Cesare Beccaria (1738) It was on this date, March 15, 1738, the famous Italian legal reformer Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana, was born in Milan. He opposed the death penalty and believed education would reduce crime – a belief borne out in practice so frequently to this day that only a Christian Dominionist would dispute it. […]

John Adams (1735) It was on this date, October 30, 1735, that the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard, where he first intended to study for the orthodox ministry, but the reality of orthodoxy sobered him and he turned to the law. […]

Roger Williams Banished (1635): Separation of Church and State It was on this date, September 13, 1635, that Separatist preacher Roger Williams, aged about 32, was banished by the Massachusetts General Court for perpetually advocating religious tolerance and separation of church and state.[1] For denouncing the Massachusetts Bay Company charter, and for holding "divers new […]

The betterment of humankind was not a high priority of Christian Europe, or of the Muslim East. It was never considered that humanity could be improved.

Wrote Thomas Jefferson, “I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in [Christianity] than he did.”

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions."

As Dupont explained in his Philosophie de l'univers (1796), he was a Deist.