09-04-2008, 02:01 AM
[quote karsen][quote karsen]James Madison, who is considered the father of the US Constitution, trained for ministry and has many writings on God if you care to look. Heck, read the Constitution for several references to God.
Yeah, I'm here. I goofed and don't expect to hear the end of it.
I didn't mean to cite the Constitution in the second sentence. I meant to say the Declaration of Independence.
Whatever. I made a mistake. Now I'm not fit to be VP.
Oh, I see. Yep, you're right, the Declaration of Independence does have four mentions of what could be construed as "God". But the God Jefferson was talking about was almost certainly not a lot like the God most Christians relate to as "God". Jefferson was not a Christian - in his time many people labeled him a Deist. The key relationship between Jefferson's beliefs and his writing of the Declaration has to do with his philosophical position with respect to ethics. He thought what is morally right and wrong came from the creator of nature (Nature's God) and could not be derived from nature itself. So when the colonies set out to make the case for breaking with Britain, and Jefferson felt it essential to make the case in ethical terms, he invoked the notion of Nature's God as the source of the moral justification for the break.
So in the Declaration of Independence one can find reference to a God, but I'll bet it is not much like the God most Christians think Jefferson was referencing; e.g., Jefferson very clearly did not think Jesus was divine (he did think Jesus was a great moral teacher, though). I'll bet Palin had no clue as to what Jefferson meant when he appealed to "God" in the writing of the Declaration when she said, "If it was good enough for the founding fathers it is good enough for me."
Yeah, I'm here. I goofed and don't expect to hear the end of it.
I didn't mean to cite the Constitution in the second sentence. I meant to say the Declaration of Independence.
Whatever. I made a mistake. Now I'm not fit to be VP.
Oh, I see. Yep, you're right, the Declaration of Independence does have four mentions of what could be construed as "God". But the God Jefferson was talking about was almost certainly not a lot like the God most Christians relate to as "God". Jefferson was not a Christian - in his time many people labeled him a Deist. The key relationship between Jefferson's beliefs and his writing of the Declaration has to do with his philosophical position with respect to ethics. He thought what is morally right and wrong came from the creator of nature (Nature's God) and could not be derived from nature itself. So when the colonies set out to make the case for breaking with Britain, and Jefferson felt it essential to make the case in ethical terms, he invoked the notion of Nature's God as the source of the moral justification for the break.
So in the Declaration of Independence one can find reference to a God, but I'll bet it is not much like the God most Christians think Jefferson was referencing; e.g., Jefferson very clearly did not think Jesus was divine (he did think Jesus was a great moral teacher, though). I'll bet Palin had no clue as to what Jefferson meant when he appealed to "God" in the writing of the Declaration when she said, "If it was good enough for the founding fathers it is good enough for me."