The Founders vigorously affirm throughout their writings that the foundation of all reality is the existence of the Creator who is the designer of all things in nature and the promulgator of all the laws that govern nature.The Founders were in harmony with John Locke who said that a person who calls himself an 'atheist' is merely confessing that he has never dealt with the issue of the Creator's existence. Therefore Locke would say that an Atheist is out of touch with the most important and fundamental reality.
John Locke insists that everyone can know that there is a divine Creator. With Descartes each person can say "Cogito ergo sum'. With God, each person can say, "I AM!" Further more, each person knows that he is something. And something cannot be produced by nothing. Therefore what brought man and everything else into existence had to be something. In order for all of this organizing and arranging to be as such that it is, the Organizer would have to be all-knowing. The something would therefore have to be superior to everything which had resulted from this effort.
Locke taught that the Creator must be a cogitative being since man is cogitative. And that a non-cogitative being like a rock could never have produced a cogitative being like a man. Locke also taught that the Creator would reflect a sense of right and wrong, and a sense of indignation for violation of the law.
The American Founding Fathers agreed with Locke. They considered this truth as the most fundamental premise underlying ALL self-evident truth.
The Founding Fathers also relied on the writings of William Blackstone when it came to their foundation on God's revealed law. He stated that the will of God which is expressed in the orderly nature of the universe is called "the law of nature' and there are laws for human nature just as surely as they exist for the rest of the universe.
The Founders looked at the Creator as both intelligent and benevolent, and anxious and able to respond to people's petitions when they are deserving of needed blessings and engaged in a good cause.
Charles Bracelen Flood discovered in his research that during the Revolutionary War that there were at least sixty-seven desperate moments that George Washington acknowledged that he would have suffered disaster had not the hand of God intervened in behalf of the struggle for Independence. James Madison also acknowledged the hand of God during the Constitutional Convention.
We can now see that the Founders were quite sincere when they adopted the motto "In God we trust." And it is also now clear why they required all witnesses who testify to take an oath and swear before God that they will tell the truth.
In closing, a note from Tocqueville "A presiding judge remarked that he had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence of God; that this belief constituted the sanction (in law, that which gives binding force) of all testimony in a court of justice; and that he knew of no case in a Christian country where a witness had been permitted to testify without such belief."
(The 28 Principles of Liberty are adapted from the book "The 5000 Year Leap" by W. Cleon Skousen. This article is also published at www.Myspace.com/angelsings www.LDSFreemen.com and the Cape Fair Cryer newspaper in Missouri.)
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