Jefferson and Thomas Paine were clearly brilliant guys, but I don't see how they didn't realize, even in their time, that a god who simply set the universe in motion and then stepped back holds no consequence for us, so, as others have said, why bother believing in that type of god? We have scientific explanations for how we got here following the Big Bang, so why is there any sense in introducing a god to explain what happened before it? Evolution eventually became the accepted means by which humans developed from lower strata, and at one time, human beings' existence was seemingly inexplainable other than by some god, just like the beginning of the universe is now. I think we should just let science to its job. Eventually, we will have the answer. I don't see a point in throwing our hands up and summoning a god in the meantime. It is a very primitive tendency of us humans. So, of course, while deists don't offend me, I don't think its constructive to continue the practice of looking to the heavens for answers to stuff we can't yet explain, like the ancients.
Our Daily Train blog at jeremystyron.com
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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