Is this proof, that the U.S. was or wasn’t founded on any specific religion or philosophy?

Is this proof, that the U.S. was or wasn’t founded on any specific religion or philosophy?
cannot believe in the immortality of the soul…. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life — our desire to go on living — our dread of coming to an end.
– Thomas Edison

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
– Benjamin Franklin

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

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.
– Benjamin Franklin,

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
– Benjamin Franklin,

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on nothing; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing and admits of no conclusion.
– Thomas Paine,

What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
– Thomas Paine,

short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandising their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.
– Thomas Jefferson
To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life.
– Theodore Roosevelt

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,

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
– Abraham Lincoln

In religion, Mr. Lincoln was about of the same opinion as Bob Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find out, he remained an unbeliever. Mr. Lincoln in his younger days wrote a book, in which he endeavored to prove the fallacy of the plan of salvation and the divinity of Christ.”
– Judge James M. Nelson,

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”
[James Madison, 1803]

“The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?”
[John Adams]

“The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.”
[Thomas Jefferson, to S. Kercheval, 1810]

“…If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that is pleasing to him, whence arises the morality
I am a christian by the way. But this is the truth.

The treaty of Tripoli

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html

Threaty of Tripoli

Art. 11. 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 Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan 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.
@Q-Tip

Really, point them out. You don’t even know who the founders are do you?
@u_bin_ca

I challenge you to produce them from the list of founders.

Answer by Q-tip
I couldn’t help but overlook the fact that half the people you mentioned had nothing to do with the founding of our country.

Answer by Hubris252
TLDNR

America was founded on the principle that you could become whatever you wanted to become regardless of what you believed and who your parents were as long as you worked for it.

Answer by u_bin_called
No. It’s a list of cherry-picked quotations from a handful of people that you’ve used to confirm your bias.

Many of the original ideas which established the U.S. were based on Age of Enlightenment principles that had its roots in many traditions…including Judeo/Christian philosophy.

Answer by Gotta Hankerin’
The framers of the U.S. Constitution were not Christians as we think of them today. In their time humanism was the philosophy most popular among intellectuals. Not completely counter to Christianity but not exactly 100% compatible either, humanism was almost a way of thinking more so than a religion. Though the term humanism wasn’t really used to describe their philosophy until much later, the framers believed that human reason could solve many of the world’s problems. It was reason that could set men free, not organized religion.

Many of the framers despised organized religion though many were devoutly religious.

EDIT: I like how you post essentially the same question elsewhere on Yahoo Answers and then, when I call you out on it, you have my answer deleted as a violation. Classy.

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What does this quote mean (Abraham Lincoln)??????
“I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”
I thought it meant something like, I don’t respect a man’s religion unless he treats his animals well… But I’m not sure. Any ideas?

Answer by LadyLynn
It means his religion should make him kind to everyone. That includes animals. If he’s not kind to animals, especially his own, his religion is not so great.

Answer by Gumtree Acc
very similar to your original idea, hes opposed to respect a man’s religion unless dogs and cats being treated kindly are as important as other things

Answer by local drifter
I’d say it means:
He doesn’t respect a religion that does not benefit all creatures with it’s goodness.

Catholics will you deny even this,words of one of the most honest leaders of the world,Abraham Lincoln?
These are words of 16th president of USA,Abraham Lincoln during US civil war “This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and North, on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promise of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal if they would attack us.”

I pity the priests, the bishops and monks of Rome in the United States, when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the blood shed in this war. I conceal what I know, on that subject, from the knowledge of the nation; for if the people knew the whole truth, this war would turn into a religious war, and it would at once, take a tenfold more savage and bloody character. It would become merciless as all religious wars are. It would become a war of extermination on both sides. The Protestants of both the North and the South would surely unite to exterminate the priests and the Jesuits, if they could hear what Professor Morse has said to me of the plots made in the very city of Rome to destroy this Republic, and if they could learn how the priests, the nuns, and the monks, which daily land on our shores, under the pretext of preaching their religion, instructing the people in their schools, taking care of the sick in the hospitals, are nothing else but the emissaries of the Pope, of Napoleon, and the other despots of Europe, to undermine our institutions, alienate the hearts of our people from our constitution, and our laws, destroy our schools, and prepare a reign of anarchy here as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico, in Spain, and wherever there are any people who want to be free.”

Answer by emagidson
Sounds like Abe suffered from a wee bit o’ the Paranoia, in addition to that troublesome Marfan’s dIsease.

I wonder if that’s one of the additional symptoms.

Based on that logic, it’s a wonder that just 100 years later a CATHOLIC was elected President of those same United States.

Answer by XAndrewX Roman Catholic Christian
Wow, thats pretty funny because I can not find that quote from any credible source…..

However it seem to be a “Chick Tract” which everyone knows is made up Catholic hatred.

You are doing the work of Satan.

I will pray for you

<<>>

Answer by Kristy
okay, first of all what does that have to do with catholics as most early americans were quaker and Parodists and Episcopal, next time ask a question that makes sense!

Answer by John S
There is ample evidence that this quote was fabricated some 20 years AFTER his assination by anti-Catholic Protestant Christians to create anger and hatred towards Catholic by mis using the name of a dead President.

IN FACT — on 2 very well documented occasions Abraham Lincoln defended Catholics by praising them.

During the Civil War, some 25 hospitals (with 25,000 beds) were set up in Washington D. C. for the care of wounded and dying soldiers, both Confederate and Union, Catholic and Protestant. At one of these hospitals, Stanton, a group of Catholic Sisters from Pittsburgh (the Sisters of Mercy) cared for about 130 soldiers.

President Lincoln visited this small hospital and later spoke of the kindness and heroism of the Sisters who served there during that terrible war.

He said,

“Of all the forms of charity and benevolence seen in the crowded wards of the hospitals, those of some Catholic Sisters were the most efficient. I never knew whence they came, or what was the name of the Order….

More lovely than anything I have ever seen in art are the pictures that remain of these Sisters going on their errands of mercy among the suffering and dying. Gentle and womanly, yet with the courage of soldiers leading a forlorn hope, to sustain them in contact with such horrors.

As they went from cot to cot, distributing the medicines prescribed, or administering the cooling, strengthening draughts as directed, they were veritable angels of mercy.

Their words were suited to every sufferer. One they incited and encouraged, another they calmed and soothed. With every soldier they conversed about his home, his wife, his children, all the loved ones he was soon to see again if he was obedient and patient. How often has the hot forehead of the soldier grown cool as one of those sisters bathed it!

How often has he been refreshed, encouraged, and assisted along the road to convalescence, when he would otherwise have fallen by the way, by the home memories with which these unpaid nurses filled his heart!”

He also met with the Bishop of New York to see if Bishop Hughes might meet with the French Leaders to try and get them to stop aiding the South.
The South is very Protestant, except for New Orleans. France, very Catholic at the time. For the French to help the South.. shows that it was not religiously motivated, but political.

The truth is that the French would have loved to regain control of the very profitable America, which they lost to the English, almost a century before.

Terms:

• lincoln quotes on civil war

Tagged with: founded • philosophy • proof • religion • specific • this • U.S. • Wasn't

Filed under: Abraham Lincoln Bicentenial

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