>> He was a member in the "Hellfire Club" an intellectual organization that scorned and opposed organized and established religions, including Christianity. Wonder what kind of political water that would put him nowadays. ;) And he liked French women. (Me too Ben.)
Thinking of Sir Francis Dashwood and his Monks of Mendhamam Abbey as an intellectual organization is a bit like referring to the Hell's Angels as a sports club. :-) I don't think Franklin was a member, per se, I think he just showed up for a couple of the orgies. The Hellfire Club ( there were actually a number of 'social organizations' that styled themselves that way, though Dashwoods - to which I'm sure you refer - was the most well known since it had a membership that included people like Lord Sandwich and Charles Fox ) wasn't really deistic so much as anti-theistic. Sort of Alestair Crowley for enlightenment fops. :-) Of course that was back in the day when people didn't know that drunken orgies with prostitutes were bad.
Franklin was, however, a founder of the Masonic Lodge in Paris and an active member of the lodge in London. Good reason to believe he *was* as deist in the true 18th century sense.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
