Deism, Atheism, and False Dilemmas

[Mudhammam]

How would being a deist or pantheist effect your life? What would you expect me to do differently with my life if I converted from atheism to either of those? If the answer is nothing, then what's the point of it?

That isn't the point at issue. It would be like rejecting highly technical scientific theories on the basis that they don't effect your life.

I would say the pragmatic approach might look at it like even though a highly technical scientific theory has no direct or immediate effect on the business of one's daily affairs, the knowledge we may potentially acquire and the corresponding ignorance we may shed as a result of the theory is very much of consequence for a number of reasons we can infer. Whether or not deism or pantheism is "true" is of no consequence to anything whatsoever insofar as any type of sense data, even hypothesized phenomena suggested only for its utility as a framework for further exploration, is concerned, on the other hand.

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@Nestor, my biggest gripe with arguments for God is that even if I grant the meaningfulness of saying an unembodied mind created the universe or blah blah, the question of the analogy this mind has to human minds(even assuming dualism) is a theological quagmire.

Right. It's a metaphysical nightmare, a word salad, an entity described in terms that receive their content solely from sense and applied to a concept that its champions are first to admit is quite literally, senseless.