Carrier’s “best proof” that the founders did not rely on the Bible in formulating our system of government comes from a paragraph in the preface to John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. Carrier quoted Adams as saying that:
Carrier claims that this statement is “a direct denouncement of the Law of Moses” because that Law was the result of inspiration from heaven, but Adams was not claiming to have ignored all documents claiming to have been produced by inspiration. He was simply acknowledging that none of the founders were claiming to have been personally inspired by God as was typical of the rulers of the past. As we saw yesterday, even in Solon’s Athens, the king was the high-priest of the land, and to continue that thought, Adams also said of Athens that:
Nobility, as well as royalty, was believed of divine right, because the gods and goddesses had condescended to familiar intercourse with women and men, on purpose to beget persons of a superior order to rule among nations.
Thus, when Adams spoke of not pretending to be “in any degree under the inspiration of heaven,” he was actually denouncing the philosophy of Solon’s Athens. Carrier completely ignores this and speaks as if Adams saw Athens as some grand utopia of democracy. In reality, Adams viewed Athens (and Solon as well) as miserable failures. It’s true that Adams recognized that Solon had several good ideas, but he also noted that when it came time to put these ideas into practice, Solon’s system was shown to be unstable.
What’s more interesting than this, however, is the way in which Carrier handled the end of Adams’ paragraph about not being under the inspiration of heaven. Adams concluded that point with this statement:
The experiment is made, and has completely succeeded; it can no longer be called in question, whether authority in magistrates and obedience of citizens can be grounded on reason, morality, and the Christian religion, without the monkery of priests, or the knavery of politicians.
This was how John Adams ended his claim that America was founded on the simple principles of nature. According to Adams, the whole American experiment was to see if laws for authority and obedience could be founded solely on reason, morality and the Christian religion. This was the American experiment, and Adams viewed it as being successful. But look at the way that Carrier refers to this line from Adams:
Adams does also say that “morality and the Christian religion, without the monkery of priests” has helped to sustain America’s success, but he never once credits any specific principle from that religion (like the Ten Commandments) as lying at the foundation of the American Constitution. That idea isn’t even considered. (emphasis in original)
Do you see the difference? According to Carrier, Adams viewed Christianity as something which helped to “sustain America’s success.” But according to Adams himself, Christianity was one of the foundations on which the entire American experiment was grounded. Carrier has taken a statement which directly refutes his claim, twisted it into saying something else entirely and presented it as evidence that he is right. As I said before, the level of ignorance required for this to have been a mere misunderstanding is unfathomable. And yet, it gets even worse.
As part of his claim that Adams did not consult the writings of Moses, Carrier cited a list of the authors that Adams quoted from in his Defence, and he pointed out that “Moses is conspicuous for his absence.” Of course, Solon was absent from that list as well since none of his writings were available to Adams, but Carrier notes that “Solon, of course (and in contrast), would be represented most significantly in the writings of Aristotle.” I have no problem with this; Adams certainly obtained some of his information on Solon from the writings of Aristotle, but if Solon can be represented second-hand, why can’t Moses be found in Adams' book in the same way?
Carrier identified Algernon Sydney as being one of the writers that Adams 