Sturmrabe

And how much evidence to prove that Deism is NOT true?

hmmm, that would be none...

edit:
actually most Atheists state quite clearly, its Agnostics that decline, and if anything Deism would be general, and theism specific

lunachick

I'd like to state that in my moments of Deism, I am not attributing any characteristics at all to a God or Gods. I do not personify it.

So, I suppose I'm a bit like Columbus - only part-time (less than 2 or 3 hours a week, maybe).

On a semi-related note, did you know that beer and bread are the 2 earliest 'manufactured' foodstuffs, and are even older than the earth itself if you're a young earth creationist? I just learned that yesterday.

Hazel-rah

I mucked about in deism for a time before I finally realized that attributing the universe to a Creator, whatever it might be, was wishful thinking.

I have, however, found much more enduring satisfaction in the pursuit of beer. If you feel inspired to worship something, I highly recommend it... and may I introduce you to the Church of the Belgian Brown?

quasi-sapien

Is there a direct correspondence between those "2 or 3 hours a week" and the occasions when you consume beer and weed? Depressants lower your inhibitions, and hallucinogenics.........well.... :Cheeky:

perfectbite

Thank you for the correction. That is what I get for trying to make sense of words and terms through association. I missed Theology 101. I think my most glaring omission was in allowing Atheism to remain mute. Again thank you for pointing out my error.

I can't help but get the feeling that the categorization of belief is the equivalent of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
But obviously folks have put a great deal of thought into these divisions.

perfectbite

Weed an hallucinogenic? They must have some mighty powerful weed over in the Shenandoah Valley.

_Naturalist_

Well of course not. That's the way deism is set up. It's unfalsifiable and impossible to support with any kind of evidence. No data, no observations, no experiments, no definitions of the god or even how many gods, no process of creation, completely impossible to support with any kind of evidence, unfalsifiable, no hypothesis, no predictions. It's just a word for the idea that someone or something created everything (except for itself) in some way and then left it to never interact with it again.

Columbus

This isn't quite true. It's based on one observation, that the universe exists.


You're adding a good bit of anthropomorphizing here. How do you know that "someone or something" are the only choices? The word "created" has an implication of deliberation. Maybe the universe is a by-product of something else, or a scrap pile. Maybe God became the universe. No-one knows.

People ask the question "Why and how did the universe come to exist?" Probably the answer is something for which we do not even have words.

Oser wrote:
Deism is the affirmation that somehow the universe got here, the most reasonable term for that original cause is God, and that's all we know about God. Making truth statements about God, even basic ones like God doesn't exist or God loves us or whatever, is wishful thinking. Not because they are necessarily wrong, but because we don't know anything about it.

Like Lunachick, I would probably qualify as a part-time Deist. It depends on who I'm talking to and what we're talking about. It's not that my beliefs change, it's that arbitrary labels like "Deist" mean different things under different circumstances. Agnostic is generally the most accurate label for me, and I may well be misrepresenting the beliefs of someone else who refers to themselves as a Deist.

Tom

_Naturalist_

Universe exists, therefore god? How does that work? That means whatever the cause was, it can be called god.

Well, are there any other options than something and someone?

Exactly. So what's the point of calling it god?

Eh. We can have words for whatever we want. We even have words for stuff that doesn't even exist. Making up words for stuff that might exist shouldn't be impossible.

perfectbite

I have given some thought to the distinction between an Atheist and a Deist. Ideally one who does not believe that there is a supreme power of any sort who created the unverse and then stayed around or left would actually be an Adeist.

No wonder I was confused, my received understanding was that it was Atheists who denied the existence of any kind of Divine being but you have pointed out my error and what an Atheist would actually claim is that there is no Divine being that can be pointed at, not that there is absolutely no Divine being at all because that would be the statement of a Adeist.

I wonder if there was a casuistic, demonizing end run that was being made with such definitions.

I have enough trouble with trying to keep the immanent and transcendent apart.
(in essence where the rubber meets the road). For instance, at first I allowed for the American Indian idea of the Great Spirit (acknowledging the universality of all being) as being more immanent than not but adding 'The Happy Hunting Ground' catapults that immanent view into being a transcendent view.