This is what I'm working on as a response...
Modern Atheistic responses such as this lack precision and rigor of earlier times and are hard to sustain in productive dialogue. Perhaps this is due to the casual and popular atheism that has spread without grounding in the earlier debates and in lexical discipline, owing more to avoidance of absolutism than to truth. Even something as recent as the theological positions of our founding fathers is bandied about with such cavalier disregard for actual truth that I was tempted just to drop the exchange. However, since I am quite the fan of both Jefferson and Franklin in some areas (though certainly not in all respects) and notwithstanding they were no theologians (and hence their religious views and those of others of the time have little bearing on the issue beyond self-defense, historic interest and constitutional interpretation), I dare to redeem them from your characterization if only slightly. Consider the following exchange from Jefferson to John Adams on the subject of the Deity, and the other snippets from his personal letters and speeches and also the following from Franklin. These provide but a glimpse, but it is hard to honestly suggest they didn’t believe in a sustaining and sentient God – a God who creates and sustains and judges all things. Jefferson, in particular, had no blind faith (in ANYTHING), but his questioning (and he, like I try to do, questioned EVERYTHING) led him to the inexorable conclusion that such a God existed. He, like many other founders, were cut from the Unitarian and Freemason cloth – I am no fan of Freemasonry (or of Unitarianism), but they are undoubtedly not the sort of Deists you suggest. They were, it seems to me, generally much more of the Aristotelian variety in all respects than even the Platonic. From my understanding, they believe completely in a personal God who is active in the world, that there is a divine punishment/consequence for evil, and that there is an afterlife. Today’s secular humanism owes little to them, and more to the French atheistic deists of the Enlightenment (so-called).
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1787 August 10. (Jefferson to Peter Carr). "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."[8]
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Existence of Deity/God, by Thomas Jefferson
I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to atheism by their general dogma, that without a revelation. there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a God.
Now, one-sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christian; the other five-sixths, then who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation. are without knowledge of the existence of a God! This gives completely a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocelllus Spinoza Diderot and D'Holbach.
The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is, that every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must admit an eternal preexistence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when only will suffice.
They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may forever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a Being whom we see not and know not, of whose form, substance and mode, or place of existence, or of action, no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend.
On the contrary. I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the universe, in all its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.
The movements of the heavenly bodies so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal force, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands. water and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles; insects. mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances. their generation and uses; it is impossible I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is in all this design, cause and effect up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new and other forms. We see, too evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the universe in its course and order.
Stars well known. have disappeared, new ones have come into view ; comets in their incalculable courses. may run afoul of suns and planets. and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals become extinct and were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one. Until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful agent that of the infinite numbers of men who have existed through all time they have believed, in the proportion at least to a unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a Creator rather than in that of a self-existent universe.
Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis. Some early Christians, indeed have believed in the co-eternal pre-existence of both the Creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and effect That was to opinion of St. Thomas we are informal by cardinal Toleta. To JOHN ADAMS vii 281 1823 Jefferson Cyclopedia, Foley 1900
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“While we devoutly return thanks to the Beneficent Being who has been pleased to breath into our sister nations the spirit of conciliation and forgiveness, we are bound with peculiar gratitude to be thankful to Him that our own peace has been preserved.” JEFFERSON’S FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE. viii, 6. FORD ED., viii, 109. (Dec. 1801.)
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“When we assemble together to consider the state of our beloved country, our just attentions are first drawn to those pleasing circumstances which mark the goodness of that Being from whose favor they flow, and the large measure of thankfulness we owe for His bounty.” JEFFERSON’S SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE, viii, 15. FORD ED., viii, 181. (Dec. 1802.)
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“We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a Superior Agent. Our efforts are in His hand, and directed by it ; and He will give them their effect in His own time.” Jefferson To DAVID BARROW, vi, 456. FORD ED., ix, 516. (M., 1815.)
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1821 February 27. (Jefferson to Timothy Pickering). "[n]o one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in it’s advances towards rational Christianity. when we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus, when, in short, we shall have unlearned every thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr Drake, has been a common one. the religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconcievable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce it’s founder an imposter. had there never been a Commentator, there never would have been an infidel. in the present advance of truth, which we both approve, I do not know that you and I may think alike on all points. as the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two minds, and probably no two creeds. we well know that among Unitarians themselves there are strong shades of difference, as between Doctors Price and Priestley for example. so there may be peculiarities in your creed and in mine. they are honestly formed without doubt. I do not wish to trouble the world with mine, nor to be troubled for them. these accounts are to be settled only with him who made us; and to him we leave it, with charity for all others, of whom also he is the only rightful and competent judge. I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the Unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also."[14]
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Finally, with a nod to Ben Franklin, here is a letter from him to Ezra Stiles in 1790 pertaining to his flavor of Deism (again, bearing little resemblance to today’s secular humanism). “Here is my creed. I believe in One God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render Him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion.”