“Question with boldness even the existence of a god.”--Thomas Jefferson.

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind.”--James Madison

“I doubt of Revelation itself.”--Benjamin Franklin

“My own mind is my church.”--Thomas Paine

The religious right is gaining enormous power in the United States, thanks to a well-organized, media-savvy movement with powerful friends in high places. Yet many Americans—both observant and secular—are alarmed by this trend, especially by efforts to erase the boundary between church and state, re-making the United States into a theocracy.

But most Americans lack the tools for arguing with the religious right, especially when fundamentalist conservatives claim their positions originated with the Framers of the Constitution. Until now. . . .

Did you know that:

• The Constitution contains not one reference to a deity--on purpose?

• Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence did not mention “endowed by the Creator”?

• “In God We Trust” was not on our currency, and “Under God” was not the U.S. motto, until the McCarthy-ite 1950s?

• The 15th-century Roman Catholic Church considered abortion moral?

• The Treaty of Tripoli--initiated by George Washington and signed into law by John Adams--declares: “The United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”?

• James Madison, “father of the Constitution,” denounced the presence of chaplains in Congress--and in the armed forces--as unconstitutional?

• Lincoln’s first drafts of The Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address made no mention of any deity?

In Fighting Words, Robin Morgan has assembled a toolkit for arguing, a verbal karate guide: a lively, accessible, eye-opening collection revealing what the framers (and other leading Americans) really believed—in their own words. She resurrects the Founders as the revolutionaries they were: “A hodgepodge of freethinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, atheists, Freemasons—and radicals."

Robin Morgan official website
about her book@ Huffington Post

Have a masonic and godless new year 2007 !

About separating state and churches

Separation of church and state is a two-way street. It isn’t just about restricting what the government can do with religion, but also what religious bodies can do with the government. Religious groups cannot dictate to or control the government. They cannot cause the government to adopt their particular doctrines as policy for everyone, they cannot cause the government to restrict other groups, etc.

The biggest threat to religious freedom is not the government — or at least, not the government acting alone. We very rarely have a situation where secular government officials act to repress any particular religion or religion in general. More common are private religious organizations acting through the government by having their own doctrines and beliefs codified into law or policy.

Thus, the separation of church and state ensures that private citizens, when acting in the role of some government official, cannot have any aspect of their private religious beliefs imposed upon others. School teachers cannot promote their religion to other people’s children. Local officials cannot require certain religious beliefs on the part of government employees. Government leaders cannot make members of other religions feel like they are unwanted or are second-class citizens by using their position to promote particular religious beliefs.

This requires moral self-restraint on government officials, and even to a degree on private citizens — a self-restraint which is necessary for a religiously pluralistic society to survive without descending into religious civil war. It ensures that the government remains the government of all citizens, not the government of one denomination or one religious tradition. It ensures that political divisions not be drawn along religious lines, with Protestants battling Catholics or Christians battling Muslims for “their share” of the public purse.

The separation of church and state a key constitutional liberty which protects the American public from tyranny. It protects all people from the religious tyranny of any one religious group or tradition and it protects all people from a government intent on tyrannizing some or any religious groups.

The end of Faith

"Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book.
We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility.
People tend to organize themselves into factions according to which of these incompatible claims they accept—rather than on the basis of language, skin color, location of birth, or any other criterion of tribalism. Each of these texts urges its readers to adopt a variety of beliefs and practices, some of which are benign, many of which are not.
All are in perverse agreement on one point of fundamental importance, however: “respect” for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses.
While all faiths have been touched, here and there, by the spirit of ecumenicalism, the central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error or, at best, dangerously incomplete. Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed. Once a person believes—really believes—that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one."

Extract of the Chapter One of the excellent "The end of Faith"

“But here’s a surprise — Mme. Marie Deraismes, a French Freemason and Freethinker, and head of the Women's Rights Movement. A female Freemason? Impossible, surely?…’’

Brian Barratt goes exploring in the obituary pages of The Times for 1891, there to discover the astonishing Mme. Deraismes who founded a lodge which admitted both men and women.

“There you are then, ladies,'' says Brian “thanks to Marie Deraismes, you too can become a Knight of the Brazen Serpent or a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.’’

>> read the complete article

Atheist Freemason

Freemasons are also freethinker, agnostic and atheist seeking for light.

Freemasons use symbols.
All around the world, in every lodges, - a lodge is a gathering of freemasons - , the symbols used are the same, those symbols are universal : the builder symbolism.
According to the masonic symbolism : the world and the man are a work in progress.

A great architect of the universe is a poetic idea to underline the common goal of all the humanity to improve the world through the improvement of anyones.
The masonic institiution use the words and ceremonies of the ancient guild of masons,
but it was created to work as an academy or a school without teachers, without any "magister dixit".

Freemasonry to achieve it goals to "unite all men of goodwill" must be free of all dogmas.
This is what we will try to demonstrate through various post on freemasonry on this blog.

Of course, we are not trying to show the Truth but another aspect of the reality of this social, philosophical movement, born more than 200 years ago, the Freemasonry.