While the deist concept is an old one, it does seem to be a lot more prevalent today, which is a good thing because it's an indication of people realizing the idiocy of the mainstream religions and moving away from them even though they don't want to dump the theistic concepts entirely. It also makes arguing for theism easier because the god in question is far more ill defined so you can change the definition you're using for it twelve times in a sentence and never have to worry about getting pinned down on some kind of logical inconsistency because the argument they're making is referencing a definition of God that you haven't been using in more than three minutes and is therefore and invalid strawman response on their part.