RE: whats your opinion of Deism?
January 10, 2011 at 12:06 pm
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2011 at 12:30 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
Rayaan Wrote:It's the same because there would still be war, death, pain, and suffering if the deistic god is real.
It's not about the reality of theistic God but whether he is believed in that influences those things.
DeistPaladin Wrote:my reasons for being a deist and not an atheist are instinctive.
Appeal to intuition?
Quote: Yet, I can't take the label "atheist" with any intellectual honesty because, deep down, I am convinced.
Your experience convinces you, you don't know why it does, so you don't know why you are convinced.
Quote:I actually went through a phase for about two weeks where I wondered what was wrong with me,
From society's perspective?
Quote: why I couldn't be a "normal atheist" like all of my friends and most of my family.
It's a harmless belief.
Quote: This happened after I realized that most of the arguments for God that I had used were justifications rather than the basis for a conclusion.
It's good that you realize that.
Quote:I'm in awe of the universe as a grand machine.
I am sometimes. I'm not always feeling that because I'm not always reflecting on that. Sometimes I am instead feeling an aversion to the world because of how fucked up it is.
The machine is grand it's just a case of whether I am currently feeling that the machine is mostly full of a deadly computer virus or not.
Quote: It is the natural that provides my sense of the sublime.
What's unnatural? Artificial things. Where do artificial things come from? Nature. What are they made of? Nature.
So what doesn't provide your senses with the sublime? What do you have an aversion for?
Quote: But this is an appeal to wonder.
So it's just the way you happen to feel. I'm not saying your perspective doesn't influence your feelings, of course it does. But that's just the perspective you happen to have. You don't have a perspective for no reason (or if you do have a perspective for no reason, then you can't be the reason for it).
Anyway, I'm rambling, sorry.
Quote: Deism is for me the truce between my skeptical brain and sentimental heart,
Well, that's nice.
All my sentimental feelings are nostalgic ones (since I've never experienced romance). I try to stay away from sentiment because I feel an appeal to it, like intuition, can sway me away from rationality (not necessarily, but it can do. I love rationality more than sentiment or intuition any day).
Quote: a way for me to keep such spiritual instincts safely grounded in the natural universe.
It's nice you can appreciate such instincts. As for me, my ideal is the rationality and self-restraint of a 100% stoical robot with the ability to experience a mellow high.
