Question Skepticism

It's funny how these things work out sometimes.  I was reading
an article on the Christian Science Monitor website, about simmering
controversies regarding the religious views of our founding fathers (in
the USA).  As I was reading it, it occurred to me that it
might be a good topic for a Skeptic's Circle post.  Yesterday,
I had seen a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/07/last_call_for_submissions_to_t_1.php">call
for papers posted on Orac's site.  So I went there
to find out who is hosting this time, and saw that Orac had already
posted on the same topic that I was considering: href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/07/one_last_fourth_of_july_thought_are_we_a.php">
One last Fourth of July thought: Are we a "Christian" nation?
 Fortunately, he wrote about the issue from a different
perspective that I was planning to.

The CSM article starts with this:

href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0703/p01s01-ussc.html">This
year, lots of fireworks over the Founders' faith



By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The
Christian Science Monitor



America's Founding Fathers often kept their
religious beliefs close to the vest, historians say, but that just
won't cut it anymore.



That's because, 230 years after the first Independence Day, Americans
of varied political and religious stripes are determined to prove that
the Founders' beliefs are similar to their own. Helped by a spate of
new books this year, skeptics and believers alike have fresh
intellectual gunpowder this July 4 for claiming the framers as members
of their respective camps.



For a nation torn over what role religion should have in the public
square, the stakes are high. Both religionists and secularists say
they're under attack in the public domain and want America's first
patriots on their side to maintain legitimacy...

MacDonald goes on to detail the arguments used by both sides to support
their claims.  Personally, I think the whole argument is
mildly interesting, the way it is a little bit interesting to know
about href="http://www.si.umich.edu/spies/stories-networks-4.html">George
Washington's false teeth; however, I do not see any reason to
use the personal beliefs of the founding fathers as a guide for
modern-day policy.

Letter
from George Washington about his false teeth

In the case of Washington's teeth, we have objective evidence that they
existed, and what they were made of.  However, we do not have
such conclusive evidence about what the founding fathers really
believed, with regard to their personal spirituality.  We know
some of what they wrote, and what some of their public statements were,
but that only tells us what they wanted others to think.
 Furthermore, from what evidence we have, it is apparent that
not all of the founding fathers had exactly the same ideas about
religion.  More to the point, not all of them had exactly the
same ideas about the ideal relationship between church and state.
 



Besides, I am not sure that it matters what their personal religious
beliefs were, any more than it matters what Washington's teeth were
made of.  With regard to the separation of church and state,
we have to assume that they meant exactly what they put in the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  That is what we need to
focus on.  Nothing else has any legal weight.  



So when authorities on United States History argue that we ought to
have a religious country, because the founding fathers were religious,
I would have to question that (hence the motto: Question Authority).
 Likewise, when skeptics argue that the deistic tendencies of
the founding fathers should be taken into account, I would have to
question that (hence the motto: Question Skepticism).  



Consider the following excerpt from the CSM article:

Some on the political left say the Founders' devotion
to reason first and foremost is crucial to remember in a time when
religiously inspired activists try to require critiques of evolution in
public schools or to restrict public funding for scientific research,
as in the case of embryonic stem cells.

I agree with the conclusion, but Washington's refusal to take communion
has nothing to do with it.  As an aside, I would have to
object to the implication that it is particularly those on the
political left who decry the teaching of creationism, etc.
 There are href="http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2006/06/why_i_signed_on_against_intell.php">plenty
of conservatives with that view.  In the interest of
clear thinking, let's keep the issues separate from the ideologies.