Looking at the lesson of history, we see that when one group conquers a nation it either demonizes the gods of the conquered nation, or it absorbs the conquered gods and makes them subservient to the gods of the conquerers. A variation on that happened during the American Revolution. The revolutionaries made the Christian God subservient to the Diest God.
The government before the Revolution was Christian. The King and monarchy of Great Britain was Anglican, which is a branch of Christianity. Before the Revolution, the citizens on the American continent were subjects of the Christian King.
The original draft of the Declaration of Independence was written by a Deist, Thomas Jefferson. It was edited by another Deist, Benjamin Franklin and by a Christian Deist (Unitarian) John Adams, and two or three others. A Deist was necessary at the drafting because if a member of one Christian sect were to draft the Declaration, the Christians of other sects would have protested and the whole process would have fallen apart from inter-sect rivalry. The Declaration was a Deist document by the intent of the Founders.
Thomas Jefferson’s Deism has its origin in the belief that natural truths and truths of scripture must not conflict. If someone learned about truth by studying scripture, those truths must conform to truths observed by studying nature. So by studying nature, one could find God, just as one could find God by studying scripture. Or theory went. The understanding of God that came from just studying nature was the foundation of the original form of Deism. Deism was different from Theism in that Theism found truths about morality that could not come just from studying nature. Revelation could teach things that philosophy could not. Philosophy, or natural understanding included things that were not found in revelation, such as the calculation for the orbit of planets. Revelation and philosophy were different, but in the original form of Deism, they could not conflict.
Jefferson stretched that understanding a bit. He wrote the Jefferson Bible, which was a collection of Jesus’ teaching without the miracles. Jefferson believed that Jesus was just a teacher, like Socrates, and that the stories of Jesus were over exaggerated by story tellers to the point where relatively banal occurrences like people getting together on a hillside and having lunch. Jefferson did not believe in the Bible or revelation as literal truth.
But Jefferson did believe that religion is necessary for virtue, and that virtue is necessary for freedom.
In Jeffersonian Deism, religious tolerance is the rule. The Declaration acknowledged God, but didn’t advocate any religion or sect. Instead, it left the door open to all faiths in God.
When I see the kinds of stuff the current US government is doing I just want to cringe. The current usurpers are trying to replace the religiously tolerant American Deist idea of God with the socialist non-idea of God. When the new government replaces the old, it must dispense with the old gods and make the new gods dominant. That is a problem for the leftists. They are essentially atheists. What god will they replace the Deist god with? None.
Instead of replacing God with nothing, they are struggling to replace God with some other religion. The current religion is Environmentalism. It is the Atheists’ null God. The god of the left is nature itself, and not the Author of Nature. In Atheism, the people put their faith in politicians, effectively making the politicians and politics their god and their source of virtue. Good luck with that.
Without God, there can be no virtue. Without the Deist ideal of God a number of ills will happen. Either one particular religion will become dominant. We are seeing that today with the push towards totalitarian and fanatical Islam. Without God, we descend into some form of statism: socialism, communism, etc. God must be present, but no one faith may be dominant. That is the straight and narrow path we must follow. If we don’t, tyranny will result.
Stumble it!
1 user commented in " Why Jeffersonian Deism is necessary for American freedom "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackGreat article, and well-timed for this time of year.
I am a Deist, mostly as original as they come — but I still embrace Christmas as best I can because those around me who I love and care about are mostly Christian… and celebrating this holiday with them is good for our souls and our relationships.
At my in-laws I even participate in "The Gift for Jesus" — where each of us dedicate to accomplishing some goal for the year that we dedicate to Jesus (in my heart, I just dedicate it to Providence — but I play along with the group). And, this year, I played the part of Joseph in the traditional Christian nativity play that our neighbors do every year.
One can have religious views — even views often-times starkly different from others' around them — without turning into a fire-breathing contentious jerk. One can have religious views radically different from the majority's without feeling the part of the victim or feeling the prevailing school of thought is always trying to drown you out.
I believe that our Founders' Deism was much like that. Many of them are on record attending Christian services or making Christian-oriented statements; and yet, in their private lives there is little doubt that several were strong Deists.
You can be a Deist and still play a part of the society around you without being contentious — as long as that society embraces the concept of religious diversity and religious tolerance.
Sadly, I agree with you, far too many atheists are far too contentious.
I do, however, cringe a bit when I read (from others as well as you) the fairly common assertion that "Without God, there can be no virtue." For an entire society of people, I do believe that the tendency of a godless-people is towards a decline in virtue; but, on an individual-level, I believe it's entirely possible for an atheist to be every bit as virtuous as the believer. Just my $0.02; but history seems full of atheists and agnosts who seemed plenty virtuous to me.
Nevertheless, to seek to create a society who purposely denies or ignores Providence does not seem a wise course to me; for the lazy and apathetic individuals among us, some God is indeed better than no God.
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