Why not deism?

[mordant]

In order for such a creator to leave evidence, it would have to intervene, don't you think?

Boru

Don't see why, the one act it's supposed to have done, creation, could leave evidence of divine creation. We haven't found any and I think the chances are infinitesimal (IMHO) that we ever will, but there's no logical contradiction in the act of creation having left evidence. Unlike the Abrahamic God, which is incoherent in concept and attributed authorship of events that we know didn't actually happen, the only problem with the God of deism is that there isn't any good reason to think it's real.

I have a philosophical problem with any sort of intervention in the sense that any deity posited to be above / outside of the natural order would by definition be incapable of interacting with it. As soon as it would interact, it would have to become part of the natural order, unless (and it's a big unless) its "interaction" was solely from the outside. In other words if you visualize the natural order as a bubble, a supernatural being could press on the bubble, distort it, heat it up, flash freeze it, even destroy it, and thus cause gross effects inside. But it can't reach inside the bubble to specifically comfort or heal or protect or communicate with one of countless individuals within, without extending at least some pseudopod aspect of itself INTO the bubble. It can't dictate holy books and issue marching orders or retribution for perceived slights (or even perceive the slights to begin with) unless it's intimately part of the natural order it's supposed to be apart from and so much better than.

These notions of supernatural vs natural are rooted in the ancient notions of matter being fundamentally bad and "sinful" and the resultant need to keep the pristine deities separated so as not to be soiled. To this day, fundagelicals prattle on about how god cannot "tolerate the presence of sin" lest he be defiled. And yet their god must of necessity literally wallow in this sinful reality in order to deal with it in any relevant fashion. This is why to me the supernatural is a useless and irrational concept.

Now if deism posits a deity whose SOLE involvement is to make the bubble to begin with, then at least that makes a little more sense (or, better, it is less nonsensical) but that begs the question of what the product of that creative act says about the creator itself. The bubble is full of pain and suffering and alienation and cruelty and ignorance and angst when it could just as well be reflecting other things ... things that would make it easy to be grateful to the creator and difficult to be dismissive of it.

[Mister Agenda]

Personally, if there is a creator, a geek who accidentally pressed 'run universe' or 'activate super collider' is equally plausible as it having been a deity. You don't have to be all-powerful to create a universe, just have the right tech. If that were the case there would have to be an original universe (at some point) that either formed naturally or was created by something more creator deity-like than ancient aliens, if the latter, the question of where that deity-like being came from remains.

[Cod]

Personally, if there is a creator, a geek who accidentally pressed 'run universe' or 'activate super collider' is equally plausible as it having been a deity. You don't have to be all-powerful to create a universe, just have the right tech. If that were the case there would have to be an original universe (at some point) that either formed naturally or was created by something more creator deity-like than ancient aliens, if the latter, the question of where that deity-like being came from remains.

My thing is... Why does it matter? Let's just say that there is a creator, a creator that doesn't interact and has just left the universe to it's own devices. Then yeah great, well done Mr creator and all that.
The problem is when people start to then make shit up about the creator, they give it qualities, they think it must care about them, they want to get to know it... They argue about which version of Mr creator is correct, they start to wear silly hats.
Why can't we accept that there are things we'll never know and leave it at that?

[Mister Agenda]

Some people can't leave Hulk vs. Thor alone. It's like that.

[AniKoferBo]

Atheism is an amorphous description of a lack of belief in a god or gods. It could mean that someone has no faith in a religious idea about what a god or gods means, or it could be a philosophical conviction of some kind. 

Something I'm curious about is why deism is virtually non-existent nowadays. There are arguments for the existence of "God", that actually, in the end, don't amount to much more than a hypothetical Prime Mover, or "something" — we don't know what — that is the source of reason, volition and material phenomena. 

Is deism pointless or even dishonest, because it's asserting something as knowledge that we cannot know? Did you ever seriously consider it instead of atheism? Or is there any practical difference?

since deism has a nondescript god who does nothing but exist, why would it make any difference?

[GrandizerII]

Atheism is an amorphous description of a lack of belief in a god or gods. It could mean that someone has no faith in a religious idea about what a god or gods means, or it could be a philosophical conviction of some kind. 

Something I'm curious about is why deism is virtually non-existent nowadays. There are arguments for the existence of "God", that actually, in the end, don't amount to much more than a hypothetical Prime Mover, or "something" — we don't know what — that is the source of reason, volition and material phenomena. 

Is deism pointless or even dishonest, because it's asserting something as knowledge that we cannot know? Did you ever seriously consider it instead of atheism? Or is there any practical difference?

since deism has a nondescript god who does nothing but exist, why would it make any difference?

The irony is that it's not that different from the classical God of [Christian] theology. It's only when Christian theologians resort to revelation that the Christian god suddenly becomes "meaningful" (and rather absurd as a notion).

[AniKoferBo]

since deism has a nondescript god who does nothing but exist, why would it make any difference?

The irony is that it's not that different from the classical God of [Christian] theology. It's only when Christian theologians resort to revelation that the Christian god suddenly becomes "meaningful" (and rather absurd as a notion).

christian theology is incoherent to the point of absurdity. god killing his son so he can forgive our future sin is like me breaking my son"s legs so i can forgive my neighbor in case she ever parks her car on my drive. it is quite ridiculous.

[GrandizerII]

The irony is that it's not that different from the classical God of [Christian] theology. It's only when Christian theologians resort to revelation that the Christian god suddenly becomes "meaningful" (and rather absurd as a notion).

christian theology is incoherent to the point of absurdity. god killing his son so he can forgive our future sin is like me breaking my son"s legs so i can forgive my neighbor in case she ever parks her car on my drive. it is quite ridiculous.

It contains a set of very confusing and convoluted doctrines (which they say arose via revelation but we sort of know historically how and why they developed).

[onlinebiker]

Deism = Woo Lite ®



But still woo.

[Abaddon_ire]

The irony is that it's not that different from the classical God of [Christian] theology. It's only when Christian theologians resort to revelation that the Christian god suddenly becomes "meaningful" (and rather absurd as a notion).

christian theology is incoherent to the point of absurdity. god killing his son so he can forgive our future sin is like me breaking my son"s legs so i can forgive my neighbor in case she ever parks her car on my drive. it is quite ridiculous.

Right.

Biblical scholarship, biblical studies, biblical archaeology, and such like are legitimate areas of study. Theology? Not so much. Theology is simply a bunch of oddballs who simply know how to extract a salary on the basis of a bucket of crap. No theoligians actually believe their own crap.