Mr. Fortenberry has asked me to explain to his readers something of how I handle quotes as evidence. Contrary to popular belief (and to undergraduate education), the emphasis in graduate programs and in the process of earning a PhD degree is not on information transfer or indoctrination. The emphasis is on the proper methods for doing one’s own research. PhDs are expected to contribute to the academic world – to write the books used by others; so one is taught how to appropriately handle evidence and what counts as evidence. Contrary to what those who have never attended graduate school say, PhD students are not taught what to think, but how to properly treat competing and conflicting sources of information.
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There’s a new book on the founding of America that has been receiving a lot of praise lately. It’s another book by atheist philosopher Matthew Stewart which he provocatively entitled Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. Stewart’s foundational premise is that "'Nature's God' … the presiding deity of the American Revolution is another word for 'Nature.'"[1] To support this claim, Stewart traced the origin of the phrase “Nature’s God” back to a poem written in 1732 by Alexander Pope and argues from thence that this God could not possibly be the God of the Bible but rather a pantheistic god from ancient Greece. Contrary to popular opinion, Benjamin Franklin was a Christian who thought that the Bible was "the most faithful of all Histories." In fact, Franklin thought so highly of the Bible that he argued in the Constitutional Convention that "We should remember the character which the Scripture requires in rulers, that they should be men hating covetousness." In 1788, Franklin wrote a letter to the Federal Gazette in which he used the example of the government of ancient Israel to defend the newly written Constitution of the United States. Franklin makes several observations in this piece which serve as unquestionable evidence of the fact that he was a sincere Christian. Here is the text of Franklin's letter: In recognition of the Fourth of July, I was invited to discuss the faith of our founders on the Deeper Waters podcast. The audio from the podcast is now available online, and I would like to invite all my readers to listen to it. It was a two hour broadcast, so we were able to cover a lot of topics. I've included a mostly accurate rundown of topics below if you want to jump to a few in particular. One of the more perplexing aspects of the American Revolution is the contrast between Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and his later work Age of Reason. In Common Sense, Paine relied heavily on arguments from Scripture to prove his point, but in Age of Reason, he ridiculed the Bible and claimed that “It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder." For many, this contrast is an unsolvable mystery; for others, it is evidence that Paine molded his writings to appeal to the sentiments of his intended audience; but I suspect that there is a better explanation. On March 25, 2014, Judge Quarles of the U.S. District Court of the District of Maryland (and a Republican appointee) issued an injunction forbidding the commissioners of Carroll County from opening their sessions with prayers invoking the name of Jesus Christ. Judge Quarles reasoned that the commissioners are guilty of advancing one particular religion to the detriment of all others. The problem with Judge Quarles’ injunction is that it is itself a direct violation of a previous ruling from the Supreme Court. I was reading through the records of the Continental Congress yesterday when I came across a letter written by Elias Boudinot to his 18 year old daughter, Susan. At the time that this letter was written, Boudinot was the President of the Congress. The war with England was coming to a close, and within six months, Boudinot would sign the Treaty of Paris to bring about the official end of the Revolutionary War. In the years following, Boudinot was elected to the first Congress where he helped frame the Bill of Rights. Many people are familiar with Boudinot’s statement that: Certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate States of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. In the book The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, Christian historian David Holmes made the following statement about John Adams: Like many of his contemporaries, he brought the religion in which he was raised into the court of his reason and common sense and judged it by what he found ... "Let the human mind loose," Adams once wrote in an outburst of Enlightenment passion. "It must be loosed; it will be loose. Superstition and despotism cannot confine it." He followed these words with the assertion that Christianity would surely triumph if the human mind were loosed. This statement indicates that Adams belongs somewhere in the category of Unitarian Christian or Christian Deist. Yesterday, as I sat at home enjoying a day off because of the snow, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article by Richard Carrier entitled “Christianity Was Not Responsible for American Democracy.” This article was intended to be included in the 2010 book The Christian Delusion edited by John Loftus, but was instead published on the book’s accompanying website. Carrier’s claims sparked a lot of interest among atheists, and he was asked to give a speech on this topic at the 2013 convention of the National Atheist Party. Carrier later published the transcript of that speech on his blog under the title of “That Christian Nation Nonsense (Gods Bless Our Pagan Nation).” And it is rumored that he will be publishing similar material in Loftus’ next book Christianity is not Great which is slated to be published at the end of this year. I will eventually be writing a point-by-point critique of Carrier’s claims, but I would like to take just a moment to point out some of the more obvious flaws in his position which show that he is just as wrong in this area of historical research as he is in denying the existence of Jesus. |
Bill Fortenberry is a Christian philosopher and historian in Birmingham, AL. Bill's work has been cited in several legal journals, and he has appeared as a guest on shows including The Dr. Gina Show, The Michael Hart Show, and Real Science Radio.
Contact Us if you would like to schedule Bill to speak to your church, group, or club. "Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning." (Proverbs 9:9)
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