What is Deism?

[sidetrack]

I’ve heard that Voltaire thought of God as like a clockmaker who made the universe,let it run,doesn’t ever intervene again and that this is a deist perspective.I’ve also heard it described as “natural religion”.Is it very much so different from theism?.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I’ve heard that Voltaire thought of God as like a clockmaker who made the universe,let it run,doesn’t ever intervene again and that this is a deist perspective.I’ve also heard it described as “natural religion”.Is it very much so different from theism?.

Deism isn’t really a religion. It describes the stance of those that think a being produce our universe but does not interact in it (just as you have described). But that’s the beginning and end of it. Deistic god concepts are not necessarily anthropomorphized. They don’t issue commands. The don’t respond to their creations. Its not far from atheism.

 

[Legend]

I see Deism as being close to agnosticism, but while the agnostic simply says that he does’nt(can’t ?) know whether there is a God, the Deist says there is a God, but he can’t (maybe doesn’t want to?) be understood.

A good treatise on Deism is ‘The Age of Reason’, by Thomas Paine. Many of the U.S. " Founding Fathers" were Deists. Thomas Jefferson went so far as to rewrite the Biblical life of Christ, leaving out the miracles and other supernatural occurences. So, I guess Deists think it’s all right to respect Jesus, but only as a man.

 

[StrawberryJam]

I’m not sure this thread is in the proper forum. What is Deism is not up for Philosophical debate. It is simply a matter of getting one’s arse off the couch and grabbing the dictionary or google for those who can’t be bothered. This forum is for exchange of thoughts, not definitions of things.

 

[Bradski]

How about: ‘Is deism a valid position?’ so we don’t waste a thread…

It does seem valid if you can’t reconcile something like the ‘fine tuning’ argument with a personal god.

It’s almost my first port of call if someone says the universe is designed. You soon get tired of ‘no it wasn’t’, 'yes it was’, so we head off to: if it was, who is to say it’s not some entity (deity if you like) who then simply shot through or went for the equivalent of a cosmic beer and then forgot about us?

Bit of a shock for us all if he/she turned up and told us that everyone had got it wrong. Except for a few like Voltaire and Jefferson.

 

[StrawberryJam]

How about: ‘Is deism a valid position?’ so we don’t waste a thread…

That would be a proper question.

It does seem valid if you can’t reconcile something like the ‘fine tuning’ argument with a personal god.

Yes, it would be a shock if any deity ever really turned up.

 

[Bradski]

Perhaps there were a few too many cosmic beers to start out with for things to be as we know they are, more after the alleged actions, and when the heck is last call anyway?

A bar that stays open for eternity. No last call. Never get a hangover and the pool table is always free (need an emoticon here that looks like Homer drooling).

Truly heaven. Maybe we can get the Muslims to come over with their virgins if we stand a few rounds.

 

[StrawberryJam]

A bar that stays open for eternity. No last call. Never get a hangover and the pool table is always free (need an emoticon here that looks like Homer drooling).

Truly heaven. Maybe we can get the Muslims to come over with their virgins if we stand a few rounds.

Let’s hope we have enough endurance for it all to enfold as it is told.

 

[Sair]

Truly heaven. Maybe we can get the Muslims to come over with their virgins if we stand a few rounds.

LOL!

This might be the hedonist’s heaven - but speaking as a philosophical hedonist, I think there would need to be more to heaven than constant celebration - it would lose its appeal after a fairly short while…

Deism is a position quite distinct from theism and atheism, in that it allows belief in an intelligent being who might have either designed or just tinkered with the universe, and doesn’t intervene in it to any particular extent. Epicurus, although he was not an atheist, believed that such gods as might exist took no real interest in human lives or relationships, and were therefore irrelevant to how we might choose to live. The deist view makes sense to me, because what could a being capable of creating universes really care about the minutiae of daily human existence? It would be rather like us taking a proprietary interest in the intimate affairs of ants.

And like any cause of the universe, an intelligent creator still requires explanation in its own right, whether it conforms to the characteristics of a person or not.