Teaching the Age of Reason

WHEN THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS PRESIDENT, he read the Bible. Then, he took a pair of scissors and cut out all the good parts, the parts that he liked. These he assembled into his own "Jefferson Bible", which is available today. The Jefferson version is considerably shorter than the original. When asked why he was cutting up the Bible, he not so famously responded "I am extracting diamonds from a pile of dung". Jefferson did not often discuss his religious views with others, but he made no attempt to hide his contempt for Christianity and other revealed religions, and his preference for science and natural law. Jefferson, like most of the founders of America's political system, was a non conformist, at least politically, and, for the most part, religiously as well. Our revolutionary founders were an intellectual bunch, who believed in science and education, and modern thinking. Their religion of choice was "deism", according to which God is the force of creation, the laws of nature, but not a judgmental super human character who intervenes directly in human affairs. Thomas Paine provided an insight into the prevailing attitude among the non conformist deistic intellectuals of the day in his essay "The Age of Reason". Throughout American history, American history has been taught so as to glorify the nation, which is an understandable tendency in all countries, and their history books. Thus we do not teach the Jefferson Bible story, and that is an indication of our fear that the dirty little secret about America's non Christian founding might get out. ("The Heretical Origins of the American Republic", Mathew Stewart). Hidden within the vast pile of hagiographic historical dung are diamonds, ready for extraction.