Ben Franklin??? I don't know about that one.
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle.
-- Benjamin Franklin, the incompatibility of faith and reason, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
-- Benjamin Franklin, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)
Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743
If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.
-- Benjamin Franklin, An Essay on Toleration
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
-- Benjamin Franklin (attributed: source unknown)
He [the Rev Mr. Whitefield] used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.
-- Benjamin Franklin, from Franklin's Autobiography