Why not deism?

[Inqwizitor]

I've read some Leibniz and Plantinga, and the rest is Wikipedia. :-) So all possible worlds exist. This would seem to go way beyond naturalism unless every possible world is causally independent of every other possible world. In that case, we must account for existential causality in each possible world. If something is a causally necessary existent in a possible world, then all causally necessary existents are actual. But then we are just pushing contingency to all possible worlds — what is causally necessary in one world is not causally necessary in another. Wouldn't there still need to be something metaphysically necessary to actualize all possible worlds?

The whole talk about necessity vs contingency can be tricky especially when positing something like modal realism, but the way I look at it is all possible worlds are actualized by necessity because, per the reasoning behind modal realism, you can't have a possible world that is not actual.

If they are spatiotemporally isolated from one another, it does not mean that all these possible worlds aren't part of the same superset world. There is one ultimate actual world in which all these possible local worlds are subsets of, and if they are contingent, then they are contingent on that ultimate world.

The main reason I hold to this view is because I'm a big PSR guy. Why this specific world rather than some other specific world cries for an explanation that traditional theism/deism fails to answer.

It's a really interesting concept; I think it is way more ambitious than classical deism, which really only tries to establish that this world has a reason for its existence, and not really much more than that, unless I'm missing something. I'm thinking of what Antony Flew finally agreed to accept in his latter years: a very, very minimalist "god" — so basic that the word and its connotations could not really be applied to it. There is also the question of teleology; if all possible worlds exist, perhaps teleology is moot.

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That article reminds me the Kantian phenomena/noumena distinction. We can see some things, but we don't know the intrinsic nature of things.

I'm curious how something that necessarily exists is in line with naturalism? Is that like the block theory of the universe?

@BrianSoddingBoru4 — what's the KSA?

'Kalam Stupid Argument', my pet name for the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

Boru

Oh, OK. I'm guessing you're not too impressed with Aquinas, either, then.

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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?

I think if many atheists if they had to take a position on the God question, they would likely be deists of some sort, just like most nones subscribe to conceptions of God like that. 

Instead they prefer to not take a position as all, prefer to lack a belief one way or the other. They see no real point in believing one way or the other, no relevance in their lives, so to believe in such a trivial conception of god, is as unimportant as having a position on your marital status.

Doesn't truth have its own sort of value, outside practical effect? Are all atheists strict pragmatists? The peripatetics acknowledged a prime mover but in a deistic way, with no practical purpose for them other than contemplation of existence.

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I think one motive for deism is an objection to the "brute fact" idea. Nature is, just because it is. The rational mind looks for the explanation for things, and is motivated by the desire for reasonable explanations.

Yes, but those reasonable explanations do not need to include the supernatural, and the position of "we don't have a reasonable explanation YET" should be acceptable. However, there seem to be many people that can't accept "yet" (basically because of insecurity/fear) so we end up with supernatural. 

Eventually supernatural explanations can get excluded with time.

I get the "god of the gaps" thing. There is a difference between positing something supernatural as a cause of something natural and why that's bad philosophy. Nature has its own causes. The question is, what causes nature, considered simply, rather than its particulars. The naturalist answer is, "it just is." It's a brute fact. A lot of people, myself included, find this anti-rational. I think the "all possible natural worlds exist" argument is a really intriguing way of getting around this problem.

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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. 

For me, my atheism is nothing more than not being convinced god exist, any gods.

My reasons for not being convinced, is that theists, deists, pantheists, etc, have continually failed to provide demonstrable evidence and valid and sound logic to support their theistic claims.

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. 

None of the arguments for the existence of god, hold up to scrutiny, they are ALL fallacious and flawed. This goes for: Kalam cosmological argument, teleological arguments, ontological arguments, etc.

None of them succeed in doing what they are meant to. What they are really meant to do, is give the believer a seemingly rational sounding support for their unsupported beliefs.

I think the strictly deistic kinds of arguments were not meant for a religious purpose originally. They were later rediscovered and co-opted, though. The cosmological argument dates from ancient Greece when religion was a mythical, experiential and imaginative endeavour, whereas philosophy was the intellectual, rational and academic attempt to describe what reality actually is. The "god of the philosophers" was a simple source of existence, and it was not worshipped, at least not directly. I'm thinking mostly of the Aristotelian school. Islam and Christianity later fused philosophy and religion and law/morality, or at least tried to (with mixed success) whereas the pagans had kept them separate matters.

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Why not pastafarianism?

Haha. Too obviously contrived.  

But hey, if all possible worlds exist, the FSM is out there, somewhere! It sounds delicious, by the way.  (I swear, I'm not being ironic).

[EgoDeath]

[How do I quote just the poster's text, without quoting mine along with it?]

Use the icon that looks like a document to switch to viewing the BB code, then edit out your own response. This is the only way I know of, and I do it often to clean up my responses to people.

If we have no working definition of what a god is, then what does atheism actually mean?

Well... no, that's not really how it works. We don't need a complete, working definition of god to reject the idea. We can work off of the information we do have, as a society, and conclude that, for right now, it isn't a sensible idea. Not having a working definition of god reflects far more on theism and deism than it does on atheists.

The reason for existence is a fascinating idea worth discussing, at least to me (and billions of other people, evidently). That there simply is no reason or that the question is not worth discussing is not any more convincing than religious ideas. 

Whether or not there "has" to be something or not is the crux of many a metaphysical debate. Simply asserting one way or the other is one way of dealing with that; but there is no compelling reason to agree.

Well, you can ask that question until the cows come home, if it suits you. I, for one, think it's a meaningless question. As do many other people, atheists and theists alike. Even deists. It's not sensible to me to ask why there's something instead of nothing, when there simply is what there is.

Who said that there being nothing was an option?

No one. This is just some strange paradigm invented by humans.

[Inqwizitor]

I can't figure out how one would tell the difference between an absent god, an indifferent god, and a non-existent god.

Deism is the belief in a non-interventionist god -- just another way, really, of saying "absent" or "not present". If god does not intervene or interact, then what is its relevance to the one who believes in such a being? It's like "marrying" a spouse who you can't see, who no one has ever seen, who never speaks to you or interacts with you in any way. It is just a non-starter.

If the universe runs according to natural laws, does it matter if those laws are sustained by an ineffable being, or just ARE? They will work exactly the same either way.

Deism is the opposite of Fideism in that Deism tries to figure out the existence and nature of god from reason and personal experience rather than from some imagined revelation. How is this different from what any atheist does, other than that atheists conclude from the deafening silence that god cannot be inferred to exist?

In my view, all deism does is allow a person to cling to some tenuous hold on the notion of a supreme being because it avoids some sort of perceived discomfort in letting go of the notion. Since I'm already past that, and it wasn't so bad at all -- in fact, it was a net positive -- I have no use for deism as a concept.

I agree that deism is based entirely on rational efforts. When you say "deafening silence" is that the lack of a good argument? A deist would not infer anything from revelation, because he or she likewise denies that there has ever been (or could ever be) such a thing.

What would the discomfort be, or is that simply the vague hope that this isn't all there is to be for us as individuals? There is a kind of sedative comfort in the idea of annihilation, too. I think that's why Nietzsche's eternal return is so disturbing. That's my idea of hell!

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Use the icon that looks like a document to switch to viewing the BB code, then edit out your own response. This is the only way I know of, and I do it often to clean up my responses to people.

Great, thanks.

Well... no, that's not really how it works. We don't need a complete, working definition of god to reject the idea. We can work off of the information we do have, as a society, and conclude that, for right now, it isn't a sensible idea. Not having a working definition of god reflects far more on theism and deism than it does on atheists.

That's probably why we can't be just "theists" based on pure reason; there has to be some faith there, some revelation.

I don't think a complete idea of the supernatural is necessary for deists though, if it's only a very minimal rejection of naturalism. There is some supernatural cause, we don't know what, and we have no epistemological method to test a hypothesis. It is not strictly necessary to know what something is to know whether something is. We could argue that we don't really know what anything is, only that something exists and looks like stuff.

Well, you can ask that question until the cows come home, if it suits you. I, for one, think it's a meaningless question. As do many other people, atheists and theists alike. Even deists. It's not sensible to me to ask why there's something instead of nothing, when there simply is what there is.

Who said that there being nothing was an option?

No one. This is just some strange paradigm invented by humans.

Thinking of it somewhat differently, we wonder why things are the way they are. What does it all mean? Deism allows for some meaning or reason, even if we'll never know.

[brewer]

@Inqwizitor My position, no one can argue, rationalize, philosophize, justify, or wish a god into reality/existence. If you/others need a god to feel comfortable and make sense of life/existence, fine by me. I'll never buy in until someone can provide evidence that I consider concrete.

[EgoDeath]

That's probably why we can't be just "theists" based on pure reason; there has to be some faith there, some revelation.

Well, even deists are operating on faith.

I don't think a complete idea of the supernatural is necessary for deists though, if it's only a very minimal rejection of naturalism. There is some supernatural cause, we don't know what, and we have no epistemological method to test a hypothesis. It is not strictly necessary to know what something is to know whether something is. We could argue that we don't really know what anything is, only that something exists and looks like stuff.

The difference between god and actual phenomena we know exists but don't understand, is that we actually have objective, verifiable evidence of those phenomena. We're far from understanding what black holes are, but we have plenty of evidence they exist. For god? Not so much.

Thinking of it somewhat differently, we wonder why things are the way they are. What does it all mean? Deism allows for some meaning or reason, even if we'll never know.

Even asking why is nonsensical. How is a much more important question.

And god doesn't necessarily provide meaning in people's lives. And people who don't believe in god are not devoid of meaning. If anything, my stakes are much higher than yours. You think you're going to live forever after your human body dies. I don't. I have much more reason to enjoy my time here on Earth, spend time with my family, do things I enjoy and chase passions that make me who I am as a person.

I don't need some idea of god for life to beautiful. Life is beautiful enough by itself. There's no need for fairy-tales.

[Nay_Sayer]

I know I was tagged, I know somewhere in that wall of text is my comment maybe I'll find it eventually.

Until then, I'll use my stock reply; You're in my prayers inky. RAmen

[GrandizerII]

The whole talk about necessity vs contingency can be tricky especially when positing something like modal realism, but the way I look at it is all possible worlds are actualized by necessity because, per the reasoning behind modal realism, you can't have a possible world that is not actual.

If they are spatiotemporally isolated from one another, it does not mean that all these possible worlds aren't part of the same superset world. There is one ultimate actual world in which all these possible local worlds are subsets of, and if they are contingent, then they are contingent on that ultimate world.

The main reason I hold to this view is because I'm a big PSR guy. Why this specific world rather than some other specific world cries for an explanation that traditional theism/deism fails to answer.

It's a really interesting concept; I think it is way more ambitious than classical deism, which really only tries to establish that this world has a reason for its existence, and not really much more than that, unless I'm missing something. I'm thinking of what Antony Flew finally agreed to accept in his latter years: a very, very minimalist "god" — so basic that the word and its connotations could not really be applied to it. There is also the question of teleology; if all possible worlds exist, perhaps teleology is moot.

I was never into that whole thing about teleology anyway.

And you might call this way more ambitious than classical deism, but if one wants to be very stringent with the PSR, then this should be the natural conclusion. Even if you were to argue that the universe exists the way it is because God willed the universe to be such way, one could still ask why did God will it one way but not another?

And I wouldn't agree that this isn't a form of naturalism since I'm not positing a super-being out there that is somehow aware of this reality. I think the only beings that are conscious in this whole reality are entities like you and me, and it probably helps for us to have consciousness. I see no need for the whole cosmos to be conscious, however.

According to my view, there is an orderly hierarchy of levels of reality that logically arises, sure. But it's still all "blind" at the end. No sentient purpose behind it.

[mordant]

I can't figure out how one would tell the difference between an absent god, an indifferent god, and a non-existent god.

Deism is the belief in a non-interventionist god -- just another way, really, of saying "absent" or "not present". If god does not intervene or interact, then what is its relevance to the one who believes in such a being? It's like "marrying" a spouse who you can't see, who no one has ever seen, who never speaks to you or interacts with you in any way. It is just a non-starter.

If the universe runs according to natural laws, does it matter if those laws are sustained by an ineffable being, or just ARE? They will work exactly the same either way.

Deism is the opposite of Fideism in that Deism tries to figure out the existence and nature of god from reason and personal experience rather than from some imagined revelation. How is this different from what any atheist does, other than that atheists conclude from the deafening silence that god cannot be inferred to exist?

In my view, all deism does is allow a person to cling to some tenuous hold on the notion of a supreme being because it avoids some sort of perceived discomfort in letting go of the notion. Since I'm already past that, and it wasn't so bad at all -- in fact, it was a net positive -- I have no use for deism as a concept.

I agree that deism is based entirely on rational efforts. When you say "deafening silence" is that the lack of a good argument?

I had more immediately in mind the lack of evidence, interaction, data, feedback, OR valid argument.

What would the discomfort be, or is that simply the vague hope that this isn't all there is to be for us as individuals? There is a kind of sedative comfort in the idea of annihilation, too. I think that's why Nietzsche's eternal return is so disturbing. That's my idea of hell!

It would be different for different people, I'm sure, but I would image that for most it is some form of that "vague hope" that "this isn't all there is". But be careful what you wish for: "something more" might be that dreaded "eternal return"!

I have personally found the prospect of annihilation FAR more comforting than the concept of eternal life. To the extent I suffer or am simply disappointed with aspects of life, that it has an endpoint and is finite helps me to endure it with patience. To the extent I find value and therefore subjective meaning and purpose, my lack of total ability to chose the time and manner of my death isn't a fantastic aspect of life, but the awareness that even positive life events gradually lose their luster leads me to understand that here in my seventh decade, maybe I'm starting to approach that situation and it's best not to linger past my "best used by" date.

Thinking of it somewhat differently, we wonder why things are the way they are. What does it all mean? Deism allows for some meaning or reason, even if we'll never know.

I'm not sure how it provides meaning or reason. Maybe you can help me to understand how it would do that. The only thing I can think of is the notion that there was at least an original creative purpose and intent to existence, even if it's all running on automatic since. But that doesn't change what it is like to be human, just because some being decided to set it in motion doesn't change what it is to experience it, or provide externally bestowed meaning or purpose to experiencing it.

Far as I can tell, life means whatever we want it to mean. A lot of elusive concepts we chase aren't really things-in-themselves. Meaning and purpose are just a subjective emotional state, a response to having enough value. If you consistently seek and embrace things that you find valuable and let go of things you don't find valuable, eventually you have enough value that it feel subjectively like "meaning" and "purpose" -- simply because you look forward to enjoy said value each day. I don't see how an ineffable, unrelatable, indifferent deity as a starting-point for all that makes any difference. How is that different, practically speaking, from existence being eternal or cyclic or a simulation or whatever else you want to speculate that it is?

[Inqwizitor]

Well, even deists are operating on faith.

How so?

The difference between god and actual phenomena we know exists but don't understand, is that we actually have objective, verifiable evidence of those phenomena. We're far from understanding what black holes are, but we have plenty of evidence they exist. For god? Not so much.

The universe itself is sufficient evidence of something not-universe. Or at least not this universe. As all arguments do, this rests on some assumptions, such as the principle of sufficient reason and a rejection of "brute fact" as a satisfactory explanation.

And god doesn't necessarily provide meaning in people's lives. And people who don't believe in god are not devoid of meaning. If anything, my stakes are much higher than yours. You think you're going to live forever after your human body dies. I don't. I have much more reason to enjoy my time here on Earth, spend time with my family, do things I enjoy and chase passions that make me who I am as a person.

I don't need some idea of god for life to beautiful. Life is beautiful enough by itself. There's no need for fairy-tales.

For a deist, this is also true. This life is all there is. I'm not a deist, but I disagree that the stakes are not as high for me. They are higher, if you consider that eternal destiny rests on this one life. That doesn't even require faith: What if Nietzsche's eternal return is true? Then this life matters even more because it's not the only one and everything you do has far greater consequences.

I don't want to disagree with "life is beautiful" but that's not true for everybody, either. It can be really not beautiful for some people, though perhaps there is some inherent beauty in simply being.

[EgoDeath]

How so?

They assume, or believe there is some sort of god or creator, without evidence. That is called faith. Claiming you used reason to come to the conclusion that there's a god doesn't make it any more true. It doesn't even compare to having objective, verifiable evidence.

The universe itself is sufficient evidence of something not-universe. Or at least not this universe. As all arguments do, this rests on some assumptions, such as the principle of sufficient reason and a rejection of "brute fact" as a satisfactory explanation.

How does this relate to what I said?

For a deist, this is also true. This life is all there is. I'm not a deist, but I disagree that the stakes are not as high for me. They are higher, if you consider that eternal destiny rests on this one life. That doesn't even require faith: What if Nietzsche's eternal return is true? Then this life matters even more because it's not the only one and everything you do has far greater consequences.

That's not necessarily true. Plenty of deists believe in some kind of afterlife. They may not have the same idea of god as most theists, but they may still believe that consciousness exists in some way after the death of the brain. Which is another assumption based on no evidence.

I don't want to agree with "life is beautiful" but that's not true for everybody, either. It can be really not beautiful for some people, though perhaps there is no inherent beauty in simply being.

Sure there is. Life and nature are fascinating. Even people in the most terrible of circumstances can, and often do, find happiness and wonder in life. That's not to say there isn't suffering in life as well. No one's claiming it's all rainbows, grapes being fed to you and endless orgasms. Life has it's ups and downs. But it's beautiful to me. And that's enough for me.