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.