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Originally posted by MAKWAY:
1. I don't think you can say that Jefferson intended us to seperate church from state to the extent we have. After all, he wrote that we were endowed by OUR CREATOR with certain inalienable rights (in the Declaration of Independance).
Actually, Jefferson would have the most likely of all of them to intend a complete separation. He openly mocked religion.

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The modern (mis)inperpretation of "Seperation of church and state" is now attempting to exclude a the Dec. of Indep. from schools because it mentions God.
The Declaration does not mention the Christian God. It mentions "Nature's God."

Regardless, technically speaking, the Declaration has absolutely no weight in our government. Once the Constitution was signed, the Declaration lost any authority (not that it really had any in the first place - all it said was the colonies were now independent).

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Clearly we've misinturpreted what that founders intent. What's worse is we allowed our misinturpretation of the opinions of 2 founders to hijack the constitution.
No, sorry. It's the Christian revisionists who are misinterpreting. The two founders CLEARLY stated what the intention was of the First Amendment.

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2. I doubt that the other founding fathers would have agreed that Madison and Jefferson were the most important. I think its easy to tell who John Hancock thought was the most important.
I would disagree. They chose Jefferson to write the Declaration. Madison, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were the big ones - they are the ones who continued on in national roles (Franklin already had - he was perhaps the most respected of all of them).
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"Nature has constituted utility to man the standard and test of virtue. Men living in different countries, under different circumstances, different habits and regimens, may have different utilities; the same act, therefore, may be useful and consequently virtuous in one country which is injurious and vicious in another differently circumstanced" - Thomas Jefferson, moral relativist