Ben Franklin and Deism

I can never remember what Deism is for some reason, so I keep having to look up the meanin of it.  " Deism is knowledge of God based on the application of our reason on the designs/laws found throughout Nature. The designs presuppose a Designer. Deism is therefore a natural religion and is not a "revealed" religion."  Deism is the belief in God through facts or evidence, rather than just saying I believe in God because I think he is always there.
"This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day and thus repaired in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me" (Franklin 143).  Say you were in the Puritan community.  You would not need a library or any sense of that kind of education, because you would believe that God had given you all the education that you would need.  Here, Benjamin Franklin loved the library.  It gave him an oppurtunity to learn new information.   Another thing that was different to Pilgrim and similar to deism is that Franklin took Sunday as his day to honor the Lord, but yet he studied and tried to learn more.  He wanted to find more knowledge and facts about God (Franklin 144-145).  This goes back to the deistic approach, Benjamin Franklin is applying himself to learn more facts and knowledge about God.  "Though I seldom attended any worship..." (Franklin, 145).  This would be unheard of in the Puritan age, but things were different now.  You did not have to go to church to say you were a believer in God.  Franklin was actually researching things that applied to God.  Franklin later on said that he would bo by the facts and not feel sorry for them (Franklin 147).  He did not care what some people thought were right or wrong, he just cared about having the facts and that is what Franklin was going to go off of.
Real quick, I know this blog is about how it relates to Deism, but when Ben Franklin says that he will not speak bad about any man, no matter what they have done wrong, it is the exact opposite of what the Puritans did (Franklin 148).  If they ever heard anybody did something wrong that went against their beliefs they would come at that person, really until they were dead or out of the community.
Also, the thirteen virtues go along with deism.  Like I said, deism is the wanting to know facts about God and striving to get them.  The thirteen virtues go along with this because Benjamin Franklin was striving to get better at learning about God.  He wanted to know everything that he could, and so by creating these thirteen virtues, he tried his best to go by these, and he knew that it would help him with striving towards excellence.  Everytday he worked very hard at learning these.  It is not like he tok one day for all of them, he took weeks for a just one single virtue, which shows that he was applying himself.

"Deism Defined, Welcome to Deism, Deist Glossary and Frequently Asked Questions." Welcome To The    Deism Site! Web. 25 Oct. 2011. http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm.

Franklin, Benjamin, and Leonard Woods Labaree. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven: Yale UP, 1964. Print.