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mackbrislawn
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Why would they think it’s true?
Oh, I know, it’s so they can say they believe in God, but without having to do anything about it.
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Oh, I know, it’s so they can say they believe in God, but without having to do anything about it.
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flaming_hito
Guest
In my case, it’s simply to distance myself from the more raving of the atheists. I am an atheist in the strictest sense of the word - I am without theism - but I much prefer the moniker Deist because I do feel that there is some spiritual force in the laws of the universe (watch for the Fibonacci Sequence in nature - it’ll blow your mind.) 
It’s the wrong way to look it to say “Oh, I know, it’s so they can say they believe in God, but without having to do anything about it.” It’s to say, “I believe in God, but I don’t claim to understand God, and I don’t believe anything that claims to understand God.” I try to be a nice person and I try to learn more about this universe that some deity (which a life spent in America makes me call God) put in place. Look at DNA, the secret of life hidden within each of us, or gravity. I just don’t think that any religion is/was exclusively privy to the information God wanted us to SEARCH FOR in every other respect, so I simply hold to what I know and try to make that a larger body of knowledge.
It’s the wrong way to look it to say “Oh, I know, it’s so they can say they believe in God, but without having to do anything about it.” It’s to say, “I believe in God, but I don’t claim to understand God, and I don’t believe anything that claims to understand God.” I try to be a nice person and I try to learn more about this universe that some deity (which a life spent in America makes me call God) put in place. Look at DNA, the secret of life hidden within each of us, or gravity. I just don’t think that any religion is/was exclusively privy to the information God wanted us to SEARCH FOR in every other respect, so I simply hold to what I know and try to make that a larger body of knowledge.
There is no evidence for Deism being true. In my experience, it’s simply the Atheist’s unbelief of specific doctrine while affirming a belief in some sort of deity. Deism can never be “proven” for the same reason no religion can be “proven”: it ultimately relies on faith in a deity, which is, by definition, belief without evidence. The only salient point is that it makes no other presumptions and makes no attempts to “convert” others. At least from my understanding, it’s just a box for those people who have had those spiritual experiences but don’t attribute them to any holy text or doctrine.
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mackbrislawn
Guest
This is true too. It’s to be an atheist without having to do their ravings!
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LPLawhead
Guest
It seems to me a bit foolhardy to ask non-Deists how it is that Deism works. Firstly, Deism does hold that there is a God, the great creator of existence. It also holds that once God created existence, in other words set in motion the laws that govern existence, there was no reason beyond that to play a constant role in human (or other) personal affairs. None of this means that we are Godless wretches akin to Atheists. I love God as much as the most devout Catholic, I just refuse to accept controlled organized religion and I don’t accept that God is revealing his word and will through random people to be spread across the planet. I don’t buy the idea that in a vast universe we are anything like the center of it and I think it’s foolish to believe what you are told about the Bible, Qu’ran or Bhagavad Gita without critical speculation. Do I believe that Jesus had some good things to teach? Absolutely. Do I believe he was God incarnate sent to be sacrificed to himself for our sins? No. Do I believe he was ressurected after being crucified? No. Do I believe that through him is the only way to light? Absolutely not. To summarize, there is a lot more to Deism than the belief that God created the world and then just left it. Do some research further into the subject, I’m not saying become a Deist, but do educate yourself on what it’s really all about.
Edit: Wanted to add that a core part of Deism is accepting that what we know about existence will continue to grow and change as we learn more. It is by experience, reason and logic that we know God. Just because chaos and entropy play a part in the clockwork of the cosmos doesn’t take anything from the idea of creation as a clock. We have to move past the idea of order that our frail minds have constructed and see order on a grander scale in which disorder plays a pivotal role.
A few reference links for interested parties:
deism.com/
deist.info/index.html
positivedeism.com/deistbible.html
Edit: Wanted to add that a core part of Deism is accepting that what we know about existence will continue to grow and change as we learn more. It is by experience, reason and logic that we know God. Just because chaos and entropy play a part in the clockwork of the cosmos doesn’t take anything from the idea of creation as a clock. We have to move past the idea of order that our frail minds have constructed and see order on a grander scale in which disorder plays a pivotal role.
A few reference links for interested parties:
deism.com/
deist.info/index.html
positivedeism.com/deistbible.html
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
Anyone that really believes he is a Deist should read: The Analogy of Religion by Joseph Butler, written in 1736 by an Anglican Bishop. It is the most famous, and the most effective argument against Deism that was even penned. It is considered one of the all time great books. Its elevated tone is in marked contrast with that of the writings which it opposes; and though this work makes considerable demand on the reader, its moral qualities have won for it a permanent place in English literature." Grolier list of One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature #44; Printing and the Mind of Man #193. The entire work is online at the above link.
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Yes, I believe they found Enlightenment principles as they understood them to apply in deism, the falseness of any superstitious “miracles”, the fact that with simple Deism one could avoid the brutal religious wars that shook Europe the previous century. The fact that Deism does away with the need for any institutional religion which many viewed as mere vehicles of wealth accumulation for the priests and bishops must have been a plus in their eyes.
Deism also satiated many deist’s great anticlericalism. Benjamin Franklin: “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” or “I wish Christianity were more productive of good works…not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing…or making long prayers filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.”
For many apostles of the enlightenment, Reason was the New God, hence French Revolutionary Robbespierre’s elevation of the Goddess of Reason to displace Christ. Reason had no time for churchly “superstitions.”
Thomas Jefferson: “You judge truly that I am not afraid of the priests”, “It is not to be understood that I am with Jesus Christ in all his doctrines. I am a materialist, he takes the side of Spiritualism.” Among the “charlatanisms of this band of dupes and impostors [such as priests]”, “Paul was the great…first corruptor of the doctrine of Jesus.” Jefferson wished to rescue Christianity from such “artificial systems…the immaculate conception of Jesus (sic), his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy.” Some list.
I have been meaning to get this book but I read a review and the author actually analyzes what exactly America’s Founding Fathers believed. I think it’s the right book.
chapters.indigo.ca/books/Faiths-Our-Fathers-What-Americas-Alf-Mapp/9780742531154-item.html?ref=Search+Books%3a+%2527Faiths+of+our+Fathers%2527
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LilyM
Guest
Right or wrong, it’s absolutely incompatible with Christianity, for obvious reasons.
I agree with Albert Einstein. ‘God does not play dice’.
It is an insult to the Supreme Being to hold that he/she/it would create anything without having a reason or purpose in mind for it. And creating living beings for a reason and a purpose necessitates a personal involvement with them.
The god of the Deists clearly is no better than a wilful two-year-old who creates a sandcastle out of mindless boredom or in pursuit of some mindless notion of fun, or picks up a shiny toy only to discard it a minute later and never think of it again, or something.
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LPLawhead
Guest
There is a difference between not thinking that God had a purpose to creating existence and not being too stupid to admit that we have no chance of knowing what it is. It must be great to have a written book of “God’s Word” because then if anyone disagrees with you you can go ahead and reference the word of God. It doesn’t matter if they don’t buy it, you do and that’s what counts! The fact is that revealed religion is nothing more than a carefully constructed opiate for the masses. I contend that God would not have given us brains capable of rational thought and reason only to ask that we turn them off and tune in to the word he passed down through his special favored race. I think it’s ridiculous to think that God spends all day listening in on your life, how self centered can people be? If you buy that I have some nice swampland in Florida for you to take a look at.
Also, here is a really neat site that can bring insight and light into your life, what do you think? Check Out This Link (no adult material)
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flaming_hito
Guest
Actually, that quote isn’t about religion, it’s Einstein disagreeing with some aspects of quantum theory. This is Einstein talking about religion: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists *, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings *.”
And I personally take the other view of it: that it’s an insult to the Supreme Being to hold that he/she/it did things in the matter of a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comic:*
Personally, I don’t see how God is a “wilful two-year-old who creates a sandcastle out of mindless boredom” if he doesn’t personally interact with a particular subset of apes on a particular planet.*
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Ah , welcome back Karl Marx!
Where have you been hiding? By the way, how did that whole plan to stamp out “revealed religion” in Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, Africa turn out last century? I assume that not too many tens of millions had to perish, no?
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LPLawhead
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So your contention is that by not believing in organized religion and not accepting man made texts as holy writ I am a Marxist socialist who wants to wipe all revealed religions off the planet? That’s ridiculous, a huge problem with revealed religion is the tradition of killing off people who refuse to believe it. Being a Deist and certainly not a socialist, I believe that there is such a thing as write and wrong, I just use my God given reason to know it instead of relying on priestcraft and popery to tell me what it is. And as a Catholic, you’re one to talk about stomping out tens of millions. I’m sorry that you aren’t capable of dealing with reality but it’s just plain fact that Christianity is all made up for your pleasure. There never was a Jesus, he was a rendition of the Egyptian God, Horus, who predated him by thousands of years. If you want to live a lie have fun with that but stop trying to influence the rest of the SANE population with your fictional “Word of God”.Ah , welcome back Karl Marx!
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AmbroseSJ
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I can understand your lack of confidence in people that have scandalized and offended you with their narrow minded attitudes, however, your argument does not hold up when scrutinized carefully. Again I ask you, are you familiar with Joseph Butler’s “Analogy of Religion?” He has already proven that your argument is baseless (from a purely rational point of view,) and worse, thoughtless.
He argues from the very things Deists acknowledge; viz. Nature, Reason and a Deity.
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jam070406
Guest
Yeah. And, for you, denying God’s Word allows you to be steeped in whatever self gratifying sin you desire. Talk about self centered. And it’s the same people like you that ask why a loving God would allow people to starve in Africa.
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jam070406
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Lemme guess, you’re an ex-Catholic that had a problem with a moral teaching of the Church?So your contention is that by not believing in organized religion and not accepting man made texts as holy writ I am a Marxist socialist who wants to wipe all revealed religions off the planet? That’s ridiculous, a huge problem with revealed religion is the tradition of killing off people who refuse to believe it. Being a Deist and certainly not a socialist, I believe that there is such a thing as write and wrong, I just use my God given reason to know it instead of relying on priestcraft and popery to tell me what it is. And as a Catholic, you’re one to talk about stomping out tens of millions. I’m sorry that you aren’t capable of dealing with reality but it’s just plain fact that Christianity is all made up for your pleasure. There never was a Jesus, he was a rendition of the Egyptian God, Horus, who predated him by thousands of years. If you want to live a lie have fun with that but stop trying to influence the rest of the SANE population with your fictional “Word of God”.
“Made up for your pleasure”? Are you insane? It’s much harder to live a virtuous life (in Grace) then to spend it trying to fufill your pleasures. Get out of here with your ignorant, immature non-sense.
From what you have written, I see absolutely zero difference between you and an atheist. And that’s why another poster also made the connection with his remark about Marx.
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Oh you are a historian too.There never was a Jesus, he was a rendition of the Egyptian God, Horus, who predated him by thousands of years. If you want to live a lie have fun with that but stop trying to influence the rest of the SANE population with your fictional “Word of God”.
Even anti-Catholic liberal religious historians like John Crossan recognize there was a historical figure named Jesus Christ who had quite the following. You are really skating on thin ice when you start quoting the historically ignorant thesis: Jesus is a myth based on Horus. No prominent historian of the roots of Christianity even holds this view! You may find the odd malcontent journalist like Tom Harpur who propagates it, but even Christianity’s enemies realize the evidence is too strong to deny the historicity of Jesus. There really was such a person. Even the radical Jesus Seminar’s scholars recognize this.Tell me something, where did you get this idea of Jesus as myth. Did you think it up yourself or have you actually read a legitimate prominent scholar in the field who has argued this; or did you watch a wacky pseudo-doc on it on T.V.?
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Oh you are a historian too.
Tell me something, where did you get this idea of Jesus as myth. Did you think it up yourself or have you actually read a legitimate prominent scholar in the field who has argued this; or did you watch a wacky pseudo-doc on it on T.V.?
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LPLawhead
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Wow, I’ve now been called an atheist, an immoral sinner, immature, and more or less an idiot for disagreeing with you. There are many many many many resources for information about the connection with Jesus and Horus as well as other earlier Gods. How CAN you believe the Bible? What evidence do you have to prove that Jesus ever existed? Can i please have a resource or two with substantiated proofs? Even if he WAS a real man, which I don’t think he was, how can you discount all the glaring contradictions throughout the Bible? Do you agree that gays and adulterers should be stoned to death? If a man takes a woman who is unmarried because he wants her should he then able to pay her father for her hand in marriage? What makes you SO sure that your Bible is true? Faith? Faith is what people choose to replace thought.
Also, just because I haven’t sold my brain to religion doesn’t make me an atheist or an evil sicko desperate for an excuse to perform profane acts. If I was why would I care about God anyway? How does my argument not stand up? There is a lot more evidence on my side of there being a God, not one of the monotheistic invented gods, but a true Creator, the God of Nature, than there is that Jesus was the Son/avatar of God sent to be sacrificed to himself in exchange for the wickedness of all mankind being forgiven. It’s OBVIOUSLY a myth, deal with it.
Also, just because I haven’t sold my brain to religion doesn’t make me an atheist or an evil sicko desperate for an excuse to perform profane acts. If I was why would I care about God anyway? How does my argument not stand up? There is a lot more evidence on my side of there being a God, not one of the monotheistic invented gods, but a true Creator, the God of Nature, than there is that Jesus was the Son/avatar of God sent to be sacrificed to himself in exchange for the wickedness of all mankind being forgiven. It’s OBVIOUSLY a myth, deal with it.
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Bubba_Switzler
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This is the place to begin to really understand Deism, both historically and in the modern context. Deists worship Reason and allow that God is pure Reason. Deists are otherwise mostly like atheists taking a ultra-skeptical view of the experiences of the ancients (e.g. the Biblical Jews and early Christians). Deism was a product of the Enlightenment which elevated Reason above Faith as a tool for seeking truth. Deists (like atheists) have enormous faith in human reason.
Which is why Deists are (mostly) close kins of atheists; they deny that their faith is religious simply because they do not practice recognizably religious rituals.
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KyivAndrew
Guest
First of all LPLawhead, can you explain to me what you mean as “write and wrong”? I guess your God-given reason is failing you. I assume you mean “right and wrong”.
O.K. so one relies on oneself to determine what is right and what is wrong according to you. Great. The problem is that in the absence of any moral lodestar, each individual is free to decide and act upon what’s right, and what’s wrong using their own reasoning. So on what basis is your reason superior to Hitler’s sense of reason or Stalin’s? On what standard are you going to rely in claiming you are right and they were wrong. What? Hey, Stalin, this is LPLawhead and I am telling you that you are wrong because my sense of reason tells me so; so please stop killing all those millions of people. That argument is solid as ice. For all the “reasonable deists” sharing your Western view, Stalin could have equally found as many “reasonable scientific socialists” last century to make that contest a toss-up.
Reason has limitations as even philosophers such as Kant acknowledge.
Stalin, Lenin, Marx all believed they were following Reason and Scientific Dialectic Materialism in wiping off millions of people. They relied on “Marxist” reasoning. On what grounds LPLawhead would you hope to convince them that they were wrong. By your individual reasoning? Hmmm
If God is just the one who started the clock of creation, where does Morality come from? Morality is not the same thing as reason. And “popery”; do you mean potpourri?
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KyivAndrew
Guest
God of Nature, eh. Have you ever heard what God the Jacobins and Robespierre tried to establish a cult to in Revolutionary France. I’ll give you a hint if your history is weak. It was the Goddess of Reason, also sometimes amorphously known as the God of Nature. Is that the Deist God you had in mind because that is the Deist god most French Revolutionary Jacobins believed in. Guess what? Nature isn’t too good at listing what is right and what is wrong. Robespierre guillotined thousands of Frenchmen and women at the altar of Nature in a vicious bloodbath until his fellow deists guillotined him in the end.
What makes you believe the “true Creator, God of Nature” as you understand it is universally recognized as having a common moral standard. Why is your God of Nature superior to the French revolutionary’s God of Nature? I would very much like to know.
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