Andrew Sutton: This seems like the type of logic that R.A. Heinlein referred to as "wooly logic" is not logical or well thought through at all
My Neanderthal roots bristle at this comment. It is also rumored at family gatherings my clan has Cro-Magnon blood in our veins. We shall see if your Modern man is any match for the wooly logic you mock.
Andrew Sutton: All the items you mention totaled up to nothing more than a summation of the beliefs of the men and women who run/founded this country.
This is a false statement. It is at the core of your false beliefs. It has several false aspects.
First of all, they are not a “summation of the beliefs of the men and women who run/founded this country.”
They are a summation of certain beliefs of some men and women who run/founded this country, and that is the problem.
There is a significant majority of others who feel Deism is the acceptable belief system for this country, and Atheists as well have the same freedoms from the tyranny or organized Christianity. They see Christainty as a stumbling block to truth and freedom.
Also, because they are falsely represented as a summation, they are propaganda pure and simple.
The George Washington quote (“impossible to govern without the bible”) is an
invention, pure fiction. You can not find the document it came from because it does not exist. It is rumored to come from his
First Inaugural address, April 30, 1789, but in fact the document does not mention god, Jesus, Christ, or the Bible. It only mentions the nebulous “Invisible hand”, “Great Author”, “Almighty Being”.
George was a deist, pure and simple.
If you attempt a rebuttal, please address this falsehood first. Show me the mammoth beef!
The proof that the group I favor is in the majority is absence of ANY reference to Christianity in the official documents.
Surely you believe that when the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written, the majority had their way and the minority acquiesced.
If you attempt a rebuttal, please address this issue second.
I don’t doubt that politicians will make statements to please the crowds. For every public proclamation that has a direct reference to Christianity, there is a more private comment to a friend about the superstition of Christianity.
GW is a Christian of convenience. It gets him the votes. He plays the role.
When a head count is done to number the Christians, all are included. Families who have not stepped foot in a church for a decade are numbered among the faithful. They proudly proclaim their Christianity but have never been baptized and never taken communion.
You may challenge any of my quotes, and I will find the original source documents and we can discuss your disagreement.
To the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789,
Washington said that every man "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
John Adams, a Unitarian, flatly denied the doctrine of eternal damnation. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote:
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
In his, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788], John Adams wrote:
"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.
James Madison
Called the father of the Constitution, Madison had no conventional sense of Christianity. In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." "What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people.
Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
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.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion
was rejected by the 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, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
Was George Washington a Christian?
His preacher didn't think so:
Why, for example, did George Washington refuse to take communion for most of his adult life, thereby (in effect) excommunicating himself from the Church of Christ? Why are his public references to the Lord Jesus Christ almost non-existent? Why did Washington aspire and attain to the rank of Grand Master in the Masonic lodge, a lodge in which each promotion requires the applicant to swear to an anti-Christian oath?
Washington's own pastor during the 8 years of his Presidency -- Dr. James Abercrombie, Assistant Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia -- had grave doubts about the state of Washington's soul. While his wife went forward to kneel with the communicants on communion Sunday, Washington always walked out the back door. Rebuked indirectly from the pulpit, he acknowledged his offense and promised never to attend church on communion Sunday, a promise that he kept. Dr. Abercrombie left us these words:
"That Washington was a professing Christian, is evident from his regular attendance in our church; but, Sir, I cannot consider any man as a real Christian who uniformly disregards an ordinance so solemnly enjoined by the divine Author of our holy religion, and considered as a channel of divine grace."
Benjamin Franklin
Although Franklin received religious training, his nature forced him to rebel against the irrational tenets of his parents Christianity. His Autobiography revels his skepticism, "My parents had given me betimes religions impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.
". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist."
In an essay on "Toleration," Franklin wrote:
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England."
Dr. Priestley, an intimate friend of Franklin, wrote of him:
"It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been
an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers" (Priestley's Autobiography)
Thomas Paine
This freethinker and author of several books, influenced more early Americans than any other writer. Although he held Deist beliefs, he wrote in his famous The Age of Reason:
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. "
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. " 
The man made a series error in note back referancing his sources which anyone with the educational background to be teaching history should know better. A serious judgment error but not in itself proof of proselytizing. 
As I said in my last post there were a 
