Thanks much Spellbanisher for the insightful analyzes of Franklin and his times.

Yes, I believe that almost all of the well known founding fathers were deists, with Franklin and Jefferson in particular rejecting much of the magic aspects of Christianity.

I really like your analysis of social/economic times of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is my opinion the individualistic (Darwinian if you will ) economic model of economic competition as opposed to cooperation did not really take hold until the mid-19th century reaching its peak during the “Gilded Age.”. This “Gilded Age” lasted basically right up until the Great Depression. That in unison, with WWII, ushered in a revised period of a sense of economic community as a nation that flourished for a while before declining until almost exactly a century later Reagan's election ushered in the “Gilded Age” redux we find ourselves in now.