From the Cutting Room Floor

Editing a Crash Course script is a constant balancing act. We need to fit as much information as we can into a 12 minute episode while making sure to prioritize complexity and nuance. Naturally a lot of really cool facts end up on the cutting room floor. 

In Crash Course Religions, which just recently wrapped, we had 25 episodes to cover one of the world’s oldest and most controversial topics. Easy, right? Today we’d like to share one of our favorite “cut for time” stories that didn’t quite make it into the series.  

In episode 13, we explore Atheism and its relationship to religion. We hit on some of the big players of course, like Nietzsche, Voltaire, and Pascal. But there was one man whose story ended up being cut from that episode, even though his portrait makes a brief appearance in the discussion on Deism: Benjamin Franklin. 

Franklin faced some religious backlash in his day. But one of the more unique instances came with his invention of the lightning rod. Why? Well as it turns out, some religious leaders objected on the grounds that diverting lighting was a direct interference with God’s “most effective method” of punishing sinners. Yikes! In his defense, Franklin had this to say: “Surely the thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the rain, hail, or sunshine of Heaven, against the inconvenience of which we guard by roofs and shades without scruple.”

A very Deist response from Franklin that probably didn’t win him any favors with those angry religious leaders.