The Unfan

Because they already do read like they purposefully exclude God, gods, deities, mysticism, and supernatural concepts in general. The constitution mentions a possible reference twice. Care to see the context?
Which in and of itself references no god in particular much less the Christian God.
and...
Which could very well mean nature, abiogenesis, your mom & dad, but most importantly is not a reference to any particular religion. ****, it even tries to be sensitive to all religions so that all people can accept it for what it is.

How about the first amendment?
See? NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION. Pretty clear. There can by no law that exists strictly because of religious reasoning. You know why that is? Because America was founded as a secular nation.

As for the founding father's beliefs. Most of them were Deists, not Christians. Aside from the mentioned two, Jefferson was probably the most out spoken of the deists. Washington didn't speak much of religion and pretty much made it publically known that it wasn't in his interest at all.

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<3_BEAUTIFUL_HELL_FAIRY_<3: I Hate Logic

anticipation

nearly all of the founding fathers embraced Deism, and were not Puritan wackjobs.

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anticipation

had it ocurred to you that the Founding Fathers would have needed the support and strength of the combined sectarian Christian groups throughout the Colonies, and had placated them through their so-called "unshakable faith?"

if the founding fathers were in fact as steadfast in their morality, then this country's most important documents, such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wouldn't contain liberal sentiments. Puritanism, the vastly dominant religion in America during colonial times, does not value privacy, individualism, or equality. The closest semblance to religion that is evident in those documents mirrors that of the Quakers, who believed in equality and universal suffrage. incidently, the Quakers were the most persecuted of all Christian groups in the new world.

most of the fanatical christian believers were royalists as well, and supported the Protestant king who reigned in England as a result of the Glorious Revolution.

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lucifer_sam

Even if they were a bunch of uptight asscracks, times have changed, and our perception of the law should have as well.

You can't even try to refute the disparity in relevance of the second amendment two hundred thirty years ago as compared to now. The right to keep and bear arms was meant to safeguard the country against invasion and attacks by Native Americans, and even then there were implications; it wasn't absolute.

The point is that the United States is a VERY different country than when it first began in the eighteenth century, and our culture serves to show that. Sex isn't just a procreative tool anymore - it's a fundamental part of our culture. And there are most certainly implications on our lifestyles as a result.

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The Unfan

This isn't true. You can have morality without Judean laws or even roots. It is absurd to think morality even derives from Christianity much less necessitating it. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that Christian morality is not only repugnant and vile, but comparitively immoral. That is neither here nor there though. The question being if the founding fathers used Christian morals should be answered first by defining morals, then defining, "Christian morals" and then defining where they derived their morals from.

So let us look at what the word "moral" means.

Definitions 5 and 6 don't really apply. So we have 4 definitions to work from which essentially add up to "good behavior." This seems like a fair definition.

Second, lets define "Christian morals." Based on the two words in use we can derive two meanings. The first being "Behavior which is good in accordance with Christianity" and the second being "Good behavior deriving from Christian faith." Again, I'd say these are fair. Feel free to disagree.

Lastly, what were the morals of the founding fathers vs morality as derived from Christianity and also where did the founding fathers derive their morality or sense there of. Let us assume the 10 commandments are what define Christian morality. If you disagree with the use of the 10 commandments just note so and I'll bring up other scripture. For this we will use the 10 commandments as found in the book of Exodus (For other references you could use Deuteronomy). They are as follows followed by my reason why the founding fathers most certainly, by this standard, did not use Christian morality.
1. Since many were deists they did believe in a god, but not God. Many believed in natural God who operated through natural means without all the supernatural mystic nonsense. This sort of deity is not the God of the bible.

2. They most certainly wanted freedom of the press, and that would include artistic interpretations of all the things mentioned. They did not view God as too sacred for artistic intent.

3. I've got no real comment for this one. It might have applied to some of them.

4. The "sabbath day" isn't considered holy. For most Americans, and especially the ones in congress, the senate, and office, it is just another day of work.

5. Doesn't seem to apply too much. It is one of those cases that could have been true.

6. Fine, this should be law.

7. With scriptual backing you will see that this also includes "lusting in your own heart" which I will liberally take to mean "feel attracted to some fine piece of ass." I'm not sure how many followed this and to what degree. I'm almost certain some of them had to be deviants to some degree though. If I recall some documentaries noted Franklin in particular had a thing for younger women, though I don't recall the documentary or if it even exists as its been so long. I could be wrong on this.

8. Again, I agree this should be law and so did they. This is totally acceptable.

9. You shall not lie in court. Seems fair.

10. The fathers were actually pretty highly in favor of at least a semi-free market. The word "covet" means to "want with a passion" or something to that degree. Of course the founding fathers weren't against wanting things or else they wouldn't have wanted a free market of any sort. Wanting things is how business works. If my neighbor has something and I think its cool I'll buy one. Economics 101 says this is pretty good.

So between the 10 commandments 4 most certainly were heavily argued against by the founding fathers at least in terms of running the country. 2 seem more like personal choices, and 1 I'm not sure on but shouldn't be law. This leaves 3 things that are "morally good" according to Christianity that the founding fathers found necessary and I can make a case for why all 3 of them just seem natural later. 3 more which some might have adhered to but didn't see as necessarilly good for the country, and 4 they felt were outright bad for the country.

So now lets look at the other option for "Christian morals" which would mean "morals derived from Christianity." Since we've established that some were deists, some were Christians, and some were probably neither that some may have morality derived from Christianity and some may not.

I strongly feel that it is insincere at best to derive morality from that which you don't believe in or know to be true. You seem like a fairly Christian person, so would you derive morality from The Big Platypus In My Shoe? Of course not, you don't think it exists, so why would you? I think this would apply to the non-Christians. Why would they use God to fathom morality when they disbelieved in God and didn't know God to be true? It just seems silly.

Secondly to say your morality is derived from your religion says a lot about your character. It means you're telling me that without your religion you would have no morals. If you're really the kind of person who would be a rapist and a killer if not for God than you have no room telling anyone they are immoral.

If I had to take a guess evolution. My theory is at some point in the development of the human brain we were much more primative and so we had to develop courtesy as a survival skill. We were probably close knit roamers who would see that same people a lot. Through this we developed a sense of community and thus developed morality. Because we were developing into communities or groupings we had to develop a sense of mutual benefits. Among these would be things like not hurting each other, because hurting each other hurts the community. So basically morality was caused by the brain adapting to a larger scale of existence.

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The Unfan

Washington probably was a Christian, yes. He did have strong ties to the Anglican church. However, my point wasn't ever that he wasn't a Christian, just that he wasn't outspoken about it and he didn't want America to be a Christian nation. In fact, one of his biggest issues was religious tolerance including ALL RELIGIONS. Outside of that he didn't speak much of his personal faith in public because he didn't want it to be a public issue. So yes, while he was in fact a Christian, he was opposed to a Christian American.

As for Jefferson, those quotes are absurdly off. First off, Jefferson was definitely not a Christian. He believed in a god, certainly. However, he was against all the mysticism and supernatural events in the bible. He believed none of the "miracles" to be true, nor did he believe the bible to be an accurate account in any sense. as is evident by his letters. The list given is pretty extensive, but if you wade through them you'll see that he clearly didn't believe in the Judeo-Christian character God, but more so a natural kind of "god". In fact he even made his own altered version of the bible removing all of the mystical escapism horse ****.

Furthermore I'll requote the one Jefferson "quote" here worth discussing as it is the only one with any slight validity to it, and I can explain away the Christian slant with a bit of ease.
Upon understanding that Jefferson did not believe in the supernatural nature of God (as I already pointed out, and made clearly evident) you can replace all uses of the word God and with "natural arbitrary creation event" and get the proper meaning behind this (actually its 2 quotes, the first sentence marked in green was from a writing about the boston tea party. The name escapes my mind as I haven't studied this topic since 8th grade) quote. Essentially what he is saying is "Whatever natural event or being created us is pretty ****ing mighty and I tremble in its glory. May the glory of the natural creation never cease to exist" or something to that extent.

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JayJamJah

Ethics and Morality are personal standards that are created as a result of the environment and people who raise the individual.

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The Unfan

Or the founders wanted to seperate from the church of England to, you know, have the freedom to choose what they believe and practice doing so without the government stepping in. Just a hunch though.

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Expletive Deleted

So is this just really bad trolling or what?

Wayfarer

Yeah, the difference being that the theory of evolution is based in science and the theory of creation is just something some random guy pulled out of his arse.

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