Once again you confirm that if the right button can be found (as true of our friend boop as it is of you), the results will be rather spectacular. Likewise, you convincingly illustrate that seeking definition and meaning will bring clarity to a conversation. I had hoped for a similar result from others on this sidebar, but it seems no curiosity was aroused, no desire to learn stimulated. But, of course, for either of those two things to have occurred, that had to have been their motivation in the first place.
Your remarks lead me to search out my own copy of the July ’75 edition of The National Geographic, and it seems that it was the very year of his death (1790) that Franklin wrote to Ezra Stiles expressing “some doubts” as to the divinity of Christ, but adding that he did not “dogmatize upon” it, expecting it to be a question soon answered. It is in this same letter that Franklin declares his belief in one God,” Creator of the Universe,” and it is at this point where etymology and definition, once again, become “our friends.” The word ‘Creator’ with a capital ‘C’ did not become common until the appearance of the King James Bible (1611) and it has, ever since that time, come to specifically mean the biblical Judeo-Christian ‘God’ (see the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, The Origins of American English Words – see also In The Beginning The story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, by Alister McGrath).
Perhaps it is that letter to which js1138 refers in his abortive effort to undermine boop’s quote of Franklin’s June 28th convention speech by falsely alleging a fabrication of one of the best known speeches arising from that period in America’s history.
Your point about the word Creator is very, very well made. There can be no doubt he was speaking of God in the Judeo/Christian sense of the word, i.e. God the Creator.