Mixing religion, government, environmentalism explosive device.
Fig. 1

In Defense of Classical Deism

by Lewis Loflin

The Internet deists have very little in common other than they hate Christianity and Judaism and equally reject true deism.

We have silliness, such as claiming deism is a method, not anything specific. In fact, they will fight tooth and nail to keep from defining deism in any rational or recognizable terms. This is because they reject traditional deism while claiming its mantel.

Their only concern that unites most of the Internet deists is to trash or tear down Christianity. The result is a teardown and trashing of American culture, which was primarily built on Protestant ethics.

Nowhere is this problem more than in a spiritual atheism system known as pantheism. Pantheism posits that God and nature are conflated into one. They may use the term God, but this view of God has absolutely no real meaning. The point of pantheism to these people was throwing a word around, such as God, a concept they truly reject.

Two of the most asinine and ridiculous terms invented in recent years are pandeism and panendeism. These are simply word play on the old run-of-the-mill pantheism, which today runs predominantly among many environmentalists that see nature as divine.

See Scientific Case for a Transcendent God.

What about classical deism do these phony Internet deists object to? Because many refuse to define anything clearly, I will do it here in clear terms that they can't twist or distort.

It's time to call out this collection of secular humanists and closet atheists for what they are. Yes, definitions are important, and we will no longer allow them to make up utter nonsense.

Classical deism posits that God (or, as we would prefer, the Deity) created the universe and transcends or stands apart from creation. God is often a loaded term due to past abuse from what is commonly called organized religion.

Christian fundamentalists and radical secularists alike have hijacked and distorted deism to the extreme. Christians use it as a dumping ground term for all kinds of heresy that seem to claim some form of God.

The radical secularists of the French Revolution, such as Voltaire, conflated the God of deism with Aristotle's Prime Mover. All of this was used to de-Christianize French society.

Radical French Deist Robespierre would be the prototypical secular mass murderer whose offshoots would include monsters such as Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. The claims that are replacing revealed religion with secular philosophies would end the world's problems runs counter to reason and empirical proof.

Classical deism places reason over revelation. This doesn't mean that divine revelation is impossible but is unreliable due to the humans that somehow claim authority from God with no proof other than their say so.

Roughly quoting Thomas Paine, unless I receive the revelation directly, it's simply hearsay.

Thus, classical deism rejects the authority of priests, councils, and other mostly political bodies. We embrace individual thought, not a collectivist organization.

Classical deism rejects the concept of heresy. The concept of heresy has more to do with religious and political organization than religion itself. In other words, keep politics out of religion.

But that doesn't mean making up anything you can concoct or feel comfortable with can be called deism, just on one's say. It doesn't work like that. If one wants to believe that trees, rocks, and slugs are somehow God, stop wasting my time and go away. Go Google the secular humanist society and be with your friends.

If one's only interest is finding ammunition against other religions, then go away. One that comes to a belief system simply because of anger with another faith is doing that new belief system no favors.

How many Muslim criminals and terrorists have we seen in recent years who have been converted to Islam, angry at either Christianity or the society they grew up in? We don't need those kinds of people here. Go away!

At the same time, the classical Deist is interchangeable with classical Unitarianism and must respect and learn from other religions. This is particularly true of Christianity, Judaism, classical extinct belief systems such as Gnosticism, etc. I'll add classical philosophy, in particular, Greek philosophy.

We must take a positive view of religion, not an aggressive stance.

How can we understand ourselves as Deists if we don't explore our roots and understand why we got here?

Thus, classical deism was an effort to moderate and introduce rationality back into Christianity that had fallen prey to church politics and superstition.

God is one or monotheistic. There have been other efforts to suggest why there is not more than one God? Simply no, because there is no need for it.

God must by necessity stand outside creation. Because the radical secularists for almost 2 centuries have failed to prove that life in the complex world we live in is simply a product of random material processes clearly indicates a power beyond mere physics and chemistry.

The absurd idea of mystifying nature through pantheism and assorted atheist spiritual beliefs undermines the scientific method and opens the door for superstition - to keep religion out of science.

The classical Deist must separate miracles from magic-they are not the same thing. The abundance and diversity of life in this world are clearly a miracle observable by all. Magic, on the other hand, clearly defies known science and physics and, unproven to the masses, must clearly be approached with great skepticism.

The classical Deist, and many of them were early scientists or connected with science, must not confuse belief in the scientific method with a belief system based on science.

Science properly understood is limited to describing the physical properties and processes in nature and nothing more. It has nothing to do with politics, ideas of social justice, or feelings.

When science is reduced to a belief system or as a governance tool, it will become corrupted and distorted. The misuse of these almost secret scientific councils to lay the foundation for oppressive political agendas must be resisted at all times.

Again, science, like religion, must be clear of politics. Science has its uses but when it becomes a belief system is open to corruption and exploitation so common among religions. Science, like reason, is a tool, not an end in itself.

New for December 2017:

On Religion and the Fall of Civilization by Will Durant

An Overview of Manichaeism. Its influence on Protestantism through St. Augustine.

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