The thing is, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim or assertion. In this case, that would be you. You claimed the Founding Fathers "intended this country to be a Christian country," and furthermore asserted that, "
We know our founders intended this country to be a Christian country," which is a logical fallacy attempt to pre-establish something that hasn't been accepted or established, because we do not, in fact, know that. And we do know, in fact, just the opposite by the writings of the Founding Fathers themselves, including what they wrote in the founding document itself, the Constitution. And then you offered up the very weak non-proof proof of, "by giving us guaranteed rights by our Creator," which is an assumption on a grand scale to interpret that that means beyond what was said.
Rather than solid proof, you gave us solid conjecture (the formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof) and false assumption (something wrongly and incorrectly taken for granted as being true), and then presented your conclusions, which are based on that conjecture and assumption, as stone-cold fact.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Not one word in there implies the Creator was the Christian God. You certainly can't argue that only Christians are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or that only Christians have these rights which are not transferable to another or are capable of being taken away (inalienable), because it states quite plainly that these rights apply to "all men", not just Christians and certainly not just Christians of this new nation. Muslims and even Atheists have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, don't they?
That sentence from the Declaration of Independence is one of the best known sentences in the English Language. The reason it's so well known is because it is so painstakingly specific and clear, as a declaration to the world for all men. All of mankind, everywhere. The use of "their" in "their Creator" is a defined pronoun, defined by the reference to "all men", not one defined by some outside reference such as one particular religion. The fact is, every single religion has their own Creation dogma and not all of them agree with each other, and the Founding Fathers were well aware of that fact. They specifically stated that these self-evident rights encompass
all men, regardless of who created them, rather than as rights solely limited to a certain set of religions.
On Thomas Paine, you state,
"He was one of many propagandists in our country and he was important but very far from being a founding father."
Yet Thomas Paine has a rightful claim to the title
The Father of the American Revolution because of his
Common Sense pro-independence pamphlet he published in 1776. The Concept of the Founding Fathers arose in the early 1820s as the last survivors of the newly created nation died out. The term was, and still is, applied to large group of people who helped form the framework of a new nation, as well as those who were prominent in the Revolution. People like Thomas Paine, Nathan Hale, John Paul Jones, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Noah Webster, Ethan Allen, Thomas Sumter, James Monroe. None of these people were framers of the Constitution, or signers of the Articles of Confederation, but they were instrumental in founding this nation, and are considered to be Founding Fathers.
As far as the Founding Fathers only being those who served in the military or signed any of the founding documents, during the Revolutionary War, Paine served as a direct aide to
Nathanael Greene, a rather important general in the Continental Army. Paine wasn't a member of the military, but he was right there all up in it just the same.
Because, the early government in the colonies represented an extension of the English government, and we wanted to get away from that as much as possible. Courts enforced the common law of England. The
Governor's Council or the
Governor's Court was a body of senior advisers to the governor. As an extension of the English Government, in 1750 Colonial legislature in all 13 colonies required all citizens in the colonies to be members of a church. One of many grievances that precipitated the American Revolution was many people did not want ties to the Church of England specifically, or any particular religion forced upon them, so it was initially reformed under the Episcopal Church. Many stuck with that religion as the nation was being formed, but it was the battle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in Congress and amongst those who were drawing up the Constitution that brought things to a finality. In 1789 the Bill of Rights was created in part specifically out of a growing desire for certain guaranteed rights, with freedom of religion and not having one particular religion forced onto people being one of the major factors in their creation. This desire for a guaranteed freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights stemmed principally from anti-Federalists who demanded separation of church and state at the Philadelphia Convention and would otherwise refuse to sign the Constitution. So make no mistake, some of the Founding Fathers wanted an established state religion, while others absolutely did not. And the did-nots won. That right there is why we are not a Christian nation.
Because you're revising facts to suit your needs, stating assumptions as facts, and viewing and interpreting things through today's concepts and trying to apply that to the 18th century. By any definition you choose, including the one you did, Thomas Paine was a Founding Father, yet you try and marginalize him simply because he wasn't Christian enough to suit you. You suggested that if I look at the times of the day (which is particularly ironic) that "the Creator" can only mean "the Christian God". That's revisionist in the extreme.
The ones who ignore it are ignoring the facts to suit their own needs, just like the ones who think that because some of the Founding Fathers mentioned God that it means therefore ergo ipso facto we are a Christian Nation. Such a conclusion is an unholy union of religious-political spin and logical fallacy.
I've never used it, but it does nonetheless accurately represent the United States and how it was not founded. If it were founded on the Christian religion, then we'd have Christian religious rites as law and we wouldn't have the "no establishment of religion" clause in the Constitution. The fact that some of the Founding Fathers, certainly not all of them, were Christian, does not even remotely translate to the US being founded on the Christian religion.
But things weren't left open to interpretation. The facts are quite clear, unambiguous, and cannot be interpreted in any other way than what they plainly state, which is -
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... There is simply no way that can be interpreted to mean the US was founded on the Christian religion. No way, no how. In order to make that claim, you have to make assumptions and interpret the intent of a select few of the Founding Fathers, and then apply that to not only the rest of them, but to the nation as a whole. Yet the history is quite clear on when and why the establishment of religion was abolished and was not placed into the Constitution. It's because the people did not want this country to be founded on any religion at all, much less a specific one. If it had been, the Constitution wouldn't have gotten signed, and it most certainly would not have been ratified by the states, which would have resulted in this nation never having been founded at all.
It's the modern day view, with an agenda, that makes it even able to be interpreted incorrectly.
