This is the one post I will make on it because it seems off-topic.
What else would you have them say in public in a time when saying you didn't believe in God could mean being locked up in jail,and then shunned by everyone in business so you couldn't make a living.
That's merely cynicism, we don't know that for a fact and the Unitarians which some were seems to be fairly far from conventional Christianity.
The one thing Karl Marx was right about is religion being the opiate of the masses. Jefferson and the others may have been educated men with a broad viewpoint on life,but they still had to "sell" the idea of independence and revolution to a mostly illiterate and superstitious crowd that would be the ones doing most of the fighting and dying. Good luck winning a war by yourself.
This is off-topic but even at best, Thomas Jefferson was one founder out of what? 50 of them. It's been shown, the majority were of some facet of Christianity. Maybe Jefferson wasn't right.
Saying such things was the custom,and everyone did it. The term "god bless!" is still used today. This stuff is ingrained in the culture and there is nothing that can be done about it.
On the other hand,in their writings to each other they were more open with their actual viewpoints,but even then they followed the custom of writing such drivel as "On the 12th of May in Our Lords year of 17XX" on the letter headings. It was what was taught to the children that were lucky enough to receive a formal education back then,so it was what they used.[/size]
https://www.thoughtco.com/christian-quotes-of-the-founding-fathers-700789
To be fair,I don't think they spoke against the idea of Christianity (or any other religion,AFATG),as much as they were speaking out on the historically proven FACT that allowing organized religion too much power over a nation corrupted the nation and made slaves of the people. This issue was really current with them as The Reformation and the troubles in England and the Catholic Church were more current history than ancient history .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_English_Reformation
We'd all be bowing to Mecca if it were not for European Christianty.
It can be truthfully said the War of the Catholics against the Protestants was still going on in Northern Ireland right up to recent years. Old Man Joe Kennedy lost his job as Ambassador to the Court of St.James during WW-2 after being caught giving war plans to the IRA to give to the Nazi's.[/size]
True. There is nothing wrong with establishing there is good and evil,and that good should be supported and evil fought against. The problem only starts when you choose a religious organization to determine what is good and what is evil. Suddenly you have innocent people being put to death in pots of boiling oil because they dared to question a church official,or even the existence of Gawd Himself.
One truism is that absolute power corrupts absolutely,and few other than the fat boy that owns North Korea have such absolute power today. Every village priest had that power back in the Middle Ages,though.
It also needs to be said that corrupt stranglehold over people was broken because of one of the bravest men in history standing up and questioning authority,Martin Luther. What is truly amazing is the he was a Catholic Priest himself,and thought the Church had too much power over the people and the governments.
This thread is not about religion which we are suppose to stay away from. However, the UK/Ireland conflict is not a religious war by any means, it has elements of a religious war but UK did not conquer Ireland to spread their Anglican faith.
The experts say so. I will go with them.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland, often portrayed as a religious conflict of a Catholic vs. a Protestant faction, while the more fundamental cause of the conflict was in fact ethnic or nationalistic rather than religious in nature.[23] Since the native Irish were mostly Catholic and the later British-sponsored immigrants were mainly Protestant, the terms become shorthand for the two cultures, but it is inaccurate to describe the conflict as a religious one.[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war
Again, this is way off topic and all I will say on this.
Again, now speaking ill of religion makes this very off-topic.
