Read it, Pass this on. The founders of freedom in the United States
tried to eliminate the problem but unfortunately the problem is an
incurable cancer.
FFR
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments
had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect
a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on
many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of
political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians
of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert
the public liberty may have found an established clergy
convenient
auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and
perpetuate
it, needs them not."
- James Madison
"A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments,
instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have
had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has
the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has
been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and
indolence
in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry and persecution."
- James Madison
"A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"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?"
- John Adams
letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27,
1816
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal
example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has
preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of
grief has produced!"
- John Adams
letter to Thomas Jefferson
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of
the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as
spurious
by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of
Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope,
because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius',
the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the
guillotine."
- John Adams
letter to John Taylor
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly
monopolized
learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has
existed
a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE
INQUIRY?
The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence,
the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced,
propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision
with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and
you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will
swarm
about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
- John Adams
letter to John Taylor
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile
to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they
have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into
mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore
the safer engine for their purpose."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women
and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been
burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an
inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?
To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
To sup****t roguery and error all over the earth."
- Thomas Jefferson
from "Notes on Virginia"
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which
weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her
seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if
there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than
that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend
they
believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one
is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are
not
one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of
the priests."
- Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, 1803
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great
reformer
of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from
by
those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted
into
an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their
oppressors
in Church and State."
- Thomas Jefferson
to S. Kercheval, 1810
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the
lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as
religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own
purpose."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral
principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to
this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing
one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and
to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the
human mind."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Carey, 1816
"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion
of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is
really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily
distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers,
and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill,
we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality
which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment
of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent
morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture,
which has resulted fro artificial systems, invented by
ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate conception of Jesus,
his deification, the creation of the world by him, his
miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his
cor****eal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin,
atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.)
is a most desirable object."
- Thomas Jefferson
to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819
"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ)
in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of
Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentence toward
forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to
redeem it.
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his
biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct
morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again,
of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth,
charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to
the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the
roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes
and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first
corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus."
- Thomas Jefferson
to W. Short, 1820
"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation,
is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous
confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or
left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the
superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless
as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham,
of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus
did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God,
physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of
men more learned than myself in that lore."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Story, Aug. 4, 1820
"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the
happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing
dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible
the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals
to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes
of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26,
1822
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made
of Christendom a slaughter-house."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26,
1822
"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of
Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who
have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy
absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his
genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical
generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in
the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the
generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
- Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823
"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and
of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism,
differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible."
- Thomas Jefferson
to Jared Sparks, 1820
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy
is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at
the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but
what we did."
- Benjamin Franklin
letter to his father, 1738
"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite
Father, expects or requires no wor****p or praise from us,
but that He is even infinitely above it."
- Benjamin Franklin
from "Articles of Belief and Acts
of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good
works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping,
sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries
and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of
pleasing the Deity."
- Benjamin Franklin
Works, Vol. VII, p. 75
"If we look back into history for the character of the present
sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their
turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The
primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the
Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants
of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church,
but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in
Bishops,
but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and
in New England."
- Benjamin Franklin
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