Christopher D. Green wrote:
Paul Brandon wrote:
At 1:26 PM -0500 12/10/04, Christopher D. Green wrote:
(And some American evangelists spend a good deal of time trying to *deny* that Thomas Jefferson and several other of the "Founding Fathers" were deists of pretty much this same ilk.)
Actually Jefferson was more more a Unitarian/Universalist than a Deist.
Franklin on the other hand was probably closer to a closet atheist; Washington simply couldn't stand being in a church.
I am not an expert on this topic (nor do I have the inclination to become one). My opinion on this matter derives primarily from Chapter 2 of Bruce Kuklick's _A History of Philosophy in America_ (Oxford, 2001).
But because I'm a sucker for almost any scholarly debate, especially with an historical angle to it, I went searching around on the web and found this very interesting, short, well-annotated argument that Jefferson was, in fact, a deist (and that this may not have been very far from certain kinds of Unitarianism, so our "debate" may be moot).
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/jefferson_deist.htm#1
(Not very nice about the Jewish religion, was he!)
Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
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