alt.education

Nicklas@Click.com wrote:

>:|On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:34:24 -0400, Bob LeChevalier
>:| wrote:
>:|
>:|>Nicklas@Click.com wrote:
>:|>>It is "mere" when the central "god" is the same
>:|>>
>:|>>Are you suggesting the "god" is different?
>:|>>
>:|>>You'll have to explain that......
>:|>
>:|>Thomas Jefferson said "I am a Christian". He also said that
>:|>Calvinists were "demon-worshippers". It sounds like HE thought that
>:|>they worshipped a different God than he did.
>:|
>:|That's nothing more than rhetoric

False

"In am a Christan" is shown in the Jefferson Bible, i.e. shown in what he
seelcted to include in it, read and study the rest of his life. It was a
form of "primitive" Christianity See below:

“. . . To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed opposed; but
not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the
only sense in which he wished any one to be, sincerely attached to his
doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every
«human» excellence; and believing he claimed no other. . .”

He also once said
" You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as
far as I know. "
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

What that meant was that while he leaned heavily towards Dr. Joseph
Priestley's brand of Unitartism, he didn't fully embrace all of that
either. He had his own unique religion hence his comment, ". . . I am of
a sect by myself, as far as I know. "

As far as he was concerned Paul, the early church fathers, Greeks, Calvin
etc bastardized/corrupted the teachings of the man Jesus.