Deism and Founding Fathers

This short letter was in answer to John Meadows who attempted to paint all the Founding Fathers as Christians written by Dr. Ben Johnson, Doctor of Divinity; Deist. May,1999.

Though the brief description of Deism accurately supports the argument about the faith of our Founding Fathers, it contains many historical inaccuracies that I would like to bring to light.

Deism is assembled around the idea that God is the creator of all, but then steps back from his creations, leaving no further interaction.

Most Deists see organized religion as a system that creates problems such as oppression, violence and warfare; all of which our founding fathers experienced or witnessed, before claiming independence from Great Britain. The only benefit that religion held in deists’ opinion, was the importance of strong ethics and moral values.

Deism was the favored curriculum within the universities our Founding Fathers attended.

They believed the Bible was not the word of God, for the stories throughout went against the laws of nature.

They did however see particular stories throughout the Bible applicable, for they showed the importance of good moral character.

As to the justification of why our founding fathers were Christian, the internet is simply not a source that has enough accuracy to be considered valuable.

There is a very specific process to the craft of historical methodology. This practice includes the process of asking a question, considering the evidence (primary and secondary sources), coming to a conclusion and communicating the knowledge with others historical scholars.

Though a Google search may say that our Founding Fathers were indeed Christian, we must look further into actual historical evidence to provide the basis of our knowledge.

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The Journey to Deism from Islam

I have an attraction on my mirror stating, “Life is not about finding yourself – life is about creating yourself.”, “commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw". This is my statement I live by.
Many people do not understand the meaning of Deism and why I am saying it, or maybe the first thing that jump in their mind is Atheist. These two believes are totally different; Atheist is unbeliever whereas Deist is about believing in God who is identified through nature and reason. In Deism our reason and belief become happily united with the wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.

It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures with that beautiful unique complexity, teaches us our duty toward each other by forgetting and feeling mercy.
I became who I am today after long journey of questions, wonders, confusions. In fact, I was born in Muslim society where questioning religion is forbidden and my parents are westernize and open minded as well. They believe on Education and knowledge. I was naughty boy who liked to ask a lot of questions that put me sometimes in trouble with others. However, I had a lot of argument about Islam in the things that never made any sense in my head; music was one of this things. I believe that music as like the language for everyone no matter who you are or where you come from or what language do you speak we all enjoy it. I love music and dance since my childhood, It was my passion with no tensions or no confusions but where I came from I was told all the time in school and public, listening to music, dancing are prohibited and celebrities are demons. I was wondering and asking myself how music that make people happy, make us fly with our emotions can be prohibited.

One time I got brave enough to ask our Islamic teacher at school some questions such as: why do we believe in Allah (God), he got angry at me and said, “Your question is stupid. You know you shouldn't ask these questions. We should believe in Allah as a Muslim without questions, Quran said that and it's our faith." I asked him again, “Did Quran say we can't ask, and how we know is Islam the only right religion, why not Christian?” He looked at me with wide opened eyes and full of anger, said "If you don't stop asking these questions I will punish you, put you failure in this subject and tell the school director to kick you out of the school." I was scared because my parents would be upset.
Since then, I tried to search by myself looking for convince answers for my questions but I couldn’t find any satisfied answers, all I found is that religious scripts to obey and follow. I couldn’t find answer for my questions though I tried to watch T.V religious series, read Islamic books publications and did a lot of searching on the Internet. Since then, I knew Islam is not what I want to believe, as God give me brain to think and that definitely for reason. I am not going to follow these people who want me to shut up my brain and mouth to follow them like a goat without questioning, though I was forced to act like them and keep my thought for myself because I knew if I talk much they won't hesitate persecute me or harm my family. I felt scared and at the same time fed up to act like someone who not I am.

My parents started to worried about me because I started to express my thoughts about religious issues with some friends by some local religious figures in my community. Therefore, they sent me aboard to study, I went first to Germany and end in China where I got my bachelor degree. At that time, I felt relief and be myself though the previous question still wondering on my mind looking for answers.

Couple of years later I decide to study and read about religions from different perspectives as we say 'think out of the box'. I started reading, watching different documentaries and historical researches of religions such as: Islam, Christian and Judaism, but every time I dig deeper in each one I face a lot of questions. I felt like I am flying in black whole with no end. During my studies I arrived to the conclusion that religious through time been political more than faith. It's about having authority or power to control people, because logically you cannot control people thought or force them to do what you want unless you have high power or authority that make people follow without argument or rejection.

On Oct.1st 2012 I received a call from my mother telling me that my Grandpa Dr. Ali Seif was murdered in Yemen by AQAP which is terrorist group under AL-Qaeda’s Ideology, that news killed me. I loved my grandpa so much, he was my Idol. He was well educated and a great guy who used to help a lot of poor people and did a lot of nonprofit surgeries for them. When he retired in United States where he grew up, study and practiced plastic surgery, he went back to Yemen hoping to make some changes and teach them some of his knowledge on medical and plastic surgeries but at the end he was killed just because he was an American citizen nationality. According to Muslim stupid mentality on their believe who would agree to kill an innocent old man because of his nationality, this incident affected me a lot and made me believe that I was right about Islam.

I decided to follow my brain that lead me through this life till the day I started searching on Google website, "I believe in God, but I don't believe in any religion." There I found a webpage shows that somebody had already asked the same question. He was told that he's a Deist, and that's how I learned about Deism. I was very impressed by it, it's clear concepts about the right of freedom to think and believe on what I was always searching for. I have read about core Deism principles and I found that in Deism God gave us the reason and conscience to develop our own moral and ethical principles. Additionally in Deism all human beings should be free to find, know and worship God in their own way. At the same time all beliefs or views should be respected as long as it doesn’t cause harm or oppress others, those principles relieved me and helped me find answers that match my own way of thinking.

In my opinion, no need to practice or commit for religious rituals and customs by praying, fasting or any other kind of rituals to be a good person. I think practicing civilized human values are more logical and wiser than believe in religious rites which from my point of view collide with reason and human civilization. I want to be myself, have freedom to read, write and express myself, live my life peacefully with myself listen to my favorite music, felling content and the inner peace.

Written by Sami A. Qasem. Reviewed and approved by Dr. Ben Johnson, Doctor of Divinity

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Deism: Beliefs and Practices

John Earwood has written a concise description of a typical Deist's approach to deity, humanity and the rest of the universe:

"Deism rejects all of the religious scriptures and dogmas created by fallible humans, as sources of final Truth. Instead, Deists try to avoid unwarranted assumptions, and focus on what is obvious. The world of Nature is where we live and breathe and have our being. But it doesn't seem to be eternal, so someone, or something, must have created it. Since the Creator, whoever She is, does not reveal Herself to us directly, we have no way of knowing what Her intentions for us were. So, as the dominant creatures on earth, we must work together to make our own way in the world. The philosophy of Deism is based on a single, axiomatic premise: that some pre-existing Prime-Mover made us a physical, spherical home, then wound it up, and turned it loose to evolve its own path through space and time. This reasonable inference is not a fixed point of faith, however. It’s just a convenient place to start our philosophical journey, because it leaves us free to deal with reality, without falling into the trap of logical conclusions derived from unwarranted assumptions."

There is no central authority that defines Deist beliefs and practices, as is the case -- for example -- in the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, Deists vary considerably in their beliefs. One core belief shared by essentially all Deists is that God created the universe, established its natural laws, wound it up and then disassociated himself from creation. Some commentators refer to Deists as believing in a God who acts as an absentee landlord.

A few Deists believe that God still intervenes in human affairs on rare occasions. However, most believe that God is wholly transcendent. God does not listen to or answer prayers; God does not intrude in nature by creating miracles.

They believe that the only paths towards knowledge are logic and reasoning.

They respect portions of the holy texts of other religions, like the Torah, Christian Scriptures - New Testament and Qur'an. However, they believe that these books are errant because they were written by humans; they do not believe that any of these books can be considered inerrant, inspired by God or the Word of God.

They believe that miracles do not happen. The world operates by natural and self-sustaining laws of the creator. 1 That is, the world continues to function under the same laws that God initially established.

They do not view God as an entity in human form. God does not have human feelings like love, hate, anxiety, happiness, etc.

Deists hold diverse beliefs concerning the exact nature and attributes of God. Some believe that God has no interest in humans and may not even be aware of our existence.

They believe that one cannot access God through any organized religion, set of beliefs, rituals, sacraments or other practice.

God has not selected a chosen people (e.g. Jews or Christians) to be the recipients of any special revelation or gifts.

Deists generally deny the existence of the Trinity as conceived by Christians. They generally view Jesus as a philosopher, rabbi, teacher and healer, but not as the Son of God. Their beliefs are similar to those of the Jewish Christians -- the initial Christian movement centered in Jerusalem and led by James, the brother of Jesus.

They believe that a practical system of ethics and a moral code can be derived from reason without the need to appeal to religious revelation and church dogma. "Most Deists believe humans are too innately noble to require supernatural coercion and threats of eternal damnation to behave morally." 2

Most Deists view God as having left his creation behind. Thus, prayer makes no sense to them. However, some pray to express their appreciation to God for his works. The latter generally do not ask for special privileges, or try to assess the will of God through prayer, or ask God to perform miracles.

Most Deists do not actively evangelize the public.

Deism symbols:

There is no universally accepted Deism symbol. Deists are an independent lot, so perhaps there should be multiple symbols for their religion instead of a single image.

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

"World View: Deism," at: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/

The United Deist Church of Asheville, at: http://www.geocities.com/

"Scott," "The Symbol of Deism," 2008-NOV-19, at: http://www.amorian.org/

"Symbol/deism," Dynamic Deism Fellowship & community Forum, at: http://www.celestiallands.org/

"Mobius Magic," Mobius Products and Services, at: http://www.mobiusproductsandservices.com/

The symbol of the United Deist Church of Asheville is also a Mobius strip. See: http://www.geocities.com/

"Possibility," The Church of Sunny Deism," at: http://www.freewebs.com/

The Deist Alliance is a cooperative venture among a number of Deist groups. See: http://deistalliance.org/

"The Christian Deism Symbol," at: http://www.christiandeism.com/  the home page itself does not appear to be online.

"One Deist," "Why Phi? Not Wi-Fi," Deism Today BlogSpot, 2008-APR-26, at: ⦁    http://deismtoday.blogspot.com/

John Earwood, "The Elusive Deity of Deism. ‘What in god’s name do you believe?'," 2005-FEB-03, at: http://godvsthebible.com/  this is a PDF file.

Much of the writing here on this page are from various web sites that deal strictly with Deism and is not the work of the author of this site. BJ.

Compiled by Dr. Ben Johnson, Doctor of Divinity

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