In my last question someone brought up how almost ALL the founders believed in God, is this true?

I have found overwhelming evidence that they did not, and most were rationalists.





For those who say that all the founders believed in God.





Thomas Jefferson-


';I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.';


';Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies.';


';Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.';





James Madison


';Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.';





John Adams


';The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.';


';The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.';





Benjamen Franklin


';The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.';


';Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.';


';I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.';In my last question someone brought up how almost ALL the founders believed in God, is this true?
Most didn't believe in Christianity, and those who say otherwise are idiots.





Still, the word ';god'; becomes irrelevent when people like ';Citizen of the Cosmos Returns'; uses it in that context, because then we must needs define god---which we can define as anything we want.





The point Matthew is trying to make, though, is simply that our forefathers weren't mostly Christian.In my last question someone brought up how almost ALL the founders believed in God, is this true?
As far as anyone knows for sure, most were deists, so they believed in the existence of god, just not a personal god who was involved with humanity. Many were members of Christian churches, but that was standard in those times, and was an expected aspect of society. They were, for the most part, not what one would consider to be practicing members of a faith.
I personally believe in God.


Christianity however is just one of the many roads that a man can find as a way to relate himself to that belief.


What other leaders may have said about specific religious dogma must have created a limited opportunity for what they thought may bring more growth to the country.
Ah and not to mention Abraham Lincoln, it was said that the only book he ever mastered was the bible. His famous speech at the battle of gettisburg was based on biblical truths and he is the most respected us president by its people even to this date. After all he understood the truth of freedom.
James Madison, often referred to as the father of the Constitution:





“We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of the government—far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” (Russ Walton, Biblical Principles of Importance to Godly Christians, New Hampshire: Plymouth Foundation, 1984, p. 361.)
Those quotes only prove that they did not define themselves as Christians. You have yet to show whether they did not conceive of ';God'; in a non-Christian way. At the time, philosophy and theology had not yet completely parted ways, and so it was possible to be both rationalist and theist (see the writings of Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau).
You also have to look at the time period. Back then if you didn't believe in some kind of higher power, you were a pretty radical thinker. It's likely that the founding fathers may have professed some sort of religous belief out of custom or tact.
It depnds on your definition of God. They certainly, as a group, had little to no belief in the Christian God as it is understood today. They did typically have some form of Deist belief in a benign Creator, or Divine Providence, of some sort.
You need to learn the definition of god and religion. The founders did not believe in religion. That does not equate to not believing in a god. I am an atheist, and I do not believe in any gods. But from what I have read, the founders were not atheists. They probably did believe in god.
Actually, they were almost all believers in a god. Not the Christian god, just a god. Franklin is one of the only ones you could make an argument for that he was not a believer.
It is false if you capitalize the g. They believed in a Creator, but a more abstract version than the Christian churches of the era offered.
They were what people now call Deists.





From their writings they did seem to believe in a God and creator....but they also were not Christians.


(no surprise since Christianity had been used in Europe to help break the backs of the people and keep them in their place).
Your Absolutely right. These were a bunch of mixed up Boy's, Right from G.W. on down.





GOD Bless YA,





Chicago Bob. (Imasinner)





Please pray for our Country and Our President (DAILY)





There is more Joy in JESUS in 24 hours, Than there is in the World in 365 Days. I have tried them both.(ME TO)


R.A. Torrey.
While many of the more prominent members of the continental congress did not count themselves among Christians they did believe in a god. They were Deists.
Many, perhaps most, were Deists, not christains (deliberate misspelling).
Many believed in a creative force, NOT organized religion.
Albert Einstein did not exactly believe in god, and he was the smartest man on earth.
Is your evidence from primary sources? And in context?
no man knows the condition or beliefs of another especially when they are dead





but never the less our country is found on christian beliefs
Let us thank God for wise men.
There are more quotes that say the opposite. They probably said different things at different times, or maybe all the quotes were not said by them


Some quotes from William Fedderer's Encyclopedia of Quotations:


Thomas Jefferson stated:


';A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen: it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian; that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.'; plus many more like this.





James Madison wrote:


';Christ's Divinity appears by St John, chapter xx,2 'And Thomas answered and said unto Him, my Lord and my God...'; plus more more like this.





John Adams ';As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation';. etc.





Ben Franklin on March 9, 1790 ';Here is my Creed, I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe...That He ought to be worshiped...As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of morals and his religion....is the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see';. I didn't see any where Ben said Jesus is God, but he did believe in God.
No, it's not true -- they held a wide variety of beliefs ranging from christian fundamentalism (of the time -- different from today) to lackadaisical christianity to deism to agnosticism to atheism.





Really, though, the bottom line is that what they believed as far as god is absolutely irrelevant. Would we label England a ';muslim'; nation if they elected a muslim prime minister? I don't think so. What matters is that they government they set up is secular -- and, in John Adams' words that you quoted (from the Treaty of Tripoli), ';The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.'; Or any other religion.





Peace.
What they believed is that what all of you are doing is completely irrelevant and pointless: and that is arguing over whether they believed in god or not, or if they were christians or not. I fail to understand why this matters at all. They were great men and the founders of our country. They understood that religion and government should never be mixed and they also understood that what a person chooses to believe in is not important in matters of rights and liberties. Christians now days have seemed to have forgotten that when they say stupid uneducated things like ';the country was founded on christianity';. Obviously it was founded on civil liberty. Stupid.
Most were Christians and others were Deists. I can't think of any who were avowed atheists. It is to noteworthy that even though they were mostly Christian they formed a secular republic for good reasons. At that point in time, it hadn't been that long since the Puritans of New england had been persecuting other groups of Christians, including hanging some for heresy.





Note: Those who would argue that most were Deists are simply lazily cherry-picking quotes from some of the more famous of the Framers. A significant number of the Framers were even Christian ministers. It is, however, to be noted that very few would fit the modern definition of a Fundamentalist.








';I also wish they would read American history, for while it is true that America is a nation of Christians, we are not a Christian nation despite the misguided proclamations of the religious right to the contrary. The framers of the Constitution were men of various religious persuasions - Christians, Unitarians, deists, theists and possibly some agnostics and atheists. None were born-again Christians in the vein of a Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.





They wrote a Constitution that is thoroughly secular, with no mention of God, Jesus, the Bible or Christianity. In addition to the prohibition against a state religion and government interference in religious matters, the Constitution also prohibits ';religious tests'; for public office.





The framers could have formally recognized Christianity in the Constitution. In fact, a few delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted to do just that, but that theocratic view of government lost out to the view of Thomas Jefferson, a deist, who told Baptists in Danbury, Conn., that the First Amendment erected a ';wall of separation between church and state.';





A Baptist contemporary of Jefferson, John Leland, also argued for the wall of separation: ';Government has no more to do with religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three gods, no god, or twenty gods; and let government protect him in doing so.'; They don't make Baptists like that anymore.';
The Founding Fathers


Their Faith


Were they deists? In an attempt to hide the Christian founding of America, many teachers and college professors claim that the founders of the United States were not Christians but rather deists who believed in an impersonal Deity but rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Bible. This simply isn't true. Although both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were what may be referred to as ';deists,'; the vast majority of the remaining founders were unapologetic, born-again Christians. Let's let them speak for themselves.





JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, the Sixth President of the United States, said, ';My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ...';





JOHN JAY, First Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, ';Unto Him who is the Author and Giver of all good, I render sincere and humble thanks for His manifold and unmerited blessings and especially for our redemption and salvation by His beloved Son... Blessed be His holy name!'; (John Jay's last will and testament)





GEORGE MASON, the Father of the Bill of Rights: ';My soul I resign into the hands of my Almighty Creator. Whose tender mercies are all over His works, humbly hoping from His unbounded mercy and benevolence through the merits of my blessed Savior, a remission of my sins.';





ROGER SHERMAN, a signer both of the Declaration and Constitution: ';I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost... that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are revelation from God... that God did send His own Son to become man, die in the room and stead of sinners, and thus to lay a foundation for the offer of pardon and salvation to all mankind so as all may be saved who are willing to accept the Gospel offer [and] that at the end of this world there will be a resurrection of the dead and a final judgment of all mankind when the righteous shall be publicly acquitted by Christ the Judge and admitted to everlasting life and glory, and the wicked be sentenced to everlasting punishment. ';





SAMUEL ADAMS, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, said, ';Principally and first of all, I recommend my soul to that Almighty Being who gave it and my body I commit to the dust, relying upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.'; (Samuel Adam's last will and testament.)





JOSIAH BARTLETT, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, also said ';Firstly, I commit my Soul into the hands of God, its great and benevolent author. ';





DAVID BREARLEY, Signer of the Constitution, stated, ';First and principally, I commit my Soul unto Almighty God.';





CHARLES CARROLL, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, said, ';On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits; not on the works which I have done in obedience to His precepts.';





GABRIEL DUVALL, selected as a Delegate to the Constitutional Convention and a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, boldly declared, ';I resign my soul into the hands of the Almighty who gave it in humble hopes of his mercy through our Savior Jesus Christ.';





JOHN HART, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, said, ';[T]hanks be given unto Almighty God therefore, and knowing that it is appointed for all men once to die and after that the judgment [Hebrews 9:27]... principally, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of Almighty God who gave it and my body to the earth to be buried in a decent and Christian like manner... to receive the same again at the general resurrection by the mighty power of God.';





JOHN DICKINSON, a General during the American Revolution and a signer of the Constitution, declared: ';Rendering thanks to my Creator... for my birth in a country enlightened by the Gospel to Him I resign myself, humbly confiding in His goodness and in His mercy through Jesus Christ for the events of eternity.'; (John Dickinson's last will and testament.)





ROGER SHERMAN, Signer of both the Declaration and the Constitution, ';I believe that there is only one living and true God, existing in three person, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the same substance equal in power and glory. That the scriptures of the old and new testaments are a revelation from God and a complete rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.';





ROBERT TREAT PAINE, Signer of the Declaration declared: ';I am constrained to express my adoration of the Supreme Being - the Author of my existence - in full belief of... His forgiving mercy revealed to the world through Jesus Christ, through Whom I hope for never ending happiness in a future state.'; (From the Last Will and Testament of Robert Treat Paine, attested May 11, 1814)





GUNNING BEDFORD, Signer of the Constitution declared: ';To the triune God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost - be ascribed all honor and dominion, forevermore - Amen.';
“I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature.”


~ Thomas Jefferson





“The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion.”


~ George Washington





“The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion.”


~ Abraham Lincoln





“A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.”


~ James Madison





';I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.';


Benjamin Franklin





';The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason.';


Benjamin Franklin





';Revealed religion has no weight with me.';


Benjamin Franklin.





I included the abe lincoln one because that is pretty straight to the point.





Its probably safe to argue that they were agnostic.