Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
>
> Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological argument of
> Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
>
> Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein, Newton,
> Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
>
> Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin has
> discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
> ----
> Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were few
> decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
>
> RG
As these people disagreed on the nature of God, at least some of them
must be wrong. Maybe all of them. Besides, did any of them cognize
God?
--
Colin R. Day cd...@ix.netcom.com alt.atheist #1500
EAC Cheerleader RAH! RAH! RAH! Go, team, go! (of course, there
is no EAC team)
Colin R. Day
> Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote in <37574A0C...@pitnet.net>:
>
> >Michelle Malkin wrote:
> >>
> >> >Does my faith indicate that I have lost my ability to think in a
> >> >quite rational and inteligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?
> >>
> >> When it comes to religion, yes.
> >
> >Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually saying about our friend here who
> >believes in God:
> >
> >Let's see, Newton and Leibniz, generally considered to have IQ's in the
> >200's, simultaneously invented the calculus... no ability to think
> >there, they were theists!
> >
> >Descartes, 210 IQ...that idiot was Catholic.
> >
> >Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Edwards....America's finest minds? heck no,
> >idiots! All believed in a deity.
> >
> >Pascal, Mozart, Spinoza, those mindless geniuses! They were theists too.
> >
> >Then there's that retard Einstein. He believed in the ontological
> >argument of Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza. What a dumb donkey.
> >
> >Then there's Ms. Malkin. She's a little better thinker than Einstein,
> >Newton, Leibniz, Pascal, Mozart, Jefferson, and company.
> >
> >Ladies and gentlemen we're in the presense of pure genius! Ms. Malkin
> >has discovered what Einstein couldn't figure out. There is no god.
> >----
> >Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were
> >few decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
> >
> >RG
> >
>
> More of Malkin's morons:
>
> Anton Bruckner
> Bach ("Te Deum" penned on all his works)
> Beethoven,
> Dietrich Buxtehude
> Franz Liszt (who became an abbot near the end of his life)
> Cesar Franck
> Palestrina
> Albrecht Durer
> Ramanujan (quintessential "true" believer)
> Socrates
> William of Occam (atheists just love this Franciscan monk for some
> reason)
> Thomas Tallis
> Roger Bacon
> George Berkeley
> Mohandas Gandhi
> Buddha
> Alfred North Whitehead (Russell's sidekick, believe it or not)
> Tolstoy
> Gogol
> Dostoyevski
> Hermann Hesse (Hesse, not Hess, you atheist idiot)
> John Milton
> Leonard Euler (greatest mathematician of them all)
No way, dude! Gauss rules! Although Euler holds
the Olympic (drug-free) record for publications.
Also, your "experts" disagree on the nature of
God, so some of them at least must be wrong.
>
> Georg Cantor
> William Olaf Stapledon ("I am a candle, Stapledon is the sun" - H.G
> Wells)
>
>
> But these clods were all deluded, feeble-minded, gullible theistic
> religionist fools. For *real* smart people, please see...
>
> http://www.blasphemy.net/
>
> --
> Atheism makes you stupid.
--
Colin R. Day
> Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote in <375756D3...@pitnet.net>:
>
> >Dr Sinister wrote:
> >>
> >> But these clods were all deluded, feeble-minded, gullible theistic
> >> religionist fools. For *real* smart people, please see...
> >>
> >> http://www.blasphemy.net/
> >
> >Thanks for the tip. I took a look. What brainpower!! Those folks will
> >certainly make the next major advancement in quantum physics.
>
> Thats right! Malkin's Morons are a pale shadow of genius! And just to
> round out the list of gullible meme-infected morons...
>
> Michelangelo
> Leonardo da Vinci
> Hans Holbein
> Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)
> El Greco
> Giotto
> Andrei Rubalev
> Peter Paul Reubens
> Hieronymous Bosch
> Francisco de Zurbaran
> Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto)
> Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)
> Fra Angelico
> Annibale Carracci
> William Blake
How does being an artist confer an expertise in
such areas? Especially when the Church was
handing out those commissions?
>
> Albrecht Altdorfer
> Andrea Mantegna
> Frederick Copleston S.J.
> Teilhard de Chardin S.J.
> Nicholas of Cusa
> Giordano Bruno
So that's why he was burned at the stake.
>
> Marius Nizolius
> Theophrastus von Hohenheim
> Copernicus
> Kepler
>
> &c &c &c
>
Again, do they all agree?
>
> --
> Atheism is the opiate of the masses - Groucho Marx
Cory Collins
g&g wrote in article
>
> Cory Collins wrote in message
> >
> >John Popelish wrote in article
>snip<
> >> How do you know that this God in not your own personal God and does
not
> >> exist outside of your mind? If it were, it would have all the
> >> properties of the God you describe. Eg. unavailable to others while
> >> totally real for you. Think about it.
> >Because I've talked to lots of others who have had similar experiences.
> >They have asked the same questions, and received like answers.
> >In Jesus' Name,
> >Cory
> Glenn R. wrote:
> Well, I actually think that virtually none of them have "received" like
> answers. They have, in all likelihood, been told how to interpret
scripture
> or an event in the same way.
Since you have not met those same people, your opinion is meaningless. It
is highly unlikely, as they were not all of the same age or denominational
background. Not all Christians blindly follow some doctrinal position,
especially when seeking personal answers directly from God.
>They have been told the emotions they
> experience in church, for example, are because the spirit is moving, or
> something like that. So, of course, they would all say that "I
experienced
> the spirit moving" and that would be enough for most believers to
convince
> themselves that everybody felt the same thing I felt so it has to be the
> spirit.
Except that I'm not talking about experiences had in a church gathering.
> Just what questions were asked that received the same answer?
Quite a variety, including, but not restricted to:
-- the truth of the Creation
-- the truth of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost as three divine beings
-- the truth of "love thine enemies"
-- the truth of the Flood
-- the truth of Jesus answering prayers asked in His name
-- how to deal with rebellious children
-- is an answer perceived actually from the Lord, or from satan
The questions asked of the Lord are many and varied. It is continually
amazing how different people asking similar questions get answers which
prove to be right.
In Jesus' Name,
Cory
Aleksandar Katanovic
David Johnston <rgo...@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:375773...@telusplanet.net...> > >> Glenn R. wrote:
> > >> You are correct, one cannot provide evidence of the lack of something
> > >other
> > >> than there is no evidence that there is something. There is no
> > >> question-begging here at all. Although the lack of evidence is not
proof
> > >> that something doesn't exist, it is a pretty good reason to withhold
> > >belief
> > >> that something exists. That is why atheists rather routinely say,
show me
> > >> the evidence before I will believe. They rarely say that lack of
evidence
> > >> is proof of anything.
> > >
> > >In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately
as
> > >superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well,
since
> > >there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
>
words.
> You do have an interesting line of reasoning. Since I do not believe that
the number
> 13 is unlucky, I am therefore, according to you, superstitious.
David,
my point was just to highlight the implausibility of Michelle's definition
of SUPERSTITION. Glenn says that he cannot provide evidence for the
non-existence of God, and according to Michelle's definition it would seem
that Glen's atheism would be superstitious, which is non-sense.
Thus, I do not see what do you try to tell me with your example of your
propositional attitude towards the number 13? I would perfectly charcterize
your attitude as intellectually virtuous, which certainly is not
superstitious, according to my criteria.
Have I done some mistake in my reasoning?
Regards,
Alex
Aleksandar Katanovic
Richard E Reboulet <dickre...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3757dbc2...@news.mindspring.com...
> On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 01:43:18 +0200, "Aleksandar Katanovic"
> <akat...@online.no> wrote:
> >
> >In other words, we cannot characterize a religious belief immediately as
> >superstitious, for otherwise would atheism be superstitious as well,
since
> >there is lack of evidence in the non-existence of God.
> >
> >Alex
> >
> You are correct! There is no more evidence for any religion than
> there is fo atheism. The only rational position is agnosticism.
Sometimes I wish not to be rational:)
It can be depresingly boring:)
Regards,
Alex
Colin R. Day
> g&g wrote:
> >
> > Gardiner wrote in message <3757E739...@pitnet.net>...
> > >g&g wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Gardiner wrote in message <37574A0C...@pitnet.net>...
> > >> >Michelle Malkin wrote:
> > >> >>
> > >> >----
> > >> >Enough with the intellectual superiority complex, Michelle. There were
> > few
> > >> >decent thinkers who didn't see what you think you see.
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> Glenn R. wrote:
> > >> Now that you have made an absolute fool of yourself by making an issue
> > >> totally different from the comment upon which it was based, and have
> > chosen
> > >> to use ugly sarcasm to do so - - - - - your point is?
> > >
> > >Well, Ms. Malkin's pointed out to a person who asked her about it, that if
> > she
> > >believes in God she has lost her ability to think well (if you have been
> > >following the thread you would know this).
> > >
> > >My point is that she has accused the world's most respected minds of not
> > being
> > >able to think well.
> > >
> > >My point is now, also, that you don't have a very good ability to see a
> > clear
> > >point. Didn't do well on the GRE I guess, huh?
> > >
> > >RG
> >
> > Glenn R. wrote:
> > You are lying. She never referred to any other people and she said the
> > fuzzy thinking only applied to the religious stuff in their lives. Here is
> > the sum-total of her response that you so dishonestly snipped out of this
> > post.
> >
> > Here is the original question, "Does my faith indicate that I have lost my
> > ability to think in a quite rational and intelligent manner? Hm, ..., hm?"
> >
> > And here is the Michelle's response. "When it comes to religion, yes."
>
> The point you have missed, Mr. Valedictorian, is that according to the
> geniuses whose names I listed, they believed that their most profound and
> accurate thinking was with regards to religion and theology. What works do you
> think Leibniz was most dedicated to? Theodicy? Monadology? Spinoza's Ethics,
> Descartes' Meditations, Newton's Commentaries, Locke's REASONABLENESS OF
> CHRISTIANITY, etc.
>
> These men saw their work with algebra, calculus, physics, politics, etc., as
> entirely peripheral and subordinate to their thinking about God. They would
> all say, with a resounding chorus, "if I have lost my ability to think in a
> rational intelligent manner about religion, then the rest is meaningless."
Then the rest was meaningless (to them, at least)
>
>
> You simply don't have a handle on understanding these geniuses'
> self-evaluation and my use of them which directly contrasts what Ms. Malkin
> was saying in this post.
>
> > So, you then proceeded with your childish attempt at sarcasm to ridicule
> > her. You started it off by saying, "Let's see what Ms. Malkin is actually
> > saying about our friend here who believes in God:" and went off on your
> > delusional comments.
>
> Am I deluded in believing that DesCartes' Meditations claims to prove God's
> existence, or am I deluded in believing that DesCartes was a high-level genius
> who gave us linear algebra, etc?
>
> > You put words in her mouth that were clearly not
> > there,
>
> She repudiated her opponent's "rationality and intelligence" with regard to
> her "thinking about God" simply because the person believes. She would have to
> do the same thing with a Leibniz or a Newton. The point is clearly on topic.
>
Rationality and intelligence are two different things. Intelligence deals with the
scope of one's cognition, and rationality deals with one's commitment
to cognition.
>
> > you made huge assumptions that couldn't possibly be based on the
> > information you had. And you made yourself to be the fool while trying to
> > make her one. You are a dishonest despicable person to do such a thing.
>
> Questioning a person's intelligence and rationality seems to me to be less
> than charitable.
>
> > Then, you try your little testy sarcasm on me, too. Actually I never took
> > the GRE. Folks who graduate at the top of their class are called
> > Valedictorians and they are generally excused from taking the GRE. I know
> > it isn't fair, but that's just the way it is.
>
> What college were you the Valedictorian of? Oh, that's right, you never said
> that directly. Only played a little word game here to try to make yourself
> look smart. Say you were the valedictorian, and I'm willing to put a little
> wager on it that you weren't, as long as the college graduated more than 5 students.
>
> RG
Colin R. Day
> Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
> Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation speeches. The
> reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually BELIEVERS who are the
> smartest kids in the class.
No, they're just the best brown-nosers.
>
>
> Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
No, I'll let you get lung cancer.
Dr Sinister
<37586FC9...@ix.netcom.com>:
>Dr Sinister wrote:
[snip]
You do have a case for Gauss. And Riemann too. Both of whom were theists.
And while we're at it, I should add
Immanuel Kant
William James
Thomas More
Euler's writings span some 80 volumes.
>Also, your "experts" disagree on the nature of
>God, so some of them at least must be wrong.
They may have differing opinions, but one can hardly say they are in
vehement opposition to each other. Kant never claimed that you'll burn in
hell if you're a Spinozaist.
Aleksandar Katanovic
> In other words, you can't provide any evidence that your or any other
> god exists. All the arguments have been gone over numerous times by
> others who are better at such things than I am. Do you have a new
> argument? The one glaring thing that stands out is that theists cannot
> prove or provide evidence for the existence of their god.
> >
Michaele,
Your answer typically reveals your ignorance of the distinction between an
EVIDENCE and your supposedly ULTIMATE PROOF, which you do lack even for your
own position. I have many arguments which is perfectly satisfactory for my
requirements of validity, or rather PROBABILITY for some belief. Your
observation that theists cannot "prove" our position equally applies to
yourselv, since you have no PROOF, speaking in the rigour of logic, that
your position is true.
However, I have an evidence, read for example my post on Resurection, which
perfectly can satisfy my requirements for the support of some belief, though
I doubt it is for you. That other peole find my reasons for the truth of
Christianity as not sufficient to support my position is due to their
standards, which obviously we do not share. This however would not rule out
an interesting discussion. Their reasons and evidence to accept the theory
of evolution is not at all satisfactory for me, but I do not find their
reasons RIDICULOUS.
Regards,
Alex
Aleksandar Katanovic
Glen,
The issue is quite relevant, since Michelle believes that all theists are
STUPID. Sarcasms were not ugly. She deserved by her arrogant attitude
totowards theists like me.
Think if someone regarded you as a moron just because you do not believe in
God. Is that fair?
Regards,
Alex
Dr Sinister
You haven't followed the thread. Malkin's claim is that religious beliefs
causes the mind to become stupid. Would you care to argue that
Michelangelo was not an intelligent man?
>> Albrecht Altdorfer
>> Andrea Mantegna
>> Frederick Copleston S.J.
>> Teilhard de Chardin S.J.
>> Nicholas of Cusa
>> Giordano Bruno
>
>So that's why he was burned at the stake.
>
>>
>> Marius Nizolius
>> Theophrastus von Hohenheim
>> Copernicus
>> Kepler
>>
>> &c &c &c
>>
>
>Again, do they all agree?
You are missing the point, as usual. These are counter examples to
Malkin's idea that religious beliefs and convictions enfeeble the mind.
Dr Sinister
Mike Ruskai <tha...@spambegone.home.com> wrote in
<gunaalubzrpbz....@24.3.128.71>:
>the population of theists
>and atheists will always complement each other, together comprising the
>entire universe.
On Tue, 20 Apr 1999 08:23:18 -0400, tm...@u.virginia.edu (Tom Murray)
wrote:
>Since theist and atheist are mutually exclusive and all encompassing
>(you either are a theist or you are not a theist and you can't be both
>or neither)
Dave "Lt. Worf" Fried <fr...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote in
<7j0u7v$jdt$3...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>:
>atheist(X) :- not(believes_in(X, G)), god(G).
>since god(G) is a qualifier for G, we can negate the predicate the
>following way:
>
>not_atheist(X) :- not(not(believes_in(X, G))), god(G).
>
>which is equivalent to:
>
>not_atheist(X) :- believes_in(X, G), god(G).
>
But now you are saying that the founding fathers were DEISTS. Ok fine.
But atheism/theism forms an all inclusive dichotomy in your feeble
brains. So which shall it be? Is a deist an atheist or is a deist a
theist? It's one or the other, right? Make up your minds, if you can find
them.
--
Cory Collins
John Popelish wrote in article
> In article <01beae37$09da7a60$8f43170c@corycoll>,
> "Cory Collins" <wyt...@silverstar.com> wrote:
> > Because I've talked to lots of others who have had similar experiences.
> > They have asked the same questions, and received like answers.
> Or to paraphrase, since some other people have the same ability as you
> to imagine God, God must not be imaginary. If this works for you, I
> have no argument for you. It doesn't for me.
Inaccurate paraphrase.
Since some other people have availed themselves of Jesus' promise to answer
prayers, they have received personal proof of His existence. It works for
me....... it COULD work for you........ you have no valid argument.......
it will for you.
In Jesus' Name,
Cory
Dr Sinister
>maff91 wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 04 Jun 1999 15:12:16 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Its no surprise to me that there's so much fuss these days about
>> >Valedictorians giving a religious testimony in their graduation
>> >speeches. The reason that there's so much fuss is that it's usually
>> >BELIEVERS who are the smartest kids in the class.
>> >
>> >Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
>>
>> Nope.
>>
>> According to a paper published in the July 23, 1998 issue of Nature
>> magazine (Larson, E. J., Witham, L., "Leading Scientists Still Reject
>> God", Nature, 1998; vol. 394, p. 313), only 7% of the scientists
>> polled claimed to believe in a personal God.
>
>Ah, I see you use the "personal" qualifier. Now tell the whole truth
>about the poll survey. The question asked to the scientists was "do you
>believe in a God who exists in the form of a person?"
This is like asking if one believes in a god which is a muffin.
There are not many Monophysite christians around these days, so most
people, even christians, would have to answer No to the question if
interpreted strictly.
Dr Sinister
Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net> wrote in <3758875E...@pitnet.net>:
>Alan Sindler wrote:
>>
>> Furthermore, to the great scientists (like Einstein) who *do* talk
>> about God, it's not anything like the biblical, wrathful, ego driven
>> god that fundie's rant about. But hey, that's just a technicality,
>> right?
Dear medicated one. Are you posting to alt.atheism or alt.anti-christian?
g&g
Gardiner wrote in message <37587C4F...@pitnet.net>...
>Colin R. Day wrote:
>>
>> your "experts" disagree on the nature of
>> God, so some of them at least must be wrong.
>
human
>body. Does that mean that humans don't exist?
>
>RG
Glenn R. wrote:
Whew! What a solid retort that one is! My god! How can we handle such a
deep analogy? Oh! I get it, it really isn't deep, you just wanted to make
us think there was more to it. I mean, comparing differences in belief in
god with differences of opinion on the the human body works really makes no
sense now, does it? And just exactly what differences in opinions on the
human body were you talking about? You were referring to something
specific, weren't you? You wouldn't just throw out something about which
you know nothing, would you?
g&g
>
>David,
>
>my point was just to highlight the implausibility of Michelle's definition
>of SUPERSTITION. Glenn says that he cannot provide evidence for the
>non-existence of God, and according to Michelle's definition it would seem
>that Glen's atheism would be superstitious, which is non-sense.
Glenn R. wrote:
Hold it, Alex. Just stop right there. You are completely missing something
here. It is impossible to prove a negative because there is always some
little glitch that wasn't checked that could verify the positive. So, what
I have said and what you think I said are two different things. I didn't
say I could not provide evidence for the non-existence of god because
evidence abounds in its absence. What I said is that I couldn't PROVE the
non-existence of god, not that there wasn't evidence that a god doesn't
exist. In other words, when looking for objective evidence of something and
no evidence can be found, that is pretty good evidence that the something
doesn't exist but it doesn't prove it.
g&g
Cory Collins wrote in message <01beaeeb$4fdd3fc0$8443170c@corycoll>...
>
>> >Cory
>
>> Glenn R. wrote:
>> Well, I actually think that virtually none of them have "received" like
>> answers. They have, in all likelihood, been told how to interpret
>scripture
>> or an event in the same way.
>
>Since you have not met those same people, your opinion is meaningless.
Glenn R. wrote:
I didn't claim to have met them. I am making a statement based on my
personal experience with christians. As such, it may be meaningless to you,
but it certainly isn't meaningless to me and to others who have had similar
christian experiences to mine.
>It
>is highly unlikely, as they were not all of the same age or denominational
>background. Not all Christians blindly follow some doctrinal position,
>especially when seeking personal answers directly from God.
>
> >They have been told the emotions they
>> experience in church, for example, are because the spirit is moving, or
>> something like that. So, of course, they would all say that "I
>experienced
>> the spirit moving" and that would be enough for most believers to
>convince
>> themselves that everybody felt the same thing I felt so it has to be the
>> spirit.
>
>Except that I'm not talking about experiences had in a church gathering.
Glenn R. wrote:
I clearly stateted that that was an example. I never claimed it was the
only subject about which you were speaking.
>
>
>> Just what questions were asked that received the same answer?
>
>Quite a variety, including, but not restricted to:
>-- the truth of the Creation
>-- the truth of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost as three divine beings
>-- the truth of "love thine enemies"
>-- the truth of the Flood
>-- the truth of Jesus answering prayers asked in His name
>-- how to deal with rebellious children
>-- is an answer perceived actually from the Lord, or from satan
>
>The questions asked of the Lord are many and varied. It is continually
>amazing how different people asking similar questions get answers which
>prove to be right.
>
Glenn R. wrote:
"PROVE TO BE RIGHT?" Every question above has been interpreted in so many
ways by so many christians that the only proof is that your original
assertion that christians get consistent answers is totally false. Thanks
for supplying the questions. By doing so, your assertion was completely
destroyed and that took a lot of courage on your part.
Landis D. Ragon
>Generally prodigious artists such as a Mozart or a Beethoven have extremely
>high IQ's. High IQ's generally aren't associated with people easily hoodwinked
>into believing nonsense.
So, you're claiming that a group of researchers couldn't be fooled by
someone out to deliberately deceive them?
http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~ggilbey/para4.html
"It is fairly easy to fool a scientist because he thinks very
logically. Scientists can cope with nature because nature doesn't
change the rules. But an alleged psychic changes the rules. He takes
advantage of the way you think and leads you down his path of
deception."
>
>> > Marius Nizolius
>> > Theophrastus von Hohenheim
>> > Copernicus
>> > Kepler
>> >
>> > &c &c &c
>> >
>>
>> Again, do they all agree?
>
>Heck no. Copernicus liked peanut butter and jelly, Kepler prefered tuna fish.
Landis D. Ragon
Chief Elf in the toy factory...
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech
censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom
denied, chains us all, irrevocably."
Dr Sinister
>maff91 wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 04 Jun 1999 20:08:24 -0500, Gardiner <Gard...@pitnet.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >James Veverka wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Gardiner,
>> >>
>> >> What, is this your first day at school? Jefferson NOT
>> >
>> >Not what? You imply that he was an atheist. Are you at all educated?
>> >You're showing a tremendous lack of information about Jefferson.
>> >
>> >Let me teach you a few lessons in history and philosophy, James, my
>> >friend.
>> >
>> >There's something among philosophers and theologians called the
>> >"teleological proof of God's existence." I'm sure it's a concept
>> >which is often critiqued in this group, as it is an argument used by
>> >theists to refute atheists.
>> >
>> >Let me give you a famous version of this theistic argument:
>>
>> Thomas Jefferson
>> (1743-1826; author, Declaration of Independence and the Statute of
>> Virginia for Religious Freedom; 3rd U.S. President,
>> 1801-1809)
>>
>> Convinced that religious liberty must, most assuredly, be built into
>> the structural frame of the new [state] government, Jefferson
>> proposed this language [for the new Virginia constitution]: "All
>> persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor
>> shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious
>> institution"
>
>Does that proved Jefferson was an atheist?
Gardiner, you haven't yet realized that muff91 is an url-quoting atheist
dogma preaching automaton. But you will soon.