On the Creator

Some people, I believe, account for all things which have come to exist, all things which are coming into existence now, and all things which are will do so in the future, by attributing them either to nature, art, or chance. …[These thinkers] define the gods as artificial concepts and legal fictions…. This trend is a pernicious doctrine, which must be to the ruin of the younger generation.

Plato
The Laws
Late 300s B.C.

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The creature having nothing but what the Creator makes him, must owe all to Him, and nothing to any one from whom he has received nothing. Man therefore must be naturally free, unless he be created by another power than we had heard of.

Algernon Sidney
Discourses Concerning Government, 1654?

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…I have long been convinced that our enemies have made it an object to eradicate from the minds of the people in general a sense of true religion and virtue, in hopes thereby the more easily to carry their point of enslaving them. Indeed, my friend, this is a subject so important in my mind that I know not how to leave it.

Samuel Adams
Letter to John Scollay
1776

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All men…are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights…. To secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

2nd Continental Congress
Declaration of Independence,
1776

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…Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?

Thomas Jefferson
Notes on the State of Virginia,
1782

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Religion and liberty must flourish and fall together....

From the sermon preached for the inauguration of George Washington
1789

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Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. ...[Neither of these principles exists in revolutionary France, where] their liberty is not liberal, their science is presumptuous ignorance, and their humanity is savage and brutal.

Edmund Burke, MP
Father of the modern conservative movement
Reflections on the Revolution in France
1790

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Tis’ substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundations of the fabric?

George Washington
Farewell Address
1796

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…Acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence…is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people.

Thomas Jefferson
First Inaugural Address
1801

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Marx’s proposition, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology….

Frederich Engels
Preface to The Communist Manifesto, English Edition
1888

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The Bible, the Word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation.... The Holy Scriptures...inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The Congress of the United States of America
Public Law 97-280, 96
(Proclaiming a "Year of the Bible")
1982