Declaring Independence, With God's Help

THIS INDEPENDENCE DAY is the two hundred and forty ninth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the sixth anniversary of the U.S. president, in a speech delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, praising George Washington for "taking over airports" in the Revolutonary War. One can easily deduce the identity of said American president who, believe it or not, actually said that. He blamed it on the teleprompter, as anyone would have. As a typically hot and steamy June lazily flowed along in a nearly empty Philadelphia in 1776,(each summer most residents left the city to avoid mosquitos and malaria), Continental Congress member John Adams wrote to his wife Abagail that the letter to the king would most likely be formally adopted and signed on the first of July, a date which, he predicted, would live forever in the proud and famous anals of American history. He wasn't far off. Adams, a member of the five man committee delegated to draw up the audacious document, nominated young Thomas Jefferson to write it; Benjamin Franklin seconded the motion. Franlikn was seventy years old, Adams and the other two committee members, Morris and Livingston, were also much older than the thirty three year old Jefferson. Stunned by the nomination, Jefferson asked Adams why he, Adams, shouldn't write it. "Because you, young man, are ten times smarter than I, ten times the better writer, and whereas I am surly and unpopular, you are warm and friendly, and much liked by everyone." How could he say no? Just to make sure, Franklin, who had nearly lost patience and stood six foot four and weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds, leaned into Dreamy Tom and, as usuall looking down his nose, muttered, "Tis time to do your duty for your country, sir". An offer Tom couldn't refuse. Jefferson's draft was heavily edited by Franklin, which improved it. Nonetheless, Jefferson, reportedly, wasn't happy about all the red ink.Jefferson had written: "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable". Franklin,like everybody else wanting a document based on science and reason rather than religion, thought the phrase "sacred and undeniable" too religious in tone. He replaced it with "self enident", a scientific term. The term "nature,and nature's God", instead of simply saying "God", is a clear indication of Jefferon's pantheism, his scientific world view, his scientific secularism. Jefferson called himself a "primitiveChristian", by which he meant that he,like everyone else, embraced the essential teachings of Jesus, but rejected all claims of the supernatural and the miraculous; all claims fo fact which violated the known laws of science were unacceptable to Jefferson, and to most of the other signers of the Declaration of Independence. But at theend of it, Jeffeson cannot resist; he tells the King and the "candid world" that God (the Christian God?) is without question on the side of the American revolutionaries. It is difficult to imagine a more frightening situation to be in than to be closely associated with the issuance of the American Declaration of Independence. They would all be hunted down and hanged. The colonies would be severely punished. On July 4,1776, and for a long time thereafter,there was absolutely no reason to think that the revolution had a snowball's chance in hell, so to speak. It was like committing political and personal suicide. So, even the atheistic Thomas Jefferson turned to God, in writing. As they say, there are no atheists in foxholes.