"DILOGUE WITH ATHEISM"

“FOUNDING FATHERS: ATHEISTS, DEISTS OR BELIEVERS?” PART II

However in this season we often are filled with patriotic thoughts and sincere gratitude for all who have made possible the immense blessings we enjoy in the land we love. And our memories often are focused on the Founding Fathers of our great Republic.

And ironically, or perhaps naturally, several of the atheists writers focus on our Founing Fathers, claiming they were not nearly as religious as we sometimes make them out to be. So what were the Founding Fathers – atheists, deists, or believers?

But first, a few words of definition. Atheists is one who believes in theos, the Greek word for God. An atheist is one who believes a-theos, or no God. A polytheist is one who believes in many gods. A pantheist is one who believes God is everything and everything is God. A panentheist, believes God is in everything, a henotheist, is one who believes there are many gods, but just one for him or his group. At one time, Ben Franklin seems to have been a henotheist, believing a high God created all the others including one for our nations (see Faiths of Our Fathers, by A. J. Mapp, Jr. , p. 22fF)

Agnosticism comes from two Greek words – gnosis, meaning knowledge, or participatory knowledge, and the prefix “alpha” or “a” which in Greek indicates the negative. Thus the agnostic is one who believes one cannot know if there is a God.

I am reminded of comedian Henny Youngman who said he once tried atheism until he discovered they had no holidays or days off! Mort Sohl said he tried agnosticism for awhile, until he discovered they didn’t know whether they had holidays or days off!

Deism comes from the Latin word for God, Deus. Deism developed in 18th century England. It maintained that there is indeed a God, but that God created the world and then left it to run on its own with the help of humans using their reasoning powers which they newly affirmed during the French, English and Scottish Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

It has been commonly affirmed that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin (sometimes), Thomas Paine and others were deists. Commonly affirmed that is, until demurement by some of the contemporary atheists.

That some Founding Fathers were critical of organized religion there can be no doubt. Jefferson remarked that “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.”

James Madison observed that the fruits of established Christianity largely have been “pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” Benjamin Franklin said, “lighthouses are more useful than churches.” Even good old Congregationalist, John Adams, observed that Christianity was a revelation but that all sort of fables, tales, legends and abuses have accumulated themselves to it to make it one of the most bloody religions ever. (see Dawkins p. 63 ff.)

Near the end of his life, Jefferson wrote of the bold decision of the Founding Fathers between submission to tyranny and the sword of independence. He wrote of the “signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessing and security of self-government.” (Hitchens. Thomas Jefferson. P. 2)

In Jefferson’s view all sects “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.” He castigated the Presbyterians as “the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical, and ambitious, ready….to put the torch to the pile (to burn at the stake) and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus.” (accused and condemned and burned at the stake in Calvin’s Trinitarian Geneva for being a Unitarian.) (Hitchens, op.

cit. p. 173-4)

Jefferson was most probably a deist and Unitarian, but most probably not an atheist, despite some of his contemporary Congregational minister’s accusations to the contrary, warning he was the anti-Christ. Our atheist writers affirm he was very much a secularist, and if alive today, outside the conventions of his time, would probably be an atheist. This however, is a specious, unprovable claim. True, as late as 1830 the Philadelphia Public Library would not place a book about Jefferson on its shelves believing he was an atheist. But Jefferson regularly affirmed his belief in the Designer-Creator who gave the gift of reason and liberty. And at the end of his life, Jefferson even referred the benevolence of God.

Jefferson did most surely oppose tyranny of any kind, especially the tranny of ignorance and superstition in religion. He wrote to the Connecticut Baptists in 1800 that “religion is a matter which lies solely between man and God…” He then added the famous statement that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And continued with this famous phrase, “ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” (Gaustad, Neither King Nor Prelate, Religion And The New Nation, p. 46)

When the Congregational Church was disestablished In Connecticut in 1818, Congregationalist John Adams welcomed the “resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty.” Jefferson congratulated Adams “that this den of priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant popedom (which of course in Connecticut was Congregationalism) is no longer to disgrace American history and character” (Gaustad, op.cit. p. 49)

On the Jefferson monument in Washington these famous words of Jefferson are engraved: “For I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tranny over the mind of man.” And in Jefferson’s mind, the deadliest and bloodiest form of tyranny was that of religion. Jefferson wanted freedom for religion but perhaps even more he wanted freedom from religion. As Edwin Gaustad observes, in Jefferson’s view: “Almighty God has made the mind free, in the name of God, it must be kept free.” ( op.cit. p. 50)

It is difficult to find an atheist among the founding fathers. Deists, yes, agnostics, perhaps, believers, yes. Most all the signers of the Declaration of Independence were church-going men. Says David Aikman, in his book, The Delusion of Disbelief, several of the signers were ordained ministers and of the fifty-six signers, thirty-four were Anglicans, thirteen Congregationalists, six Presbyterians and one Catholic, one Baptist and one Quaker. Nearly the same proportion applied to the thirty-nine men who signed the Constitution. (p. 14) Thus the great majority of our Founding Fathers were indeed believers.

(To be continued)