(June 30, 2014 at 10:02 am)blackout94 Wrote:(June 30, 2014 at 9:43 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: How is that different from a deist?
If I'm not mistaken, a theist believes in a god that is in constant touch with the universe, a being that has omnipresence, omnipotence, all of those characteristics... A deist believes in a creator that abstains from controlling the world. In a sense, a theist believes god created the universe and is constantly shaping it (eg natural phenomenons) while a deist merely believes a god created the events (eg big bang) to make our universe come into existence but abstained from intervening further more. The theist god is shaping the universe as we speak, the deist god is just looking, for some deists god even caused the big bag explosion and ceased to exist, for others god caused the universe and then mixed, fused himself with it and became the universe himself. I hope this helped
I get the difference in definition, but if one is a theist in that sense, what's the practical difference? If a God is pulling the strings on the universe (physics, natural phenomena, weather, etc), but we can't communicate with, entreat, quesiton, see, measure, or hear from it, what's the difference between that and a God that ceased to exist when the big bang happened?
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
- Thomas Jefferson