In hmolscience, founding fathers fallacy refers to the over-common, albeit misaligned, assertion, that the founding fathers of America were Christian and that American was founded as a "Christian nation". Correctly, in the US Constitution, the founding document of America, the word "god" is NOT found; moreover, the First Amendment (1791) prohibits such integration.

Founding Fathers | List
The following is a meta-analysis ranked listing of the "founding fathers" of America:

	Founder	[3]	[4]	[5]	Atheism	Ligare \| Belief	Discussion
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1.	Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) \| P3 IQ:180\|#91	3	3	3	[HD:17][FA:54] [GA:28]	Atheist [labeled] Epicurean materialism [self-defined]	Authored: Declaration of Independence (1776); advised his nephew to "question with boldness the existence of god" (1797); penned his own Jefferson Bible (1813); most-intelligent American President according to polled (2013) opinion. [7]
2.	James Madison (1751-1836) \| P4 IQ:165\|#245	5	4	5	[HD:18][FA:57]	Atheist [labeled] Social physics [see: Princeton] Anti-Episcopalian	Authored: US Constitution (1787), wherein the word "god" not employed, based on Newtonian mechanics (see: Newtonian government).
3.	John Adams (1735-1826) \| P2 IQ:170\|#216	4	2	2	[HD:14]	Free-thinker [self-defined] Irreligionist [self-defined]	“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” — John Adams (1797), Article 11 of Treaty of Tripoli, Jun 7
4.	Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) IQ:175\|#160	1	5	4	[HD:13][FA:40]	Atheist [labeled] Deist [self-defined]	He edited out the term “sacred”, in Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration, for the term “self-evidence”, so to replace a religion assertion with a rational assertion. (Ѻ)(Ѻ)
5.	George Washington (1732-1799) \| P1 IQ:140\|#415	2	1	1		Atheist [labeled] Deist / Christian [classified] (Ѻ)	In his day, was often labeled an atheist; evidence shows that he was a man of deep, though unorthodox, faith, with views tending toward deism; was fond of referring to god as providence. (Ѻ) Used Thomas Paine’s writings to inspire his troops to remember what they were fighting for, and even suggested that no other individual had done more for the cause of American independence. [6] Refused to take communion; refused to kneel in prayer in churches or at Valley Forge; refused to have a priest at his death bed; refuse to take last rites.
6.	Thomas Paine (1737-1809)	10	7	6	[HD:15][FA:49] [GA:28]	Notorious atheist Deist [self-characterized] Penned: Atheist’s Bible	Considered the first American freethinker to be “labeled an atheist” (Jacoby, 2004). His writings were used by Washington to inspire troops to remember what they were fighting for, and even suggested that no other individual had done more for the cause of American independence. John Adams stated that without his pen, Washington’s military victories would have been in vain. [6]
7.	Samuel Adams (1722-1803)	11	6	7		Puritan (Ѻ)	A supporter and correspondent (Ѻ) of Thomas Paine and his Common Sense and Age of Reason.
8.	Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804)	6	9	9		Secular (Ѻ)
9.	Patrick Henry (1736-1799)		8	8
10.	John Jay (1745-1829)	7	14
11.	James Monroe (1758–1831) \| P5	8				Deist (Ѻ)
12.	Abigail Adams (1744-1818)	9
13.	Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816)		10	10
14.	John Hancock (1737-1793)	12	11
15.	John Marshall (1755-1835)		12
16.	Peyton Randolph (1721-1775)		13
17.	Ethan Allen (1737-1789)					Atheist	Founding father of Vermont, the 14th state.

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Overview
It is frequently asserted, amid religious vs atheism discussions, that America was founded on the Bible and or Christianity. This, however, is incorrect.

In 1996, James Haught, in his 2,000 Years of Disbelief, summarized the founding father's fallacy as such: [2]

“Since disbelief remains a taboo topic, the pattern that people usually called ‘great’ tend to be religious skeptics, is rarely mentioned. Church men generally contend that great figures in history, such as America’s founders, were conventional worshipers. That’s untrue. ‘One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian’, philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler and a team of Encyclopedia Britannica writers said.”

In 2014, Matthew Stewart, in his Nature’s God: the Heretical Origins of the American Republic, traced the origins of the secular nature of the founding fathers; the abstract of which is as follows: [8]

“America’s founders intended to liberate us not just from one king but from the ghostly tyranny of supernatural religion. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Stewart brilliantly tracks the ancient, pagan, and continental ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration. In the writings of Spinoza, Lucretius, and other great philosophers, Stewart recovers the true meanings of “Nature’s god,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and the radical political theory with which the American experiment in self-government began.”

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Declaration of Independence
The following shows the famous 28 Jun 1776 presentation of the Declaration of Independence, the declaration itself penned by Thomas Jefferson, by the so-named Committee of Five (Ѻ)(Ѻ), the three main committee members, namely Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin shows with their respective Haught disbeliever rankings, of the top 64 disbelievers of history:

Signing of the Constitution
The following depicts the scene at the 17 Sep 1787 scene (Ѻ) at the signing of the Constitution of the United States, following its 1776 “Declaration of Independence”, by the newly formed 13 American colonies, from Great Britain, with key players, namely William Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, the architect of the constitution, who used Newtonian government as the foundation of its structure, and Thomas Jefferson, the first American President, along with respective Haught disbeliever rankings shown below Franklin and Madison:

Other
The following are related images founding fathers John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison:

The following are related images founding fathers Thomas Paine, author of Age of Reason (1794), Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington:

The seven main founding fathers, according to Historian Richard Morris (1973), are: John Adams, patriarch of physicochemical social dynamics pioneer Henry Adams, Benjamin Franklin [science believer], Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson [separation of church and state], James Madison [Newtonian government constitution], and George Washington. [1] Another noted founder is: John Witherspoon, a Princeton social physics chief.

References
1. Morris, Richard B. (1973). Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: the Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries. Harper & Row.
2. Haught, James A. (1996). 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt (pg. 11). Prometheus.
3. Herr, Josh. (2015). “12 Founding Fathers, Ranked!” (Ѻ), The Fiscal Times, Jul 2.
4. Kelly, Martin. (2016). “Top 10 Founding Fathers” (Ѻ), About.com, Aug 11.
5. Butler, Derek. (2014). “Top 10 Founding Fathers” (Ѻ), Rant Political, Oct 20.
6. Bolelli, Danele. (2011). “The Filthy Little Atheist … Founding Father” (Ѻ), DisInfor.com, Dec 30.
7. Thims, Libb. (2013). "Poll: 3 Smartest American Presidents?" (N=25-35/18), Nov 11.
8. Stewart, Matthew. (2014). Nature’s God: the Heretical Origins of the American Republic. W.W. Norton & Co.

Further reading
● Holmes, David L. (2006). The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Oxford University Press.

External links
● Founding Fathers of the United States – Wikipedia.
● The Faiths of the Founding Fathers – Wikipedia.