RE: whats your opinion of Deism?
January 8, 2011 at 9:20 pm
(This post was last modified: January 8, 2011 at 9:22 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
If someone tells me that they're a deist, it tells me that this person believes in a divine being, but it doesn't really tell me much else. Much beyond that is essentially speculation, but I do usually have more assumptions, but I recognize them as such, meaning that I recognize that those assumptions can just as easily be wrong because it does vary very much with the individual since there is no organized Deistic beliefs to my knowledge.
This assumption is that I assume this person rejects traditional religions but has some desire to keep the idea of a higher power, perhaps as a creator of the universe or just as an observer with some degree of influence.
My opinion of Deism is that has all the benefits of allowing someone to keep their faith in god without needing to cop to the crazier beliefs, like young-earth creationism. This isn't always the case, as I've found, because some simply supplant the organized brand of insanity with their own brand of insanity.
This assumption is that I assume this person rejects traditional religions but has some desire to keep the idea of a higher power, perhaps as a creator of the universe or just as an observer with some degree of influence.
My opinion of Deism is that has all the benefits of allowing someone to keep their faith in god without needing to cop to the crazier beliefs, like young-earth creationism. This isn't always the case, as I've found, because some simply supplant the organized brand of insanity with their own brand of insanity.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
