12/14/2022 0 Comments Im in love with benjamin franklinBut, isn't your enterprise one of inventing your own personal religion? You can say "faith" or "religion" or "tradition" or "doctrine" are not all the same - and they aren't. Franklin as with many of the Enlightenment deleted a good many pieces of the Christian religion which made them uncomfortable. Whether or not you can subscribe to the religion then ought to be your dilemna but not that of the religion. But, I wonder, just because something makes you "uncomfortable" or makes you doubt - is that something which ought simply to be expunged? Especially as regards religious faith, it would seem part of the deal that all religions have certain essential claims which are not expungeable. Now, I have problems with folks struggling to intellectually assent to the creeds which nearly all Christians have confessed for at least a millenium. I can't help but notice however that you think it is only right as a Christian to "do the comfortable thing." You said that on a previous posting about "shortening the Nicene Creed" or something like that. I'm glad you question - this is so wonderful to do. Franklin, Letter to Ezra Stiles, 9 March 1790, in John Bigelow, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin, at 12:185-86 (New York: Putnam’s, 1904) (paragraphing edited and bullets added for readability). especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.īenj.I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequences, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed.though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes,.These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.Īs to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.I believe in one God, the creator of the universe.But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a few words to gratify it. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. You desire to know something of my religion.
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