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In an article about the phony Jefferson quote the atheist club, the "Backyard Skeptics" put up on a bill board in the picture above, their leader (?) Bruce Gleason admitted that the quote was spurious.
He agreed that Monticello was an authoritative source.
"You're absolutely right," he said. "I should have done the research before I put my billboard up."
The quote on the billboard is an abridged version of a quote that first appeared in a 1906 book called "Six Historic Americans," by John E. Remsburg, who attributed it to a "Letter to Dr. Woods."
It reads: "I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies."
The Jefferson Library knows of no letter to a Dr. Woods ever written by Jefferson, or of any appearance of the phrase anywhere in his writings.
On a page about spurious quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the Jefferson Library writes: "We are asked about this one on a fairly regular basis. As with many spurious Jefferson quotes, it is frequently seen on various Internet sites. Many sites do not cite a source, but a good number of those that do attribute this quote to a letter from TJ to a 'Dr. Wood.'
"As far as we know, TJ never wrote to an individual calling him/herself Dr. Wood. Another suspicious element is the statement that he does not find in Christianity 'one redeeming feature.' One presumes that Jefferson did, in fact, find some redeeming features in Christianity, otherwise he would not have taken the time to paste together his own versions of the Bible."
As with so much of this popular atheist erudition, the people who are always claiming evidence, intellectual rigor and the such as the property of their ideology, when you look into their claims, the evidence shows the opposite.
Gleason said he would do some more research on the quote, although he didn't think it misrepresented Jefferson's views.
As what I posted the last two days proves, anyone who did even the small amount of research into Jefferson on religion and, specifically, Christianity, would have to honestly conclude that statement does misrepresent Jefferson's views. Atheist propaganda is full of that kind of misrepresentation, more on that in a minute.
Following up links on the newspaper story led me to another instance of Gleason's idea of scholarship.
Gleason, 56, isn't just a nonbeliever. He thinks religion is actually bad. "You will never see an atheist suicide bomber," he says.
Apparently Gleason's research methodology never turned up the Tamil Tigers, other Marxist-Leninist-Maoist groups wedded to terrorism and various anarchists who embraced "propaganda of the deed." The record of atheists with political power is uniformly bloody, based in terror as a means of gaining and maintaining power. But I've written on that before.
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But Gleason, from everything I've read about him this morning, would seem to be a propagandist and blow hard, not a scholar or a journalist. Looking up the source of the quote, I found that The Secular Web" ("a drop of reason in a pool of confusion") has posted Six Historic Americans by John E. Remsburg* and, indeed, that is a place you could read the spurious quotation in the phony letter to the apparently fictitious Dr. Woods. In turn, he gives his authority on which he based his "quotations" alleged to document Jefferson's disdain for religion and Christianity in particular.
The "Memoirs, Correspondence and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson," edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a grandson of the distinguished statesman, was printed in four large volumes, and published in 1829. From these volumes, and other writings of Jefferson, I have culled some of the most radical thoughts to be found in the whole range of Infidel literature.
I looked at the Project Gutenberg edition of the Memoirs, Correspondence ... and didn't find that letter, which the Jefferson scholars at Montecello apparently don't know either. In his perusal of the letters in that early collection, he must have, somehow, missed those letters to John Adams, Joseph Priestly, Benjamin Rush and others** that I posted yesterday, only, as can be seen in Remsburg, he didn't, he merely misrepresented them to suit his own atheist ideology.
It was from this book or on some other atheist, uh, scholar based on what Remsburg said, that I believe Barbara Ehrenreich used to make her statement. Remsburg says:
In a letter to his nephew and ward, Peter Carr, while at school, Jefferson offers the following advice, which though thoroughly sound, would be considered rather questionable advice for a Christian to give a schoolboy:
"Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear. ... Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you" (Jefferson's Works, Vol. ii., p. 217).
Looking up the letter, here is what Jefferson said in his advice to Carr concerning Religion. Note what Remsberg left out in the elision between "blindfolded fear" and "Do not be frightened".
4. Religion, Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine, first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible, which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change of the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know, how contrary it is to the law of nature, that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, and that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions, 1. of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended, and reversed the laws of nature at will, and ascended bodily into heaven: and, 2. of those who say he was a man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, and the second by exile or death in furca. See this law in the Digest, Lib. 48, tit. 19, § 28. 3. and Lipsius, Lib. 2. De Cruce, cap. 2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned, under the head of Religion, and several others. They will assist you in your inquiries; but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them all. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement: if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that, increases the appetite to deserve it: if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject any thing, because any other person, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by Heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some, however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get and send you.
I don't see anything but advising him to think hard about it, read lots of different things and to make up his own mind.
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Remsburg's eagerness to turn Jefferson, who repeatedly said he was a Christian, who believed in God, who believed that there were consequences for our conduct in a "future life", into a 19th century style atheist isn't rare among his fellow ideologues. A Dr. Conway reported knowing about letters Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine showing just how much of an infidel he was.
The published writings of Jefferson, which, however, do not contain many of his most radical thoughts, would indicate that he regarded Jesus Christ as a historical character. In a contribution to Frazer's Magazine for March, 1865, Dr. Conway shows that he was sometimes disposed to entertain the mythical hypothesis. Mr. Conway says:
"Jefferson occupied his Sundays at Monticello in writing letters to Paine (they are unpublished, I believe, but I have seen them) in favor of the probabilities that Christ and his Twelve Apostles were only personifications of the sun and the twelve signs of the Zodiac."
This was the opinion held by Paine during the last years of his life.
Apparently this alleged correspondence reporting Jefferson was a convert to Dupuis' POV on the topic was only seen by Dr. Conway because I haven't seen anyone else who saw it. It wasn't in any of the collections I looked at. I read all of the letters to Paine I found there, which were pretty few and none of them discussed stuff like that. In a letter to John Adams he congratulated him for taking on Dupuis in the original, saying he'd read a short summary of it, not saying he was particularly convinced by it. His letters to Paine are all quite short and deal with political and purely temporal matters. I got the feeling he didn't especially want to discuss other things with Paine, odd considering his long and numerous letters expressing his enthusiasm for the topic of religion, especially the Unitarianism of Priestly and Channing, quite a bit closer to mainstream Christianity than the later 19th century version of it, what we're more familiar with today.
Since Paine died in 1809 and Jefferson wrote up into the 1820s, anything he might have said to Paine clearly wouldn't have been his final word on the topic. At any rate, other than "Dr. Conway" reporting he'd read the letters, those, unlike Jefferson's letters to Priestley, Adams, Rush, etc. and his Syllabus, aren't known to really exist. If anyone has them, I'd like to see what they said and if they'd been inspected for authenticity.
These unavailable letters are still a part of the atheist use of Jefferson in their propaganda. That they might well be entirely fictitious, as real as pink unicorns, doesn't keep them from citing him. Considering how they use the real, known letters and documents, quote mining them more dishonestly than creationists have Darwin, lying about letters that some of them just have looked at in order to opportunistically and mendaciously clip them, this is just another of the cases in which the advertising of an ideology doesn't match its performance. Which is the sum total of Jefferson's critique of established religion's use of the teachings of Jesus. Ironic, isn't it.
* Remsburg was a prominent 19th-early 20th century atheist ideologue, a member of the American Secular Union.
** I will post some passages I quickly word searched in the four volumes at my annex later. But I want to check them for accuracy and completeness first.
Again, nothing Jefferson says in that lengthy quote that I wouldn't expect most of my seminary professors to endorse, in general principle if not in specifics (though I doubt they'd blink at many of the specifics).
ReplyDeleteOne has only to remember that reason was the hallmark of Christianity until the 19th century German scholars "went too far" and prompted the Fundamentalist movement (yes, it has a date, and an origin point), which then became the public face of Xianity in the latter half of the 20th century (something it wasn't, for the nearly 2000 years before that).
History really is a bit more than what just happened last week.....