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<Hello, Farrell! I will challenge you to show where Franklin said in his biography that he was a Deist.>
It wasn't in his "biography" but in his "autobiography." If I wrote George Bush's lifestory it would be a biography of Bush, but if he wrote it himself, it would be an autobiography. At any rate, here is the statement from Franklin's autobiography:
My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.] It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist" (*Autobiography,* as published in *The American Tradition in Literature,* seventh edition (short), McGraw-Hill, p.180).
Franklin went on to say that his "arguments" (presumably his arguments for deism) convinced Collins and Ralph, two freethinkers who later wronged him, so he came to "suspect" that "this doctrine" (presumably Deism) "though it might be true, was not very useful." This is the closest that Franklin came to retracting his Deistic beliefs, and even in this statement, he acknowledged that it was "true." Even if Franklin had not made this direct statement of his Deistic beliefs, critical examination of his writings would have shown his acceptance of Deistic philosophy. For one thing, Franklin employed in his writings the vocabulary of a Deist. He referred to God as "the Powerful Goodness," a reflection of the Deistic tendency to avoid using the word "God," which Deists believed had unfavorable Christian connotations. Whenever a Deist used the word "God," it was usually in the expression "nature and nature's God," which appears in the introduction to the Declaration of Independence and reveals to the astute reader that the author of this passage (generally believed to be Thomas Jefferson) was a Deist. In "The Speech of Polly Baker," for example, Benjamin Franklin had the fictional character Polly Baker refer to "nature and nature's God." Clearly, Franklin was a Deist.
<I'll also challenge you to show that Jefferson, or any of the others you mentioned except Paines, said they were Deists.>
Well, I will challenge you to show that Peter, Paul, John, or any of the other apostles ever said that they were Christians. They never did, but an examination of their writings (or in some cases the writings attributed to them) clearly shows that they were Christians. In the same way, examination of the writings of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, etc. will show that they were Deists. One thing is sure: their writings indicate very clearly that they were not Christians. To try to prove to you that they were Deists would require a very long post, so I am going to mail to you an article "The Christian Nation Myth" that I have compiled from a series of articles that a regional newspaper editor asked me to write on the subject of the religious beliefs of the "founding fathers." It discusses Jefferson and Washington in detail and provides detailed documentation.
I will mail this article to anyone who would like to receive it. BTW, can anyone on this list explain to me how anyone who knows anything at all about Thomas Jefferson could possibly argue that he was a Christian?
I have accommodated Paul Nanson's request, so now I will make one of him. If he is going to insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, will he please explain why the founders didn't even mention God in the constitution? That doesn't make a bit of sense.
F. Till