"Don't trust your eyes!Trust mine!"

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jan 15, 2012 at 15:34

BB King ,

I am afraid that you who deny America's evidently Christian origin and character throughout most of its history are quite self-referential in calling me " a historical revisionist". I find it hilarious to note how you simultaneously combine your leftist denials of your country's history with stern right-wing politically correct preaching against the left as exemplified by the USSR.You're a bizarre hybrid indeed.

Initially, I wanted to address every argument you bring up but I realized that it would be better to just concentrate on one absurdity you wrote instead, to lucidly demonstrate your scholarly qualities ,i.e. your dogmatism boasting of being "free thought".

So you wrote triumphantly :

> Abraham Lincoln was not a Christian

"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."
-Spoken by Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Joseph Lewis

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html#lincoln<

In his Second Inaugural Address delivered on March 4, 1865 Lincoln says about the Americans engaged in the fratricidal war i.al. :

" Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

This short and ardent speech is crammed with Biblical themes and allusions (Gen. 3:19, Psalm 19:9) and quotes two of Jesus' sayings more or less faithfully according to King James' Bible (Mathew 18:7/Luke 17:1 and Matthew 7:1). But you say I must not trust my eyes but yours, don't you? You know better thank to your dubious quote that Lincoln was neither Christian nor cared about the Bible, don't you?

Your methodology of arriving at knowledge is clearly revealed here.You rely more on somebody's quoting Lincoln than on Lincoln himself. I have the sad impression that everything or almost everything you say seems to be also a second-hand stuff and trusting the wrong eyes.

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