FAITH-BASED AMERICA

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself (Franklin’s Autobiography).

Some volumes against Deism fell into my hands . . . They produced an effect precisely the reverse to what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the Deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself; in a word, I soon became a thorough Deist" (Ibid).

TOM PAINE

"My country is the world and my religion is to do good" (The Rights of Man, 1791).

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church" (The Age of Reason, 1794).

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity" (Ibid.).