thegreekdog wrote:I'm unsure, but did I use the term "god" and "created" in reference to making a person religious? If I did, I did not mean to. Presumably, creationism can be supported by those who are not religious. Additionally, people who are religious may not believe in creationism.
The blue makes sense, the red does not.
That's not what I'm arguing in any event. I'm saying that (1) captain.crazy is illogical and (2) oVo is wrong regarding his assumptions on the founding fathers and the Constitution.
Finally, I've read the most recently published biography of Ben Franklin (but not his autobiography). I guess your point is that he said a lot of things? My point was that he, among others, were not necessarily atheists (I do not presume to know whether George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, et. al. believed in God, Jesus, Allah, or the Buddha). I do know that their writings were peppered with references to God.
Oh, your founding fathers were probably not outright atheists, or at least not all of them, but many of them were certainly sceptics (heard about the Jefferson bible? 46 pages after all miracles and inconsistencies were clipped out). Incidentally, in 1831 an episcopal minister complained that "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism."
My point about Franklin is that he was a politician and opportunist, through and through, do not take anything from him at face value. The same likely goes for the rest of the bunch. "When in Rome, do as the Romans" and when in Religionland, do as the religious. If that includes using their terminology, which had been around for some 1500 years by then and quickly gaining secular meanings in addition to or even superseding the original ones or had become parts of figures of speech, so be it.
This does not make them bad persons, but I think it's a more accurate portrayal than one of them as wise, freedom-loving men with wholly good intentions gathering and declaring that one of the biggest (or even the biggest?) British colonies was independent, effective immediately.