Thomas Jefferson / John Adams
(Top Posts - History - 021801)

Of note, the vast scholarly work detailing the
questionable nature and possible mythical origins
of Jesus Christ occurred (and continues to occur)
after the day and age in which Freethinkers like
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams rejected most
of the christian bible and the christian religions
derived therefrom.

Here are a few pertinent quotes from them ...

Thomas Jefferson:
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/extra/founding-fathers.html#jefferson

"In every country and every age, the priest has been
hostile to liberty.

He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have
perverted the purest religion ever preached to man
into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind,
and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."

- Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford,
March 17, 1814

- - -

"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great
reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles
were departed from by those who professed to be
his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors
in Church and State."

- Thomas Jefferson to S. Kercheval, 1810

- - -

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government.

This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their
political as well as religious leaders will always avail them-
selves for their own purpose."

- Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813

- - -

"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion
of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth.

Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which
it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the
dross of his biographers, and as separable from that
as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines
of a system of the most sublime morality which has
ever fallen from the lips of man.

The establishment of the innocent and genuine character
of this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the
imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial
systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immac-
ulate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation
of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resur-
rection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence
in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement,
regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.)
is a most desirable object."

- Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819

- - -

"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus
Christ) in all his doctrines.

I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he
preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness
of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem
it.

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him
by his biographers, I find many passages of fine
imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely
benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance,
so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and
imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such
contradictions should have proceeded from the same
being.

I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore
him to the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity
of some, the roguery of others of his disciples.

Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the
great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the
doctrines of Jesus."

- Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, 1820

- - -

"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a
nation, is ever more dangerous.

Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason
and religion; and a step to the right or left might place
him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition,
a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the
being whom they represented as the family God of
Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God
of Israel.

That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind
as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been
convinced by the writings of men more learned than
myself in that lore."

- Thomas Jefferson to Story, Aug. 4, 1820

- - -

"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to
the happiness of man. But compare with these the
demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.

1. That there are three Gods.

2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor,
is nothing.

3. That faith is every thing, and the more incompre-
hensible the proposition, the more merit the faith.

4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.

5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain
individuals to be saved, and certain others to be
damned; and that no crimes of the former can
damn them; no virtues of the latter save."

- Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse,
Jun. 26, 1822

- - -

"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ...
made of Christendom a slaughter-house."

- Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse,
Jun. 26, 1822

- - -

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine
of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors
of them, who have perverted them to the structure of
a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and
without any foundation in his genuine words.

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."

- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams,
Apr. 11, 1823

- - -

John Adams:
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/extra/founding-fathers.html#adams

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and
is, a revelation.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales,
legends, have been blended with both Jewish and
Christian revelation that have made them the most
bloody religion that ever existed?"

- John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp,
Dec. 27, 1816

- - -

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most
fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of
mankind has preserved--the Cross.

Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"

- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson

- - -

"What havoc has been made of books through every
century of the Christian era?

Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by
the bull of Pope Gelasius?

Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manu-
scripts burned in France, by order of another pope,
because suspected of heresy?

Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition,
the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine."

- John Adams, letter to John Taylor

- - -

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly
monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation,
when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting
sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY?

The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly
insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently
endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded.

But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of
a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you
will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets
will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly
into your face and eyes."

- John Adams, letter to John Taylor

--- end quotes ---