Are Deists more like theists or Atheist?

[robvalue]

I'll leave others to say exactly what Einstein was as I'm not totally sure.

I too have no idea what the actual point of a deist belief is, it's something that baffles me. But then, belief is not a choice. I'd certainly say deism is generally much closer to atheism than religious theism. It generally supposes a model where things are exactly like an atheist would expect, except "a god" got things rolling before the Big Bang, instead of "we don't know what happened". So it's kind of just relabelling "We don't know" for personal preference, I think. Maybe for emotional reasons, maybe philosophical reasons, maybe logical reasons that I can't fathom. As Deist Paladin has shown, it can be pragmatic to put forward this belief as a way of cutting through bullshit arguments about whether there is a god and get straight to "What makes you think God happens to be exactly like a character in your favourite story book?"

I mean no disrespect to deists. It's just my own incredulity, and I totally respect their belief that there was "some big force" behind everything. And if that's what they believe, then they are only being honest in saying so, whether or not they feel they can rationalise it.