(September 15, 2019 at 3:10 pm)Inqwizitor Wrote: If we want to really get down to an ontological principle, we should ask, "What is a god?"

Well that's the issue, isn't it? Theists and deists alike haven't defined what a god is, let alone provided evidence for such a thing.

(September 15, 2019 at 3:10 pm)Inqwizitor Wrote: That might be the fundamental problem with deism, actually. In that case, though, atheism loses cognitive meaning, as well.

How does atheism "lose cognitive meaning?"

(September 15, 2019 at 3:10 pm)Inqwizitor Wrote: The issue is basically, why is there something rather than nothing? That is at least a reason, if not an entirely convincing one (and to be convinced is subjective anyway), to accept some sort of necessary existent.

Why should we accept that as a sensible question in the first place? Who says that "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is even an idea worth discussing?

The question implies that there has to be something instead of nothing, which isn't true. There doesn't "have" to be anything, there simply is. There are no shoulds or should nots, there's simply what is. And the reality is, we are here.

[How do I quote just the poster's text, without quoting mine along with it?]

If we have no working definition of what a god is, then what does atheism actually mean?

The reason for existence is a fascinating idea worth discussing, at least to me (and billions of other people, evidently). That there simply is no reason or that the question is not worth discussing is not any more convincing than religious ideas. 

Whether or not there "has" to be something or not is the crux of many a metaphysical debate. Simply asserting one way or the other is one way of dealing with that; but there is no compelling reason to agree.

(September 15, 2019 at 3:10 pm)Inqwizitor Wrote: The issue is basically, why is there something rather than nothing? That is at least a reason, if not an entirely convincing one (and to be convinced is subjective anyway), to accept some sort of necessary existent.

Nothing is not an issue. No one has a description of nothing. If we can't describe nothing we have no need to argue about nothing.

(September 15, 2019 at 1:22 pm)Inqwizitor Wrote: There are arguments for the existence of "God", that actually, in the end, don't amount to much more than a hypothetical Prime Mover, or "something" — we don't know what — that is the source of reason, volition and material phenomena. 

Is deism pointless or even dishonest, because it's asserting something as knowledge that we cannot know? Did you ever seriously consider it instead of atheism? Or is there any practical difference?

When I was considering similar questions, I realized that there was no reason to assign the attributes of awareness and willfulness to a deistic God.  Such an uncaring and non-participating God might as well be a completely mechanical law of the universe, a mere given about reality.

And without the attributes of awareness and willfulness, you might as well not call it "God" at all, to avoid confusions.  At that point, becoming an atheist is just a matter of intellectual honesty.

OP: From what I understand of deism, it requires at least a bit of supernatural belief. There's no way I'll even consider riding that train.

Yes, I think deism is pretty much pointless (dishonest, I can't say).  It suffers from the same fatal fallacy as all other incarnations of the KSA and appears to function as a sort of security blanket for people who want there to be at least some magic in the universe.

Boru

Deism, is the inability to accept or understand that natural processes happen naturally.

It would be similar to thinking that mechanical processes need some kind of natural process in order for it to move.

A car moving down the street is being pulled by several invisible, intangible horses. An airplane achieves flight because many invisible, intangible birds pull it into the air.

Deism puts something in front of a natural process because people don't understand the nature of nature.