Athiests: Were the drafter of the Declaration of Independence delusional or just stupid in your opinion?

Question

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Notice that they wrote the FACT there is a CREATOR and we are CREATED are truths and that these truths are self-evident. Do you know what self-evident means?

It means that anyone one who is actually intelligent and bothers to think about it will be able to see it and get it.

So tell me about our founding fathers here, what was their problem?

Answer 1

That makes it all the more telling that they didn't establish a religious nation.

Read your Constitution, kid, and accept the facts. The United States is better than your religion.
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How about that? I just learned that Hobby Lobby - the chain of arts and crafts stores - is associated with the anti-American "dominionist" movement. I found out when I found that they took out a full-page advertisement in today's NYTimes pushing for the United States to be "one nation under god".

I'll never shop there again.

Answer 2

You really should learn about a subject before you spout off about it.

1. Even if the founders believed in a god as creator, that's irrelevant as we have more knowledge today than they did over two hundred years ago. To believe that something is valid because someone famous or considered an "authority" said it is called "argument from authority," and is foolish.

2. Many of the founders were deists, or believed in "nature's god: very different from the gods of organized religions.

3. The Declaration of Independence is not a founding document.

4. Regardless of the personal beliefs of the founders, the U.S. was created as a secular nation. Read the U.S. Constitution, and the contemporaneous writings of its authors.

Answer 3

The declaration of independence was a letter to England (which WAS a Christian theocracy). One would expect that if you are writing a letter to someone, you'd do so in their language.

The facts are that the founding fathers were a mix of Deists, Christians, and Freethinkers. If they believed that there was a god casually, as most people do today, and which appears to be the case... then i would say they are simply mistaken. These men were definitely not stupid. Nor were they religious fanatics.

Take a look at the Constitution... i challenge you to find any mention of god in the document that outlines the operation of our government.

Answer 4

Their problem was that, even in their day, there were idiots like you with whom they had to contend. It was phrased that way so that the fundies would not rise up in opposition to a godless declaration. And it was before anyone had any notion of common descent and evolution, so it was naturally assumed that we were created; how else could we be here? These days, we know "how else", even though many choose to reject the overwhelming evidence, or worse, to not even look at it.
And unsurprisingly, you seem to have no notion at all of the distinction between "fact" and "opinion". Or that ALL CAPS does not alter that distinction. Or even of how to spell "atheist" correctly.

Answer 5

They were neither. It is interesting that another person who answered jumped on the claim that Jefferson and Franklin were atheists. I am wondering if he is an atheist or trying to discount atheism with the Jefferson=atheist=liar claim. And as for his claim that Franklin was an atheist, Franklin was a Freemason and could not have been one as an atheist.

Franklin and Jefferson were Deists, they did believe in God, but were not Christians. They were more like the Unitarians than anything else, believing that all religions are valid to a point.

Answer 6

Weren't those a lot of the same chaps that later said that slaves were 3/5 of a person for census purposes (and 0/5 of a person for voting purposes)? Guess it wasn't all that self-evident that all men were created equal, if human slavery was enshrined in the Constitution nine years later.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to distinguish between rhetoric and practice.

Answer 7

there is an obvious conflict of pursuits between the fetus' precise to existence and the mum's precise to liberty/pursuit of happiness. The questions, then, are: Is the fetus a man or woman with the proper to existence? if so, does that precise trump the mum's precise to do what she needs together with her physique? in my opinion, i think of the respond to the two questions is particular different than each and every now and then (rape, mom's well-being), yet to assert that individuals who're professional-decision do no longer care bearing directly to the assertion of Independence is a gross oversimplification of the difficulty. this is coming from somebody who's usually enormously liberal, by skill of ways. no longer all liberals consider each and every liberal place.

Answer 8

You have to remember that these men who wrote the declaration left england because of the lack of religious tolerance, which is why the word "creator" was used instead of "God." Some were agnostic/atheist, while others did believe in god in their own respect.

What it's basically saying that it's obvious that everyone is created equally (no s***), and that's allowed by who they believe created them.

Answer 9

So tell me...how many people on R&S have been converted or have "seen the light" after reading one of your thousands of posts about the same thing? Don't you care whether you are achieving your goals? You know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Answer 10

Just because someone wrote it doesn't mean it's true. I don't think they were stupid at all. They just believed in something I choose not to. A difference of opinion is not neccessarily a bad thing.