A letter about Thomas Jefferson to the editor of
Faxts.com - Replies to author welcome.
March 25, 2007
Editor
Letters to the Editor
FAXTS
editor@FAXTS.com
On April 13, 2007 America should be honoring the birth of a great
American. It will be Thomas Jefferson’s 264th birthday.
How many people know that the author of the Declaration of
Independence was in possession of a rational freethinking mind whose
views on religion were diametrically opposed to the orthodox
Christianity of his day and that he would have been most scornful and
contemptuous today of the mind-numbing Christian orthodoxy preached
by the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of this world?
After all, our third president did give this advice to his nephew
Peter Carr:
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there
be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded fear. (Letter, August 10, 1787).
One suspects Pope Benedict XVI wishes that Jefferson’s common-sense
observation concerning the virginity of the mother of Jesus had never
been made:
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the
Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
(Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823).
Robert E. Nordlander
nord@milwpc.com