A large portion of the population of established religions today are nominal members (i.e.  members only by name). Most of them still attend worship/church services but some never go to church at all. Most of these nominal members believe in the essential doctrines of their religion specially those that seem to be right in their judgment. But, when the teachings of their religion go against their common sense and rational thinking, they reject them.

In my observation, many Catholics in the Philippines (I can only speak of my fatherland), especially those who are highly educated, are of this type. They choose which doctrines to believe and which doctrines to reject; a reason why they are referred to by Catholic authorities as “cafeteria-style” Catholics. I presume that nominal members of other religious groups do the same. And also those nominal members of many religions around the world.

Without knowing it, these people are actually placing much value on personal reasoning and judgment over and even against the teachings of their religion. So, without being conscious about it, they are actually rationalists in matters pertaining to religion. Some may question many teachings of their religion and others may just dismiss them as baseless. Generally though, they find the existence of God to be a very reasonable idea by merely observing the beauty and complex designs of nature.

If this is so, they actually subscribe to a set of beliefs that is basically deist. The Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary defines a deist as “one who believes in the existence of a God or Supreme Being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason.” The deist is the person and the religious philosophy is called deism.

I was in a much the same situation before. I didn’t know that such a religious philosophy had a name and history. It was a very popular philosophy back in the 17th and 18th centuries and there were attempts to institutionalize it (like in France and in the US) but the efforts failed partly due to the individualist nature of deism. But it was revitalized with the advent of the internet and now, according to a survey done by the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI ), deism or a simple belief in a Deity is the fastest growing religion in the United States with an astounding estimated growth of +717% from 1990 to 2004.

To my fellow deists, I think its about time to go out of our shells and to be seen as what we are and to show the rest of the world that we are not just nominal Christians, or nominal Jews, nominal Muslims or nominal whatever. We have a religious philosophy of our own. We are deists!

Reference cited:

Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI ). 2001. American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS): Top Twenty Religions in the United States. Accessed on September 21, 2006 at adherents.com

Note: This is a revised version of the article by the same author that was published at Relijournal.com, the link to the article is http://www.relijournal.com/Religion/You-Might-Be-a-Deist-Without-Knowing-It.6071.

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The pure and simple belief in God — the Uncaused Cause and Designer of all things — without the added baggage of unreasonable and unsubstantial claims of special revelations (i.e. ancient sacred books) is what defines deism. A deist’s knowledge about God is based on reason, nature and his own conscience.

It has been remarked so many times that the God of deists just set the universe running with its predetermined laws and then left. But, that is not an essential component of deism. Some deists do believe that God may intervene or may have intervened at some point in history in some places and some people but it is a deist’s firm stand that these interventions were not intended to be used as stamps for a supposed message from God.

For one thing, these interventions (classically called miracles or suspensions of the natural laws) can hardly be proven. When the person or persons who were witnesses of such miracles (if it really happened) relate this to other people, those who will receive their message would have to rely on their words for anything that they will have to say.

Thus, modern deists do not out rightly claim that miracles are impossible to happen. They can occur by God’s will, but they are miracles or maybe revelations only to those who have witnessed it first hand. Any revelation/miracle that comes from second hand sources becomes unreliable and is not anymore obligatory for any reasonable person to believe.

Secondly, people can easily be deceived by what they see or perceive. The prevalence of ghost stories show that even in modern times, people are still prone to deception. As David Hume rightly commented, it is more possible that the person who reports a miracle is lying or is deceived than that a miracle has really happened . The rationale is that we see so many people in our lifetime being deceived and/or lying but very rarely or none at all do we see miracles occurring.

Note: This is a revised version of the article by the same author that was published at Relijournal.com, the link to the article is http://www.relijournal.com/Religion/What-is-Deism.6095.

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