Why not deism?

[Inqwizitor]

I can't figure out how one would tell the difference between an absent god, an indifferent god, and a non-existent god.

Deism is the belief in a non-interventionist god -- just another way, really, of saying "absent" or "not present". If god does not intervene or interact, then what is its relevance to the one who believes in such a being? It's like "marrying" a spouse who you can't see, who no one has ever seen, who never speaks to you or interacts with you in any way. It is just a non-starter.

If the universe runs according to natural laws, does it matter if those laws are sustained by an ineffable being, or just ARE? They will work exactly the same either way.

Deism is the opposite of Fideism in that Deism tries to figure out the existence and nature of god from reason and personal experience rather than from some imagined revelation. How is this different from what any atheist does, other than that atheists conclude from the deafening silence that god cannot be inferred to exist?

In my view, all deism does is allow a person to cling to some tenuous hold on the notion of a supreme being because it avoids some sort of perceived discomfort in letting go of the notion. Since I'm already past that, and it wasn't so bad at all -- in fact, it was a net positive -- I have no use for deism as a concept.

I agree that deism is based entirely on rational efforts. When you say "deafening silence" is that the lack of a good argument? A deist would not infer anything from revelation, because he or she likewise denies that there has ever been (or could ever be) such a thing.

What would the discomfort be, or is that simply the vague hope that this isn't all there is to be for us as individuals? There is a kind of sedative comfort in the idea of annihilation, too. I think that's why Nietzsche's eternal return is so disturbing. That's my idea of hell!

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Great, thanks.

Well... no, that's not really how it works. We don't need a complete, working definition of god to reject the idea. We can work off of the information we do have, as a society, and conclude that, for right now, it isn't a sensible idea. Not having a working definition of god reflects far more on theism and deism than it does on atheists.

That's probably why we can't be just "theists" based on pure reason; there has to be some faith there, some revelation.

I don't think a complete idea of the supernatural is necessary for deists though, if it's only a very minimal rejection of naturalism. There is some supernatural cause, we don't know what, and we have no epistemological method to test a hypothesis. It is not strictly necessary to know what something is to know whether something is. We could argue that we don't really know what anything is, only that something exists and looks like stuff.

Well, you can ask that question until the cows come home, if it suits you. I, for one, think it's a meaningless question. As do many other people, atheists and theists alike. Even deists. It's not sensible to me to ask why there's something instead of nothing, when there simply is what there is.

Who said that there being nothing was an option?

No one. This is just some strange paradigm invented by humans.

Thinking of it somewhat differently, we wonder why things are the way they are. What does it all mean? Deism allows for some meaning or reason, even if we'll never know.