McCain’s Pastor: America was Founded with the Intent of Destroying Islam

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=7929995&ch=4226716&src=news

I guess he missed reading Jefferson or Franklin or Adams..
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/president/GalleryDetail.aspx?section=a

from Adams, the 2nd President:

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”

http://www.constitution.org/jadams/ja1_pre.htm

The common translation of Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, transcribed in Arabic to the Muslims of Barbary:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli

Ben Franklin in his letter to the President of Yale, Ezra Stile in 1790:

“…the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated
with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this…

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of
morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is like to see; but I
apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present
Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize
upon,…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
http://www.historytools.org/sources/Franklin-religion.pdf

The Autobiography of Ben Franklin
http://www.earlyamerica.com/lives/franklin/

From Jefferson:

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820

And 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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

actual photo of the letter from the library of congress:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page053.db&recNum=843&itemLink=/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjser1.html&linkText=7&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_6TzD&filecode=mtj&next_filecode=mtj&prev_filecode=mtj&itemnum=32&ndocs=514

also available at

http://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/53/Letter_from_Thomas_Jefferson_to_John_Adams_1.html
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html
http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

in relation to Thomas Paine, considered the Father of the American Revolution..

“Paine proposed the name United States of America for the new nation. When the war arrived, Paine published a series of important pamphlets, The Crisis, credited with inspiring the early colonists during the ordeals faced in their long struggle with the British. To inspire the troops, General George Washington ordered Paine’s “The American Crisis” to be read out loud to his men. The first Crisis paper began with the famous words:

These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, t renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as acmeans of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

http://thememlingindex.com/thomas_paine_anti_christianity_quotes.html

“The opinions I have advanced… are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues—and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now—and so help me God.”

also from The Age of Reason