[The Urban Sombrero]

No you go ahead. Four points based in fantasy and I've spent enough time on the La-La merry-go-round. But there remains this latest point of contention. Average colonists did not fight, it took men of great valor to go against the King. Average colonists stayed home and behaved rather than face the world's most formidable army.

If your pet phrase actually exists as a place, you dwell there. The belief that public pronouncement and public writings are the "that's it" test suggest to me that you, indeed, are a partisan. The partisan reads to reinforce his worldview. Those four points of inquiry take one on a journey that leads to the fact that deistic thought influenced our Founding Fathers. Deism was not secular, nor atheistic. In fact, among our Founders there were non-Christian Deists, but more Christian Deists.