TheAgitator.com
Hitchens Annihilates Blackwell
Thursday, April 9th, 2009….on faith and the American founding.
59 Responses to “Hitchens Annihilates Blackwell”
Leave a Reply
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 2.5 License.
I saw this yesterday. It was fabulous. I have had misgivings about Hitch due to his stance on Iraq, but I still respect him. He is always interesting on TV, in print or in person (I had the opportunity to see him speak at Illinois State University a few years back).
I can’t stand Hitchens’ positions on Iraq, but he’s usually dead on about religion.
Ken Blackwell looked like an absolute fool in that interview. Not just a fool, but a dishonest fool in complete denial. He quite obviously walked into that discussion utterly unprepared (the level of ignorance he displayed on even the most basic points of the discussion were inexcusable for a person holding his positions in the national GOP), he made almost no comments that were either quantifiable or substantiated, he quite obviously ducked the question on every point Hitchens made (making him look not only ill-informed but weak) and basically came off as a gigantic idiot who knew nothing about American history or the Constitution.
No wonder the Republican Party has been so useless the past eight years…it’s run by a bunch of clueless morons who don’t know anything about religion, politics, or economics.
I wonder how many of those 62% who thought that America was a “Christian Nation” didn’t mean that in a positive way. Seems like 2 very different groups would answer yes to that question.
Hitchens is so brilliant in general that I’m happy to entertain his ideas on the Iraq war.
Always the danger of trying to draw conclusions from a one question poll.
Although I agree with Hitchens, I can’t shake the impression that I’m looking at a pasty, sickly Grima Wormtongue.
Yes, I’m not sure the “is the US a Christian nation” statistic is very instructive. Many of the devout would likely answer in the negative because they don’t see the US as Christian enough, while non-believers who answer that way might be merely expressing their preference. And vice-versa.
(A small subset might actually understand that Constitutionally, we aren’t a Christian nation, and have answered accordingly.)
The thing I found most interesting is this business of ‘The Church” feeling itself to be persecuted: “It will take a crucified Church to bring a crucified Jesus back into their lives” or some such.
Those nails in your hands and feet hurt much, Mr. Blackwell? You can take them out and come down off that cross if you want to, you know.
For years, the Religious Right were held at arms-length by their more worldly R’s as being the wide-eyed, frizzy-haired crazy wife (think of the mother in that Stephen King novel “Carrie”) in the Republican marriage of convenience.
They got closer to power under Bush, and we got John “Crisco” Ashcroft singing “Let the eagle soar!” while he covered a bronze statue’s hooters, while real heroes like John O’Neil were on the trail of ol’ Osama and getting nothing but the shaft from his own Justice Department. Nuts. Frakkin’ nuts.
They had their day; those antics and worse are why there’s been a reduction in the numbers of those who profess their faith, as many are rightfully ashamed of those antics (where was all that love and charity while we were bombing the brown smelly stuff out of innocent men women and kids in “Eye-rack”?) .Enough, already!
BTW, Hitch rules, even when I disagree with him. Letters to a Young Contrarian should be required reading for everyone.
Namedropping Lincoln for a more contemporary president (compared with Washington and Jefferson anyway) didn’t even do him any favors:
“The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
–Abraham Lincoln
Hitchens always comes through on religion.
“Crisis of faith” is not the same as “not everyone is a Christian” but it is treated the same in America.
Blackwell isn’t a worthy opponent here. Maybe at a town hall in Maine, but not against Hitchens. I’ll side with Ben Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson.
God does ruin everything…drugs, sex, peace, wine, porn, Sunday mornings (for some), freedom.
Hitchens appears to have conducted the debate after a three- or four-martini lunch, and even in a state that would render most people incomprehensible he manages to make Ken Blackwell look like an idiot.
@Kyle: Or a fat Edward Scissorhands.
By about four and a half minutes into that, it was time to stop everything and ask Blackwell just why the hell he was laughing at facts.
Hitch is my favorite commie. Ditto ‘B’ on “Young Contrarian”, and I heartily recommend his indictment of The Former First Grapple, “No One Left To Lie To”. I’ve several of his books in me stacks, all of them stone keepers. Even when he’s wrong, he’s in a class of his own. When he’s right, then stand back and look out. If you’ve not read “God Is Not Great”, you’re missing a great comprehensive dismissal of theology.
Poor Blackwell. That’s a tough gig, right there.
And Hitchens, in turn, gets annihilated.
If you’ve not read The Irrational Atheist, you’re missing a great comprehensive dismissal of the arguments of Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett and Sam Harris. It so badly trashed Harris that he actually essentially admitted that he had to revise a lot of his arguments and abandon others when he and Vox discussed the book and its attacks on him.
I agree that Blackwell comes across as very uncertain here (and that’s being generous)…however this does not settle the matter one way or another. They put two people opposing each other who clearly are not on equal footing (whether that footing is intellectual, spiritual, or verbal is up to you) and there isn’t much that can be determined from the flogging of a ‘disabled’ opponent. Personally, I dislike these polls about “do you think this is a Christian nation?” since they don’t really say much of definitive value (as B already mentioned) and it usually just leads to various indecent remarks across the religious groups (atheists included).
Would I like the country to be a “Christian nation”? Certainly. I am a Christian and I personally believe it would be a benefit for America (just as many atheists believe that atheism would be better for the country and would benefit America as a whole). However, I understand that many people want nothing to do with Christianity and there’s really no reason to enter into huge arguments to try and persuade (and certainly not force) them one way or another. The same is true in the opposite direction; I’m sure many atheists understand that there are many people who want nothing to do with atheism, and there is no reason to engage in that debate either. We all have a world-view, and most of us are not going to change it because of a poll, an insult, an eloquent speech, or a verbal “smackdown” in a TV interview. And that’s fine, we can all believe what we want and live our lives accordingly as long as we don’t infringe on the rights of others.
The main thing that I find unfortunate is the horrible way individuals of opposite world-views treat one another. We’ve all seen how many Christians have tried to beat down an atheist with all kinds of guilt-inducing tactics or threats of hell-fire. We’ve also seen atheists belittle and insult Christians by using condescension. There is no place for this kind of action among adults.
I’m working on my PhD in Biomedical Science currently, and I interact with atheists (who are just as verbal about their views as televangelists are about theirs) every day. In fact, one atheist I met was exceedingly nice to me and helped me immensely when I first started the program (she was graduating the next semester with her M.S. degree and she showed me the ropes). We both share a mutual respect for the other since we come from opposite world-views (Christian and atheist) but we were still friendly, honest, and genuine with each other. I seriously think we need more of those kinds of interactions before we break out in debate or shouting matches about religion or atheism.
Just some personal thoughts :)
Heh.
Franklin was a member of the Hellfire Club ….
So we should adopt his faith?
The Treaty of Tripoli settles the whole “Christian Nation” question. It’s not.
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
The preliminary treaty began with a signing on 4 November, 1796 (the end of George Washington’s last term as president). Joel Barlow, the American diplomat served as counsel to Algiers and held responsibility for the treaty negotiations. Barlow had once served under Washington as a chaplain in the revolutionary army. He became good friends with Paine, Jefferson, and read Enlightenment literature. Later he abandoned Christian orthodoxy for rationalism and became an advocate of secular government. Joel Barlow wrote the original English version of the treaty, including Amendment 11. Barlow forwarded the treaty to U.S. legislators for approval in 1797. Timothy Pickering, the secretary of state, endorsed it and John Adams concurred (now during his presidency), sending the document on to the Senate. The Senate approved the treaty on June 7, 1797, and officially ratified by the Senate with John Adams signature on 10 June, 1797. All during this multi-review process, the wording of Article 11 never raised the slightest concern. The treaty even became public through its publication in The Philadelphia Gazette on 17 June 1797.
So here we have a clear admission by the United States in 1797 that our government did not found itself upon Christianity.
You know it was going to b a bloodbath once Blackwell started speaking. His first statement is utter babble, completely incoherent and full of nothing. The rest of the dialogue between the two was moot.
I often, perhaps even usually, agree with Hitchens on religion, but he’s still an asshole.
Mike T,
And Rational Responders did a great takedown of “The Irrational Atheist” and their flawed arguments against Harris (and all other atheists). Here’s a link:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/vox_day_1
Every time I see Hitchens, I think he *really* needs to lay off the sauce or he is going to end up with first hand knowledge on the question of whether the afterlife exists sooner rather than later.
Hitchens is always brilliant … Though he’s looking a bit rough in that video. :(
Ah, Vox Day. If he didn’t have his father’s money paying to promote him from his core crank WorldNetDaily venue, I’d call him a shameless self-promoter.
“It so badly trashed Harris that he actually essentially admitted that he had to revise a lot of his arguments and abandon others when he and Vox discussed the book and its attacks on him.”
My guess here is very much that this is Theodore Beale’s (i.e. Vox Day’s) peculiar characterization of whatever conversation he had with Harris. Sort of like when the TimeCube guy debates people at Harvard and declares himself the winnar simply because people are polite and gracious to him.
The comical thing is that guys like Blackwell can’t separate morals and religion. Just because someone is atheist doesn’t mean they’re immoral. Just becaues someone is christian doesn’t mean they have good morals.
Commandments like Thou Shall not Steal or kill aren’t the basis for our laws… they are simply another set of rules that draws from the same reasonable societal norms as our most basic laws. That’s why the other, strictly religious, commandments didn’t become laws.
Things get stupid when people try to legislate the sins identified by their particular religion. That’s when victimless, consensual actions get turned into crimes.
Shouldn’t they start with a definition of what a Christian is? It’s an pretty broad term. I think that by my definition, there never was and never will be a Christian government, after all isn’t government just brute force?
@drew
His father is now in prison for tax evasion. Ended up his father is more delusional than his son is.
While Hitchens clearly won, this just goes to prove once again that rational argument cannot hope to change a viewpoint that wasn’t arrived at rationally to begin with.
Tax evasion is not a default black mark. Nor is time in prison.
Because we all know that libertarians can only be atheists.
Bashing the faith of people is always a great way to build a political movement, right?
Bashing Ken Blackwell is not bashing all religious people. When someone responds to an inconvenient fact by just refusing to acknowledge it, they’re not being rational. And pointing that out is not bashing religion.
Confused… did you mean “Religion does ruin”, or do you actually believe in God and think it is just pissed off at all of us and wants to make our lives miserable? ;)
Personally, I’ve found that God really improves on sex, peace, wine, Sunday mornings, and freedom, while religion has a generally bad track record at it. Then again, I’m one of those folks whose brand of Christianity compels me to try to provide justice for the oppressed (and finds that the oppressor is almost always the government), seeks to love my enemies (aka quit killing them), and give every other faith or lack thereof a chance. I sure hope the System that is Christianity is on the decline, so that people who actually follow what Jesus said can get back to actually doing it without government help or interference.
“Tax evasion is not a default black mark. Nor is time in prison.”
True, but in this case it was because of some truly delusional right-wing nonsense. Vox and his sect literally believe that angels and demons are waging exciting battles for control of the universe all around us all the time. Must be an exciting way to perceive reality! If… a little silly.
Mostly it was an asinine argument. The reason was the basic topic wasn’t even defined. What do they mean we’re a “Christian Nation”? I still don’t know after wasting 8+ minutes of my life watching that garbage.
Hitchens argument was to point at the religious beliefs of a few founders. That is as meaningless as whatever it was Blackwell was trying to say. While the religious faith of a few of the founders may not be “orthodox Christianity”, a lot more of them were. But that still doesn’t define whether we are a Christian nation.
I would have answered that we are a Christian nation because it’s the majority faith in our country historically. Our culture, laws and morality are shaped by this faith. In fact I think it’s so enculturated that most of the time we don’t even know it. But when was the last time you saw WalMart decorated for Duwali?
The only real information I got out of it was to get a take on why Hitchens has been for the Iraq war – it’s good opportunity to kill some theists, in this case Muslims.
I disagree with Hitchens final assertion. The biggest threat we face is not people of faith, but people who thirst for power. I don’t care if they base it on religion, politics, or economics. The groups who lust for political power are the most dangerous people in the world regardless of what rationale they embrace. And I’m not sure the Islamic terrorists are truly more of a threat than the Obamaniacs.
Big Chief,
So by that rationale, if Muslims were the majority does that mean that our Constitution takes a back seat to Islam like too many Christians seem to think it does to Christianity?
The population may be largely Christian, but that does not make our government Christian (which is what Blackwell and Hitchens were arguing about). Christianity is intentionally omitted from the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers knew that putting one religion above all others was the first step back towards tyranny. We have a secular Constitution and our laws (the legitimate ones, anyway) are derived from that, not Jesus.
Although I am an atheist, I have to say that the US is a Christian nation in terms of it’s historical development and cultural viewpoint. In large measure, most of the debates on questions of morality and ethics are shaped by the Christian heritage of most Americans.
The fact that Christianity and Islam both have their roots in Judaism and all three therefore share a common core of precepts does not change the fact that these precepts have influenced American public policy. Nor does the fact that other faiths – Confucianism, Bhuddism, Animism, etc have arrived at essentially the same ideals. Even those without faith would agree that “Thou shalt not commit murder; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness” are basic commonsense rules for running a society.
But these ideas and precepts originally came into the US political sphere from the Christian perspective, which has essentially made the US a Christian nation.
What the US is not is a Christian state, which has been conflated in these discussions with being a Christian nation. The failure to make this distinction has allowed the preachers to use their faith as a means to gaining political power to serve their sectarian ends.
Actually, the UK and US legal systems of adversarial trials by jury are primarily derived from Norse (i.e. pagan) legal traditions. A Christian legal system would be like the inquistorial systems common in continental Europe.
There’s a reason there’s a book of the Bible called Judges and not one called Juries.
UCrawford – I’m certainly not going to use the term “nation” and “government” interchangably. As the saying goes, I love my country but fear my government. And I guess that helps make my point. Hitchens and Blackwell were talking somewhat across each other because they didn’t define terms. Of course we have a secular Constitution. And a secular government. But Christianity is still a driving force in our culture. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that much of it is driven by Puritan Christianity. And there aren’t a lot of Puritan churches around today.
I agree with Aresen’s comment 100%. And I think much of the activity that the Religious Right has taken to “Christianize” politics has mostly politicized the Church and done more to hurt the Church than it’s helped America.
Wasn’t all this claptrap decide in the first amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
i usually stay away from the religious stuff .. who am I to argue against someone’s beliefs? you can believe whatever you want.
i would like a “Christian nation” proponent to address one question though:
how do you reconcile the fact that the founders were religious people with the fact that they went out of their way to ensure that gov’t would NOT be religious, and NOT interfere in religion?
i concede that the founders were largely christian. and i support you when you say, “yay, look what our alums have accomplished. christians are cool”. you are just citing facts. But it appears to me that a group motivated by their faith was extremely worried about the mixing of faith and govt.
It’s worth pointing out that Hitchens’ support for the Iraq war/GWOT comes from his hatred of religion. He’s the guy who coined the term ‘Islamofascism’, btw. The facts that Iraq had no WMD, no ties to al Qaida, etc. do not matter to him. The whole point for him is that the secular West needs to humiliate Muslims.
Cheer him on for making Blackwell look like a boob, but realize his radical atheism has cost lives.
For the record, I’m an atheist.
dsmallwood,
I think the main reason why the founding fathers did those things was to protect religion from government, much like they tried to put many things in the constitution to protect the people from government. After all, when a powerfull organization such as the government can control a religion they will inevitably use it for their own corrupt gain (just as some mega churches use their power in the wrong ways). So my take on it is this: the founding fathers thought that Christianity was the best way to live a life and make decisions, but they did not want the government (which they knew was bound to become corrupt) to enforce a corrupt state religion or to suppress the free practice of religion.
Exactly right. This is an argument over semantics. Did the founders write the constitution as a shining beacon to their christian heritage? No, but no one can seriously argue that their very fundamentalist christian upbringings and beliefs didn’t influence every aspect up to and including the final product.
There was only one religious influence on those folks. In case some have forgotten, the only people involved who were not white or descendants of a christian theology were slaves.
The only people who don’t seem to understand this are rabid atheists, a constant embarrassment to non-religion hating atheists like myself, and rabid religious types who can embarrass someone else.
Reality — enjoy some today.
we’re being lectured on reality by someone who thinks the founders were exposed to Christian fundamentalism.
Dude, half of them were theists (didn’t believe in the trinity). Thomas Jefferson wrote a version of the New Testament that removed all references to Jesus supernatural properties. Christian Fundamentalism didn’t start to coalesce until about 80 years after the U.S. Independence.
Maybe you should actually read stuff the founders wrote instead of blindly accewpting whatever your pastor tells you as the gospel.
Lloyd–I’m pretty sure Hitchens wrote a few unkind words about Saddam over the years quite apart from his distaste for religion. My impression has always been his advocacy for the Iraq war was rooted in his hatred of the Baathists, the injustice experienced by the Kurds, etc. No?
I disagree with Hitchens’ support for the war, but I think your characterization of his motive is both unfair and inaccurate.
Big Chief,
Fair enough and agreed on all points.
B,
I’d agree with Lloyd’s position on Hitchens and Iraq…frankly, it’s almost impossible for me to read anything from Hitchens regarding the GWOT mainly because most of what he writes isn’t predicated on an advocacy of national defense but on his blinding hatred of Islam (even when he goes with the national defense tack, it’s mainly operating from the position that warring with Islam is interchangeable with national defense…which he sells by using the most egregious examples of Islam he can find).
I’m an atheist myself, and I certainly have no love for religion, but there’s a big leap between wanting to be able to live a life free from religious intrusion, personally, and wanting the state to stamp it out because I want a world free of religion (as Hitchens does). So while I might agree with Hitchens on many of his religious views, his political solutions show him to be no true friend to libertarians who are atheist.
B-
The Hitchens I hear constantly justifies the GWOT in terms of the secular West vs. retrograde, obscurantist Islam. Sorta like how the NYT’s Tom Friedman justifies the war on the grounds that, because ‘they’ (meaning Muslims) attacked the US on 9/11, it was important to attack a (random) Islamic country to attack to send the Muslims of the world the message “suck on this.”
I got a little giddy when Blackwell stammered that he wasn’t going to let Hitchens “bogart” his time.
That was awesome.
“Mostly it was an asinine argument. The reason was the basic topic wasn’t even defined. What do they mean we’re a “Christian Nation”?”
This is a fair point.
I’d say that the key issue is this: our nation was founded on principles that came from all sorts of Western canons and philosophies, and simply headlining them all as “Christian” simply because that was the dominant religion of the West is ridiculous: terribly shallow as intellectual history, sheer nonsense as political philosophy. Many of the Enlightenment ideas that shaped the founders’ views emerged as ideas that at the time stood in direct opposition to traditional religious ideas and understandings of the world. The fact that modern Christians have updated their understandings to better fit into the liberal enlightenment is evidence of influence going the other way, not that these basic values and ideas are inherently or distinctively Christian.
And the whole point of the constitution, the whole underlying philosophy behind having one at all, was that people could _reason out directly_, rather than appealing to any religious authority, a system of government that would best serve the interests of the people WITHOUT a supreme pontiff or divine king to oversee it all. None of this was premised on the idea that people must or could only be Christians. There’s a reason the Federalist papers are all pragmatic appeals to political and legal concepts, rather than endless citations of Bible verse. Bicameral legislatures are not endorsed in the Bible.
None of this is to say that Christian ideas weren’t major cultural and intellectual players. They were. And many of the founders held the elitist view that while traditional Christianity was a mess of silly superstitions, that it served to keep their unschooled inferiors in line. But the point was that in many cases we’re talking more about flavor than substance. The “Judeo-Christian” values Blackwell cites are actually common to most societies, and while Christian cultural themes are important, a lot of them (like, for instance, the Protestant work ethic, or ideas of religious conscience) are specially contingent on 2000 years of history since Christ, influenced by countless other forces and ideas, rather than direct reads from the Gospels.
What was distinctive and unique about the US at the time, which everyone AT THE TIME seemed to understand perfectly well, was not how religious an enterprise the new government was, but how explicitly secular. Heck, the Blackwells of the day outright called the founders atheists (falsely, as it happened, as they were far more complex than that, and not a known atheist amongst them). For the founders, the point of that secularism was not that religion was bad, but that their efforts were about organizing political forces in the material world, not about deciding matters of religion. As they saw it, religion would (and did!) thrive best the more it was left up to individuals to choose and practice as they chose: in their theory of government, all state power is appropriated from the people. And the power to believe or not believe whatever one wants was not a power the government had any right or business to take unto itself.
Anyone got a definition of “God”? I haven’t seen one yet…as if we all magically know it. I’ll tell you what, America is a Ganggggastardtly nation and Gangggggastardtly DOES exist.
Blackwell seems like an idiot, but Hitchens’ statement that Benjamin Franklin was an atheist is absurd.
Just so there’s no confusion, I’m not the JBlanton posting in #44, that is the perspicacious man I call my brother.
In response to #42 dsmallwood,
The matter is fairly simple, looking at historical data, find one nation that prospered where the government controlled religion, or religion controlled the government. The very premise of the foundation of the country, of the church, and of the human condition in general (from a Christian perspective, but I think many can agree) is that men are inherently capable of evil and particularly corruption. This applies to leaders in the government, as well as in the church. This is why these two establishments are, insomuch as the systems themselves are concerned, necessary evils. The need of any structured system where flawed men lead flawed men is at best a necessary evil. I need government to ensure property rights, enforce laws, and maintain military, but they also steal, manipulate, lie, cheat, etc. Just as I rely on church to be a moral center and a place of intillectual and spiritual growth, they end up straying from both intellectual and spiritual highground and go astray from the quintessential foundation of the original precept. The point many would make at this point is that church and religion are not necessary at all, but the founding fathers disagreed.
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” – Patrick Henry 1765
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. 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 a gift from 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, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.” – Thomas Jefferson 1781
“Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” – George Washington
The founding fathers understood that a deep understanding of our inherent liberties and morals was made possible by an understanding of the basis for them: religion. I would submit that there is no solid foundation for freedom or morals, outside of religion. Christianity in particular, but even just religion in general. In court, you swear an oath of truth on the Bible, because it is the doctrine for the basis of the morals which are brought to question in that very court. Regardless of your religion, you can agree that just as the governments establish laws, a deity can establish freedoms and morals in the same manner, both acting as a higher power.
Tarran, the fact that half the guys who wrote the declaration of ind. where Deists (I think that’s what you meant, if you’re going to criticize my theology lesson at least you should know the proper terms) doesn’t mean a whole lot when they were surrounded by those who believed, in one form or another, a christian theology.
People can argue philosophy until they’re blue in the face but this is very basic sociology. The first amendment to our constitution is a direct result of christians taking it on the chin from the church of england. They only had one religious influence, christianity. These folks were not jews, hindus, buddhists, muslims, or any variety of native american polytheist voodo, at that stage in our devolopment we were very much a christian nation. Are we all forgetting these peoples grandparents and parents spent their youths burning witches? Yeah tarran, I’d call that pretty fundamentalist.
This romanticized view of our founders being incredible rational superheros above the sway of 18th century christianity in all its forms is a bigger fairy tale than washington chopping down the cherry tree. Lets all take a look at the laws these people passed in their home colonies and then argue whether their christian based religion played any part in the founding of this nation. Jesus people, sodomy is STILL illegal in some places.
The fact that people believed in Christian theology doesn’t make everything they do, or even every value they hold, Christian. This should be patently obvious to anyone who’s ever met a human being, so why when figures fade into history do they suddenly become mere categories.
And the fear of state power is an excellent example: this is something experienced by Christians, but in a historical contingency, not simply read straight out of a list of fundamental or essential Christian ideas.
“This romanticized view of our founders being incredible rational superheros above the sway of 18th century christianity in all its forms is a bigger fairy tale than washington chopping down the cherry tree.”
Or Washington praying at Valley Forge.
But regardless, nonsense. No one said that they were above its sway. But to simply declare that they were simply applying the basic values and principles of orthodox Christianity to arrive at the underlying values and laws of the nation is equally absurd. It’s far more complicated than that, and for many of the founders, yes, political philosophy WAS far more important than quoting Bible verses. It’s not for nothing that Franklin got voted down when he suggested that the convention pray. It was because almost no one there cast their reasoning or decisions in a religious cloak.
Plus, modern Christians would find many of their diverse views heretical or absurd.
Even as an American, it’s very gratifying watching a Brit school an American on American history.
See also:
Brooke Allen: “Our Godless Constitution”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050221/allen
First for the ignorant: The US is not a nation. Only people who haven’t figured out the Pledge of Allegiance brain-washing believe that it is. $1000 to the first person to find the US referred to as a Nation in the Constitution for the United States of America. The US is a “UNION” of 50 nations. DUH!
And regardless of the BS spewed out the arses of the blackrobed jurists, the First Amendment applies ONLY to Congress wherein Congress cannot interfere in religion BUT religion is free to interfere/interact in government as much as it wants.
Every state was left alone to be involved in religion as the individual state constitution allows/ed.
There’s a nice 1200 page book written in 1864 that disproves all “the US is not a christian nation” bullshit. This book is available now as a reprint of the original. It also disproves this deist crap about the writers of the DoI, etc.
The Treaty of Tripoli was written in arabic and is meaningless relative to the state of religion in the US. It is quite possible that no one translated it before it was approved. Can NY1 prove otherwise? One document out of thousands does not make the case.
Tiochfaidh ar la!