Refutation of Deism

[Brown10985]

Can someone tell me some good books or articles that have a good refutation of deism? Thank you

 

[RobedWithLight]

It would be good if you could first give us an idea what deism really is.

Gerry

 

[mtr01]

RobedWithLight:

It would be good if you could first give us an idea what deism really is.

Gerry

From what I remember of deism (way back in college and high school theology) is that it is sort of a “clockwork” view of God. The deist believes in God as the first cause of the universe. He started its “ticking” and basically left it alone to its own design after that. Once He finished with creation, He was no longer involved.

I’m pretty sure that’s deism in a nutshell. If I’m offbase, please correct me…or feel free to explain it better.

 

[Brown10985]

mtr01:

From what I remember of deism (way back in college and high school theology) is that it is sort of a “clockwork” view of God. The deist believes in God as the first cause of the universe. He started its “ticking” and basically left it alone to its own design after that. Once He finished with creation, He was no longer involved.

I’m pretty sure that’s deism in a nutshell. If I’m offbase, please correct me…or feel free to explain it better.

You sumed it up pretty well.
Anyone have any good refutations of this?

 

[RobedWithLight]

Brown10985:

You sumed it up pretty well.
Anyone have any good refutations of this?

Well, from what I’ve understood so far about deism, a creator who creates and then abandons His creation to its own devices may pose serious ethical and moral problems. For instance, it would give rise to the problem of what is, is right. In this sort of universe, morality and ethics, including the concept of moral justice are pointless and meaningless. A universe without a universal governor, left on its own, would move in ways that would seem utterly arbitrary, like a wayward car moving at 100 miles per hour without a driver. The car might hit another car, run over a herd of cows, or hit and even kill people crossing the street, yet we cannot blame the car nor can we punish it for the destruction it causes simply because it has no driver whom we can question or punish.

Gerry

 

[PilgrimJWT]

So, if God is the responsible for the runaway car, should we punish him???

 

[RobedWithLight]

PilgrimJWT:

So, if God is the responsible for the runaway car, should we punish him???

Who would punish Him? In such a Godless universe, punishment is pointless because it logically follows that the universe left on its own by its Creator, would only be following its own inexorable cosmic programming, defined at the very point of the creation. What Is, Is.

A computer program intended to calculate only the square root of a number cannot be blamed for its inability to calculate the cube root of a number, nor can we blame the programmer because it wasn’t his “intention” in the first place to write a program that does more than what it actually does. While a watch would continue to function as a watch even in the absence of the watchmaker, there is no way for the watch to act otherwise, like make its arms run backward instead of forward, or at least make it more accurate and efficient, unless the watchmaker intervenes now and then in its operation.

There is no point of “punishing” the Creator because there would be no true morality or justice to speak of, in the absence of universal moral standards, which would only have real meaning in a universe in which a personal God actively governs while allowing His creatures free will.

Gerry

 

[amarischuk]

For shame, the person asked a simple question and non of these Catholic scholars could point him in the direction of Etienne Gilson.

Two books of his (that I have read…I’m sure others touch on it) deal with Voltair-style deism. The first would be the “Unity of Philosophical Experience” (especially the 3rd section “The Modern Experiment”) and the other book would be “God and Philosophy” (or was it “Philosophy and God”?)

Both are still in print. Another book, no longer in print is “Christianity and Philosophy” by Gilson.

Gilson’s close friend Jacques Maritain also touches briefly on Deism in his “Introduction to Philosophy” however it is a difficult book to find.

Also try Frederick Copleston…his 9 volume History of Philosophy is still a benchmark and still is in print. Perhaps also see his debates with A J Ayer and Bertrand Russell. His debate with Russell is on the net and reprinted in Russell’s book “Why I am not a Christian”. I think it might be more difficult to find his debate with Ayer.

For a more modern discussion of some theistic problems in Thomism, see Norris Clarke’s “The One and the Many” which explicitly deals with Kantian/Humean criticisms of metaphysics.

All are good, fairly conservative Catholic philosophers…though you might start to criticize the present state of the Church because of their writings. Maritain wrote a letter in support of contraception, Gilson was friends with Cardinal de Lubac, Marie Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar, Copleston’s book on Aquinas is critical of Thomistic ‘solutions’ to Aristotelean/Averroes problems and Norris Clarke is an outspoken Jesuit professor at Fordham who has written extensively on classical (Aristotelean) interpretations of Thomism.

But that is what you get…there is no such thing as perfectly orthodox/conservative scholarship in the Church. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that it is an oxymoron.

Adam