I have a comic due for the Ann Arbor Paper on Monday and I’m thinking that I’d like to do something on the threat of theocracy in the United States. I’ve got a rough idea in my head, but, to make it good, I’d like to ask for your help. I’m thinking of juxtaposing quotes from our founding fathers concerning the separation of Church and State, with recent statements made by leaders on the right, like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Bob Jones. So, I’d like to ask that if you have access to good quotes, either from the founding fathers or from one of our radical American clerics, please leave a comment… I’m thinking that this would also make a nice t-shirt project. I personally would love a shirt with a quote from Ben Franklin on one side and Jerry Falwell on the other, and I suspect that I’m not alone. (On this subject, I should tell you that I’ve got a lot of t-shirt ideas and my hope is to have some merchandise out before the holidays. So, start saving your allowance.)
Connect
9 Comments
“Civilized people – Muslims, Christians and Jews – [implication: atheists are uncivilized] all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.”
can i sad
“Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved, I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“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
Falwell said President Bush should “blow them (the terrorists) all away in the name of the Lord.”
also see
http://www.4religious-right.info
and
http://www.theocracywatch.org
both sites which seem to be unavailable at the moment (bogged down with traffic or something else?)
“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.” [George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792]
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have 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, letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774]
“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…Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.” [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, pp. 8,9]
Sorry if this is too long.
From the Atheism.org page Quotes from the United States of America’s Founding Fathers
“The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves…these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.” — Thomas Jefferson [no source given]
“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 in 1813, _The_Writings_of_Thomas_Jefferson_Memorial_Edition_, edited by Lipscomb and Bergh, 14:21
“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 in a letter to Thomas Jefferson
“Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.”–Benjamin Franklin
“Christianity…(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. …Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and imposters led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.” –Thomas Jefferson, _Six_Historic_Americans_ by John E. Remsberg
“Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity [of opinion]. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”–Thomas Jefferson, _Notes_on_the_State_of_Virginia_(1781-85), _Oxford_Dictionary_of_Quotations_
“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley 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 blind faith.” — Thomas Jefferson
“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 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 to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802, _The_Writings_of_Thomas_Jefferson_Memorial_Edition_, edited by Lipscomb and Bergh, 1903-04, 16:281
“…no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise.. affect their civil capacities.”–Thomas Jefferson, _Statute_for_Religious_Freedom_, 1779, _The_Papers_of_Thomas_Jefferson_, edited by Julron P. Boyd, 1950, 2:546
“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, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_ by James A. Haught
“Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project.”–James Madison, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_ by James A. Haught
“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”–James Madison in a letter to Edward Livingston in 1822
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize [hu]mankind.” — Thomas Paine, _The_Age_of_Reason_
“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law.”–Thomas Paine, _The_Rights_of_Man_, 1791, ed P.S. Foner, 1945
“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” — Benjamin Franklin, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_ by James A. Haught
“One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.”–The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420 [under what heading?]
These are all submitted by users to ZNET (link):
Thomas Jefferson:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Thomas Jefferson:
I have never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
John Adams:
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.
Woody Allen:
If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.
Susan B. Anthony:
I cannot imagine a God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling Him “great.”
Jesus:
No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Martin Luther:
…God grants wealth to those coarse asses to whom He gives nothing else’.
Mark Twain:
God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made everyone happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell – mouths mercy and invented hell – mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
Mark Twain:
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen
In doing research for the comic, I just discovered the Armed Females of America site. Here
diovan
predefined commonality:aurora struck chieftain.fascinate mercifully levitra http://www.order-doctor.com/