Dec 2, 2019, 8:55 PM
—“[Jefferson was a Deist.] Most deists denied the Christian concepts of miracles and the Trinity. Though he had a lifelong esteem for Jesus’ moral teachings, Jefferson did not believe in miracles, nor in the divinity of Jesus. In a letter to deRieux in 1788, he declined a request to act as a godfather, saying he had been unable to accept the doctrine of the Trinity “from a very early part of my life”.[17][24] In an 1820 letter to his close friend William Short, Jefferson stated, “it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.”[25] In 1824, four years later, Jefferson had changed on his view of the “materialism” of Jesus, clarifying then that “… the founder of our religion, was unquestionably a materialist as to man.”—
“I REQUIRE A COUNTERPOISE OF GOOD WORKS TO REDEEM IT.” ie: your faith is irrelevant. Only your deeds matter. Because from every experience I have seen, those who hide behind faith use it as a shield of moral cowardice, selfishness, and self-delusion, under which they can pretend moral righteousness while doing precisely the opposite. If you must sell your religion by your words, you have no religion to sell.
GODS
My understanding is that gods are archetypal Despots, kings, priests, or parents, and that deism is nothing more than the anthropomorphism of physical and natural laws, and that as populations increased, man required religion because of the alienation of agrarianism and urbanism, just as man desires marxism, socialism, statism, postmodernism, feminism, and the various new age, occult, and Buddhist pseudosciences to compensate. And that the stoics and epicureans understood the problem was solved through training (stoicism) and restoration of social orders (epicureanism) that created mindfulness by mental training, and socialization, that are natural consequences of tribal life, and absent in social, economic, and political life at scale.
I pray to my god all the time. and I do what he advises me. And I usually pay for it if I don’t. I do not know his name. But it certainly is not that vile evil demon Jehova and is far more likely Thor/Zeus/Dayus-Pitar, or their material agents Aristotle and Odin. And if I seek wisdom of great men in history I find it in Hayek, Jefferson, Frederick the great, henry 8th, Ceasar, alexander, and most of all Aristotle. I don’t see it in the nonsense of filthy, superstitious, thieving lying, sheep-f—king foulness of our mortal enemy. Increasingly I prefer Odin(chaos) and Aristotle(order) who are two sides of the same coin.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are a disease, the consequences of which are systemic lying by their participants, and all the consequences that result.
They owe us a dark age, the great plagues, endless wars,m lost peoples, lost civilizations, lost knowledge, and a billion dead. And in the hell that is history, they will burn forever as the worst people to have walked this earth.
There is only one debt existential – that is to our ancestors who made us possible, the heroes that defended and advanced them, the natural world that sustains us, and the universe for the opportunity.