Lokmar
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Ok you stupid cunt, you need some more PWN3D!On the matter of a Christian God having any role to play in 18th century political or scientific documents (and despite Lok's ka-powning and ga-zinging his way to better Bible health), it must be remembered that, at a time when the Inquisition still held some clout in Catholic Europe, and a mere century after the arrival Calvinist Puritans on the shores of America, many, if not most, men of science, of letters, or of government office felt it rather imprudent and quite impolitic to advertise their freethinking views. Thus it was, in the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, that men of reason--such as the Founding Fathers of the United States of America--chose to camouflage their agnosticism and atheism (and even their Deist ways) in order to provide lip service to then-regnant superstitions and religious beliefs. They certainly didn't want the Salem witch hunters to come a-knockin on their door, and the smell of Giordano Bruno's charred corpse still filled their nostrils even some two hundred years after the man was burned at the stake by the Church of Rome for thinking wrongly.
Lokmar needs to redo his History 101 class. We can only hope he'd get a passing grade the second time around.
John Adams
June 21, 1776
"Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.
"The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty."
July 1, 1776
"Before God, I believe the hour has come. My judgement approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and Independence for ever!"
In a July 1, 1776 letter to Archibald Bullock, former member of the Continental Congress from Georgia, Adams wrote:
"The object is great which We have in View, and We must expect a great expense of blood to obtain it. But We should always remember that a free Constitution of civil Government cannot be purchased at too dear a rate as there is nothing, on this side (of) the New Jerusalem, of equal importance to Mankind."
July 3, 1776
"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end ofthis continent to the other, from this time forward forever.
"You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory I can see that the end is worth more than all the means; that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even though we [may regret] it, which I trust in God we shall not."