Letter: Freedom and religion don’t mix

Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005 | 8 a.m.

In his Nov. 7 letter, Timothy Carroll says that I'm altering and distorting American history to support my ideas of the separation of church and state. Mr. Carroll states that in my Nov. 3 letter I made the Puritans sound anti-religious. I never said that. I said that they came here to avoid persecution because they did not subscribe to the accepted religious beliefs of their time. The Puritans wanted freedom to worship, but the freedom to worship, or not, is founded on the freedom of not having someone else's beliefs forced on you.

English history is replete with examples of religious persecution. Practically every time they changed monarchs they changed religions, and many people died as a result.

Our Founding Fathers understood this and mostly rejected the Christian faith. Benjamin Franklin said, "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Thomas Paine wrote in his "Age of Reason," published in 1794, "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to be no other than human institutions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind." John Adams stated in the Treaty with Tripoli, June 10, 1797, "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Yes, we freedom-loving Americans tolerate certain manifestations of religion, such as prayer before each session of Congress, but that is to our credit. Religion does not have a good track record when it comes to freedom and tolerance. The ideas of freedom and religion, and tolerance and religion, are oxymoronic concepts.

Nadia Romeo

Las Vegas