“God is an essence we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is gotten rid of there will never be any liberal science in the world.”

—  John Adams

Attributed to Adams in A Brief History of Disbelief BBC Four (2005) by Jonathan Miller, Online video http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief. The two sentences are derived from two different letters to Thomas Jefferson, written five years apart, juxtaposed to give a misleading impression of Adams' meaning. The first comes from his letter of 17 January 1820, and the second from his letter of 22 January 1825.
Misattributed

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John Adams 202
2nd President of the United States 1735–1826

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