Deism

[steve_bank]

Have not heard te term in modern times
Thomas Jefferson and contemporaries were deists. Jefferson created a version of the bible without the supernatural.

Argument by design s an old argument for god.

Deism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Deism (/ˈdiːɪzəm/ DEE-iz-əm [1][2] or /ˈdeɪ.ɪzəm/ DAY-iz-əm; derived from Latin deus, meaning "god")[3] is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology[4] that rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Deism is also defined as the belief in the existence of God solely based on rational thought, without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority.[3][4][5][6][7] Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology, that is, God's existence is revealed through nature.[3][4][5][6][8]

Since the 17th century and during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in 18th-century England and France, various Western philosophers and theologians formulated a critical rejection of the religious texts belonging to the many institutionalized religions and began to appeal only to truths that they felt could be established by reason alone as the exclusive source of divine knowledge.[4][5][6][7] Such philosophers and theologians were called "Deists", and the philosophical/theological position that they advocated is called "Deism".[4][5][6][7] Deism as a distinct philosophical and intellectual movement declined towards the end of the 18th century.[4] Some of its tenets continued to live on as part of other intellectual movements, like Unitarianism, and it continues to have advocates today.[3]

Enlightenment Deism​

Origin of the word deism​

The words deism and theism are both derived from words meaning "god": Latin deus and Greek theos (θεός).[3] The word déiste first appears in French in 1564 in a work by a Swiss Calvinist named Pierre Viret[9] but was generally unknown in France until the 1690s when Pierre Bayle published his famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, which contained an article on Viret.[10]

In English the words deist and theist were originally synonymous, but by the 17th century the terms started to diverge in meaning.[11] The term deist with its current meaning first appears in English in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

Herbert of Cherbury and early English Deism​

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, portrayed by Isaac Oliver (1560–1617)

The first major statement of Deism in English is Lord Herbert of Cherbury's book De Veritate (1624).[12] Lord Herbert, like his contemporary Descartes, searched for the foundations of knowledge. The first two-thirds of his book De Veritate (On Truth, as It Is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False) are devoted to an exposition of Herbert's theory of knowledge. Herbert distinguished truths obtained through experience and reasoning about experience, from innate truths and from revealed truths. Innate truths are imprinted on our minds, and the evidence that they are so imprinted is that they are universally accepted. Herbert's term for universally accepted truths was notitiae communes – Common Notions. When it came to religion, Herbert believed that there were five Common Notions.

• There is one Supreme God.
• He ought to be worshipped.
• Virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine worship.
• We ought to be sorry for our sins and repent of them.
• Divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments, both in this life and after it.

Herbert himself had relatively few followers, and it was not until the 1680s that Herbert found a true successor in Charles Blount (1654–1693).[13]

The flowering of Deism, 1696–1801​

See also: Deism in England and France in the 18th century

The appearance of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) marks an important turning point, and a new phase, in the history of English Deism. Lord Herbert's epistemology was based on the idea of "common notions", in effect, on innate ideas. Locke's famous attack on innate ideas in the Essay effectively destroyed that foundation. After Locke, deists could no longer appeal to innate ideas as Herbert had done. Instead, deists were forced to turn to arguments based on experience and nature. Under the influence of Newton they turned to the argument from design as the principal argument for the existence of God.[14]

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Have not heard te term in modern times
Thomas Jefferson and contemporaries were deists. Jefferson created a version of the bible without the supernatural.

Argument by design s an old argument for god.

Do you have some question about deism? In addition to the information you cited, I understand that deism posits a God who created the world but does not intervene in it. The deist God is like a clockmaker who winds up one of her clocks and then just lets it tick away never bothering to alter the time the clock displays. In my opinion, deism so understood has some minor strengths over revealed religion in that deists need not explain any failed prophecies nor dearth of miracles because to them God doesn't reveal anything to anybody nor does she perform miracles. However, the deist God like the God of revealed religion is not necessary to explain the world we live in.

 

[steve_bank]

Have not heard te term in modern times
Thomas Jefferson and contemporaries were deists. Jefferson created a version of the bible without the supernatural.

Argument by design s an old argument for god.

Do you have some question about deism? In addition to the information you cited, I understand that deism posits a God who created the world but does not intervene in it. The deist God is like a clockmaker who winds up one of her clocks and then just lets it tick away never bothering to alter the time the clock displays. In my opinion, deism so understood has some minor strengths over revealed religion in that deists need not explain any failed prophecies nor dearth of miracles because to them God doesn't reveal anything to anybody nor does she perform miracles. However, the deist God like the God of revealed religion is not necessary to explain the world we live in.

And that was in the wiki intro....read before leaping?

No qustions. Information for which some may be inerested in.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

It's kind of the most pointless theistic position ever. It's just positing a god for the sake of having a god and then not having that god do anything. Completely unfalsifiable and completely irrelevant. Basically just atheism for people who don't want to call themselves atheists.

 

[Politesse]

I'm often accused of deism, as a sort of insult by people who are confused about agnosticism. I don't know anyone who actually embraces the position as more than an intellectual exercise.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Carl Jung would take the idea of innate ideas and call them archetypes. In general, they are patterns that people can make without knowing other people made them. Archetypes are real, but just pre-wired instinctual things, not full blown concepts.

Specifically, the concept of God was not an innate idea which is demonstrated by the punishment religion wields among the unfaithful.

 

[steve_bank]

It's kind of the most pointless theistic position ever. It's just positing a god for the sake of having a god and then not having that god do anything. Completely unfalsifiable and completely irrelevant. Basically just atheism for people who don't want to call themselves atheists.

The atheist mistake can be not understanding that religion is emotion and feelings not rational and scientific.

Religious try and shoe horn everything into religion, the flip side being tryimng to fit all things including human behavior into mathematical science.

When I was strarting out as an engineer someone gave me advice, 'You can not apply engineering logic to people;. I found he was right.

I believe religion is just one manifestaion of a comon human trait. In the day people worshippedEric Clapton and the Dead.

Bob Dylan never wrote a coherent set of sentences yet people wrote books and papers on meaning. I watched a home film clip in a Byram bio where he is sitting in front of a typewriter with Joan Baez commending how the lyrics would drive his followers crazy.

When Dylan went electric at a Newport Folk Festival those that had made him into a prphet/folk hero were horrified. He was an entertainer who got rich as an anti system hero.

Religion fills a need.

Before modern observational science logical reasoning leading to a creator was reasonable.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It's kind of the most pointless theistic position ever. It's just positing a god for the sake of having a god and then not having that god do anything. Completely unfalsifiable and completely irrelevant. Basically just atheism for people who don't want to call themselves atheists.

I'd describe deism as theism for people who like a lot about atheism but don't want to be atheists. For many people atheism has a lot of advantages including free thought and freedom from most religious strictures, but atheism lacking a God seems unsatisfying to them because they can't figure out existence without a God. That's essentially what deism is: It's a God for those who doubt religion and who doubt existence without a God.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious. Lots of people wish to keep one foot in the door. Agnosticism and deism are religiously acceptable while atheism is not. So in a way you get to have your cake and eat it too.

 

[Elixir]

Anything that gets rid of officious assholes in ridiculous getups telling other people how to act and soliciting them for money under threat of eternal torture, is all good by me.

 

[steve_bank]

Well said both of you,. Moogley expresses how I feel and how I went from agnostic to atheist.

The pope is just a man in a goofy hat.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious. Lots of people wish to keep one foot in the door. Agnosticism and deism are religiously acceptable while atheism is not. So in a way you get to have your cake and eat it too.

I think that a lot of outwardly religious people are closet atheists. They still "depend" on religion possibly as a source of income or socializing, and that's why they don't avow their atheism. So one need not necessarily need to be a deist to keep a foot in the religious door.

 

[Politesse]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious.

Until its seeming premises are challenged intellectually, of course; then it is "merely an absence of belief in god(s)".

 

[southernhybrid]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious. Lots of people wish to keep one foot in the door. Agnosticism and deism are religiously acceptable while atheism is not. So in a way you get to have your cake and eat it too.

I think that a lot of outwardly religious people are closet atheists. They still "depend" on religion possibly as a source of income or socializing, and that's why they don't avow their atheism. So one need not necessarily need to be a deist to keep a foot in the religious door.

Not that we're on topic, but I've met two or three atheist Christians about 10 or 15 years ago. They went to a Methodist church on Sundays, but then they met up with an atheist group during the week. They loved their churches. They just thought of the beliefs as Christian mythology, which is obvious to atheists. Organized religion serves a lot of purposes for people. It's just that some of us aren't happy being around that mythology.

I've known a few people who could be called Deists, despite never using that old term. They strongly believed that there must be a god but that god doesn't intervene or make up any rules for humans to adhere to.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious.

Until its seeming premises are challenged intellectually, of course; then it is "merely an absence of belief in god(s)".

I suppose I must be one of those closet theist/deists then. I was actually with friends singing holiday songs and some were about the magic savior. I'm so ashamed of my hypocrisy.

 

[steve_bank]

Being atheist and rejecting all contact with religion is a hard way to go.

Rituals are fine, like Christmas. Now just a commercial holiday obviously but based on the celebration of the birth of a demigod.

I knew an atheist who became Catholic so he could more easily socialize with his wife at church functions.

Bach's and Handel's religious music is enjoyable. Greg roan chants.

 

[Politesse]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious.

Until its seeming premises are challenged intellectually, of course; then it is "merely an absence of belief in god(s)".

I suppose I must be one of those closet theist/deists then. I was actually with friends singing holiday songs and some were about the magic savior. I'm so ashamed of my hypocrisy.

Don't worry, as long as you lacked a belief in the lyrics, you're safe.

 

[abaddon]

Claiming to be atheist is embracing complete independence from all things religious. Lots of people wish to keep one foot in the door. Agnosticism and deism are religiously acceptable while atheism is not. So in a way you get to have your cake and eat it too.

"Statistics on atheism are often difficult to represent accurately for a variety of reasons. Atheism is a position compatible with other forms of identity including religions. Anthropologist Jack David Eller states that "atheism is quite a common position, even within religion" and that "surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion." Furthermore, he observes that "some atheists call themselves 'spiritual', and as we have shown above, atheism in its broadest sense does not preclude other religious concepts like nature spirits, dead ancestors, and supernatural forces." (from here)

If it's true that there are religious atheists in the world (and it is) that's the death of the idea of atheism as anti-religion.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Anthropologist Jack David Eller states that "atheism is quite a common position, even within religion" and that "surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion."

There must be some kind of difference I suppose between everyday atheism and religious atheism. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

I will say that based on behavior, and not self reporting, there are a helluva lot of atheists out there that are unaware of their atheism.

 

[abaddon]

There must be some kind of difference I suppose between everyday atheism and religious atheism. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Everyday atheism = a person being not-theist from one day to the next, and reading up on science as part of what he feels is most meaningful in life.

Religious atheism = a person being not-theist from one day to the next, and practicing reverence towards (or unity with) a supra-human something as what he feels is most meaningful in life.

The common denominator is being "not-theist". So that's the commonality that informs the definition. The 100 other things an atheist might be don't figure into it.

Maybe the confusion comes from thinking religion is necessarily about gods. Religious = theist, yeah? That's a common mistake among christocentric persons.

Theism is sometimes a feature of religions but is not religion. Supernaturalism is often a feature of religions but is not a trait of all religion.

Atheism is not anti-religionism. Atheism is not physicalism. Atheism is not naturalism. Atheism is not secularism.

To try to limit atheism to one 'not-theist' group is to leave a billion other 'not-theist' persons out of the 'not-theist' group. The illogic of this should be clear.