P
Portofino
Guest
As I understand it, Deists give some form of honor, reverence, and thankfulness towards God, which does indeed imply that they view God as either well-disposed towards human beings, or else not ill-disposed towards human beings.
Some of the roots of Deism, as I understand it, are in Aristotle and Epicurus; the latter believed that the gods existed in a state of perfect happiness and “unperturbability.” This was not believed to be compatible with emotions such as hatred or jealousy or rancor. This is one historical (though, admittedly, not strictly logical) reason why Deists don’t believe that God is actively hostile towards humanity or means humanity ill; Aristotle or Aquinas would have agreed with Aquinas that this would have been a form of imperfection, whereas God is perfect (it’s also, rightly or wrongly, why some of them had problems with the God of the Old Testament, who had destroyed the world through Flood, or who razed Sodom and Gomorrah, or who willed the death of all Egyptian first-born). When Epicurus said the gods don’t intervene, it was a statement that actually had a very positive feeling tone to it, since popular religion at that time was preoccupied with asking the gods to curse their enemies (he wrote, at one point, “if the gods intervened in human affairs and listened to our prayers we would not be here, since human beings are constantly wishing ill upon each other”).
I do find a Deist’s position plausible insofar as they already believe that God doesn’t intervene in human affairs (whether they are right or wrong about this is a separate issue). The non-intervention of God would seem more plausibly compatible with either A. a God who is indifferent or B. a God who is loving and beneficient, but has sufficient reason not to intervene.
But I think you’re right that we may be projecting human sensibilities onto the Godhead. Normally, we associate non-intervention with indifference or a relatively weak form of anti-pathy (not lifting a finger to help). If the antagonism is active, strong, we associate it with not only refraining from helping, but actively harming. But if God doesn’t intervene – which they believe – then God is not “actively” harming, at least in human terms; which suggests a God who is either benevolently well-disposed towards human beings, or at least non-malevolently indifferent.
I think you’re also right that there is something about the human psyche that resists believing that God is evil. There’s a line in King Lear which goes, “as flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport” but this is a line tending more towards atheism or agnosticism (for how could such a God exist?)
Call it a human intuition, perhaps – the God concept doesn’t make sense to us if God is not good or, at least, not bad (not cruel).
But no, they can’t prove God is good, unless they accept Aquinas’ arguments that God is good – the source of all goodness;., yet remain unconvinced that God has intervened in human affairs (in terms of answering prayers and the like)… In that case, they need simply posit that God has reasons for not intervening, and that we cannot judge God on this point, with our limited human minds.
