Good Doctor HST
02-06-2005, 10:25 PM
Yep. I know that our money and our Pledge of Allegiance all have the word "God", but that's an ambiguous word. 95% of the world believes in some form of higher being. I have no problem with that.
But the Bible only represents 1 distinct religion.
Of course, people who testify in court place their hand on a bible too. If those individuals don't believe in the "Jesus" God, what good does it do?
Gold9472
02-06-2005, 10:28 PM
Yep. I know that our money and our Pledge of Allegiance all have the word "God", but that's an ambiguous word. 95% of the world believes in some form of higher being. I have no problem with that.
But the Bible only represents 1 distinct religion.
Of course, people who testify in court place their hand on a bible too. If those individuals don't believe in the "Jesus" God, what good does it do?
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Always on the New Testament... never the old, or at least the book of the person's religion.
ehnyah
08-19-2005, 10:46 PM
Actually, most of the founding fathers were masons.
They may have believed in "nature's" God, a higher power, etc...but they were deists, they started the revolution, God had nothing to do with it.
Also, the word God was added to our coinage years after. Roosevelt I, actually took it off our coinage arguing that God's name had no place on "money". What if that money was used to do illegal or unmoral things?
Also, God wasn't added to the pledge untill the middle of the twentieth century.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances"
Did they believe in some form of englightenment? They used the word very frequently. What is the enlightenment? Well some would argue that is the sign of Lucifer..."bearer of the light".
"Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." - George Washington
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." - declaration of independence
Background:
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Part I - The Enlightenment
In the history of Atheism, no period is as complex and exciting as that time we know today as the Enlightenment. Cultural historians and philosophers consider this era to have spanned the eighteenth century, cresting during the French Revolution of 1789. It was a phenomenon which swept the western world, drowning in its wake many of the sclerotic and despotic institutions of l'ancien regime or old order, and helping to crystallize a new view of man and the roles of reason, nature, progress and religion.
And too, the Enlightenment was a feverish period of Atheistic thought and propaganda. Many of the leading philosophers of the time were Atheists or deists, opposed to the cultural and political hegemony long exercised by the Vatican and its shock troops, the Jesuits. Much of the political, social and literary activity of the Enlightenment was characterized by a repudiation of Christianity, and the formulation of doctrines calling for separation, if not outright abolition, of state and church.
While there are many currents to this period, one of the fascinating and little-explored backwater eddys of particular interest to Atheists and libertarians is the role of Masonic lodges and "secret societies" during this time. Surprisingly little objective historical work exists on this area. The drama of social revolution and intellectual apostacy was taking place not only in the streets of Paris, or the open fields of Lexington and Concord, but in countless lodges and sect gatherings and reading societies as well. These conclaves, with their metaphorical-hermetic secrets, symbolism and lore, were the crucibles of "impiety and anarchy" so bemoaned by church dogmatists of the time like the Jesuit Abbe Barruel. Of all of the clubs, societies, libraries, salons and lodges of this stormy time, perhaps none has been so villified, attacked and misunderstood as that group known as the Order of the Illuminati.
My purpose here is not to write a history of the French Revolution, or even attempt the herculean task of digesting the complex fabric of the Enlightenment. We do know, however, that much of the best in western civilization today rests on some of the ideas germinated or reformulated during that age of revolution, ideas formulated by Atheists, deists, rationalists and state-church separationists. What I hope to undertake here is a twofold task: an examination of Freemasonry, with its founding and subsequent role in the Enlightenment, and an examination and defense of the maligned, little-understood sect of the Illuminati - a defense long overdue.
Any definition of the Enlightenment must, of necessity, begin with a prohibitorum - attempts to rigidly segmentalize history are often futile, since they envision history as a string of compact, autonomous events, each a "period", distinct in all respects from all other times. History is not this way, of course, and like any period the Enlightenment is a broad designation to help us understand the events and ideas of the 18th century. Were we to construct a model to loosely describe this time, however, it would emphasize three areas - reason, nature, and progress. It was during this time that how leading personalities looked at their world, its religions, its societies, its knowledge, its political institutions, changed so radically. And it was here that the birthpangs of industrialization were being felt, where so much of the modern world was to be born from the womb of the old order.
Reason is the capstone in the pyramid of ideas which describe the Enlightenment. Reason, not faith or divine revelation, told one the facts about life and the world. Some held that reason alone, the product of thoughtful contemplation, could reveal archetypical truths in much the same way Pythagoras had deduced his theorems on Samos millenia before; others maintained that reason involved an empirical faculty as well. In either case, reason was intermeshed with nature. Like nature, mans' reason had become vitiated by those notorious enemies of humanity - religious superstition, government, socioeconomic rank, poverty and prejudice. Destroy these in an unpheavel of antiauthoritarian wrath, and once again reason would provide a lucid, natural mechanism for apprehending the world and guiding a new human society.
Reason, then, was the faculty for comprehending nature, the second important element in the Enlightenment triad. Nature was just that - the natural, real world. It was not the realm of the supernatural, the demonic, or the godly, but the empirical or rational "stuff" of which the universe was, and is, made. Nature could be understood through reason; through logic, scientific inquiry, and open mind of free inquiry, nature would yield her secrets.
Finally, there was progress. Reason, working upon nature, would enhance the quality of life for each and every one of the Enlightened. The Atheist philosopher Condorcet preached the doctrine of a coming Utopia, where indefinite progress would bring forth a "natural salvation" of plenty and immortality. Progress held that since the universe was knowable, enlightened man could become the subject of history rather than its object. Mankind could fashion nature to its wishes; the efficacy in shaping the natural order was limited only by time and the sheer limits, if any, of reason.
On each and every one of these points which underpinned the Englightenment - reason, progress, nature - the orthodoxy of the era were hostile. The church maintained that divine inspiration and revelation were sufficient to lead the kind of life desired for man by god, pope and king. Nature was hostile, unknowable, and forever a surrogate to a higher reality ruled by supernatural forces, gods and demons alike. One's time on earth was allotted only for preparation in dying and being reborn in that supernatural kingdom. As for progress, the hierarchical arrangement of a god in heaven and kings and popes on earth as his "lawful representatives" demanded conformity, stablility, and obedience, instead of development, experimentation and blasphemy.
Atheism and militant anti-clericalism were both important elements in the Enlightenment. The French philosopher Voltaire saw priests and Christianity as a scourge on the human race, exclaiming "E'crasez l'infame!" (Crush the infamous things!). The clergy were perceived corrupt, the pope considered a tyrant, the king despised as a lackey and errand boy for the whoremaster in Rome.
If the bible was the holy book of the Christian enlightenment, then the Encyclopedia was the inspiration of the Enlightenment. Here was a compendium of human knowledge dealing with arts, sciences mechanics and philosophy which swelled to some 36 volumes by 1780. Begun by the Atheist Diderot in 1751, the Encyclopedia bore the imprints of Voltaire, Montesque, Rousseau, Buffon, Turgot and others. Gracing the title page of Diderot's compendium in the first edition was a drawing of Lucifer, symbol of light and rebellion, standing beside the masonic symbols of square and compass.
The Enlightenment mirrored the Christian religion. Reason became its revelation, nature its god. If the Enlightenment did not abolish the myth of god, it reduced god to a sort of absentee deity, a caretaker to the universe who was nevertheless subject to the laws of nature. Deism arose from the same fertile soil of the Enlightenment as had Atheism, and no doubt many deists were actually Atheists. The deistic god was symbolized in the masonic lodges as the "Great Architect of the Universe", certainly not the god of the Christian superstition.
This and other critical notions of the Enlightenment were spread throughout all of Europe, and even to the New World. It had been nearly 250 years since the first book printer to popularize literature, one Aldus Manutius of Venice, had begun the mass circulation of pamphlets and booklets. The Enlightenment was a literary explosion of dissertations, books and journals, all filled with the novel ideas as controversies of the period. These ideas spread; they were discussed and debated in the universities (where they often met with official and clerical censure), in reading societies, in cafes and salons, and in those mysterious lodges of the Freemasons.
More:
http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/enlightenment/
The Masonic Founding of The United States of America
"Something like 98% of the Founding Fathers of the United States were MASONS. Their main religious affiliation was UNITARIAN. The rest were either Catholic or Church of England. If you will look at the Masonic rolls of Boston (MA), New York (NY), Philadelphia (PA), Richmond (VA) and a dozen other cities lining the east coast, it reads like a Who's Who in American History. Many of the historical figures who came to help The Colonies in their break from England (e.g. Lafayette from France and Polaski from Poland) were also Masons. In fact, many of the officers who were fighting on the British side were also Masons. Masons, at that time, were DEISTS. A deist is one who believes that a God created the world but that same God doesn't interfere with it. Most Christians are theists. A theist sees God interfering with or can interfere with what's happening in the world. (This isn't any different than the Pagans who believed that the gods interfered with the lives of humans.) In other words, the Founding Fathers of this country saw that what happens here was up to them. It wasn't God's will that The Colonies break away from England. It wasn't God's will that there be a United States of America. Nor was Manifest Destiny God's will. It wasn't God's will that the United States eventually become a world power.
http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2005/05/317776.jpg
http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3800
Consider this:
Frank Carlucci, The Mason's Mason
"His talent for secrecy in the Masonic brotherhood, for example, for which he was rewarded with the highest honor: "sublime prince of the royal secret".
http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3357
http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2005/07/320646.jpg
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