Originally posted by John:
quote:
The same concerning John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. The later, though not a founder, certainly influenced the political structure of the country.
{Fixed quote structure and attribute - Adminnemooseus}
I found that the anti-religious Thomas Paine much to my surprise was also an anti-evolutionist!
I think what Paine is criticizing evolutionists for is that not referring to God, they explain the moral dimension to reality as similar to some kind of material properties.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?R...
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Thomas Paine provides one example affirming this. Although Paine was the most openly and aggressively anti-religious of the founders, in his 1787 Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists in Paris, Paine nevertheless forcefully denounced the French educational system which taught students that man was the result of prehistoric cosmic accidents or had developed from some other species:
It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist.
When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them. . . .
The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter and jump over all the rest by saying that matter is eternal.
And when we speak of looking through nature up to nature’s God, we speak philosophically the same rational language as when we speak of looking through human laws up to the power that ordained them.
God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon.
But infidelity, by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account and yet it pretends to demonstration. [30]
Paine certainly did not advocate this position as a result of religious beliefs or of any teaching in the Bible, for he believed that the Bible is spurious and a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy. [31] Yet, this anti-Bible Founder was nevertheless a strong supporter of teaching the theistic origins of man.
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regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu
[This message has been edited by Syamsu, 11-28-2002]
[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 11-28-2002]
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