Thomas Jefferson and Religion

[Undecided]

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Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries were members of the Enlightenment.  The Enlightenment began moving humanity out of the dark ages and into the age of reason.

You may have heard previously of the "Jefferson Bible".  This was a book in which he compiled the parts of Jesus' teachings that he thought were valuable to save.  He and his Enlightened com padres rejected the stories of miracles in the Bible and the divinity of Jesus as embarrassing to the sense of reason.  But they recognized the ethical breakthroughs made by this great spiritual teacher.  They were afraid that as the Enlightenment movement spread, the Bible would be rejected by all mankind in its entirety, and Jefferson's desire was to try and find a way to save the valuable parts of the New Testament.

Jefferson was so confident that mankind would move further and further away from Christianity, that he thought that all young Americans of his time would die as Unitarians!  What a shock it would be to him to see what spiritual life is like in this country today.  He would be amazed to see how little progress Americans have made toward critical thought.  The America of 1812 was more free-thinking than is the America of 2012.

[Mornac]

Paople aren't as dumb as Jefferson pegged 'em.

[Case_Closed]

The days of religious persecution in the United States is going to end in 2012 when Newt Gingrich becomes President of the United States.

Get your hating in before then, Walking Dead Godless Losers.

The end.

[Undecided]

Paople aren't as dumb as Jefferson pegged 'em.

They didn't turn out to be as smart as he thought.

[Undecided]

The days of religious persecution in the United States is going to end in 2012 when Newt Gingrich becomes President of the United States.

Get your hating in before then, Walking Dead Godless Losers.

The end.

There is no religious persecution in this country, except for perhaps against Muslims and Atheists.

Jefferson was no atheist.  He believed in God.  He just didn't believe in the Trinity.  He thought that if Jesus had tried to walk on water, he would have drowned.

[Mornac]

They didn't turn out to be as smart as he thought.

--They're flawed by nature. Jefferson and his "Enlightend com padres" apparently weren't enlightened enough to grasp that.

[Undecided]

--They're flawed by nature. Jefferson and his "Enlightend com padres" apparently weren't enlightened enough to grasp that.

They were plenty aware that human beings are flawed.  He just didn't think they would become as "stuck" in ancient superstition as they have, in the age of reason.  Before that, they had an excuse, but then -and now - there is no excuse.

That is not to say there is no excuse for believing in a God.  A decent argument can be made for that, just not really for the divinity of Jesus.  And making Jesus divine tends to put the focus on that, rather than on what the points were that he was trying to communicate.

[Mornac]

Like I said - he pegged 'em wrong.

[DougRich]

What a shock it would be to him to see what spiritual life is like in this country today.  He would be amazed to see how little progress Americans have made toward critical thought.

Spirituality and critical thought are not always incompatible. What I believe would probably shock Jefferson, if anything were to do so, would be that three quarters of the American population still identify themselves as "Christians" - not really the same thing as having a "spiritual life", from all reports.

Of course, that number has dropped precipitously in just the last twenty years, and a recent poll shows that only 18.7% of us attend church regularly. 15% state that they have "no religion", and that number is 25% for those between the ages of 18 and 29.

So the numbers are at least headed in the direction that Jefferson foresaw; it has just taken us longer to make the trip than I'm sure he could have imagined.

Unfortunately - to say the very least - religion and church attendance have largely given way not to lives devoted to critical thinking and moderate, rational judgment, but to trivial distractions and shallow materialism. Superstition has not, for the most part, given way to reason, but to the cult of personality, nasty politics, and Facebook. Our schools have failed to teach critical thinking - largely because critical thinking is the last thing that the politicians, the corporate consumer machine, and the remnants of the religion business want taught there - and so the void once occupied by a belief in God and thoughts of Heaven is filled with the modern day equivalent of the old Roman "bread and circuses".

The America of 1812 was more free-thinking than is the America of 2012.

Indisputably...but not because there was either more or less church attendance or belief in God in those days.

[johnhp]

Spirituality and critical thought are not always incompatible.

Religious belief and critical thought are not incompatible either, Mornac's witness to the opposite not withstanding.