As an atheist, I do find some use for the Jefferson Bible. (US Founding Father) Thomas Jefferson collected all the best parts of the Gospels, dropped the miracles, some of the stranger allegories, but kept all the sermons (the things Jesus was said to have directly taught). It's about 14 "letter" pages, so almost "pamphlet" sized. As far as I'm concerned it finds most of the baby in the bathwater (IMO, so much bathwater), is an easy read, and says some things much more succinctly that I think a lot of Christians might be surprised to find are core teachings of Jesus in the Bible. I sometimes…
This is such an extremely interesting comment, given the context of this conversation, because it sums up so much with so little. There is indeed overwhelming documentation (and other evidence) of Jesus' existence [1], and essentially no doubt of such. The Bible in general corresponds quite well with historic evidence on most topics*. Where it diverges from history is obviously in the divine. But does this mean one shouldn't be able to publicly express doubt of Jesus' existence? I would say no. Because while there is both overwhelming evidence and consensus, there was also overwhelming…
Perhaps as a peer comment is alluding to, this issue might simply be viewing things through an all-or-nothing lens. In some ways I think this is similar to Thomas Jefferson and Christianity. He was drawn to the soundness of the values of Christianity as a system of moral and ethical behavior, but found the supernatural aspects of it unbelievable, and words of third parties as less relevant. So he simply cut them out and actually literally cut and pasted his own 'Bible' together, the Jefferson Bible. [1] For self evident reasons he kept this as a personal project, but that was essentially…
>> "If we took the element of God out of the bible and distilled it down to useful teachings on life I wonder how useful non-religious people would find it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible Thomas Jefferson. Yeah... that Thomas Jefferson... not just some random dude with a common name. There is a propaganda campaign to convince people that americans were united as hard core puritan evang neocon christians continuously from the earliest days until a very recent fall like when the Beatles arrived, but that fantasy has nothing to do with reality, of course.
Jefferson created what is called the Jefferson Bible[0], it is the story of new testament without any magic or superstition. It primarily consists of the words of Jesus and his moral teachings over his worldly actions. I think it's best to read Jefferson in a similar way. As a paragon of virtue Jefferson fails, but he has some wisdom to share on the nature and design of large scale human organizations. I don't think Jefferson would've wanted to look over the New York City Council anyway, he's probably much more at home in a library or museum. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
I think it's clear why the OP comes off as sounding condescending. Just as I think it's clear why I come off as condescending in that post. I also think the implied definition of what is religious and spiritual is pretty narrow, and seems to lend itself to monotheistic and/or abrahamic traditions. A lot of what people might say is 'spiritual' can end up being a lot more philosophical than mystical. The terms always end up being muddy, so I'm not saying that as a personal dig. I would say that being human results in the confirmation bias. A marked understanding of it's psychological…
When this story first came out last year claiming that Thomas Jefferson was removed from the curriculum because he was an atheist (which he was not), I went and looked at the actual differences made to the state standards so I could have a laugh. As it turns out the claims in the story were false. This latest version at least gets right that he is not on the list of influential Enlightenment era authors. That's true. Not pointed out though is that he is more covered throughout the rest of the curriculum than just about any other figure. Also relevant and not mentioned in these articles is the…
Religion is what one makes of it. One thing that gave me an immense amount of respect for Thomas Jefferson was learning about his religious views. [1] In a nutshell, he took from religion what made sense to him, while also being aware of the tendency for later iterations to be politicized in various ways or for things to go from mundane to mythical over repeated tellings. He even created the 'Jefferson Bible' [2] which was made by quite literally cutting and pasting various sections of the Bible, across multiple translations, into his own version which made sense to him. The reason this gave…
Another excellent example on this front is Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, by any sort of fundamental interpretation of religion, would have been a heretic, or worse, in a time when religion was still a fundamental component of society. He espoused Christianity, but rejected the virgin birth, resurrection, and various other miracles in the Bible. He actually even composed his own 'bible' by [literally] cutting and pasting sections of the bible (across multiple languages no less) into a new book - the 'Jefferson Bible.' [1] And he made no secret of his views. Discovering this increased my respect…
Perhaps, but the strong religious motivations for the early colonies is well documented. [1] > Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by men and women, who, in the face of European persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions and fled Europe. Even from the article you link quotes a wide range of religious beliefs: > Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 28 were Church of England (or Episcopalian, after the American Revolutionary War was won),…