Originally posted by Zimphire:
How come our "Founding Fathers" that wrote such things had no beef with this, but yet, now we do?
Do we know better than they as to what they meant?
Let's see:
Thomas Jefferson on religion:
"They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. 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. ...
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer 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. ...
"If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot...
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, 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 prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
John Adams on religion:
"The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes. ...
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles. ...
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religions in it."
Thomas Paine on religion:
"Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy. ...
"...any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system. ...
"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
Special bonus non-Founding Father quote:
"The remaining part of the clause declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any test or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its own stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility."
-- Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Vol III, (1833) p 705.
How come our "Founding Fathers" that wrote such things had no beef with this, but yet, now we do?
Do we know better than they as to what they meant?
Let's see:
Thomas Jefferson on religion:
"They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. 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. ...
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer 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. ...
"If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot...
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, 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 prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
John Adams on religion:
"The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes. ...
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles. ...
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religions in it."
Thomas Paine on religion:
"Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy. ...
"...any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system. ...
"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
Special bonus non-Founding Father quote:
"The remaining part of the clause declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any test or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its own stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility."
-- Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Vol III, (1833) p 705.