I have come to expect ignorant claims that America is a Christian nation from the uneducated fundamentalist, but I was very surprised to read it in Thursday’s Alligator from a UF law student.
Although after reading further I realized Bryan Griffin knows his belief has no evidence to support it, and a belief no matter how sincere and strong is not necessarily true without evidence to support it. Some readers may have noticed that when speaking of the Declaration of Independence, Griffin uses no quotations. That’s because he makes a claim that does not actually appear in the Declaration of Independence.
The true wording of the document is, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Anyone who has even the most elementary education of our Founding Fathers knows by “Creator” they meant a deistic naturalist god, and not the God of the Bible. This misrepresentation is nothing less than dishonesty and a complete lack of intellectual integrity.
However, if Griffin wishes to discuss some of our early documents, allow me to quote the Treaty of Tripoli, drafted under George Washington and signed by John Adams.
The treaty states in Article 11, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” How could our founders be any clearer than this?
However, neither of these documents is our governing document, which, of course, is provided by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Anyone who has read the Constitution should know any references to religion are purely exclusionary. Any person with even the smallest amount of knowledge and integrity would realize America and the Constitution were not shaped by Christianity or any other religious philosophy.
In his column, Griffin makes a brief mention of the movement that shaped America but does not elaborate on the Enlightenment because it was a movement not based on Christian philosophy, but rather on reason and secularism, which are the very ideas he is attempting to discredit!
The fact is, no matter if you’re a religious person or not, everyone should be proud of and support the secular government set up by our founders, because a government that remains neutral on matters of religion is good for the theist and atheist alike.
Editor's note: This letter refers to this column http://www.alligator.org/opinion/columns/article_86e73f18-b648-11df-b8af-001cc4c002e0.html
