Are Deists more like theists or Atheist?

[Secular Elf]

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.

Historically, a lot of people seem to have been deists before modern theories of evolution and before the big bang theory was put forth.  In other words, it was due to some people being unable to think of how else the universe and life got started, and they were unwilling to just say that they had no idea.  But they could see that the miracle stories were silly, and so they were not full-fledged religionists either.

Now, there is no longer the same motive to be a deist that there was 200 years ago.  But really, they ought to have just said that they did not know how the universe started.  Of course, they might also have been "deists" in word only, as they may have wanted to avoid upsetting their neighbors too much.


As for what Einstein believed, he, too, lived in an era when saying that one is just an atheist was not socially acceptable.  So it is hard to know what he believed on this point.  Clearly, he was not a traditional religionist, but that is not the same as being sure he was a complete atheist either.  His own statements are not altogether clear on what his beliefs were, though, of course, some of the changes over time could have been due to him changing his mind.  See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Eins...ious_views

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_v...t_Einstein

As far as I know about Deism, the history of it goes back to the late Middle Ages into the Age of Enlightenment.  I have a DVD college course from The Teaching Company (used to be called The Great Courses, purchase DVDs with college profs giving lectures on any subject you want to learn about, I get the catalogs in the mail all the time) about the Philosophy of Religion.  I took notes when I watched it, but can't find them now (the house is in a damn mess).  So to the best of my recollection, there were some Christians, Muslims, and Jews who were growing tired of all the religious wars going on in Europe so they began thinking out of the box, and started talking, reading, and writing treatises among themselves regarding their philosophical thoughts about god, religion, and keeping the peace among all the monotheists.  And that is how Deism was born.  I can't remember all the particulars, but if I ever run across my notes I will come back to this thread and post them, unless anyone else knows exactly what I am writing about here and beats me to the punch before this thread gets too old for me to legally comment on.