Quote Originally Posted by Anti-Squeaker
Quote Originally Posted by asianator365
Quote Originally Posted by Anti-Squeaker
I was under the impression that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" would mean that we don't have a mention of "God" in the pledge of allegiance. And silly me thought that "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" would allow me to choose whether I want to go to church or not. Silly me, how could I believe in that? Yay for McCarthyists pushing through a veritable mountain of bullshit religion stuff, and accusing anyone who opposes them a Communist. Glad to see the Christian Right has evolved since those days (wait, wrong word choice, thats a myth right?)
Huh...obviously you haven't read too many original documents from the people who were part of the government that wrote the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States (including the Bill of Rights).

Oh, you mean like these?

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

"And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
-- George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789

"If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists."
-- George Washington, letter to Tench Tilghman asking him to secure a carpenter and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, March 24, 1784

"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself."
-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756

Liking the taste of that foot in your mouth?
You misunderstood my meaning and actually semi-proved what I meant to communicate. The Establishment clause was meant to prevent the Federal government from making one religious sect (Example: Church of A) the official religion of the land, over other religions (Ex: Church of A, B, and C). This was meant to avoid the British system, where they had the Church of England as the officially established religion of the country. The thinking was that if you didn't have an official religion, you couldn't have government based persecution, purges, etc. of other religions. The Free Exercise clause can be translated to modern English as "You do whatever the hell you want". You will notice that your quotes from George Washington and John Adams support this interpretation. You will also notice that no where in the First Amendment are the words "separation of church and state" found.

My comment that you hadn't "read too many original documents from the people who were part of the government" that wrote our earliest governing documents was more a response to your first comment about not having a mentioning of ""God" in the pledge of allegiance." There are a great many first hand sources that show that the founders were not opposed to religion in government, they were opposed to an officially sanctioned ("establishment of") religion administered by the government.

Now as for Thomas Jefferson (don't quote me on any of this, I don't have time to go thoroughly research it right now), I believe he is what was known as a "deist" and cherry-picked the parts of the Bible that he liked, while discarding the rest. This is similar to some religions today that take selections from the Bible, the Koran, the Tanakh, and other religious texts while not completely following any of them. You can see this in the above quotes where he refers to taking the good parts of the New Testament and separating it from the parts he believes to be defective ("It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.") The same appears to be true of your second Jefferson quote, where he refers to "restor[ing] to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." I'm not an English major, but I do believe that "this most venerated reformer of human errors" refers to Jesus or God. If this is correct, he is essentially saying "I don't believe that Jesus was the child of a virgin but maybe one day in America we'll follow the important stuff that he put forward without believing in a virgin birth."

If you really want me to go dig up a ridiculous amount of quotes, I'll do it, but it'll take me a while to go find them all and I really don't think it'll change your mind. PM me if you are interested.