It seems you have a certain antipathy for the Holy Book, USCB. You should know that not all people who love the Bible are "biblical literalists."
Plus it's interesting to me that the Holy Scriptures is the #1 best-selling book of all time. I don't see how that could be the case if it were just "junk."
Notwithstanding, on my understanding of the definitions given, I conclude that both TJ and Ben believed that God created the world -- matter, natural law, lifeforms, etc. -- out of nothing. (And then He "split," or left the scene....) To that extent, they fit the description of "creationists."
These facts about TJ are undisputed. Essentially you have called me a liar because I preferred to use the word "creationist" in its radical, primary meaning, to refer to someone who believed in a Creator, as betty boop as shown:
creationism n. Theology. 1. The doctrine ascribing the origin of all matter and living forms as they now exist to distinct acts of creation by God. Compare evolutionism.rather than the PC version from modern, liberal dictionary editors.
So when I responded to you, "He is a DEIST", it was not as though that didn't count, or that I was asserting that he was an orthodox Christian, it was specifically to say he and just about everyone else at the time, and most certainly orthodox Christians of one stripe or another, believed that that the universe was created by a Creator. I mean, what else was there at the time? There were probably a few atheists, and all the people who believed that the universe is eternal, but that is exactly the sense in which I used the word. The meaning of a word is not "stretched" or "lost" by using it in its primary, or more radical sense; it is lost by what C.S. Lewis called "verbicide", or, the deliberate destruction of words. You undoubtedly have the right to your preferred usage of the term, and so do I.
Cordially,
The Exaltation of a Reasonable Deity:
Thomas Jefferson’s Critique of Christianity
...Jefferson molded and absorbed these various ideologies (among others) and elevated God to the stature of Rational Creator. As many enlightened reformers of his age rejected God and Christianity alike, Jefferson found a way to justify belief. By simplifying religion and remaining aloof to exclusivistic tendencies, Jefferson produced a rational theology that, although was at times considered outlandish, was not unique or radical. It may not have exactly fit the bill of orthodox traditionalism, but Jefferson stood amongst powerful company in his perception of a reasonable Deity. For instance, several of the Founding Fathers held an accepted belief in general principles of religion. As Ben Franklin noted in a letter to Ezra Stiles in 1790:
Here is my creed. I believe in One God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render Him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion.12
I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a new view of the Universe, in its [sic] parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its [sic] composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it’s distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles … it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion … We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it’s course and order.
The irony of Jefferson being used to imprecate design is palpable.
Cordially,