The "Founding Fathers" on Religion, and Crackpots -
Part one: Franklin
by Bob Higgins | January 16, 2008
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
[Benjamin Franklin, in _Toward The Mystery_]
I am sick to death of crackpots of every variety. Sick political crackpots like Norman Podhoretz and his illicit spiritual love child William Kristol. Sick, sick of the insipid giggling talking heads of network and cable news and media crack pots of the Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, Glen Beck genre who have turned the communication of fear and lies unwary and uncritical crack pots of their audience into some kind of filthy, cynical and perverse modern art form / marketing device.
Mostly though, I am sick, sick, sick of religious crackpots, of born again snake oil salesmen, of piously preaching phonies of every religious variety, from every tin hat sect and bat s*** crazy cult who have crawled from the wreckage of reason that our modern political process has become and invade my airways and newspapers with their sanctimonious lying blather on a daily basis.
Raw Story ran a short piece yesterday reporting on remarks made to a carefully assembled choir in Warren, Michigan Monday night by erstwhile preacher and full time political office seeker Mike Huckabee. (Watch the MSNBC Video)
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
Mike Huckabee, Warren, Michigan Mon. 1/14/08
Well, there you have it, God, or the Huckster's version of God (ie "the living God") needs our Constitution amended to meet "His" standards which I expect will be a supremely difficult task for mere mortals, lacking as we do, such Godlike qualities as omniscience, omnipotence and the ability to leap tall buildings with a single bound.
Break
"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan]way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.]It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist"
[Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography,"p.66 as published in The American Tradition in Literature, seventh edition (short), McGraw-Hill,p.180]
Who will define these Godly standards he neglects to mention, nor does he explain who will take magic chisel in hand and carve, in granite no doubt, a more suitable document. He could, I suppose, appoint a committee of noted religious charlatans of his acquaintance from among the Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar crowd, (provided they are not actually serving time for tax fraud) who will then step into the holy prayer closet of their simple parsonage (36 rooms, 9 baths, ample parking for the Bentley, in a very tony neighborhood) and kick out a constitution New Covenant that will release us from what the Huckster sees as the hideous bounds of the body of secular (Satanic?)law which has so retarded us as a chosen people these last centuries.
What Huckabaloo doesn't seem to recognize is that, in the minds of many citizens, some, of my acquaintance, is that the guys "founding fathers" who wrote the Constitution the first time around got it right.
These were among the most accomplished, studious, politically and socially sophisticated people of their time, yet they were no farther removed from the long dark ages of man than we are historically distant from their enlightened times, (as we prepare to establish a new and possibly darker age of our own) yet they came together despite differing backgrounds, from a variety of political, moral and economic philosophies, and with a wide disparity of religious beliefs and hammered out a Constitution under which all men could live in liberty and relative harmony.
They wrote a document which, I am certain, (although I am in no way a religious person) made God (living or otherwise) smile a bit with amusement and pride.
I think that God is no longer amused with us, and I suspect that his current ill humor has nothing to do with amending our Constitution, but rather, greatly to do with our refusal to honor the one that he commissioned of those good men two centuries ago.
The "Founding Fathers" were supremely capable of speaking for themselves and expressing their beliefs and private dreams for the liberty, freedom and dignity of mankind and did so in the Constitution other official documents of the time and hundreds perhaps thousands of Letters to friends colleagues and detractors during their lifetimes.
I have sprinkled a few excerpts from these missives from Ben Franklin around this post and at the end will offer a hyperlink to others. As most of you know much of this great body of historical knowledge is readily available through this wondrous system of tubes (thanks so much Al) known as the internet.
It mystifies me that someone like Huck can rise to the level of Governor of a State in this modern Union of ours without the knowledge of the published writings of the greatest men of our shared history, or without the awareness that misquoting or lying about the precedents that they labored so mightily to establish would easily and instantly be exposed (those tubes again)for the cynical flimflam that it is.
I'll let Ben finish this, he has a certain quaint flair for the language which I sorely lack and a lovely sense of humor which I have misplaced somewhere in my preoccupation with all these crack pots:
"You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His providence. That He ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render Him is doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in His government of the world with any particular marks of His displeasure.
"I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next, without the smallest conceit of meriting it... I confide that you will not expose me to criticism and censure by publishing any part of this communication to you. I have ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments, without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me unsupportable and even absurd. All sects here, and we have a great variety, have experienced my good will in assisting them with subscriptions for building their new places of worship; and, as I never opposed any of their doctrines, I hope to go out of the world in peace with them all."
[Benjamin Franklin, letter to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, shortly before his death; from "Benjamin Franklin" by Carl Van Doren, the October, 1938 Viking Press edition pages 777-778 Also see Alice J. Hall, "Philosopher of Dissent: Benj. Franklin," National Geographic, Vol. 148, No. 1, July, 1975, p. 94]
Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust
Related stories and links:
Ben Franklin on religion and Christianity
Related article at AlterNet What Religion's Blind Stranglehold on America Is Doing to Our Democracy)
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12194