Atheism and Honesty

Isn't it amusing that someone would bring up the spector of "dishonest christian sources" in a thread on a public forum? In discussions about the religion of our founding fathers, I often run across atheist who are attempting to revise history and change the faith of our founding fathers. They do this most often through using quotations from the founders our of context, or using incomplete references. Here are a few of my favorites.

From http://jeromekahn123.tripod.com/thinkersonreligion/id9.html

Late in life he [John Adams] wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"

Mr. Adams did most assuredly write that. However, he went on in the next sentence to add:

"But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell."
-- See the original document at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006646.jpg

Another favorite is quoting from a letter from Nelly Custis-Lewis, the adopted daughter of Washington that lived 20 years with our first president. The site PositiveAtheism offers:

Custis: Never Witnessed Devotions

"I never witnessed his private devotions. I never inquired about them."
-- Eleanor "Nellie" Parke Custis Lewis, Martha Washington's granddaughter from a previous marriage, quoted from Sparks' Washingon, also from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, p. 22

Funny, Nellie also says:

"Is it necessary that any one should [ask], “Did General Washington avow himself to be a believer in Christianity?" As well may we question his patriotism, his heroic devotion to his country. His mottos were, "Deeds, not Words"; and, "For God and my Country."

Same letter -- I wonder why that gets left out?


In short ... one is left to wonder who is dishonest. Sometimes you hear the phrase "the pot calling the kettle black" -- but, I am not sure Christianity plays the kettle or the pot in this.