Deist

A deist is defined as "deist - a person who believes that God created the universe and then abandoned it" with Deism being defined as "The belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws."

I have heard people say the "Founding Fathers" were mostly deists.

A few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical Christians such as Thomas Jefferson, who constructed the Jefferson Bible which contained everything Jesus said but cut out a lot of commentary.

Benjamin Franklin was another but while he had many illegitimate children by several women he saw to their raising and education. He had a perception of virtue and moral responsibility.

Thomas Paine challenged institutionalized religion in The Age of Reason'. He speaks of a Christian fraud and a neglect of the creator in the views of Christians. But his views and interpretations of the Bible were dependent upon what was posing as Christianity. He was said to be a deists yet he quoted the Bible extensively in his pamphlet Common Sense.

He drew from 1 Samuel 8 arguments against the Crown and tyranny but missed the purpose of the Church and the practice of Pure Religion which was to care for the widows and orphans by charity. Ironically he proposed later in life to create a tax by which government could provide for the old age of those who had no family to care for them.

Paine spoke of Deism and Religion, at least as the Quakers saw things admitting that they were close but to drab and colorless.

"How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical."

"The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers; but they have contracted themselves too much, by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gayeties, nor a bird been permitted to sing." AGE OF REASON by Thomas Paine, "TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

"As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism— a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade." AGE OF REASON by Thomas Paine, "TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

Clearly he missed the essence of Christ

To say the Founding Fathers held beliefs very similar to those of deists might be fair but we would have to look at the similarities and essential differences since there is a wide variety of philosophical deism and an even wider array of what might call itself "Christian"..

Gregg Frazer a historian argues that the America's Key Founders, Neither Christians nor Deists. He gives evidence that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and George Washington supporters or followers of a hybrid "theistic rationalism".

Theistic rationalism is a mix of natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism.French, English and German Deism differed from each other.

Theistic rationalists believe natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism typically coexist compatibly, with rational thought balancing the conflicts between the first two aspects.

Sense "Natural Religion is "religion, especially deism, based on reason rather than divine revelation."but Theistic rationalists believe that God plays an active role in human life, rendering prayer effective. So, this Deism does not allow one to "belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it..."

A deist that renders prayer effective does not believe God remains apart and would not qualify as a deist and to to call them one would be irrational. Together a common theme is to set the role of religion to be to promote morality but whose morality.

The traditions or rules or ordinances of society that set morality are either a product of right reason or revelation. Cannon law is defined as divine will or right reason. In truth divine will is based on revelation and right reason is codependent.

These deist opposed to more modern view and accept parts of the Bible as divinely inspired, using reason and therefore personal revelation resulting from prayer and virtues including humility as their criterion for what to accept or reject.

Their belief that God intervenes in human affairs and their approving attitude toward parts of the Bible distinguish theistic rationalists from Deists to the point where if you chose to label them as deist would be a deception.

There are always some people that want to label important or influential people as deist so that they can use that label to write off those who are connected to religion, specifically organized religion.

Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason and ordinary experience of nature. This distinguishes it from revealed theology, which is based on scripture and/or religious experiences, and also from transcendental theology, which is based on a priori reasoning or what was traditionally accepted before.

What is based on scripture but the private interpretations of people who may or may not be divinely inspired or even rational. There seems to be a line of prejudice due to a myriad of opinions and factors concerning religion and what is rational.

M. de Montesquieu was accused of being a deist also to which Thomas Nugent responded in 1752:

"The author first complains of his being charged both with espousing the doctrines of Spinoza, and with being a Deist, two opinions directly contradictory to each other. To the former of these he answers, by placing in one view the several passages in the Spirit of Laws directly levelled against the doctrines of Spinoza; and then he replies to the objections that have been made to those passages, upon which this injurious charge is founded."

de Montesquieu had already argued:

"Before I conclude this first part, I am tempted to make one objection against him who has made so many; but he has so stunned my ears with the words follower of natural religion, that I scarcely dare pronounce them. I shall endeavour however to take courage. Do not the critic's two pieces stand in greater need of an explication, than that which I defend? Does he do well, while speaking of natural religion and revelation, to fall perpetually upon one side of the subject, and to lose all traces of the other? Does he do well never to distinguish those who acknowledge only the religion of nature, from those who acknowledge both natural and revealed religion? Does he do well to turn frantic whenever the author considers man in the state of natural religion, and whenever he explains any thing on the principles of natural religion? Does he do well to confound natural religion with Atheism? Have I not heard that we have all natural religion? Have I not heard that Christianity is the perfection of natural religion? Have I not heard that natural religion is employed to prove the truth of revelation against the Deists? and that the same natural religion is employed to prove the existence of a God against the Atheists? He has said that the Stoics were the followers of natural religion; and I say, that they were Atheists, since they believed that a blind fatality governed the universe; and it is by the religion of nature that we ought to attack that of the Stoics. He says that the scheme of natural religion is connected with that of Spinoza; and I say, that they are contradictory to each other, and it is by natural religion that we ought to destroy Spinoza's scheme. I say, that to confound natural religion with Atheism, is to confound the proof with the thing to be proved, and the objections against error with error itself, and that this is to take away the most powerful arms we have against this error."