Today is the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth. Apparently he’s an important figure in American history, what with him being the third President of the United States and all. Given the significance of the day I thought that it was worth spending a few minutes talking about him. Please take into account that I’m not an American and American history and politics were never part of my childhood education. Any errors and omissions are a result of the dodgy websites where I’m getting my information. ;)
I’m going to concentrate on Jefferson’s famous religious opinions given that this site is dedicated to the dialog between atheists and theists. Raised in the Church of England (the name itself is conclusive proof that God is English, as if the sense of humour weren’t a big enough clue) he converted to the deist philosophy. He believed in one God, divine moral law and divine providence but not in supernatural revelation. He viewed Jesus as a great teacher but not as the incarnation of God or as a messiah. Perfectly reasonable beliefs if you ask me.
Jefferson’s conclusions about the Bible are noteworthy. He considered much of the new testament of the Bible to be lies. He described these as “so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture”. He described the “roguery of others of His disciples”, and called them a “band of dupes and impostors” describing Paul as the “first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus”, and wrote of “palpable interpolations and falsifications”. He also described the Book of Revelation to be “merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams”. While living in the White House, Jefferson began to make his own condensed version of the Gospels, omitting Jesus’ virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection, primarily leaving only Jesus’ moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible.
When I read that I just had to laugh. It’s a fine example of cherry picking and is about as close to atheism as you can get and still believe in God.
Read the rest of this news item »
In this article in Saturday 15th March’s Guardian newspaper John Gray compares the rise in vocal atheism to evangelical Christianity of the worst kind. While he has several points of value I can’t help feeling that the comparison is unfair.
Atheism is not an organisation or a philosophy, it has no core dogma or central body of literature to claim wisdom or worth. Atheism is, in simple terms, a lack of belief in gods. Actually there are two common definitions of atheism:
Read the rest of this news item »
There hasn’t been any active discussion on the discussion board for a while so we decided to close it to new posts and comments.
Everything posted on it is still there.
The point of closing it is not to restrict discussion but rather to prevent new people posting there hoping for responses and being disappointed they don’t get any.
If you have something you’d like to discuss you’re welcome to e-mail it to us on the feedback form as a suggested post for this blog.
Posted in Atheist/Christian Dialog | 12 Comments »