If you're listening to Atheists Talk radio right now, you've been hearing a lot about the secular intent of the founding of the US government. The LA Times has an article on the Jefferson Bible — that greatly abridged version of the Bible that Jefferson made by chopping out all the miracles and unbelievable stuff, reducing it to a work of New Testament philosophy. The article asks,
"Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, 'I only believe these parts?'"
My reaction would be "Hallelujah!" The Religious Right ought to be experiencing some sever cognitive dissonance, since they both revere the founding fathers to a ridiculous degree and insist that this is a Christian nation…but they avoid it by deluding themselves about the radical nature of some of the founding fathers' religious belief.
We need a president who can do this:
In Jefferson's version of the Gospels, for example, Jesus is still wrapped in swaddling clothes after his birth in Bethlehem. But there's no angel telling shepherds watching their flocks by night that a savior has been born. Jefferson retains Jesus' crucifixion but ends the text with his burial, not with the resurrection.
Stripping miracles from the story of Jesus was among the ambitious projects of a man with a famously restless mind. At 71, he read Plato's "Republic" in the original Greek and found it lackluster.
We won't be getting one in the next election.
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Heh.
I tell folks, if we are going to get the "Bible" back into the schools, I suggest for a K-12 lesson plan a project where each student makes his or her Jefferson Bible editing out those parts with which he/she disagrees and has to explain why. Of course traditionalist students would be permitted to not edit anything out.
Could you imagine buying a bunch of Bibles for a school class and then a photo of K-12 students cutting them up with scissors? It would make for great media.
Well, the reaction would be really super duper exciting if a US President took a copy of the koran and edited it with scissors and glue.
... damn, I like that idea.
Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.
That's such a good idea, that it's scary.
Well first we will have to get a president who could be trusted with something as sharp as scissors...
--ct
BTW,
Even though I liked the article, one caveat is it repeats the claim that Jefferson (and Washington) was a "Deist." They might be categorized as "Deists" in some looser sense of the term, but not as defined in the article, the common way of understanding Deism.
"Deists differed from traditional Christians by rejecting miraculous occurrences and prophecies and embracing the notion of a well-ordered universe created by a God who withdrew into detached transcendence."
The God of neither Jefferson nor Washington "withdrew into detached transcendence." They were "theists" not "deists." This is a point Ed Brayton and I have tried to stress.
I tell folks, if we are going to get the "Bible" back into the schools, I suggest for a K-12 lesson plan a project where each student makes his or her Jefferson Bible editing out those parts with which he/she disagrees and has to explain why.
Almost - a better plan would be that they have to explain why they agree with the parts they left in, not the parts they took out. That would encourage them to really examine the parts they're leaving in, and might cut down on the total amount.
That school class example is really the way that religion should be taught at early ages. It would also go a long way to show that a "holy" book is like any book, i.e. made by human hands. What is written can be edited. Why not do it to various holy books and texts, for some comparative cut and paste? :)
Koran, Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Talmud, the Eddas - anything you can find, you can use. It would no doubt be very interesting to compare passages from various faiths, especially for kids who might have heard only of a few before coming to school.
Hi PZ,
Nothing to say about this particular post. Just wanted to say thanks for the blog which is keeping me entertained on a bus ride across eastern Thailand.
John
Meh, they're just gonna claim that the Jefferson Bible is an atheist forgery (like Einsteins insistance on not being a theist).
Or perhaps Teh Athiest Conspiracy(tm) was on his case so he had to appear as a freethinker to survive in politiics so that he could inject some Cristain TROOOOOOTH into the constitution.
There's nothing these people can't rationalise.
INT. MONTICELLO - DAY
Shepherd Book: What are we up to, Thomas?
Thomas Jefferson: Fixing your Bible.
Book: I, um...
[alarmed]
Book: What?
Jefferson: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense.
[he's marked up the bible, crossed out passages and torn out pages]
Book: No, no. You-you-you can't...
Jefferson: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem.
Book: Really?
Jefferson: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.
[rips out page]
Does this mean Jefferson was secretly a programmed killing machine?
Not to be repetitive, but I suppose this is a better place for that link to Bush editing out anti-religiousness from a Jefferson quote during a July 4th speech.
"But Obama's main message was the government's duty to address what he said are "moral problems" -- such as war, poverty, joblessness, homelessness, violent streets and crumbling schools -- and to employ religious institutions to do it." - 7/5/2008
Fellow founding father Thomas Paine's views on religion, as expressed in The Age of Reason (1795), were so offensive that no one would bury him on consecrated ground. Instead he was buried on his own farm...
...before a disinterment that, after a curious chain of events, led to his skull residing a few hundred yards from Darwin's Down house in the mid-nineteenth century!!
See The Trouble with Tom by Paul Collins
That Bible lesson's a great idea. Maybe kids should have a chance to write their own origin myths, too.
Given the current fundamentalist obsession with "end times", it is worth noting that Jefferson dismissed the Book of Revelation as "merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams".
PS: one of many nuggets that will appear in my Rough Guide to Evolution, once the publishers have finished with it!
"That Bible lesson's a great idea. Maybe kids should have a chance to write their own origin myths, too."
Did that in 8th grade when we studied mythology.
A Molly for Ginger Yellow, stat!
That's something I'd like to have in my library! I hope someone starts mass producing the text.
No, we won't be getting someone like this in the next election. But that shouldn't stop us from working toward restoring the idea that a president should be smarter than those he or she represents and not simply willing to pander to them.
Spoke too soon. The text is available. I should've read the article before commenting.
I think McCain is more nonreligious than he will admit - but it's just something he doesn't consider very important, could be damaging to him politically, so he will outsource to the conservative fundamantal Christians.
I think McCain is more nonreligious than he will admit - but it's just something he doesn't consider very important, could be damaging to him politically, so he will outsource to the conservative fundamantal Christians.
I think McCain is more nonreligious than he will admit - but it's just something he doesn't consider very important, could be damaging to him politically, so he will outsource to the conservative fundamantal Christians.
Can you imagine the reaction if our president talked to god and was told he needed to go to war? Oh, wait, that DID happen, and it makes me WAY sicker than a grown man playing cut n' paste does!
You guys may like the following post. In it, I show that John Adams too was a freethinker who thought the Bible was "errant" and hence man's reason could "spot" the error and cut it out.
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2008/06/jeffersons-syncretism-adam…
Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have it available in both hardback and paperback. The hardback looks old-fashioned, but I couldn't find out if it was faux-leather or not. Amazon also has it in "Kindle" format. Ebookmall.com has it available in both Adobe Reader and Microsoft Reader formats. Most of these run about $8 USD
ABE Books has one bookseller offering it in a faux-leather binding with gilt edges for $48 USD. and two booksellers offering the 1904 government printing with leather binding. One is priced at $140; the other is $500.
I think what we really need is the "P.Z. Myers Bible", containing all the bits our tentacled overlord agrees with. Shouldn't require too much paper! In fact, might it not reduce to the single sentence, which as we know can indeed be found therein: "There is no god."?
PZ, I'm so glad find a computer and tune you in while I visit my daughter in Amsterdam. I was getting nervous without my daily peek into Pharyngula. I am finding large numbers of refreshingly secular people here.
It's available at the Monticello bookstore: Jefferson Bible.
If you hunt around, it can also be found on the internet in downloadable form, free.
Can it be printed on an absorbent two-ply?
You know, to really take the little k-12 exercise to its logical conclusion, why not skip the scissors altogether and hand them the glue? One page at a time, they can correct the problems with scripture.
The e-text of the work is available:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html
And somewhat easier to read, here:
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/
Heh, irony.
some good music to listen too while reading your Jeffersonian bible Goddamned by Jay Brannan http://youtube.com/watch?v=omOV2_h5uoc
Speaking of Jefferson & presidents, check out the latest bit of creative quoting from our current one:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/bush_edits_out_jeffersons_re…
PZ@30,
Do you really want to risk rubbing any part of such a text against skin near to delicate mucous membranes? Could you be absolutely sure it won't get into the bloodstream?
30
You got that idea from the copies of the Constitution in the White House, huh?
Have you all missed the relevance of this, or have I missed you all commenting on the relevance of this?
In his Independence Day speech, your dear President quoted Jefferson to an appreciative audience. Directly from the transcript on the White House website: "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be -- to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all -- the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."
Completely missing from the middle of the quote above, after "to burst the chains" and before the comma were the words "under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves"
Looks to me like Jefferson's actual words clearly had criticism of religion. That was the president slyly changing a direct quote from a founding father to alter its implied meaning. Seems important to me.
On my blog here.
I've gotta wonder how many of Jefferson's contemporaries, and I mean "regular voters," not just the educated elite, were aware of his version of the Bible.
There is an assumption that people used to be more superstitious than they are now, but I'm afraid that may not be the case. :-)
Bald Ape,
I don't think any of his voters knew of his cutting up of the Bible; there was a social prejudice back then towards "religious correctness" that made it impossible for either Jefferson or Adams to "clarify" what they exactly believed on religion.
However, some of Jefferson's Federalist clergy critics knew that he wasn't a traditional Christian like they were and tarred him as an "infidel" (which according to orthodox Christian standards both he and Adams were) and an even "atheist" (which he was not). The public was aware of those attacks.
There's always been end time cults in all religions, however the current cult which obsesses on revelations was the lunacy of some Brit Weirdo Fundie which spread to America. That was long after Jefferson's Death.
"Can it be printed on an absorbent two-ply?"
Or it could be more "green":
http://www.poopoopaper.com/
And Thomas Paine was basically an outright athiest, to the extent that he was persecuted.
From his "Age of Reason":
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.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Paine also wrote the seminal "Agrarian Justice", the touchstone of the land-tenure reforms that was later taken up by Henry George.
#6
I've read several biographies of Jefferson, all of which refer to Jefferson as a Deist, as well as heard it from professors in College level classes. A Deist is more popularly understood as a creator who does not interfere in anything.
I refer to Deists as one cup of coffee from a Unitarian, and a sixpack away from an atheist.
It's also consistent that one MUST disregard all miraculous events from the Bible if you're a Deist, and refer to Jebus as a philosopher.
So when you are insisting that Jefferson was a Theist, you are contradicting all the current scholarship, and many secular University History departments, unless they have shifted in the past fifteen years when I was in my Jefferson reading frenzy.
The fact that you are contradicting the 'experts' however, does not mean you're wrong, but does beg a citation or two.
Heehee - thank you, Ginger Yellow @#11. Exactly what I was thinking...
You folks would likely love "The Thomas Jefferson Hour®" as much as I do, on PBS (Tuesdays around here, 1-2.) Clay Jenkinson is great as Jefferson and clearly very enthused, informed, and realistic (as far as likely wording of opinion and description.) I admire Jefferson for being an independent thinker, and expect he'd be fascinated by discussions about the Anthropic Principle and M***l R*****m. He was after all, a Deist AFAIK, not a total atheist and thus rather in line with my own views.
Another reason I like Jefferson is as founder of my Alma Mater, the University of Virginia! Go 'Hoos! So adding to the enjoyment of the horror of learning in a previous thread that I'm in Mensa, some can now enjoy my being a Cavalier (and Unitarian Universalist as well, often considered a proper home base for Jeffersonian thought even though he was not a member.)
http://www.jeffersonhour.org/?id=2
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/jefferson_deist.htm
Jefferson did of course have some flaws, one of which was his inability to comprehend Plato. Of the "Republic" he wrote: "While wading thro' the whimsies, the puerilities, & unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?" In this case, the world was right and Jefferson was wrong.
A citation:
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . . ."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
Or two:
"I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with his providence, and our riper years with his wisdom and power; and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that he will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do, shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/jefinau2.htm
Christian Nationalists might point to that as proof that Jefferson believed in the "biblical God." However, what it actually shows is that Jefferson thought most or all world religions (including Islam, pagan Native Americans and Greco-Romans) all worshipped the same generic "Providence" who came to different peoples under different names.
I got to thinking seriously on cutting the parts out of the bible I don't agree with. Then I thought, "What about when there is something on the opposite side of the page that I agree with and don't want to cut out?" Then I realized that the probability of that was so vanishingly small that it wouldn't be a problem. As for my class, however, I can't anticipate what they'll do. Maybe we can just use markers. Furthermore, the logistics remain a problem. For example, does each student do the whole bible? Maybe just one book, or one chapter? Who will donate a class set of bibles for defacing? I feel it would be immoral to obtain them under false pretenses (is there such a thing as true pretenses?) or by stealing them. Also, how do I do this without getting my ass fired? I got in trouble a couple of years ago for saying testicles, so you never know.
By the way, Happy Birthday to me, and to George W. Bush, Sylvester Stallone, and the Dalai Lama.
The last I heard, the bible was long out of copyright. You could download and print any translation of the bible that you like.
You could also just use the electronic texts themselves, and do all of the editing on a computer.
That having been said, I don't think it would be dishonest to ask some group, such as the Gideons, for a donation of bibles for the purpose of "textual analysis".
Hint: Look up the etymology of "analysis". Heh.
#47 #48
Cool, thanks for those, Jon.
So I guess the best you could say is that Jefferson may have been a Deist, but if he was, he was having it both ways.
[understatement] That is not entirely inconsistent with Jefferson [/understatement]
He also changed his mind a lot over his seventy years.
Maybe he had a deathbed conversion to Deism just to be contrary.
BWAHAHA
-s
Owlmirror wrote: That having been said, I don't think it would be dishonest to ask some group, such as the Gideons, for a donation of bibles for the purpose of "textual analysis".
more wisdom from mr.brannan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFyZARSQdKc
"why don't the gideons leave condoms in the drawer?
bibles don't save many people anymore"
Let me note too, Scooter, that if you want to appeal to the authority of experts, Steven Waldman's new book, "Founding Faith, likewise argues that Jefferson was not a "Deist" in a strict sense, but rather a "unitarian," or a "theist." And that book gets blurbs by among others, Joseph Ellis, Walter Isaacson, Jim Wallis, George Stephanopoulos, William Bennett, and Mark Noll.
Waldman likewise has written me in an unsolicited email saying that he has checked in with my blog and agrees with my basic assessment of the FF's faith.
#54 Thanks, Jon
If you really want your mind blown, I recommend Genghis Kahn, and the founding of Modern Civilization by Jack Weatherford, if you haven't already.
They found a bunch of Documents in China, took about ten years to translate them, mostly deciphered by `1998 and basically rewrote two hundred years of history from circa 1200 to 1400 with radical implications on the 'Enlightenment', and surprising takes on liberalism and multi-culturism.It's really well written, and a great 'everything you know is wrong' narrative.
There's a section that includes an event organized by Khan where Buddhists , Xians, and Muslims gather to debate which religion was the best. It's one of the funniest things I've ever read.
The "world" does not agree that Plato was right. "Whimsical, puerile and unintelligible" actually sound rather mild compared to some criticism of Plato.
Having just watched Cosmos, Carl Sagan strongly suggests that Plato's ideological mysticism lead inevitably to stagnancy and corruption.
I see that that segment is on Youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_JSpolpWYEM
Plato's Republic was an obscene glorification of a delusional and totalitarian dictatorship. It is not surprising at all that people like Paine, Jefferson, Russell, Sagan, and many others criticised it.
Maybe kids should have a chance to write their own origin myths, too.
I have a cousin who is a pretty devout lutheran. She's got 2 kids - a 9 year old girl and a 7 year old boy. Last time I was visiting, the topic of my being a nihilist came up (as it often does) and I asked her, "hey can I borrow your kids to show you something for a minute?" So I had the kids sit down and come up with 10 commandments to live by. They're good kids - smart and well-raised - and they did a pretty good job. They had stuff like: #2 "be kind to animals" and #4 "respect your parents" I didn't help, I just facilitated and took notes then helped them pare the list down to 10.
When we were done I turned to my cousin and said, "isn't it cool that your 9 and 7 year old kids could do a better job putting together a moral system than 'god', in 15 minutes?"
She got the point.
BC, #21 (and 22 and 23!)
How genuinely religious is any US politician? I can't believe for a second that many of them are genuine in their professed faith. About the only Xian value they care for is forgiveness - in others, toward them for their actions, if (when) they get caught.
If to pretend to believe in a god for your own sake is a Pascal's Wager, does that mean one pretending to do it for the sake of a career is a Pascal's Croupier?
Jon Rowe wrote:
I think the problem is not with saying that Jefferson was a Deist. It's with the anachronistic definition of 'Deism'.
The historical movement known as Deism is defined by the works of John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, William Wollaston, Lord Bolingbroke, et al., and in this sense, Jefferson most certainly was a Deist. These individuals largely considered themselves Christian, even if they rejected such mysteries as transubstantiation, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, and allied themselves more with 'natural religion' than the 'revealed religion' of Scripture.
This Deism (which is the historical source of the term) has little to do with the nonreligious 'absent clockmaker' definition prominent in contemporary discussions. And so even if Jefferson was no Deist in the contemporary sense, he was a Deist in the sense that matters most.
llewelly wrote:
Arguably the Republic is more concerned with justice and its relation to the good life than with political philosophy. After all, the political stuff is introduced as a useful large-scale heuristic which can then be transferred to the level of the individual.
Owlmirror wrote:
From ancient Greek analusis 'breaking up', ana- 'back' and luein 'to loose'.
Arguably the Republic is more concerned with justice and its relation to the good life than with political philosophy. After all, the political stuff is introduced as a useful large-scale heuristic which can then be transferred to the level of the individual.
Yeah, right. Plato lived in Athens at a time of enormous political turmoil - coups, counter-coups, purges, wars, plagues - in which his own family, and probably he himself, were deeply involved. Of course The Republic had nothing to do with politics!
Too bad our current prez just dirtied Jefferson's home with his presence last Friday...
http://www.nbc29.com/Global/story.asp?S=8620581
@#11 Ginger FTW!
Neil @ #45
You can't go anywhere in UVa without running into a Jefferson reference!
The University of Northern Iowa has a freethinker's club with T-shirts that have the following quote by Jefferson: "Question, with boldness, even the existence of a god." Well said.
@ Dave2,
Plato insisted that words, and the ideas behind them, were merely approximations of ideal forms.
He didn't even know what "is" is.
Like he could ever be president.
There you go again.
Trying to deny the undeniable. (Of coarse you are these atheists folk)
The thirteen colonists were a very Puritan Protestant and Anglican Protestant people in all classes especially the middle class. It was their dominating identity in morality and intellect.
Small numbers at the top were not so and so were something else. Yet these few people did not create america of the new establishment. Their individual opinions , any side, were irrelevant as to the essence of a people and a nation especially so representive one as this new nation.
The founding fathers were Christian, indeed protestant, enough in numbers and conviction and even passion.
That this Myers dude tries to change this reality shows it hits a nerve.
The nerve hit is that the greatest country and civilization in human history was founded, created, animated, and ozzing from every pore a very biblical souled Protestant Christian people. A few deist/theists etc is a not-worthy-for-footnote details.
America must be brought back in all aspects of its life to biblical convictions and regulations to have a great future like its great past. This is from a Canadian so bias is not likely relevant.
The thirteen colonists
of Cobol?
tell us more, Starbuck.
Robert Byers, you start by giving a more-or-less accurate picture of the religion of pre-revolutionary America: Puritan Congregationalists in New England, Anglicans in Virginia, Protestant 'enthusiasts' in Pennsylvania (Quakers and Germans), scattered Roman Catholics in Maryland, evangelical 'born again' Methodists and Baptists after the Great Awakening, and some freethinking Deists and Unitarians among the educated classes.
But then you write, "The founding fathers were Christian, indeed protestant, enough in numbers and conviction and even passion." Admittedly, the Deists and Unitarians known as the founding fathers were Christians in a very watered-down sense of the term, and they were part of the theological current of Protestantism (they certainly had no love for Roman Catholicism). But the founding fathers were of the "[s]mall numbers at the top" you mention.
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin were certainly not Puritans or high-church Anglicans or Quakers or Moravians or Methodists or Baptists. None of them could sign off on the Westminster Confession or the Thirty-Nine Articles or the confessional creeds of the Nonconformists or Wesley's Articles of Religion or even just the Nicene Creed. They denied the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and the inerrancy of Scripture.
To consign this to a footnote (or expunge it entirely, as you suggest) seems quite out of order.
Dave2,
Byers evidently knows his 1984:
"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."
The widely-believed lie that the USA's "Founding Fathers" (for whom nearly all Americans have an absurdly exaggerated reverence) were theologically orthodox Christians is extremely useful to the theocratic right. It must therefore be upheld by any means necessary.
Jefferson did of course have some flaws
Such as owning property in human beings, regarding this as so unexceptionable as to finagle the electoral process to favour people who did, and fathering a string of children on a woman he could legally have beaten and tortured if she had rejected his advances.
He was right about Plato, though.
Find me one man who doesn't.
This is one of my favorite Jefferson quotes
Yes. Jefferson is not a man worth paying attention to.
The thirteen colonists
of Cobol?
No, Fortran, silly!
The saddest and most telling aspect is that this is news.
P.S. Byers is a fool.
As long as we are talking about Jefferson, Ive always been fond of the following quote:
Actually, Jefferson was the kind of accommodationist that many "new atheists" would not like very well. I mean, at least be consistent. He treated "revelation" a lot like very "liberal" theologians do today.
Of course we'll never know if he would have been a liberal religionist, deist, or atheist if he lived today. Perhaps it was his time that did not allow him to be an atheist (though some were as early as Descartes). So one might assume that "for his times" he was a freethinker, but I don't think we'd tend to call a deist like he sensibly was a "freethinker" in today's context.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
It would be unfair to judge Jefferson by his archaic notions even though he was fairly progressive for his time. In some ways, he was far more progressive then the religion toting assholes in politics these days. In other ways, he wasn't ahead of his time. He did view indians and blacks as inferior to whites, and kept plenty of slaves. Yet, his idealized views on liberty helped set the template to our modern democracy. Unfortunately, politicians have ignored many of his warnings and have used their personal illogical views to cloud the direction of democracy. We have lost many of our inherent rights and freedoms, while the Executive Branch consistently exercises it's dominance and throws the whole checks and balances system off kilter. To restore our rightful place as a democratic nation, we may need to instigate another revolution. Otherwise, if the status quo continues, the divisional lines between the wealthy and the poor will continue to increase, eventually leading to a autocratic state run by incompetent idiots...wait, that's already happening. Nevermind, sometimes, if you put your ears close to the ground, you can hear countless dead spinning in their graves.
Actually, what Dominionist fucktards like Byers are trying to push isn't the delusion that the Founders were "theologically orthodox Protestants", it's the even more poisonous delusion that they subscribed to the 19th-century shit souffle of ignorance that sill plagues us today under the nom de guerre of "fundamentalism".
A few years ago, I came across an old high school teacher of mine at a store. We had a conversation about the founding fathers, and he claimed "Jefferson believed in god so much he wrote his own version of the bible." I told him he should take a look at that bible, and sent him the link via email when I got home.
I came across him again a year or so later. He wouldn't speak to me.
Ktesibos@82,
FSM on a bike! They really are going to need their own Ministry of Truth to rearrange history on that scale.
"We need a president who can do this."
Um, you mean pick through the Holy Shepherd's Tales and choose the bits he likes, ignoring all the bits he doesn't?
You have that now. Witness his apparent constructionalist conviction that the Constitution is fixed and unchanging--except when he wants to stop teh gays a-marryin'.