NotfooledbyW
Gold Member
- Jul 9, 2014
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#181 reply to #163
Franklin’s ‘religious freedom and moral society’ you cite has nothing to do with the bullcrap alliance between Trump and white Christian nationalist evangelicals of today:
Read Franklin’s utmost and hearty ridicule of one of evangelical Christianity’s most important theological doctrines - original sin:
So if you want to revert modern America to something akin to the secular intellect and morality of our founding fathers you need to start by telling Trump and his white Christian evangelical nationalists to go fly a kite.
thank you for bringing up Benjamin Franklin.
The US was such a success because it was started by a diverse group of people who sought religios freedom, and as Franklin eluded to, only a moral society can be free.
Franklin’s ‘religious freedom and moral society’ you cite has nothing to do with the bullcrap alliance between Trump and white Christian nationalist evangelicals of today:
Read Franklin’s utmost and hearty ridicule of one of evangelical Christianity’s most important theological doctrines - original sin:
Franklin rejected original sin in his 1735 A Defense of Mr. Hemphill’s Observations:
But lest they shou’d imagine that one of their strongest Objections hinted at here, and elsewhere, is designedly overlook’d, as being unanswerable, viz. our lost and undone State by Nature, as it is commonly call’d, proceeding undoubtedly from the Imputation of old Father Adam’s first Guilt. To this I answer once for all, that I look upon this Opinion every whit as ridiculous as that of Imputed Righteousness. ’Tis a Notion invented, a Bugbear set up by Priests (whether Popish or Presbyterian I know not) to fright and scare an unthinking Populace out of their Senses, and inspire them with Terror, to answer the little selfish Ends of the Inventors and Propagators. ’Tis absurd in it self, and therefore cannot be father’d upon the Christian Religion as deliver’d in the Gospel. Moral Guilt is so personal a Thing, that it cannot possibly in the Nature of Things be transferr’d from one Man to Myriads of others, that were no way accessary to it. And to suppose a Man liable to Punishment upon account of the Guilt of another, is unreasonable; and actually to punish him for it, is unjust and cruel.
So if you want to revert modern America to something akin to the secular intellect and morality of our founding fathers you need to start by telling Trump and his white Christian evangelical nationalists to go fly a kite.
thank you for bringing up Benjamin Franklin.
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