id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
en-wikipedia-org-6689		Deism - Wikipedia			.html	text/html	9350	1287	61	philosophical position that rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a Supreme Being or creator of the universe.[3][4][5] In Natural History of Religion (1757) he contends that polytheism, not monotheism, was "the first and most ancient religion of mankind" and that the psychological basis of religion is not reason, but fear of the unknown.[33] Hume's account of ignorance and fear as the motivations for primitive religious belief was a severe blow to the deist's rosy picture of prelapsarian humanity basking in priestcraft-free innocence. In the United States, there is a great deal of controversy over whether the Founding Fathers were Christians, deists, or something in between.[36][37] Particularly heated is the debate over the beliefs of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.[38][39][40] Deism and Natural Religion: A Source Book by E.	./cache/en-wikipedia-org-6689.html	./txt/en-wikipedia-org-6689.txt