Sometimes I forget that in the times of the founding fathers people were basically at their least religious ever. The founding fathers have some pretty interesting quotes on this. (Jefferson especially went hard)
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
-Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814
“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 civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
-Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
“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 obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
-Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780
“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.”
-Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
“The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.”
-John Adams
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”
-James Madison, Letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774
“The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.”
-John Adams, letter to John Taylor
So as you can see they werent huge fans, but somehow these quotes and intentions have been muddled over time into the idea that these men were all God, Guns and Family™, when in fact most of them were liberal revolutionaries and in fact traitors. History makes them out to be heroes but it is important to remember that they were just men with ideas and not gods.
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