[OregonBronco]

Originally Posted by GonzoLays

If it wasn't for religion, you would never know what the "right thing" was in the first place. If some "higher source" never gave us the laws, there would be no laws, you dig?

And you have some information to back up your off the cuff assertions, I assume?

Here's a good read:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0303-30.htm

The next step from this argument is the assertion that religion is the basis of America itself, and that twisted half-truth that the Founders and Framers did not write a "wall of separation between church and state" into the First Amendment of the Constitution. And then, conservatives will say, religion should inform the decisions of government; government should be subsidizing religion (as it is already with tax breaks and "faith based initiatives"); and religion-based legal perspectives (particularly on issues like abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality) are necessary, since the basis of American law is religion.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams disagreed.

In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."

The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

"Sir Matthew Hale [a conservative advocate for church/state "cooperation"] lays it down in these words," wrote Jefferson to Cooper: "'Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.'"

But, Jefferson rebuts in his letter, it couldn't be. Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:

"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."

Not only was Christianity - or Judaism, or the Ten Commandments - not a part of the foundation of British and American common law, Jefferson noted, but those who were suggesting it was were promoting a lie that any person familiar with the commonly-known history of England would recognize as absurd.