Farah: Why atheists can’t be real Americans

Joseph Farah of WingNutDaily is thrilled to read about John Hagee’s anti-atheist rant.

As Farah points out, the pastor of a 20,000-member megachurch isn’t exactly a fringe character. He’s speaking for lots of evangelical Christians when he says,

“This nation was not built for atheists or by atheists. It was built by Christian people who believed in the Word of God. To the atheists watching this telecast, if our belief in God offends you, move. There are planes leaving every hour on the hour, going every place on planet earth. Get on one, we don’t want you and we won’t miss you, I promise you.”

Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily, takes it a step farther, continuing the falsehood that all the Founders were devout Christians, and asserting that atheists just can’t be real Americans.

Atheists can’t be real Americans in the truest sense of the word – and People for the American Way should be renamed People for the un-American Way.

Let me explain why.

America was founded on a creedal statement. It can be found in the Declaration of Independence:

“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; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Thus, America was founded on the principle that the Creator God endowed men with certain unalienable rights. This statement formed the basis of self-governance in a world ruled by kings and tyrants. It is the principle that set America apart from the rest of the world.

It’s important to note that the founders – and most of the 2 million people living in America at the time of the founding – were Christians who believed in the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They weren’t referring to any other god. They rejected Allah. They rejected paganism in all its forms. They rejected atheism.

Well, actually, they were referring to another god. Many of them were Deists, and this is even demonstrated in some of the quotes Farah uses to support his position!

Quotes Farah,

Another signer, Benjamin Franklin, wrote in 1790: “Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, is the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.”

That’s pretty solid a denial of the divinity of Jesus, so far as I can tell. And as we know, no President has ever denied the divinity of Jesus. Except the ones who have.

Does Farah think that only a Christian can be an American? I guess that counts out Benjamin Franklin. And Thomas Jefferson, well-known for his “Jefferson Bible”–the teachings of Jesus, stripped of all “miracles” or other supernatural nonsense, a fairly effective denial of divinity in itself.

But Farah is definitely playing to his readership, and doing a good job of it . . . whipping the evangelicals into a frenzy about the “atheist threat”.

His closing is perhaps the most horrifying aspect of his hate-filled diatribe:

These men had markedly different perspectives on religion.

But they all recognized one thing – man cannot freely govern himself without accountability to God.

Ultimately, the only alternative is government tyranny of one form or another.

His suggestion, of course, being that the only alternative to “tyranny” is a Christian theocracy.

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