What is OmniNerd?

Welcome! OmniNerd's content is generated by you, the reader. Through voting and moderation we strive to highlight the nerdiest of what's around and provide content that's a little more thought provoking than other sites.

Submit New Content

Voting Booth

I am most afraid of dying?

View Results, All Polls
75 votes, 12 comments
1
Nerd-It
+ -

RE: The usual hypocritical religious load of junk

Comment comment by scottb on 10 December 2007

Oh, and to heap up the insults, he quotes John Adams to support himself:

There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders.... In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'

Of course, before you make an appeal to authority, you ought to check that the authority actually agrees with you. Here are a few more Adams quotes:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature... [In] the formation of the American governments ... it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven.... These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. - A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America

As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? - letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

Adams, like Jefferson, was a deist who rejected the divinity of Jesus. He'd certainly be no fan of Mr Romney, and he'd unquestionably be one of those "secularists" that Romney's trying to distance himself from.

You are a viewing a subset of a larger discussion.
View Full Discussion
Star This to Save in Your Profile Favorite
Thread parent sort order:
Highest Voted : Lowest Voted : Oldest : Newest
Thread verbosity:
Expand All : Minimize Replies to Comments
2 Nerd-Its - +
RE: The usual hypocritical religious load of junk by Brandon :: NR9

Adams agrees with Romney sufficiently to support the sense in which he was quoted: Government cannot hope to succeed unless human passions are controlled by morality and religion. The U.S. constitution depends on such.

Whether or not Adams views the U.S. government as being divinely organized, thinks the original "revelation" of the Christian religion has been diluted by fables, tales and legends, or accepts the divinity of Jesus is irrelevant.

Adams, like Jefferson, was a deist who rejected the divinity of Jesus. He'd certainly be no fan of Mr Romney, and he'd unquestionably be one of those "secularists" that Romney's trying to distance himself from.

Unless Adams would apply some sort of religious test, I can see no reason he wouldn't be a "fan of Mr Romney." And I've seen nothing to make me believe he'd be one of those "seek[ing] to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God."

Posted 11 December 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply