Lately, I've seen a lot of instances of people being misquoted, and to me, it's really annoying. Whether it's a case of deliberately misquoting someone or doing it out of ignorance, I don't believe it's ever acceptable.
For instance, today I was looking up whether or not Ernest Hemingway was an atheist for a quiz (don't worry it's open-book, so we're aloud to look around). In doing so, I came across this page. The person asking the question quoted Hemingway as saying, "All thinking men are atheists," and then asked everyone whether or not they thought that was true. The answer that was chosen as the best one just killed me.
This person quoted Thomas Jefferson (much worse of a guy than his status as a "founder of America" would permit us to speak of). Anyways, the quotes by Thomas Jefferson included "Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies," "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." and, "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man." These quotes were obviously meant to prove he was atheist, and therefore strengthen the argument that all thinking men were atheists. But this person for got one very important thing. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist.
Note that Deism still boasts a belief in God, just not a believe in the divinity of Christ, or his ability to perform miracles of any kind. You have to be somewhat thick to overlook this. I mean, Jefferson was the author of The Jefferson Bible, a version of the Bible which omits any reference to Jesus as divine, takes out all the signs and miracles he performed, and switches other things around for no perceivable reason besides. But the fact is, he still believed in God. He wasn't an atheist, he just wasn't a Christian. His failure to be either may be worse, but that's not the point.
And that's not the only time I've come across people being misquoted to be atheists. A few months ago, when I was looking for a specific quote by Victor Hugo that I remembered but couldn't find in the book, I was shocked to find some quotes by him that were interpreted as atheist when they actually weren't. Such as:
"In every village there is a torch; the teacher, and in every village there is an extinguisher; the priest."
"Every step which the intelligence of Europe has taken has been in spite of the clerical party."
Etc. The fact is, Victor Hugo was a Christian. I have read both these quotes in their context in his book, Les Miserables, and they were written well after he had become a Christian - somewhere between the death of his daughter and his return to France after his exile. What Hugo meant to convey through these quotes was his lack of faith in the clergy and others who saw the church as a source of power, not his lack of faith in God. His poem "A Villequier" (written while he recovered from the death of his much loved daughter at nineteen), proves that quite clearly.
It's true that there are a significant number of "thinking men" that have been atheist. Benjamin Franklin (supposedly) was not quite atheist, although he was often accused of being such, Emily Dickinson, Hemingway, and a bunch of other people I'm forgetting. However, there are a lot of people that were Christians or Deists (Victor Hugo, Thomas Jefferson, T.S. Elliot, Charlotte Bronte, most of America's other founders, etc) Alexandre Dumas' book The Count of Monte Cristo seems to suggest he's Christian, but The Three Musketeers doesn't so much, I can't find anything in his biography that confirms either one (his lifestyle certainly doesn't). Of course, some of these people converted from atheism to Christianity, such as Victor Hugo and T.S. Elliot. The fact is, someone's intelligence doesn't have much at all to do with whether they turn out a Christian or an atheist or a Muslim. It's about what they're raised as and, ultimately, what they decide for themselves.
Just a few thoughts that don't all have anything to do with the title. xD
