Are Deists more like theists or Atheist?

[DeistPaladin]

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. 

From what I learned in a documentary: "Atheism: A History of Unbelief", deism did evolve.

According to that documentary, the word was first used in the 16th century as an outgrowth of the early expressions of the coming Enlightenment. God in this school was less wrathful and personal and more an architect of the natural universe. By it's nature, deism is an attempt to understand God through a study of the natural order instead of stories of supernatural upheaval, putting science over scripture. 

The earliest deists of this century did not reject Christianity (or, in my cynical opinion, were smart enough not to do so publicly or in writing or any other way that would get them burned at the stake). As Christianity's power waned, the tense relationship became increasingly unstable. By the dawn of the 18th century, you had thinkers like Sir Issac Newton who still held to a Christianity of a sort, but one which was anti-Trinitarian and heterodox in nature. 

Deism's big break with and complete rejection of the Bible, Christianity and the god Yahweh came with Thomas Paine and his book "The Age of Reason". In it, he condemns the petty god Yahweh and expresses awe of the natural universe, who's wonders make the supposed miracles of the Bible pale in comparison. It's with this publication that deism takes shape as a distinct view of God, one in which all the angels, demons, Heaven, Hell, revelation, priests, prayer and churches are all scrapped, leaving only God, the natural universe and ourselves, beings gifted with higher reasoning. 

Of course, once all this clutter of theism is scrapped, there isn't anything practical to distinguish it from atheism, the admittedly indistinct notion of "Nature's God" notwithstanding. Thomas Paine himself was regarded as an atheist by later generations. Many of my freethinking colleagues on the internet have remarked that I "talk like an atheist" and I no longer even correct anyone who says I am. Anyone who would use the word as a pejorative is not going to understand the hair-splitting and abstract philosophical distinction anyway. 

Love the avatar, by the way.