The GOD Delusion by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

The deist God is a physicist to end all physics,
the alpha and omega of mathematicians, the apotheosis of designers; a
hyper-engineer who set up the laws and constants of the universe,
fine-tuned them with exquisite precision and foreknowledge, detonated
what we would now call the hot big bang, retired and was never heard
from again.
    In
times of stronger faith, deists have been reviled as indistinguishable
from atheists. Susan Jacoby, in Freethinkers: A History of
American Secularism, lists a choice selection of the
epithets hurled at poor Tom Paine: 'Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog,
souse, louse, archbeast, brute, liar, and of course infidel'. Paine
died in penury, abandoned (with the honourable exception of Jefferson)
by political former friends embarrassed by his anti-Christian views.
Nowadays, the ground has shifted so far that deists are more likely to
be contrasted with atheists and lumped with theists. They do, after
all, believe in a supreme intelligence who created the universe.

SECULARISM,
THE FOUNDING FATHERS
AND THE RELIGION OF AMERICA
    It
is conventional to assume that the Founding Fathers of the American
Republic were deists. No doubt many of them were, although
it has been argued that the greatest of them might have been atheists.
Certainly their writings on religion in their own time leave me in no
doubt that most of them would have been atheists in ours. But whatever
their individual religious views in their own time, the one thing they
collectively were is secularists, and this is the
topic to which I turn in this section, beginning with a - perhaps
surprising - quotation from Senator Barry Goldwater in 1981, clearly
showing how staunchly that presidential candidate and hero of American
conservatism upheld the secular tradition of the Republic's foundation:
    There
is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme
being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's
behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are
growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with
wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following
their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups
on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a
loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the
political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if
I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who
do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of conservatism. 19
    The
religious views of the Founding Fathers are of great interest to
propagandists of today's American right, anxious to push their version
of history. Contrary to their view, the fact that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation was early stated
in the terms of a treaty with Tripoli, drafted in 1796 under George
Washington and signed by John Adams in 1797:
    As
the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of
enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and
as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility
against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no
pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an
interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
    The
opening words of this quotation would