there's a lot to recommend in vaber's portrait. as an adult, franklin touted ethical industrialability and benevolence each as he jettisoned christian orthodoxy. many recent scholars have taken franklin at his word by describing him as a deist. he calls himself a deist in his autobiography so that's a decent place to start. other scholars have called him everything from, quote, a stone-cold atheist which is ridiculous, he's not an atheist to a man who believed in the, quote, active god of the israelites, the prophets and the apostles. that's what another scholar says. so deism stands at the center of this continuum between atheism and christian devotion. but other than indicating skepticism about doctrine, deism could mean many things in 18th century europe and america it can mean many things. the beliefs of different deists didn't always sync up. some said that they believed in the bible as originally written. other deists doubted the bible's reliability. some deists believed that god remained involved in life on earth. others saw