This thread is for discussing Ch. 1 - Revolutionary Secularism. You can post within this framework or create your own threads.

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The words of Madison and Jefferson are wonderful. I will be reading more about them in the future.

I knew I liked Virginia for a reason...and I thought it was just a nice place...

It was the state with the first religious freedom act (which spurred on the separation issue).


I have notes on the chapter that I will be sharing soon.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

I am not necessarily for ousting religion from our society, just keeping where it should be: in the personal sphere. As I have said, there are just too many different people/religions/sects within religion for a government to endorse only one as a standard. This is what the Founders saw, at least those that aspired to an Enlightenment philosophy. Reason, not myth. Human Beings, not a God as lawmaker. Reason and secularism won. Let's move on.

But the seeds of our current discord between the religious v. non-religious/secular/non-christian, according to Jacoby and other research/pondering I have been doing, were sown all the way back to the days of our Founders. A secular Constitution was possible due to the cooperation of true secular freethinkers as well as marginalized evangelical of the time. Many factions existed that would have been subjugated by any recognition of the majority Christian group as a national religion. These marginalized groups sided with the secularists as the lesser of two evils, and have 'bided their time until their growing numbers' increased to the point that they could 'influence lawmakers' and insinuate their faith back in to the law of our land. I think that we are living in those times now.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Jacoby mentions many times through the first few chapters about how the great freethinkers of the past, and those who especially were instrumental to the founding and of setting the foundation of this country, were and are still marginalized by the religious institution of this country.

Does anyone think this is the case? Was it by intention or oversight? Were these great thinkers forgotten for religious or political reasons (case in point, many of Paine's friends shunned him because of the fear of drawing the ire of the ignorant)?

I, of course, feel that religious institutions are the most corrupt institutions around and absolutely subjugate information that may open up eyes to the foolishness they disseminate to the general public.



Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Edited by: misterpessimistic  at: 7/12/05 4:14 pm

misterpessimistic

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. . . freethinkers of the past, . . .were and are still marginalized by the religious institution of this country . . . Does anyone think this is the case? Was it by intention or oversight?

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I think the primary principle at work here is confirmation bias. Until recently, it was simply unthinkable to a religious person that a freethinker or even a person with a different religion could be moral. Although there is surely some deliberate dissembling, I think Christian historians who ignored freethinkers "knew" that they weren't important before they began writing.

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If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

misterpessimistic

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I knew I liked Virginia for a reason...

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I always liked it because it sounds like "vagina"

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Without downgrading the importance of either the establisment clause or the constitutional ban on religious tests for officeholders, one can make a strong case that the omission of one word - God - played an even more important role in the construction of a secularist foundation for the new government. p. 28 softcover

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Sweet!

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God, unlike enslaved humans, was not a deal breaker. p. 29

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Ouch!

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Americans lived no longer in an age of faith, but in age of faiths and an age of reason. (last sentence of chapter)

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Almost seems like a miracle doesn't it?

Edited by: LanDroid at: 8/4/05 8:35 pm

These are quotes I had tagged as well. Very profound and, in the case of the slavery one, kinda sad.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Jeremy,

There is a town in seskachaw called Regina. They pronounce it re-GEE-na. THAT's funny!

Edited by: ginof at: 8/20/05 2:28 am

Mr P. you are correct, the words of Madison and Jefferson are inspring, particularly the quote on page 20. Madison was the architect of the constitution, for him to say

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A just government instituted to secure and perpetuate it [liberty], needs them[the clergy] not.

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is huge. Further on the page it shows that he thought that keeping the government and religion completely separate was the way to minimize the worst effects of religions discord on civil society and government. Yet, we run headlong in the other direction......

The discussion of the passing of the religious liberty law in virginia (p23-4) is also interesting in that they do acknolwlege god, but vote down a reference to jesus. I wonder what today's virginians (i.e. pat robertson and jerry fawell) would think of that if they knew who did it and why? I can see them sputtering out something wrong now.