Excited Penguin Wrote:Rhythm Wrote:Deism is most definitely not new...not even relatively...and certainly not in historical terms, lol. Perhaps you're only familiar with the deism of the founding fathers of the US or some shit..you think they were originators?
I find it hard to believe that deism preceded theism. But if that's true, then I'm wrong.
Though 'classic deism' is a product of the Renaissance, the origins of both deism and theism are lost in prehistory. The ancient Greeks certainly had a notion of it.
There's no way to know whether 'something must have made all this' preceded 'and we should propitiate it so it doesn't smite us'. My own thinking is that mere animism (which can be boiled down to belief in a spiritual world that permeates everything without any beings that fit the definition of god) came first.
As an aside, some cultures have gods but no Creator. Norse mythology lacks a creator God, for instance: everything started with the interaction of fire, light, and heat with darkness, cold, and ice.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
