Yes, the founders represented a whole range of convictions about the issues of society. I agree that people tend to emphasize the parts for the historical record, positive or negative, that best suits the point they’re trying to make. I’m in favor of airing all the laundry, dirty or otherwise. Speaking of Jefferson and emphasis, I don’t think he’s much of a favorite among conservative Christians; his New Testament only Jefferson Bible redacted the miracles, including the resurrection, basically denying the divinity of Jesus while emphasizing his moral teachings.

Eudokia said: “Indians enslaved other Indians. They killed other Indians and took their lands. Why aren’t people shocked and outraged about it? Is it because the aggressor and the aggressee are both Indians?”

Unless you’re talking about Mesoamerican empires, this sort of thing happened on a much smaller scale between tribes, with technologically matched combatants, rather than the near genocide committed by Europeans. Of course, pathogens brought from Europe, such as small pox, also helped decimate the native populations. Part of the modern outrage with the white’s oppression and destruction of native Americans has to do with the hypocrisy involved (the same as in the treatment of black Africans): A group that proclaims all men are created equal, then oppresses certain groups of men because they are judged to be inferior by that same group, seems just a bit hypocritical.

Eudokia said: “As far as women’s rights and suffrage, are concerned, in the past there have been many societies where women were unfairly treated solely because of their gender.”

Probably most any society that didn’t worship a goddess as their main deity.

Eudokia said: “I think American women are very fortunate because unlike allot of the women of the middle east, the founders put in writing a recourse. All I can say is thank goodness women had the US constitution to rely on. Without it where would they have been?”

The same place they were during the 133 years they were waiting around for the 19th amendment to finally pass, and give them the vote?

Yes, the founders expressed their feelings that “all men are created equal.” Of course that didn’t include black men from Africa

Believe it or not, many of the founders, at the time of the writing of the Constitution, were against slavery. There’s a little known detail that secular historians fail to mention, Thomas Jefferson actually wanted to end slavery. Maybe the fact that he had a black mistress played a deciding role in his convictions or maybe he actually believed that ‘…all men are created equal…’ since he did pen the phrase. There is a possibility that both were influencing factors. Long before this country was a nation, plantation owners were using slaves as laborers. I have to admit this issue confounds me. Indians enslaved other Indians. They killed other Indians and took their lands. Why aren’t people shocked and outraged about it? Is it because the aggressor and the aggressee are both Indians? Slavery still exists today in many countries. Do you hear anyone focusing intently on the problem? I didn’t think so. So why does America get single out? I actually know the answer to this question.

and certainly not women of any color, just white men be they commoners or kings.

As far as women’s rights and suffrage, are concerned, in the past there have been many societies where women were unfairly treated solely because of their gender. In Biblical times, a woman in Jewish society was not allowed to testify in court on the basis that she was a woman, and still today, in the middle east, women experience an extreme form of inequality. I think American women are very fortunate because unlike allot of the women of the middle east, the founders put in writing a recourse. All I can say is thank goodness women had the US constitution to rely on. Without it where would they have been? Probably wearing a buhrka. And if the founders had not included the very 1st amendment, there may not have been a 21st amendment.

Yes, the founders expressed their feelings that “all men are created equal.” Of course that didn’t include black men from Africa, and certainly not women of any color, just white men be they commoners or kings. Their point was that men should decide who governs them, and in what way, and that royalty should not rule them through a claim to divine right.

As a modern inheritor of the founders’ dream of creating a free society, I can appreciate and uphold their idea of democratic rule (even if I don’t hold to their various religious convictions), while completely opposing their Orwellian ideas of some people being “more equal than others.” The part about “unalienable rights” is great, applying them only to white males is something we now reject.

On the one hand, it feels wonderfully patriotic to be part of the legacy of this experiment in building a truly free society. We want to uphold the principals on which it was founded. On the other hand, we can’t live in the stagnant past. So, U.S. citizens discuss and interpret, and occasionally modify, our founding document, the U.S. Constitution. We keep the conversation of liberty alive.

Unfortunately, people also discuss and interpret, and then occasionally modify (in their minds and in print) the character of our founders, as if this diverse group was of a single mind about all matters. Some groups and individuals have a tendency to remake these historical figures in their own image in order to stay true to the notion of original intentions, and to claim them as their own (and nobody else’s!).

The U.S. was founded by Christians, deists, freethinkers, progressives, conservatives, slave owners, and bigots. We have to accept who they were, warts and all, and that they governed a relatively mono-cultured agrarian society which no longer exists. What they intended for society in their time is an important part of our history, what they might have intended for ours is largely irrelevant; they don’t live in our world, and couldn’t have anticipated its complexities. That’s why they allowed for the U.S. Constitution to be interpreted by the judiciary and amended by the legislature. It’s our intentions that matter now; we can’t look to a bunch of dead guys to be responsible for our morals or our future.

The reason why I am on this blog is that I was at a book store and came across a copy of ‘I sold my soul on ebay.’ At first I was going to buy the book because the author seemed to want to promote good relations with Christians. I wanted to see if this was possible. I ended up not buying the book but I took note of the name of the author because I found out he had a blog. I didn’t know the name of the blog. So I did a search by using his name and found the Friendly Atheist and the rest as they say is history. I read Mriana’s post and decided to answer this person. It was the deist part of Mriana’s comments that I found I couldn’t resist responding to.

As far as starting a dialog. This is what I thought I was doing.

It goes on and states that among these rights, (which the Creator gave) are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…

Ah, but this is just a bad plagiarism of John Locke’s identification of life, liberty, and property as our rights, and he saw them as social constructs and explicitly pointed out that they did not arise through divine revelation. So the DoI stole the conclusion but mangled the logic that led up to it.

In any case, these rights don’t come from any god(s), so the number of legal documents that claim otherwise is moot. Truth isn’t decided by a vote.