Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
From:
[email protected] (Brad Pierce)
Subject: Religion and the USA "founding fathers"
Keywords: quotes
Nntp-Posting-Host: lanai.cs.ucla.edu
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 16:30:36 GMT
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments
had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect
a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on
many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of
political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians
of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert
the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient
auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate
it, needs them not."
- James Madison
"A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments,
instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have
had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has
the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has
been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence
in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry and persecution."
- James Madison
"A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a
revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables,
tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian
revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that
ever existed?"
- John Adams
letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal
example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has
preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of
grief has produced!"
- John Adams
letter to Thomas Jefferson
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of
the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious
by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of
Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope,
because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius',
the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the
guillotine."
- John Adams
letter to John Taylor
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized
learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed
a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY?
The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence,
the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced,
propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision
with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and
you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm
about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
- John Adams
letter to John Taylor
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile
to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they
have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into
mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore
the safer engine for their purpose."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women
and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been
burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an
inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?
To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
To support roguery and error all over the earth."
- Thomas Jefferson
from "Notes on Virginia"
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which
weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her
seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if
there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than
that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they
believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one
is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not
one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of
the priests."
- Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, 1803
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer
of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by
those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into
an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors
in Church and State."
- Thomas Jefferson
to S. Kercheval, 1810
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the
lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as
religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own
purpose."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral
principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to
this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing
one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and
to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the
human mind."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Carey, 1816
"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion
of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is
really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily
distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers,
and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill,
we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality
which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment
of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent
morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture,
which has resulted fro artificial systems, invented by
ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate conception of Jesus,
his deification, the creation of the world by him, his
miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his
corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin,
atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.)
is a most desirable object."
- Thomas Jefferson
to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819
"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ)
in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of
Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentence toward
forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to
redeem it.
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his
biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct
morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again,
of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth,
charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to
the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the
roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes
and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first
corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus."
- Thomas Jefferson
to W. Short, 1820
"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation,
is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous
confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or
left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the
superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless
as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham,
of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus
did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God,
physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of
men more learned than myself in that lore."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Story, Aug. 4, 1820
"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the
happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing
dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
cA> 2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible
the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals
to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes
of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made
of Christendom a slaughter-house."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of
Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who
have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy
absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his
genuine words. 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 Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
- Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823
"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and
of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism,
differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Jared Sparks, 1820
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy
is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at
the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but
what we did."
- Benjamin Franklin
letter to his father, 1738
"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite
Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us,
but that He is even infinitely above it."
- Benjamin Franklin
from "Articles of Belief and Acts
of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good
works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping,
sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries
and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of
pleasing the Deity."
- Benjamin Franklin
Works, Vol. VII, p. 75
"If we look back into history for the character of the present
sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their
turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The
primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the
Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants
of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church,
but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops,
but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and
in New England."
- Benjamin Franklin
"The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of
the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.''
[Thomas Paine]
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind,
tyranny in religion is the worst."
[Thomas Paine]
"...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the
effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half
hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
[Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"]
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church."
[Thomas Paine]
"Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions."
[Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
[Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity."
[John Adams]
"They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American
people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'
thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to
liberty; he is always in allegiance to the despot, abetting his
abuses in return for protection of his own."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814]
"... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various
batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I
have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the
West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less
caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their
interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is
indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Spofford, 1816]
"[I]t may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of
separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority
with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential
points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to
a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded
agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way
whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and
protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."
[James Madison, "James Madison on Religious Liberty",
edited by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238]
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature
shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings
shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
[John Adams]
-------
"...this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there
were no religion in it."
[John Adams]
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty
gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
[Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all
mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814]
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
[Benjamin Franklin]
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it
does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the
help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
[Ben Franklin]
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man
and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship,
that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not
opinions, I contemplate with soveriegn reverence that act of the whole
American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT.
"The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519]
"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story
of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in
vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told
of the assassination of Julius Caesar..."
[Thomas Paine]
"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the
study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles;
it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing;
and it admits of no conclusion."
[Thomas Paine]
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society?
In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the
ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding
the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians
of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty
may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just
government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
[James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785]
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of
maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary
operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment
of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less,
in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility
in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
[James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785]
-------
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation.
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been
blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the
most bloody religion that ever existed?"
[John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816]
-------
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of
the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross.
Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
[John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era?
Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius?
Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by
order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index
expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the
guillotine."
[John Adams, letter to John Taylor]
-------
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.
And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or
dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate,
the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently
endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth
in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof,
and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm
about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
[John Adams, letter to John Taylor]
-------
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are
servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal
for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of
a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason
than that of blindfolded fear."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787]
-------
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in
the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the
craft, the power and the profit of the priests."
[Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, 1803]
-------
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
[Thomas Jefferson, to S. Kercheval, 1810]
-------
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade
of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders
will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Baron von Humboldt, 1813]
-------
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles,
all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been
quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for
abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and
absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Carey, 1816]
-------
"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own
country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the
rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from
the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond
from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime
morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment
of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the
rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from
artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate
conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him,
his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal
presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration,
election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object."
[Thomas Jefferson, to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819]
-------
"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his
doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he
preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness of sin; I require
a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find
many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely
benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so
much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate,
therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the
latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of
this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the
first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus."
[Thomas Jefferson, to W. Short, 1820]
-------
"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more
dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and
religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the
grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel
and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of
Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus
did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically
speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than
myself in that lore."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Story, Aug. 4, 1820]
-------
"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin:
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible
the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals
to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes
of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]z
-------
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church
... made of Christendom a slaughter-house."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]
-------
"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those,
calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the
structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any
foundation in his genuine words. 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 classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in
the brain of Jupiter. But we may 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, to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823]
-------
"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and
of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism,
differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Jared Sparks, 1820]
-------
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more
regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day
we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did."
[Benjamin Franklin, letter to his father, 1738]
-------
"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite
Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us,
but that He is even infinitely above it."
[Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief
and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728]
-------
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean
real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making
long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men,
and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
[Benjamin Franklin, Works, Vol. VII, p. 75]
-------
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in
Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been
persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians
thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on
one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed
persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans.
They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves
both here (England) and in New England."
[Benjamin Franklin]
The New Testament, they tell us, is
founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of
its foundation.'' [Thomas Paine]
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind,
tyranny in religion is the worst."
[Thomas Paine]
"...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the
effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half
hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
[Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"]
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church."
[Thomas Paine]
"Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions."
[Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
[Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity."
[John Adams]
"They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American
people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'
thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
[Thomas Jefferson]
"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to
liberty; he is always in allegiance to the despot, abetting his
abuses in return for protection of his own."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814]
"... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various
batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I
have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the
West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less
caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their
interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is
indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Spofford, 1816]
"[I]t may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of
separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority
with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential
points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to
a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded
agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way
whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and
protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."
[James Madison, "James Madison on Religious Liberty",
edited by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238]
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature
shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings
shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
[John Adams]
-------
"...this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there
were no religion in it."
[John Adams]
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty
gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
[Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all
mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814]
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
[Benjamin Franklin]
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it
does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the
help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
[Ben Franklin]
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man
and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship,
that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not
opinions, I contemplate with soveriegn reverence that act of the whole
American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT.
"The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519]
"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story
of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in
vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told
of the assassination of Julius Caesar..."
[Thomas Paine]
"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the
study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles;
it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing;
and it admits of no conclusion."
[Thomas Paine]
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society?
In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the
ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding
the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians
of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty
may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just
government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
[James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785]
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of
maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary
operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment
of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less,
in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility
in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
[James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785]
-------
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation.
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been
blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the
most bloody religion that ever existed?"
[John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816]
-------
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of
the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross.
Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
[John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era?
Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius?
Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by
order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index
expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the
guillotine."
[John Adams, letter to John Taylor]
-------
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.
And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or
dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate,
the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently
endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth
in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof,
and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm
about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
[John Adams, letter to John Taylor]
-------
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are
servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal
for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of
a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason
than that of blindfolded fear."
[Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787]
-------
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in
the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the
craft, the power and the profit of the priests."
[Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, 1803]
-------
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
[Thomas Jefferson, to S. Kercheval, 1810]
-------
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade
of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders
will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Baron von Humboldt, 1813]
-------
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles,
all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been
quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for
abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and
absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Carey, 1816]
-------
"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own
country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the
rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from
the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond
from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime
morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment
of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the
rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from
artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate
conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him,
his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal
presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration,
election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object."
[Thomas Jefferson, to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819]
-------
"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his
doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he
preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness of sin; I require
a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find
many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely
benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so
much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate,
therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the
latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of
this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the
first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus."
[Thomas Jefferson, to W. Short, 1820]
-------
"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more
dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and
religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the
grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel
and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of
Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus
did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically
speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than
myself in that lore."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Story, Aug. 4, 1820]
-------
"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin:
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible
the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals
to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes
of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]z
-------
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church
... made of Christendom a slaughter-house."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]
-------
"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those,
calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the
structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any
foundation in his genuine words. 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 classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in
the brain of Jupiter. But we may 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, to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823]
-------
"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and
of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism,
differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Jared Sparks, 1820]
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"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more
regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day
we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did."
[Benjamin Franklin, letter to his father, 1738]
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"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite
Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us,
but that He is even infinitely above it."
[Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief
and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728]
-------
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean
real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making
long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men,
and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
[Benjamin Franklin, Works, Vol. VII, p. 75]
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"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in
Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been
persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians
thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on
one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed
persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans.
They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves
both here (England) and in New England."
[Benjamin Franklin]
