ssociations of independent worship in England. His parents raised him in the Presbyterian church. He was exposed to the normal theological dogma of the period. His father's library consisted mainly of books of polemical divinity (Aldridge, 1967, p. 12). By the age of fifteen, Benjamin Franklin had developed a skeptical mind and was questioning his belief system. His beliefs over the course of his life did not remain static. This is true not only for the area of religion but for other subject matter as well. Benjamin Franklin remained open to discussion and rational influences throughout his lifetime.
In Benjamin Franklin's teenage years he began to doubt the doctrine that his parents had raised him to accept. He was exposed to books on doctrinal points through his voracious appetite for knowledge and through his apprenticeship in the printing trade. Benjamin Franklin was exposed to the writings of deist philosophers through these works which were intended to refute the deist point of view. He became a doubter (Aldridge, 1967, p. 13). At the age of nineteen, Benjamin Franklin write a treatise, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. He was wise enough to realize that the work would offend most people with its attack and questioning of the fundamentals
of Christianity (Huang, 1994, p. 20). In this work, Benjamin Franklin, tried to prove that there exists no free will, evil does not exist, and that all human actions are based on the pleasure or pain which is derived from the action. In Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, he mentions the pamphlet only to disown the work (Forde, 1992, p. 360). Shortly after publication, Benjamin Franklin, destroyed most of the copies realizing that it would alienate and offend his religious colleges and peers and raise their ire against him.
Benjamin Franklin did realize the value of public worship for society. He felt that religion had a place in upholding the v...