Why do some Atheists change?

[DeistPaladin]

I've often wondered, "why deism?" I mean, a god which never, ever interacts with the universe is very much the same as a nonexistent god. And since there's no evidence that this being exists, there's no reason to believe it exists. It's not even like deists claim to have some "personal revelation" or interaction with this deity like Christians do, it's just kind of "there."

I believe that most deists are probably deists because they don't accept the bullshit claims of theists, but yet they hold onto a belief in a god because of traditional, familial, or societal reasons. I could be wrong about this, though. I'd need actual deists to explain to me exactly what they believe.

In all, though, I'd rather hang around deists with the idea of an impersonal, hands-off type of god than the Christians with their hairy thunderer "vengeance is mine" type god.

First, a bit of my background. I was raised by atheist parents, most of my family are atheists as are most of my friends. So I don't think there's any familial or societal pressure at work here.

When I say that deism is "atheism with poetic flourishes", I mean it's an outgrowth of a sense of awe of the natural order and hope for human reason/human civilization, the same traits that most atheists I know of share. Back when I had a website, many of my inspirational quotes posted on it came from such thinkers as Hitchens, Sagan, Dawkins and Harris. If atheism were a city, deism would be a suburb in its greater metropolitan area.

Deism is a spirituality grounded strictly in the natural and the natural provides plenty of inspiration, often superior to what's written about in scripture. As Hitchens said, "who's going to look at the incredible images captured by the Hubble telescope and then go marvel at a burning bush. The natural universe is enough." And Dawkins described the gods of theism aptly when he spoke of "a petty god, a little god." The gods of theism are obsessed with whether we pray in the right direction five times a day or if we work on the Sabbath or if we believe the right things about why a certain someone died 2000 years ago. How about instead a god who seeded the universe with intelligent life that can grow to build on that foundation? Once while walking out of the New York planetarium after a show, I couldn't help but blurt out to my Christian sister, "why would anyone waste their time in church on Sunday?"

As a deist, I look at the universe, from the micro to the macro, and see a grand machine. I reflect on human reason and the potential of human civilization, with all the things that have come together in our evolution to make it possible, and I see intent. "God" is simply the enigmatic mind behind it all.

From the few deists I've spoken to online, it seems that few "convert" to it, at least not in any stable way. There are some who do temporarily convert from Christianity or Islam but check back with them in a few years and you'll find deism was just a rest-stop on the road to atheism. Most of us seem to "discover" that's what we were all along, or so it was with me. Disclaimer: this is just my experience, not a formal population survey, so I may be wrong about this.

So the distinction between deism and atheism is more sentiment about the things we agree on, hence "poetic flourishes".