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I am a deist?
- Thread starter xkatz
- Start date
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
Possibly. Deists also tend to believe that God never (or seldom) intervenes in human affairs. Before Darwin, religious skeptics tended to be deists rather than atheists. Nowadays, I think that skeptics tend to see less need to posit a creator God to explain the way things are.
xkatz
Well-Known Member
I believe that as well.
What are your religion's scriptures?
xkatz
Well-Known Member
I'm thinking you're not Deist until you're sure what religious scriptures you're rejecting.
Speaking as an atheist, the Torah has a lot to offer.
xkatz
Well-Known Member
I'm thinking you're not Deist until you're sure what religious scriptures you're rejecting.
Speaking as an atheist, the Torah has a lot to offer.
Well I do know it's the torah for a fact and I reject all other religious scripture as well.
On what grounds?
xkatz
Well-Known Member
That they are man made and most of the rules these scriptures create are illogical and/or arbitrary.
Have you tried, like, studying them? It'd be a shame to throw away Judaism just because you haven't tried on the coat of many colours.
But I would say that to be a Deist you would have to have Deist beliefs, not just reject other beliefs.
xkatz
Well-Known Member
Well seeing that I have grown up Jewish, read Torah, had a Bar Mitzvah and did Hebrew School for ten years I would say I have pretty good knowledge.
And I have read a fair amount on Deism, and I believe in most, if not all of the beliefs in Deism.
Then why do you question that you are diest?
xkatz
Well-Known Member
I don't know I wanted to see what other people had to say I guess.
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
Deists do not generally believe in any reveled revelation. Nor do we believe in a 'personal' or 'interventionist' god. Usualy, god to a Deist is the 'First Cause', we feel no need to anthropomorphize god into something resembling humans in appearance or emotion.
It is also important to understand that while a belief in a Deistic god is perfectly reasonable, you cannot 'prove' god through reason.
xkatz
Well-Known Member
Well I pretty much believe all of that anyways.
However I meant to say belief is in reason, so that's my bad I guess.
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
xkatz
Well-Known Member
ThereIsNoSpoon
Active Member
Deists are people that normally think God to be some kind of supernatural alien who has set all in motion and now only watches as things unfold, or even just left alltogether.
No interference by him, nor is there any moral stuff with hell and paradise and other nifty things.
St Giordano Bruno
Well-Known Member
I am not a deist but I am an atheist* with an emphasis on that asterisk because the simple question "do you believe in God?" I don't believe can be answered with a simple yes or no answer.I am certainly an atheist when it comes down to a Biblical or Yahweh definition of God and so I guess many deists would too. I do subscribe to many of those deist principles like I do not believe in an anthropomorphic god in any way shape of form nor do I believe in divine intervention such as with miracle cures for cancer. But where I beg to differ I do not believe there was some intelligent designer or architect that created, designed or built the universe in the beginning. Essentially I subscribed to Hawking's view that the universe created itself through spontaneous creation such as a quantum fluctuation in the unstable equilibrium of nothingness.
But if one defines "god" as the laws and principles that created the universe and theoretical physicists the likes of Hawking are right with their self made universe, then I think if that is the criteria for God then the universe itself is God. It may be a totally blind and dumb kind of God but a God by that definition anyway. Which is why I describe myself as a scientific pantheist looks on nature and God as one in the same thing.
But if one defines "god" as the laws and principles that created the universe and theoretical physicists the likes of Hawking are right with their self made universe, then I think if that is the criteria for God then the universe itself is God. It may be a totally blind and dumb kind of God but a God by that definition anyway. Which is why I describe myself as a scientific pantheist looks on nature and God as one in the same thing.