The Atheist Pig

We are afraid of nothing.

Particularly your fake God.

Yes. That includes the things I don’t understand and can’t explain.

I’m not an expert on all the Jewish law in the Old Testement, there were a lot of them. They were impossible to follow, but I’m not Jewish and they don’t apply to me. Why do you ask?

Patience grasshopper. I’ve been doing this around the clock for days. You just tagged up to enter the ring.

You really should understand the topics you wish to debate on. As a Christian those laws in the Old Testement don’t apply. If you find that in the New Testement then lets talk. The Old Testement points to the New Testement and demonstrates our need for a Savior.

My turn. What is the origin of the universe?

Question with boldness the existence of God. – Thomas Jefferson

The government of the United States is not, in any sense founded on the Christian religion. – John Adams

History is overwelmingly on my side with this one too.

The majority of the Founding Fathers were atheists of a sort. That is to say, they weren’t followers of the bible but agreed with the doctrines of christ. Jefferson even published his own bible which involved only the teachings of Jesus but not the claims of divinity. No one in their right mind would say that the majority of what Jesus said in his short time in the bible were terrible ideas. Love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc.. A lot of the Old Testament writings were brutal, horrifying, murderous, and hateful and some Christians, like Wayne, will say that they follow Jesus’ teachings and not the Old Testament. But, Jesus didn’t say his teachings abolished the old ways. “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). “The Law” referred to the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses in which god’s laws were written down. “The Prophets” referred not only to the writings of the biblical prophets, but also to the historical books of what came to be known as the Old Testament. I was, at one time, unsure of my beliefs before I read the bible cover to cover. It was when I finished I became an atheist.

“It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” Mark Twain

His quote about being a real Christian is related to his book he published that I mentioned. I did refer to one quote by Jesus in the New Testament. I didn’t reference the Old Testament. Unless Matthew somehow switched to the Old Testament. Besides, I’m not attacking Christianity because many of the New Testament beliefs that were spoken by Jesus were good ideas. But when you tell someone to not look at one part of a religious work and only focus on the good of it then of course it’s going to look good. You, not you specifically but in general, can’t pick and choose what people decide to look at in a religious work. One has to judge any religious work as a whole for what it is.

Each religion has it’s good points and bad but most religious people refuse to look at anything other than their own religion. I know that you said try to attack the New Testament but that’s not my intent. My statement on how they were atheists of a sort is referring to all of the atheist quotes that can be found by the Founding Fathers. Jefferson was mainly agnostic. As was Abraham Lincoln but Lincoln had the public perceive him as a Christian.

“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.” Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln

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.”

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.

“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

“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

The 1796 Treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was “not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” This was not an idle statement meant to satisfy muslims– they believed it and meant it. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams.

None of the Founding Fathers were atheists. Most of the Founders were Deists, which is to say they thought the universe had a creator, but that he does not concern himself with the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God, (Nature’s God or the God of Nature), but this was not the God of the bible. They did not deny that there was a person called Jesus, and praised him for his benevolent teachings, but they flatly denied his divinity. Some people speculate that if Charles Darwin had lived a century earlier, the Founding Fathers would have had a basis for accepting naturalistic origins of life, and they would have been atheists. We’ll never know; but by reading their own writings, it’s clear that most of them were opposed to the bible, and the teachings of Christianity in particular.

Yes, there were Christian men among the Founders. Just as Congress removed Thomas Jefferson’s words that condemned the practice of slavery in the colonies, they also altered his wording regarding equal rights. His original wording is here in blue italics: “All men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.” Congress changed that phrase, increasing its religious overtones: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” But we are not governed by the Declaration of Independence– it is a historical document, not a constitutional one.

If the Christian Right Extremists wish to return this country to its beginnings, so be it… because it was a climate of Freethought. The Founders were students of the European Enlightenment. Half a century after the establishment of the United States, clergymen complained that no president up to that date had been a Christian. In a sermon that was reported in newspapers, Episcopal minister Bird Wilson of Albany, New York, protested in October 1831: “Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.” The attitude of the age was one of enlightened reason, tolerance, and free thought. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if the Christian Extremists had their way with this country.

Sorry I seem to have rambled a bit.

Thanks and Happy Fathers Day to you.

You’ve said He was a fraud before though.