I was a deist most of the time even though I had my doubts.
For Jefferson, like most of the key Founding Fathers, was a deist, someone who believes that there may be a creator of the universe but not an all-powerful, obedience-demanding figure.
Like most men of the Enlightenment (including most of American's founding fathers), Darwin (for much of his life) was a Deist: he thought there was something bigger than human consciousness, but he did not personify it (as theists do), and gradually he lost all feeling that we would call religious (as opposed to spiritual: Desmond and Moore 1992, Moore 1994).
And one of the most significant Founders of this country, Benjamin Franklin, was, by common acknowledgment, a "Deist," not taking any definite position on the issue of religion in his many writings.
Unlike most composers, Handel was at the centre of his society's intellectual life – a deist assertion from his contemporary Alexander Pope's Essay on Man bursts into flame at the climax of the oratorio Jephtha.
Then, a few months ago, he told me that he was a deist.
In 1779, Thomas Jefferson, a deist, proposed disestablishing the Episcopal church in Virginia.
("A Papist, a Mohomotan, a Deist, yea an Atheist" might someday even become president, one critic warned).
(Franklin was a Deist, though he usually kept his skepticism to himself. Talking against Religion is unchaining a Tyger).
During it all, Armstrong, reportedly a deist, is said to have watched respectfully but without making any comment.
