I don't understand the Muslim comment either.I can say I mean it when I say the pledge, but why the statement about Muslims?
I never said being deist means he doesn't believe in god. It just means he wasn't christian and wouldn't approve of evangelical right-wing nutjobs trying to shove god down our throats. And ben franklin was confirmed atheist. You are just taking some of his quotes out of context. Here are some quotes that summarize his hate for god.
The nation is not under god and our atheist founders would be offended if they knew we put god in our currency and forced our children to make pledges to god against their will.
That is why the founding fathers were atheists. They decide to figure out the facts before they believed in a false theory. Eventually they did and rejected the belief in god.
"My parents had given me betimes religions impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself" (Autobiography, p. 66).
"The time which I devoted to these exercises, and to reading, was the evening after my day's labor was finished, the morning before it began, and Sundays when I could escape divine service. While I lived with my father, he had insisted on my punctual attendance on public worship, and I still indeed considered it as a duty, but a duty which I thought I had no time to practice" (Ibid. P. 16).
"When he explained to me his tenets, I found many absurdities which I refused to admit. ... Keimer wore his beard long, because Moses had somewhere said, 'Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard.' He likewise observed the Sabbath; and these were with him two very essential points. I disliked them both" (Autobiography, p. 40).
"Revelation, indeed, as such had no influence on my mind" (Ibid, p. 67).
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
Religion
Lambert (2003) has examined the religious affiliations and beliefs of the Founders. Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and three were Roman Catholics (C. Carroll, D. Carroll, and Fitzsimons). Among the Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 28 were Church of England (or Episcopalian, after the American Revolutionary War was won), eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists.
A few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical Christians, such as Thomas Jefferson[13][14][15] (who created the so-called "Jefferson Bible") and Benjamin Franklin.[16] A few others (most notably Thomas Paine) were deists, or at least held beliefs very similar to those of deists.[17]
Founding Fathers of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia