Clockwatchers

"It was treated as heretical--akin to atheism--because Deists rejected Biblical authority. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, wrote that the authors of the canonical Gospels were 'ignorant, unlettered men' who laid 'a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications.' He famously crafted his own Bible sans miracles."

Steven Waldman at Beliefnet discusses the return of Deism.