This is why I don't believe the Bible--it is too full of strangeness.
"Both Democratic candidates promote the nonsense of the Bible!
Hilary Clinton says, "I think the whole Bible is real." So she believes in the talking donkey (Numbers 22:28), that any nation that will not serve Israel should "be utterly wasted" (Isaiah 60:10-12), among many other ridiculous claims! Based on the blank check both Democratic and Republican politicians give to Israel, it appears they're all strong believers in the Hebrew Bible!
Barack Obama gave a speech in which he used the genocidal maniacs, Moses and Joshua, as great examples to be followed! It's pathetic and dangerous when in this nuclear age politicians still cling to the insanity found in the Bible, Torah and Koran! Here are just two examples to demonstrate that Moses and Joshua were murderous butchers. Deuteronomy 2:34 in which Moses brags about killing "men, women and the little ones", and Joshua 6:21 which says the Hebrews "utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ***, with the edge of the sword." How Obama can think this is good is beyond reason!
http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm
As the Deist Founders put it, God gave us Reason, not religion, and they condemned Christianity every chance they got. It is said that not once in any of George Washingtons papers, diaries, and other writings did he ever write the words "Jesus" or "Christ."
http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm
It wasn't the Christian God that the Founders loved.
The Founders intended the Constitution and the nation to be free FROM religious domination as well as to free up any religion in the world for the use of the people.
All quotes from the Founders come from this site
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summe...
"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
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church.
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. "
Thomas Paine
"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."
Thomas Jefferson
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have 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.
"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
"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. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England."
Benjamin Franklin
"We freethinkers [Freemasons] are, I suspect, sometimes suckers for the big lie that the U.S. really was founded as a Christian nation... I know I suspected something like that when I first read "As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion..." as a quote from the Treaty with Tripoli. "
By Ed Buckner, Ph.D. on the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/buck...
It is the evangelicals who are attempting something in this nation that is remarkably like Muslim Sharia, where religious principles rule. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/...
Perhaps Christianity and atheism, always at odds, are so polarized because the atheists would liberalize the laws as the Founders would have had them (hopefully based upon the same faculty of Reason the Founders were so proud of possessing.)
Evangelicals, on the other hand, want laws that would bear "calamities that engine of grief [the Cross] has produced!"
Their attempts are already bearing the calamities of ripping this nation apart at the seams.