Deism for non-believers

[Angrboda]

The question I have about a deist god is how that god avoids inevitably sliding into the god of Apatheism — he exists, but he is completely irrelevant to our existence. And any properties of this Deist god that you assign to "rescue" it from irrelevancy in the end becomes a property by which that* god can be falsified, or at least persuasively undermined by the traditional avenues of theodicy, justice, Euthyphro's dilemma, inconsistent attributes and so on. Any deist god worth caring about ends up being one of the ones we can't believe.

I just finished reading a fascinating book by Pascal Boyer called "Religion Explained," and a number of fascinating consistencies in supernatural / religious beliefs emerge. Nobody cares about a god who only exists on Wednesdays, or who is aware of everything, but has no power to do anything about it. People's supernatural agents are organized around various dimensions, one of which he calls relevancy — the supernatural agent is capable of acting in ways which matter to us, from the threat of eternal hellfire to the belief that malevolent witches caused your roof to collapse. Being a religious being means mattering. Otherwise, what's the point. In Buddhism, there are plenty of gods, but nobody cares, because they aren't relevant. How do you make your Deist god relevant without at the same time sowing the seeds of its destruction?

(I've got the Shermer book, but alas I rarely read aside from book club and group assignments these days. But I'll keep it in mind — I actually hauled it out recently with the aim of getting a taste of it, to encourage pursuing it; at present, it's now underneath a book on epistemology, a fiction book, computational neuroscience, an intro to Buddhism and Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis". I keep meaning to read some personal selections; I just never have the time. [In the past two weeks, in an unusually heavy load, I read 4 books in preparation for discussion groups, only one of which coincided with a book I had on my personal reading list — and that exception was unusual; I rarely have interest in these books prior to having them assigned])