For Awhile Anyway

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.  Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
―    Napoléon Bonaparte
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On This Day In:
2014	By Contrast
2013	A Very Long Time…
2012	Raise And Support
2011	Naturally
2010	A Quick Sunday Morning Read
	Giants Win Game 4 In Shutout 4 to 0!!!

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Truth Shift

The business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man’s goods and person.  And so it ought to be.  For the truth certainly would do well enough if she were once left to shift for herself.
—  John Locke
From: “Letters Concerning Toleration“
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On This Day In:
2013	Real Heroes
2012	Controlling The Beast
2011	1,002

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Disturbing

And all of you this: I love you for what you might be; I’m deeply disturbed by what you are.
—   Henry F. Ottinger
[My feelings about the Religious Right in America…   —   KMAB]
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Except When He’s Left

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.
—    Abraham Lincoln
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Passionate Germs

There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation.
—     President John Adams
[There must be a similar set of germs in human nature for nationalism.  —   KMAB]
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Good And Bad

When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
—     Benjamin Franklin
[And why are we continuing to support “Faith Based” charities with government funds?  Would the Founding Fathers do so?   —    KMAB]
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Attaining High Office

In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.
—    George Washington
[Can a Mormon grow up to be President of the United States?   —    KMAB]
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Discernible Virtue

This sentiment is echoed again and again in the writings of the Founding Fathers.  Virtue brings happiness, vice unhappiness, both to the individual subject and to society in general.  The nature of virtue is not mysterious, to be comprehended only through Christian revelation; it is clearly evident in nature and discernible through the exercise of reason.
—    Brooke Allen
From her book:  “Moral Minority“
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Are You Convinced?

Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.
—  James Madison
(From “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments“)
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Convenient Auxiliaries

What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?  In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people.  Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.
—   James Madison
From:  “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments“
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True, False And Useful

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
—  Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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What Have You Burned Lately?

[When] the pretended friends of religion lead infidel lives; when they carry religion to market and offer it in exchange for luxuries and honors’ when they place it familiarly and constantly in the columns of newspapers, manifestly connected with electioneering purposes, and when they are offering it up as a morning and evening sacrifice on the altar of political party — these men are placing a firebrand to every meeting house and applying a torch to every bible.
—  Abraham Bishop
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