Ethan Allen is famous for being the leader of the Green Mountain boys - a group of Revolutionary war soldiers. However, he was far more than a soldier - he was, like many of the famous American patriots of his time, a Rennaisance man - fluent in science.

He is famous to us today for several of his statements related to reason, logic and religion. A skeptic of the credulity of religion, he is noted for saying:

"In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it that are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue."

Allen also wrote: "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally "denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature."

Allen was aware of the counter argument to skeptical attacks on religion. They tended to rely on faith, and the claim that all claims to knowledge require faith. He saw this as nothing less than an attack on reason itself, and wrote the following to debunk this claim:

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason. If with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.
- Ethan Allen, Revolutionary War hero