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In a letter dated July 2, 1756, Benjamin Franklin presented a proposal to George Whitefield, the most famous preacher of the Great Awakening, that they partner together to establish a Christian colony "in the Ohio," which was frontier at the time. In the letter, Franklin expressed confidence that God would give them success in such a project, "If we undertook it with a sincere regard to his honor." For the next 30 years, they carried on a lively and open correspondence. Whitefield often spoke about faith in Christ and admonished Franklin to make sure he was prepared for the next...

Vatican Abp organizing Global Education Pact touts pope’s ‘new humanism’ where God ‘withdraws’ Vatican archbishop Vincenzo Zani said Pope Francis’s ‘new humanism’ centers on a God who ‘creates but then withdraws.’ Abp. Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education. ROME, February 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican prelate tasked with organizing the Global Education Pact to be signed at the Vatican on May 14 has explained the theological vision at the heart of Pope Francis’s “new humanism,” in which God withdraws in order to allow for the possibility of human freedom. Speaking to LifeSite at a Global...

Spain laid claim to the Island of Jamaica from the time Columbus landed there in 1494. In 1503, Columbus was shipwrecked there for a year. In 1655, Jamaica was captured by British Admiral William Penn, the father of Pennsylvania’s founder. Jamaica was too far from England to defend, so the inhabitants turned to privateers, freebooters, buccaneers and pirates for protection. The likes of Blackbeard, Calico Jack and Captain Henry Morgan, namesake of the rum, attacked Spanish ships and settlements, then returned to Jamaica with their booty. The skull pirate flag, called the “Jolly Roger,” was adapted from the flag of...

Many historians call the Founding Fathers "Deists," and many of them were not true Christians -- after all, Thomas Jefferson tore all the miracles out of the Gospels! But judging by the Declaration of Independence, our Founders were more religious than many think: our founding document mentions God no less than four times.This is not to say America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation -- the federal government has never had an established religion. But the Jewish and Christian understandings of God deeply influenced the founding generation, and that influence radiates from the Declaration of Independence.Here are the four...

Was the faith of the Founding Fathers deism or Christianity? What does the answer mean for us today? Both the secularists and the Christians have missed the mark.There's been a lot of rustle in the press lately--and in many Christian publications--about the faith of the Founding Fathers and the status of the United States as a "Christian nation." Home schooling texts abound with references to our religious heritage, and entire organizations are dedicated to returning America to its spiritual roots. On the other side, secularists cry "foul" and parade their own list of notables among our country's patriarchs. They...

BEN GOERTZEL: Hugo, you've recently published an article on KurzweilAI.net titled "From Cosmism to Deism”, which essentially posits a transhumanist argument that some sort of “God” exists, i.e. some sort of intelligent creator of our universe – and furthermore that this “creator” is probably some sort of mathematician. I'm curious to ask you some questions digging a little deeper into your thinking on these (fun, albeit rather far-out) issues. Could you start out by clarifying what you mean by the two terms in the title of your article, cosmism and deism? (I know what I mean by Cosmism, and I...

When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair...

Sir: I have frequently with pleasure reflected on your services to my native and your adopted country. Your "Common Sense" and your "Crisis" unquestionably awakened the public mind, and led the people loudly to call for a declaration of our national independence. I therefore esteemed you as a warm friend to the liberty and lasting welfare of the human race. But when I heard that you had turned your mind to a defense of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and more grieved that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true...

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...

What is portrayed as the debate between religion and science feels increasingly like watching the very bitter dissolution of a doomed marriage. The relationship started out all roses and kisses, proceeded to doubts and regrets, then fights and silences, a mutually agreed separation, and finally to curses and maledictions: “I wish you were dead!” In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss declared “the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science.” Krauss’s essay was the latest eruption of a vituperative argument going on in the scientific community over “accommodationism.” Accommodationists hold that even atheists...

Though they aren't journalists, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton broke one of the biggest stories in contemporary religion with their 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Conducting the most comprehensive study of religion and teenagers to date, the sociologists discovered a newly dominant creed that they dubbed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). Rather than transformative revelation from God, religion has become a utility for enhancing a teenager's life. Smith and Denton lay out the five points of MTD: 1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on...

On Tuesday evening I attended the debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox at Oxford’s Natural History Museum. This was the second public encounter between the two men, but it turned out to be very different from the first. Lennox is the Oxford mathematics professor whose book, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? is to my mind an excoriating demolition of Dawkins’s overreach from biology into religion as expressed in his book The God Delusion -- all the more devastating because Lennox attacks him on the basis of science itself. In the first debate, which can be seen on video...

Even before he died in December 1799, a battle began over the nature and significance of George Washington's faith. Was the father of our country a deist, a Unitarian, a lukewarm Christian, or a fervent evangelical? Popular paintings depict Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War and ascending to heaven after his death. Few of the varied aspects of the Virginian's life have caused as much contention as his religious beliefs and habits. Moreover, no other president has had his religious life so distorted by folklore. Given Washington's immense contributions to the American republic, semi-divine...

October 02, 2006, 6:02 a.m. Traitors to the EnlightenmentEurope turns its back on Socrates, Locke, et al. By Victor Davis Hanson The first Western Enlightenment of the Greek fifth-century B.C. sought to explain natural phenomena through reason rather than superstition alone. Ethics were to be discussed in the realm of logic as well as religion. Much of what Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and the Sophists thought may today seem self-evident, if not at times nonsensical. But that century was the beginning of the uniquely Western attempt to bring to the human experience empiricism, self-criticism, irony, and tolerance in thinking. The...

A common and false impression about America’s Founding Fathers is that they were deists -- that is, they believed in a "watchmaker" God who set the universe in motion and then stepped aside to let it run itself. The deist god lacks the interest, or the power, to intervene in human affairs. Michael Novak, a celebrated theologian and author, convincingly rebutted this misconception in his book, "On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding." In "Washington's God," Novak and his daughter Jana turn their attention to the religious beliefs of America's first and greatest President. The...

Divining W : Inside Washington’s God. An NRO Q&A Michael and Jana Novak, father and daughter, are authors of Washington's God, to be released early next month. Take a President's Day preview of the book here. Q: Who is Washington's God? A: The Great God Jehovah who led the people of Israel long ago, the same benevolent Providence that led the way through many dark times to the independence of the United States. That is the God Washington described in his letter to the Synagogue in Savannah, after the war. Washington was an active vestryman in his local Anglican...

Talk Radio Host Tom Sullivan, sitting in today for Rush Limbaugh, failed to challenge a caller (a self-declared "secularist") who labeled Jefferson a 'Deist'. Thomas Jefferson was no deist. In the source column, Dr. James Kennedy wrote: "While Jefferson has been lionized by those who seek to drive religion from public life, the true Thomas Jefferson is anything but their friend. He was anything but irreligious, anything but an enemy to Christian faith. Our nation's third president was, in fact, a student of Scripture who attended church regularly, and was an active member of the Anglican Church, where he served...

Flew's Flawed Science by Victor J. Stenger The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 25, Number 2. The late-in-life “conversion” of philosopher Antony Flew from atheism to belief in God has been widely reported in the media.1 In a recent interview with Gary Habermas, misleadingly titled “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism,” Flew explains his new position, which he identifies as deism rather than theism.2 Richard Carrier has also conducted a correspondence with Flew, which clarifies some of the issues.3Flew has not changed his mind on the inadequacy of the various philosophical arguments for God, which he...

NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England....

(We receive numerous requests from across the country to answer various editorials and letters-to-the-editor. The subject is usually the religious persuasions of the Founding Fathers, and the standard assertion is that they were all deists. The following is but one of many possible replies to such accusations.) I notice that your newspaper has an ongoing debate concerning the religious nature of the Founding Fathers. A recent letter claimed that most of the Founding Fathers were deists, and pointed to Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, and Madison as proof. After making this charge, the writer acknowledged the "voluminous writings" of the...