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cleanhippie

(19,705 posts)
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 02:49 PM Sep 2012

Did Jefferson really say that "Religion is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"?

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It seems that he did, sort of...


Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man (Quotation)

This is a somewhat-paraphrased version of the following:

"...those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy, the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man, endeavored to crush your well earnt, & well deserved fame." - Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, Washington, March 21, 1801[1]

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/christianity-most-perverted-system-ever-shone-man-quotation



Your thoughts?
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unblock

(51,973 posts)
1. i think he was talking about christianity rather than religion in general, but the point stands
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 02:58 PM
Sep 2012

in any event, jefferson was a deist and fiercely opposed to religion as an institution.

so the spirit of the quote is certainly very jeffersonian.

rsweets

(307 posts)
3. The philosophy of christianity is a wonderful thing ...
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 03:01 PM
Sep 2012

It's just when people get involved, with their need for power and
control, things tend to slide off the tracks.

cleanhippie

(19,705 posts)
7. I didn't. Should I have?
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 05:44 PM
Sep 2012

Upon reading his Wiki page, he sounds fascinating and quite progressive. Thanks.

 

rug

(82,333 posts)
8. Yeah. He was a very influential thinker, particulary about established religion, in Jefferson's time
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 06:58 PM
Sep 2012

It might be why that quote came from a letter to him.

 

rug

(82,333 posts)
10. No I haven't.
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 07:13 AM
Sep 2012

Other than isolating oxygen, I don't know too much more about him. I did visit his house in Northumberland, Pennsylvania where they had artifacts of his life.

Dammit, now you've got me wanting to learn more about him.

This might be a good start:

Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, Associated University Presses, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1970.

SarahM32

(270 posts)
13. Rug, Jefferson said "Paul was the first corrupter of Christianity."
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 08:20 PM
Sep 2012

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to [Jesus] 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 refuse; 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 first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus." --- Thomas Jefferson (See "The Jefferson Bible," which is his edited version of the New Testament, removing the "corruptions.&quot

 

rug

(82,333 posts)
14. Thanks, Sarah. I didn't know that.
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 09:18 PM
Sep 2012

It's odd how Paul is so often singled out as pulling Christianity away from Christ.

SarahM32

(270 posts)
15. It's not odd when you learn why.
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 10:32 PM
Sep 2012

Last edited Fri Sep 21, 2012, 01:02 PM - Edit history (1)

As is explained in the article About Christianity, Paul was not an apostle (as even the apostles stated), and he had never heard or seen Jesus in person. And yet, because Paul had a spiritual experience and was converted to Christianity after having “heard the voice of Jesus” from out of the blue, and believed he was a “chosen vessel” of the Christ, he assumed his interpretation of the Hebrew Torah and Tanakh was correct, and he even assumed he could elaborate and expand on it.

The problem is, Paul was not accurate in his references to and interpretation of the Old Testament, and in certain instances he was just wrong. That's why the theology of Christian Apologetics he invented is rejected by Jews, many progressive Christians and Muslims, and many others. And Jefferson was just one of many Enlightenment thinkers who realized that.

 

rug

(82,333 posts)
16. That is the debate.
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 10:49 PM
Sep 2012

Nevertheless, Paul has been and remains central to Christianity. The description in Acts of the Council of Jerusalem highlights Paul's role in relation to Peter, and by extension, the relation of the Church to Gentiles and Israel. Despite the renewed criticism of Paul, I don't subscribe to the theory that he hijacked Christianity.

SarahM32

(270 posts)
17. Yes, and there's a big "stumblinglock" preventing its resolution.
Fri Sep 21, 2012, 01:55 PM
Sep 2012

And it is the son of man, the modern Messiah, who removes the stumblingblock of false beliefs and myths and thereby resolves the conflict and the debate.

“ ... but he that takes refuge in Me shall possess the land, and shall inherit My holy mountain. And He will say: ‘Clear the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of My people. For thus says the High and Lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth (angry); for the spirit that enwraps itself is from Me (KJV says: “for the spirit should fail before me”), and the souls which I have made. For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and smote him, I hid Me and was wroth; and he went on frowardly (willfully) in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also, and requite with comforts him and his mourners. Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the Lord that creates the fruit of the lips; and I will heal him.” – Isaiah 57:13-19

As is explained in the article on Isaiah Chapter 53, unbeknownst to most Christians (and Jews and Muslims), that speaks of the same son of man who the people “esteemed as stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)

It also speaks of the same son of man that Jesus of Nazareth spoke of, saying:

"The days will come when people will want to see one of the days of the son of man, and they shall not see it. So they will look here and there, but do not follow them. For as the lightning lightens all parts under heaven, so shall also the [work of the] son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected by his generation." (Luke 17:20-25)

As is explained in the article on Prophecies Re: He Who Fulfills Them, Jesus was not speaking of himself in that instance, because Jesus suffered only on the last day of his life, not first or beforehand, but only after he had completed his mission. Furthermore, Jesus was accepted by multitudes of Jews, Greeks and others in his generation. And even if he may have used the term “this generation” (as was reported in Luke), that term was used in several different instances referring not to that generation but ours, the generation of the modern son of man who comes at the end of the age (aeon).

With correct understanding of the prophets, including Jesus, you can see that Jesus was speaking of the next son of man whose message (work) is sent before him and can be seen in a flash, like lightning, all over the world (over the Internet).

Now back to Isaiah – Jesus said that the next son of man would "first be rejected by his generation" knowing the prophecies in the book of Isaiah, and knowing that it is written:

(God) has made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand has he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver has he hid me; And said unto me, You are my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God. And now, says the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength." (Isaiah 49:2-5)

Isaiah was writing about the modern son of man as an old man, which he is now. He is hidden and has labored in vain. He feels physically spent and yet takes refuge in God to be his strength, and he is like Jacob (who wrestled with God).

As both Isaiah and Jesus foretold, at first he is not recognized as a servant of God, and because his message is rejected for so long, his faith will waver and he will sometimes fear that all his work has been in vain and for nought. And it will be as if he is hidden in the shadow of God’s hand. (Isaiah 42:1-2, Isaiah 49:2-5, Luke 17:24-25, Isaiah 49:4; Isaiah 51:16, Isaiah 53:4, Isaiah 57:15-21, Isaiah 62:11-12)

That's the present reality. And things will not improve until enough people finally get the message that will resolve the conflict, reconcile the Abrahamic religions with each other and with all the other major religions, and enable humanity to start building upon a foundation of understanding to progress into a brighter future in which we finally have government of, by, and for the people and use the common wealth for the common good.
.

11. It was Priestley's influences that led TJ to make...
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 10:15 AM
Sep 2012

...all those claims about Unitarianism late in his life, as an ethical, rational answer to Christian dogma;


"The population of my neighborhood is too slender and is too much divided into sects to maintain any one preacher well. I must therefore be content to be a Unitarian by myself, although I know there are many who would become so if once they heard the questions fairly stated."

(...from a letter to Benjamin Rush, January 8, 1825)

"I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."

(...from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June 26, 1822)

"The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism...The diffusion of instruction will be the remote remedy to this fever of fanaticism; while the more proximate one will be the progress of Unitarianism. That this will, ere long, be the religion of the majority from North to South, I have no doubt."

(...from a letter to Thomas Cooper, November 2, 1822)  

SarahM32

(270 posts)
12. Jefferson quotes reveal his aversion to Theocrats, but the Jefferson Bible shows his other side.
Thu Sep 20, 2012, 07:38 PM
Sep 2012

"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." – Thomas Jefferson

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." --- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Jesus 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." – Thomas Jefferson

"But a short time elapsed after the death of [Jesus] 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

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those calling themselves [preachers], who have perverted them ... without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." – Thomas Jefferson

However, Jefferson also said the following:


"Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to [Jesus] 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 [refuse]; 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 first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus." --- Thomas Jefferson (See "The Jefferson Bible," which is his edited version of the New Testament, removing the "corruptions.&quot

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it would read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion," the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Muslim, the Hindu and Infidel of every denomination.” -Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to his Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." – Thomas Jefferson

In fact, as it says in an article on Quotes of the Founding Fathers Regarding Religion, while most of the Founding Fathers greatly admired and honored the actual message of Jesus of Nazareth and preceding prophets, they were highly critical of certain Christian doctrines as presented in the official Christian Canon (Bible) because they were educated men and familiar with the bloody history of theocratic, imperial Christianity.

The Founding Fathers were men of “The Enlightenment” and they rejected Theocracy and were highly critical of the Theocrats who, in the name of Christianity, had caused the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and all the "religious" military industrial imperialism that had plagued the world for centuries. And they were just as critical of the Theocrats in their day — such as those in England and in New England (in America) who used the same man-made doctrine of preeminence and superiority to justify themselves in their quest for theocratic political power.
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