Benjamin Franklin

One of the Founding Fathers. He was never President, but he was ambassador to France, and also he is on the $100 dollar bill. Benjamin Franklin was a prolific inventor, he invented the Franklin stove and the bifocal and also discovered electricity with the kite experiment in a lightning storm. Benjamin Franklin is truly a great American.

Some historians claim that Benjamin Franklin was a deist rather than a Christian. But although Franklin wrote widely, he rarely made statements associated with principles of Deism. Instead, Franklin proposed saying prayers at the Constitutional Convention, prayers that would certainly have been Christian in nature. At most 5% of the Founding Fathers were deists and historians tend to exaggerate this number in an attempt to deny the Christian basis for the United States.

A quote from Franklin's autobiography would seem to clear up this debate. "Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle’s Lectures. 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." <need citation for this, such as when this autobiography was written and the context of this quote, such as evidence that Franklin was not simply describing a phase he went through>