I never claimed that deism was equal to atheism. You are misrepresenting me.
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I would see deism as a reaction to theism, it proposes a conceptuon of god specifically different to the theistic notion in that it is not a personal, interventionist god. I would categorise deism as atheist.
False hope is worthless. Deism is a belief in god, but not theist god, hence it is atheist. Atheist responds to THEISM, the worship of a personal interventionist god. The deist god is an entirely different concept.
Yes, but the convention of using 'theism' to refer to personal, interventionist gods was established long ago - and the early deists used the term 'deist' specifically to distinguish between the theistic concept of god and the deism is identified as deism to seperate it from theism.Personally I see deism as more accurately a subset of atheism.