Tour Guide: Here we have Benjamin Franklin and Jonathon Edwards discussing topics like religion, philosophy, and daily life among a host of other subjects. We will only have time to stop and listen in on a small part of the conversation, though. Let’s listen in…

Edwards: O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held ofer in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in Hell (214).

Franklin: The word “sinner” means to me that they cannot correct whatever they did. I prefer the word “errors” and I do not believe in Hell.

Edwards: You will burn forever because of your Blasphemy to the holy name of God. Neither will Jesus save you; he will be the bringer of your ultimate destruction. Your foot shall slide in due time.

Franklin: My foot shall not slide! I shall make your foot slide to science. I see you use the ideas of John Locke in your sermon. Experience is what everything is all about, and the best way to experience anything is to tinker with it. Tinkering is exactly what I do.

Edwards: Look at us, two very intelligent people, bickering like children! Let us have a proper argument, though without shouting too loudly. I have no reason to shout, and I am sure you are the same. Anyway, about science, God created everything -

Franklin: God did not create everything.

Edwards: God created the processes that created everything.

Franklin: Fair enough.

Edwards: And because everything belongs to God, he has the right to destroy everything.

Franklin: I see your reasoning. It’s the chicken and egg paradox, but your answer is God made them both.

Edwards: Yes.

Franklin: And your answer to why everything is the way it is is God.

Edwards: Yes!

Franklin: Oh, dear. You need serious medical help. Laughing You still believe there is a God when all there really is is Physics. Laughs some more

Edwards: Your foot shall slide into the inferno of Hell. You are a wicked, unbelieving Israelite, one of God’s visible people (207)!