In the 1600s, England was becoming a safe place for dangerous viewpoints. Controversial English writers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were encouraging people to take their beliefs from facts, not faith -- and they got away with it. No mobs tore them apart or burned them at the stake, although some religious people might have wanted to.
Deism was evolving around the same time. Deism is the belief that God or some other supernatural entity created the universe, put the laws of physics in charge of making it run, and shuttled off to some celestial retirement home. To deists, a rainbow is an optical phenomenon of light passing through water, not a symbol of the Lord’s covenant with the creatures of the Earth. The deist version of God didn’t throw down plagues, spark up miracles, or chat with prophets.
Deism became popular among some people who valued rational thought so much that they couldn’t accept churchly preachings about a virgin birth, a snake talking Eve into biting an apple, and other impossible events. In England’s American colonies, deists included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.
Since deism denied that God did most of the things that the Bible says he did, it was something of a stepping-stone toward atheism. The leading deist (or possibly atheist) who took the next step was a skeptical Scot named David Hume.
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