Why not deism?

[Inqwizitor]

Atheism is an amorphous description of a lack of belief in a god or gods. It could mean that someone has no faith in a religious idea about what a god or gods means, or it could be a philosophical conviction of some kind. 

Something I'm curious about is why deism is virtually non-existent nowadays. 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?

[chimp3]

Atheism is an amorphous description of a lack of belief in a god or gods. It could mean that someone has no faith in a religious idea about what a god or gods means, or it could be a philosophical conviction of some kind. 

Something I'm curious about is why deism is virtually non-existent nowadays. 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?

Deism does not supply the believer with a Daddy figure in the sky. The argument for Deism does not supply an atheist with anything. It is the same as if no gods exist.

[GrandizerII]

Atheism is an amorphous description of a lack of belief in a god or gods. It could mean that someone has no faith in a religious idea about what a god or gods means, or it could be a philosophical conviction of some kind. 

Something I'm curious about is why deism is virtually non-existent nowadays. 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?

Yeah I have seriously considered it. In fact, I was a deist for quite a while after leaving the Christian faith because at the time I still found plausibility in standard arguments for God that had nothing to do with Christianity specifically. Then after further reading and discussions with atheists, I came to realize that my belief in the deist God was nothing more than a legacy of my faith in the Christian God, and that I could instead easily hold to a view that is completely naturalistic without any appeal to the divine and whereby all the phenomena I needed my previous God to explain were more satisfactorily explained by the positing of naturalism. So I came to believe that the cosmos necessarily exists, that modal realism better addresses the questions of apparent fine-tuning and the questions of necessity vs. contingency, that the modal ontological argument is just an empty argument if you don't assume the existence of God in the first place, that morality is easily explicable without any logical need for God, and that even the deist concept of God suffers logical problems that naturalism does away with easily.

As for reason and volition, these are products of the nervous system and need not be explained by any sort of phenomena external to the human biology. We have very good explanations for how we come to produce reasoned responses, and we can appeal to computer AIs as good analogies to the human mind (except perhaps for the awareness part, which still has naturalistic explanations anyway ... such as panpsychism which I'm still not really sure about but it's there as an option).

[Inqwizitor]

As for reason and volition, these are products of the nervous system and need not be explained by any sort of phenomena external to the human biology. We have very good explanations for how we come to produce reasoned responses, and we can appeal to computer AIs as good analogies to the human mind (except perhaps for the awareness part, which still has naturalistic explanations anyway ... such as panpsychism which I'm still not really sure about but it's there as an option).

Panpsychism is really interesting. I wonder how it is practically different from pantheism, though. If the universe is eternal and possesses psyche, it's like, the universe is a great cosmic mind.

[Fake Messiah]

Deism was largely used in pre Darwin times when people didn't want to have anything to do with religion and yet there was no other way to explain the beginnings of life so they had to acknowledge the minimal attributes like prime mover and life force.

But why aren't people today choosing deism instead of Jesus? Some are and these people are called agnostics and some are deists/ agnostics but are not aware of it, like when they speak of God living in another dimension.

But also problem with deists God is that he is very boring and people want God to excite them to hate gay people, people of other religions, who is pro gun, pro nationalism, etcetera.

[Inqwizitor]

Deism was largely used in pre Darwin times when people didn't want to have anything  to do with religion and yet there was no other way to explain the beginnings of life so they had to acknowledge the minimal attributes like prime mover and life force.

But why aren't people today choosing deism instead of Jesus? Some are and these people are called agnostics and some are deists/ agnostics but are not aware of it, like when they speak of God living in another dimension.

But also problem with deists God is that he is very boring and people want God to excite them to hate gay people, people of other religions, who is pro gun, pro nationalism, etcetera.

My understanding is that naturalism does not explain the origin of life, let alone the universe. Deism is an easy shrug that says, OK, so there is something that must exist and is not metaphysically contingent; we don't know what, and we probably never will. Life is short and then you die. Whatever it is that exists will go on without you and doesn't particularly care about you. I guess many agnostics now are actually deists, though they don't really care about the arguments.

Melding politics and God is the bane of religion. Atheists are right to demand a separation of church and state. "Render unto Caesar" etc. Christians were called atheists originally for the same reason, though modernity has inverted the positions.

Great point re: deism is boring. Hadn't thought of that.

[downbeatplumb]

My understanding is that naturalism does not explain the origin of life, let alone the universe.

Science has not finished. So for the moment "we don't know but people are working on it" is better than installing some sort of holding belief.

[Inqwizitor]

My understanding is that naturalism does not explain the origin of life, let alone the universe.

Science has not finished. So for the moment "we don't know but people are working on it" is better than installing some sort of holding belief.

Right. And there are theories about RNA I think, that it is some sort of bridge between inorganic and organic matter (I'm no expert). What I mean is, naturalism does not say why there is anything at all. It's denounced as a meaningless question. Deism doesn't require that kind of eliminative reductionism.

[EgoDeath]

First, we should ask, "Why deism?"

What reason to we have to think there's a god of any kind in the first place?

[Inqwizitor]

First, we should ask, "Why deism?"

What reason to we have to think there's a god of any kind in the first place?

If we want to really get down to an ontological principle, we should ask, "What is a god?"

That might be the fundamental problem with deism, actually. In that case, though, atheism loses cognitive meaning, as well.

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.