(June 9, 2012 at 10:10 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(June 9, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Well, since you cant test it in a lab or get a patient on it, I'll relegate it to the woo section of what humanity makes up with no evidence.
There is no need to call nature god or treat it as if it has special qualities. Nature is a process, it is not a god so "Diesm" is nothing more than a step toward atheism and a step away from theism.
Look, the reason people slap that label on themselves is simple. It is nothing more than letting the "mystery of it all" and the "sense of awe" get to you. And also maybe a bit of fear of not having "something to believe in".
If you don't hold a belief in a god, skip the deism altogether. Just study nature and the universe without that label, you don't need it.
I don't disagree with you that it's woo, and I see no reason to believe it myself. I also see no harm in believing in a non-personal deity that doesn't carry all the dogmatic baggage with it. Deists are not the people creating the harms you mentioned, as far as I know.
If people are going to believe in woo (and they will), Deism is about as harmless as it gets.
Even if you are not doing physical harm to yourself or to others, spreading claims of ANY kind that have no evidence, can lead others to actually expound on your naked assertion and that can get out of control. That is how myths and legends get started. L Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer and Scientology was started by his fans.
Right now Harry Potter and Star wars "seem" harmless, but as stupid as our species can be, it would not shock me in the least if 1,000 years from now a religion existed based on those fiction stories.
. And on top of that you do yourself a disservice by being distracted by the superfluous when you could just skip the guessing and go with what we know scientifically.
