The "Founding Fathers" on Religion, and Crackpots - Part one: Franklin | by Bob Higgins | January 16, 2008
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
[Benjamin Franklin, in _Toward The Mystery_]
"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"
[Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography,"p.66 as published in The American Tradition in Literature, seventh edition (short), McGraw-Hill,p.180]
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