Any fundamentalist will tell you that our nation was founded as a Christian nation by Christians and for Christians. Their carefully crafted surveys show that a massive majority of Americans say that they are Christian, and therefore approve the fundamentalist platform.
Let’s look at some of their potent evidence. I pulled this fact from a Christian political activist site, ObjectiveMinistries.org [1]
“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord [i.e. Jesus Christ] one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names…”
– Article VII, US Constitution
Yeah. I’m sure that our Deist founders inserted the phrase “Year of our lord” to enforce Christian doctrine. This was simply a declaration of what calendar they were using (as opposed to the Chinese or Hebrew calendars). But then, this site also is currently pushing “Roy Moore for Alabama Governor — Taking America Back For The Lord One State At A Time!”
Apparently the word “Objective” in their URL refers to its meaning as “Target” rather than “unbiased”. I got to this site while looking for the obvious parody site, LandoverBaptist.org [2]. Anyone with the sense of a 10 year old would recognize that it is a pointed parody, yet the ObjectiveMinitries site has labeled it as hate-speech and misleading, and is running a campaign to get it shut down.
I suggest viewing both sites regularly, one to see what the radical churchies are up to, and the other for comic relief. Mind the ads in the latter.
But, back to my point: America was founded in part to avoid having “the church” be a political player. Every time ossified doctrine directs social interaction, things go badly. Our founders knew their history. When authors of the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution mention “God”, it is generally in a vague, Einsteinian sense of a generic creator or an embodiment of eternity.
Our nation was born when western culture was beginning to embrace the intersection of evidence and reason. This Dangerous Intersection was beginning to supplant the earlier blend of supposition and reason; the Aristotelian method. That technique had a good run, and did its bit to move civilization forward. But around the time of our secession from the British Empire, educated people were aware of the widening gap between what the church claimed, and what correlated evidence proved.
But weren’t our founders all raised as Christians? I’ll address the few Jews shortly. Well, they were also raised as farmers. As people learn, they outgrow insufficient memes [3]. As for Jews, they were always here. The first religious refugees to come and permanently settle in the future United States were Spanish Jews. Look that one up for yourself.
For more about our founders, try this article at infidels.org. [4]
But, what about current demographics? Most non-believers and undecided folk were raised in this Christian culture. Given a survey where the choices are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Atheist, these would likely pick “Christian” rather than the loaded, hated “Atheist”. After all, Pascal’s Wager [5] isn’t a bad bet unless you look at the numbers. Keep in mind that many versions of Christianity now popular in the U.S. claim that most of the others are false. Choose with care!
I don’t deny that more people attend Christian churches of some sort or another in the country than all the others combined. But to leave room for the others, it is imperative that we stop passing laws based on one particular faith, especially those that go against the conclusions of Science.
“Science is just another religion,” I hear from the back row. No. Science is a filter for progressively separating reality from nonsense, and carefully recording both. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick
From the 1940’s through the 1970’s, America was an important nation of Science and industry. We have since been sliding down the slope into a nation of faith. We are no longer #1. Watch this Bill Maher riff [6] on that topic.
So, in conclusion, I admit that there are more Christians here than any other faith. However, the intentions of our founders was to create a nation of reason and morality, not blind obedience to any particular brand of invisible friend.
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