Religion for the Sake of Utility

Benjamin Franklin was a well-known Deist. According to Frank Kelleter, after having read several derogatory books on the subject of Deism, Franklin became only more convinced of Deism for "not just the veracity but the ill repute" of the belief system. Franklin's ideas on reason centered around the belief that the individual could discern truth through his own "democratic reason" and that institution wisdom and tradition were obstacles to the individual's ability to discern that truth. Therefore, it makes sense that Franklin would have been drawn to a belief system without a clearly defined dogma.

However, later in Franklin's life he began to have a shift in his religious thought. His changing opinions did not concern the veracity of his religious beliefs, but the utility of them. He once said that he "began to suspect that this Doctrine [of deism] tho' it might be true, was not very useful." He came to this conclusion after seeing how his behavior toward his friends and family had declined without the dogma of religion to keep him in line.

To remedy this, Franklin came up with his own religious sect, which he planned to title "The Society of the Free and Easy" which combined ideas of Deism with the parts of Christianity that he found useful.

However, one must question whether a belief system based on utility contradicts the Enlightenment ideals that we associate with Franklin. The very religious institutions and dogmas that the Enlightenment thinkers spoke against could have argued that their power was necessary to hold society together, and thus, had great utility. If the purpose of the Enlightenment is for the individual to attempt to determine truth through reason, it would seem that the truth-seeker has a responsibility to not simply disregard that truth for the sake of utility, despite how inconvenient that truth may be.