Blacknad wrote:
"I do have suspicions though that the American Christian is more likely to be a less reasonable creature."
Again ... it is a minority on a country-wide basis. But in some regions, The South-East through Texas it is a very sizable minority. These folks are among the planet's worst hypocrites ... citing precendents that don't exist and pontificating about the founding fathers' intent when they are so ignorant of the facts as to be comical. Not 0.1% of them has ever actually read Adams or Jefferson. If they did they'd probably have their likenesses removed from the country's money.
To give you a sense of how large the disconnect:
John Adams, second president of the US, labeled the Christian religion as the "most bloody religion that ever existed."(1) The Senate, during Adams presidency, ratified the Treaty of Tripoli that proclaimed, "the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."(2)
(1) John Adams, letter to F.A. Vander Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816.
(2) Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, Article 11.
and
James Madison, 4th President of the US:
Proclaimed Christianity to cause "pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry
and persecution."(3)
(3) James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785.
and my personal favorite:
Ethan Allen stopped his own wedding until the presiding judge affirmed that "God" referred to the God of Nature and not to the God of the Bible.(4)
(4) Sense of History compiled by American Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press Inc., New York NY)
BTW: Tele-evangelism = legalized fraud
