What is deism?
Posted by Joemar | Filed under Philosophy
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.
Tags: deism