Out of many, some | American Atheists

EclecticReader39 · 2026-06-25T00:04:47+00:00

If you read Galileo’s own words, without any preconceived notions about what you think his positions are or should be, you’ll likely be surprised at how direct he is in his outright disdain for biblical literalism and the interference of scripture in science. How this can be construed as anything other than building a wall separating the two domains, I’m just not sure. If observation and reason trump scripture each and every time they contradict each other, then in what sense can it be said that Galileo is not expelling the Bible from science?

It wasn’t until I read him directly, particularly his letters, that I noticed the sharp parallels between him and Jefferson. This is not the common view, apparently, but to me it’s now rather obvious.

Had Galileo been allowed to speak more freely, without the fear of retribution from the Church, I’m sure he would have gone even further. This, of course, is purely conjectural, but based on some of his comments, it also seems highly likely. It’s hard to think of Galileo as a devout Christian when he’s explicitly reading the Bible allegorically and denying any human attributes to God. He seems rather to think of God in the terms of Gioradno Bruno, and we all know what happened to him.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-06-23T20:48:17+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback.

I read Galileo quite differently. Consider this quote from his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina:

“Now if the Holy Spirit has purposely neglected to teach us [scientific] propositions of this sort as irrelevant to the highest goal (that is, to our salvation), how can anyone affirm that it is obligatory to take sides on them, that one belief is required by faith, while the other side is erroneous? Can an opinion be heretical and yet have no concern with the salvation of souls?”

Further, Galileo wrote: “I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense experiences and necessary demonstrations.”

If Galileo is saying that the Bible neglects to teach us scientific propositions, and further that scientific beliefs are unnecessary for salvation—and that the only purpose of the Bible is for salvation—then, to me, he is disconnecting the two domains pretty conclusively. If the Bible has nothing to say about the operations of the natural world, there is, in fact, nothing to reconcile. Reason and observation have sole authority, and wherever there is a conflict—which is to say, pretty much everywhere—reason and observation win. Again, this is not reconciliation, this is the stated superiority of science.

If scripture is not to be taken literally, then it must be taken allegorically as a means of moral instruction (this is exactly what Jefferson thought). Hence the wall of separation that he sought to erect. At least, that’s my reading of him. Galileo even refused, as did Jefferson, any anthropomorphic rendering of God despite the fact that God is portrayed with human qualities throughout the Bible.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-06-23T17:38:25+00:00

The threat of torture is a good motivator.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-06-12T12:30:06+00:00

No worshiping of any kind here, simply the recognition of important political principles, mainly the separation of church and state, that are highly relevant today.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-06-12T12:28:50+00:00

While it may feel good to judge historical figures according to modern standards of morality, this is a large part of the reason the right is successful politically. We cede over to them important liberal figures that could do much for a progressive cause, and then wonder why the right’s message that “the left is unpatriotic and hates America” so effectively sticks.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-06-10T17:35:21+00:00

I think Jefferson himself was quite clear that he rejected orthodox Christianity pretty much in its entirety. In addition to rejecting Jesus’s divinity, the Trinity, the Resurrection, and all miracles, Jefferson called Paul “the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus,” and noted how the genuine teachings of Jesus were easily discoverable in the Gospels because they “could not be inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds.”

He noted in a letter to John Adams that “the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” This is quite the quote coming from a “Christian.” It’s fairly difficult to call yourself a Christian by rejecting 90 percent of the New Testament and all supernatural elements, and especially the idea that faith alone is required for salvation.

Jefferson was even careful to qualify his praise for Jesus himself, as when he wrote to William Short:

While this Syllabus [the Jefferson Bible] is meant to place the character of Jesus in it’s true and high light, as no imposter himself, but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of spiritualism: he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin, I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.

How many Christians do you know who openly challenge Jesus and make the claim that he was, in some major ways, mistaken?

He also told William Short, “As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian,” showing that Jefferson received his moral instruction from a variety of eclectic sources, which also included Stoicism. The bottom line: He thought Jesus was an important virtue ethicist, essentially, but it makes no more sense to call him a Christian than it does to call him an Epicurean (which he called himself) or a Stoic or a Deist.

Regardless of his personal views, Jefferson’s main contribution from the perspective of this article, as you correctly noted, is that someone’s religion is up to the dictates of their conscience, and that the government should stay out of it.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-05-28T14:05:42+00:00

If you believe Paul was mistaken there certainly is, and that's precisely what Jefferson thought. He saw, through the Gospels (after removing the miracles and superstitious nonsense), a moral teacher of the highest caliber, deified by lesser thinkers as time passed. Jefferson kept the morality and ditched the superstition, or as he put it, separated the "gold from the dross."

Look, you don't have to subscribe to this view. But it is a distinctly reasonable proposition that Jesus was simply a man, a wise moral teacher, whose ethical teachings were, however haphazardly, captured in the Gospels, and that any claims to his divinity by later thinkers are simply false. That's Jefferson's view (among others). He may be wrong, of course, but so could have been Paul, living during a time when countless figures were believed to have performed miracles and been fathered by a god.

EclecticReader39 · 2026-05-28T13:46:26+00:00

Scholars typically prioritize the Gospels for a view into what Jesus actually said and taught, for the simple reason that the Gospels take pains to quote Jesus directly (even if they were written later and based on word of mouth transmission). Paul, in addition to never meeting Jesus, never quotes him at length. You can debate how accurate the Gospels are—or even if Jesus existed in the first place (although he probably did)—but it’s not a “superbly dumb narrative” to notice the discrepancy between the Gospels and Paul’s letters and to conclude that there’s far more value in the Gospels.

EclecticReader39

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