Throughout background, man's attempt to rationalize the mysterious and the unexplainable has led to numerous explanations to the universe's mysteries, specially the mysteries of God's characteristics and of individuals nature. Inside the eighteenth hundred years, Benjamin Franklin's school of thought was influenced heavily by Puritanism, yet his explanations of God and of human being nature were extremely not the same as the Puritan reason distributed by John Winthrop, John Dane, Michael Wigglesworth and Mary Rowlandson. Both Franklin and the aforementioned Puritans believed strongly in living a virtuous life, yet Franklin and the Puritans were motivated by significantly different forces to live a life with a moral conscience. Due to the Puritans' pessimistic perspective on real human nature-all people are innately evil because of original sin and actually deserve to be damned-they feared the repercussions of their wrathful god if indeed they didn't live morally. On the other hand, because of Franklin's positive view of god-as a good, forgiving, sensible and everything powerful creator-he saw people, too nearly as good by nature and developed a pragmatic method of morality. Undeniably, some parallels exist between your Deist idea Franklin developed and the Puritan viewpoint he was educated growing up. Despite these similarities, the two philosophies are on practically opposite attributes of the variety in the way they make clear the universe's unknown, most notably in the various ways they view God, which directly influences their outlook on the entire world and on human being nature.
Because Ben Franklin's and the Puritans' contrasting views of God are the key factors that determine how they are encouraged to reside in their lives, how they explain the earth, and how they view people; it is important to comprehend the differences between the Puritans' pessimistic view on God, and Franklin's optimistic view of God. To the Puritans, the bible was the divine phrase of God and the main expert on morality. Inside the bible is also where in fact the Puritans could start to see the ways that God operates. The Old Testament portion of the bible is filled with reports of God smiting the sinners of the world. He destroys the metropolitan areas of Sodom and Gomorrah, kills the kids of sinners to instruct a lesson, and even transmits bears to maul several young people who mocked another man. Due to the bible's depiction of your harshly ruling God, Puritans view God as "most dread" (Wigglesworth, 3). In Michael Wigglesworth's emphatically popular and Puritan poem, "YOUR DAY of Doom, " people are horrified with their God's fury on judgment day. In fear of eternal damnation, people "hide themselves in Caves and Delves" because they know they are really sinners (Wigglesworth, 3). Ben Franklin on the other palm believed in God, but a key difference was that didn't use the bible to rationalize God's mother nature: "after doubting of several details, I started out to mistrust the Revelation itself" (Franklin, 25). Instead, he used logic to find out his view on God and rationalizes that if "God is all-good [and] all powerful then Evil doth not are present" (Franklin, 6). Both the Puritans' and Franklin's opposing views of God influence the way they view the world, and those opposing views were developed through completely different solutions: the Puritans' pessimistic view of God through interpretation of religious words; and Franklin's positive view through beliefs, logic, and reasoning.
The dogmatic Puritans with the tough and almost unappeasable God "most dread" and the technological Ben Franklin with his "all-good, all-wise" God obviously explained the universe differently. In order to explain mysterious phenomena and understand how the world works, the Puritans followed the theory that everything happens as a part of God's plan. They assumed in predestination, and therefore everyone's lives and afterlives have been completely determined before delivery. Whereas Franklin presumed that God simply created the world and allowed the laws and regulations of mathematics and technology to govern it, the Puritans presumed God acquired a hands-on impact on every detail on the globe. When Puritan John Dane was stung by the bee, he explained the occurrence much less an unlucky coincidence, but as a consequence from God for sinning: "God, God acquired found me out" (Dane, 9). When Mary Rowlandson was taken hostage by Native Us citizens, she too observed it not as an unlucky event, but as an indicator that God cares about her. She actually treasured her affliction and "was ready sometimes to want it" (Rowlandson, 20). Franklin was a lot more interested in understanding those laws of character and technology that he thought explained life than to instead describe everything as God's work. Franklin and the Puritans both had a need to explain the how the world works to be able to instill a degree of comfort in their lives. Their vastly different views of God, though, led these to explain their world in equally different ways.
At an initial glance, Benjamin Franklin's moral code appears to be nearly identical compared to that of a typical Puritan. Increased in a Puritan family, Franklin was taught a code of morality towards living a virtuous life. Such as a Puritan, he adopted this code devoutly, even to the point where it pained him to ever fail in moral excellence: "I wish'd to live on without committing any mistake at any time" (Franklin, 32). Even after transforming to Deism, Franklin published thirteen strikingly Puritanical suggestions to living a virtuous life. These guidelines included the virtues of temperance, chastity, sincerity, and order, among others. In his goal to live humbly, Franklin even directed to "imitate Jesus, " the Puritan messiah whose divinity he refused to recognize (Franklin, 33). Where in fact the difference is out there between Franklin's and the Puritans' morality is not in their moral code itself, but in their different motivations to follow this code. As explained before, the Puritan God perceives nearly all people as undeserving of salvation, with only a go for few lucky enough to avoid damnation. With eternal salvation or damnation at stake, the Puritans contacted morality in a dogmatic manner. They used the bible as God's guide to living life, thinking that straying from Calvinist morals made them "worse than brute beasts" in the sight of God (Winthrop, 1). Franklin firmly assumed that virtuous living benefitted oneself not merely in the afterlife, but also possessed real benefits in today's life: "certain actions might not be bad because these were forbidden, or good because it commanded them, these actions might be forbidden because they were harmful to us, or commanded because these were beneficial to us" (Franklin 29). Franklin seems to view god as a somewhat of your father-figure: he makes a rule not only for the sake making a rule, but because he cares about his child and feels the rule is good for her or him. The Puritans and Ben Franklin have opposing ideas of the cause/affect relationship between morality and real human nature. While the Puritans make an effort to live virtuously to avoid regressing to their "nature [of being] corrupt, " Franklin thinks that humans attempt to be good people because they're good naturally.
Both the Puritans' pessimistic view of the God and Franklin's positive view of his God immediately affected just how they saw human characteristics. The Puritans think that God primarily made mankind good, but the Bible state governments that man sinned, and for that reason, their unforgiving God damned mankind for eternity with the selection of a select few. Within a conversation made while campaigning to be governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, a Puritan, explained his views on human being nature: "The exercise of preserving of [natural] liberty makes men increase more evil and in time to be worse than brute beasts" (Winthrop, 1). Winthrop thinks that with out a stable government in rule, man's natural depravity will show, as humans will degenerate to animalistic behavior. Conversely, Ben Franklin thought that mankind is naturally good. Based on his reasoning and reasoning, he figured an "all good, all powerful" God can only create Good, and if God created people, then people must be good (Franklin, 26). While Franklin does believe that man is flawed rather than perfect, he thought that individuals can improve themselves. Franklin himself strove for moral excellence, but found "[he]never attained the efficiency [he] had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far in short supply of it, yet [he] was a better and a more happy man than [he] usually should have been" (Franklin, 34). In a way, Franklin says that God didn't make man perfect, but created a global with those earlier mentioned practical advantages to living virtuously, which generally leads people to live virtuously. Franklin and the Puritans got two different views of God that were in stark compare with each other. Both Franklin's positive view God and the Puritans' pessimistic view of God led both to come up with equally optimistic and pessimistic views of individual dynamics, respectively.
Puritanism and Ben Franklin's Deism are both massively different philosophies, but both of these philosophies remain massively and quite possibly equally influential in modern-day America. While Ben Franklin's was certainly inspired by Puritanism growing up-particularly his view of morality-his beliefs greatly differed from that of the Puritans in his view of God's characteristics, which directly damaged just how he viewed the planet, human nature, and his motivation to reside virtuously. As the Puritans believed within an overbearing and harsh God, Franklin believed in a forgiving God. As a result, the Puritans seen people as by natural means evil, discussed everything as part of God's plan, and implemented a moral code to avoid damnation, while conversely Franklin saw people nearly as good, explained the world with logic and reason, and resided virtuously for useful benefits, alternatively than eternal salvation.
