DISCOVER DEISM

Discover the Deist in you.

9 THINGS EVERY DEIST SHOULD KNOW

9 Principals that just might make your life better.

3 WAYS PANENDEISM CAN BENEFIT THE WORLD

How Panendeism can positively impact the way we interact with and understand our world.

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Showing posts with label explanation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label explanation. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

A Panendeist's Explaination of Why Evil Exists

To understand why bad things happen, we must first imagine a world without them.










What Would Life Look Like Without Evil?

To understand why evil happens, I think we must first ask ourselves, what would the world look like if it was absolutely perfect? If you just scratch the top of that though experiment, you'll probably get some very positive imagery, maybe some picture of you running through a meadow under a perfectly blue sky, but, if you follow that thought process all the way through, you'll arrive at a horrifyingly meaningless form of existence. Why? Because there is only one perfect response and action to every choice you make, in fact, there may only be one utterly perfect thing for you to be doing - ever.

A Day in a Perfect Life

For the sake of illustration, lets imagine that there were multiple perfect things that you could engage in. Now imagine waking up in your perfect home (which is identical to everyone else's perfect home), surrounded by your perfect family, who loves you not because they have a choice, but because that's the only thing they can do - after all, they're perfect too. You get out of your perfect bed and have the perfect breakfast, followed by the most utterly perfect mid-day activities and family time. You wow as you enjoy the perfect picnic at the perfect park, your taste-buds burst in ecstasy as you consume the perfect dinner with your perfect family. After your dinner, you engage in the most remarkably perfect sex in the most perfect position with your perfect wife, and at night, you and your family all lie together in the meadow, looking up at the perfect stars in the perfect night sky - each of you has gone through the entire day in an unshakable and unrelenting mental state of ecstatic loving bliss.

Now imagine that every single family on earth is doing the exact same thing that you're doing, perhaps at different times (depending on geographic location), and all without any choice to deviate from this objective 'perfect' state of being. Imagine that every day will be exactly the same and that you will never die, nor will you ever deviate from this state of existence.

'Perfection' Eliminates the Purpose of Being and Free Will

Besides being terrifying to imagine, a perfect world, with perfect beings, and a perfect material nature cannot accommodate purpose, actual freedom, or a reason for being. In a perfect world, there are no problems to solve, no diseases to cure, no triumphs, no struggles, no tears, and no victories. In such a world, we would simply exist as choice-less beings with no objective meaningful purpose or means of defining our own existence.

Bad Defines Good and Good Defines Bad

Without bad to define good, good is nothing. When you see a beautiful sky on a sunny day, you can appreciate it because you've seen stormy skies that bring rain and destruction. In the same sort of way, when you love deeply, you can appreciate it, because you've known what it means to feel alone.

A perfect world is like a perfectly white room in which you, and everything around you are also perfectly white. In this room, you see nothing, because there is no contrast to define one thing from another. The same would be true of a perfectly black room. It is only by allowing the freedom of both elements, black and white, that innumerable variations of grey can lend form and meaning to this room and all that lies within it.

So in our perfect world scenario, you can't really love or really enjoy anything, because you have nothing to define what makes anything worthy of love or enjoyment in the first place. Everything you do, and everything that happens around you, is simply a set of incomprehensible actions that take place without anyone ever having chosen to do them.

The Scope of Good and Evil

Since good and evil are two parts of an integral whole and necessary to define one another, we must consider that the greatest possible experiences of love, joy, or attainment exist in polarized contrast to equally powerful capacities for hate, sorrow, and failure. We, our world, and the universe it occupies are free, and such freedom requires both good and evil to exist as unrestricted elements. To limit the scope of how bad things could be, would be to limit scope of how good they could be also, ultimately this would diminish our own freedom and depth of experience.

Because Evil Exists, We Have Purpose and Meaning

As humans, it is our transcendent purpose to choose good over evil. When we choose to engage in things like love, friendship, creativity, caring for our fellow beings, or improving the world around us, we find unison with God, and we feel the transcendent beauty, good, and meaning of it.

Written by Benjamin F. Sullivan, Published with Permission via Panendeism.org

Understanding Deism, Pantheism, & Panendeism

This article is meant to be a quick, at a glance guide to understanding Supernatural Theism, Pantheism, and Deism and how they each define God differently.


In Deism God is transcendent, but God is not present materially. God is completely apart from us and creation itself.


In Pantheism and Pandeism, God is universally manifest in and as everything. In this world view, God is not transcendent because God is the manifestation of all reality. Therefore, in Pantheism, we are Gods.


In Panentheism and Panendeism, God is both transcendent of material reality, and present in it. God is in us and we are in God. This is effectively a kind of "natural theism." In this view, we are all part of God, but we ourselves are not gods.

Monday, July 20, 2015

9 Things Every Deist Should Know


While there are no "official" tenets of Deism, many of the following "unofficial" tenets might be the best way to introduce generally accepted beliefs within Deism. The unofficial tenets of Deism are:

1. Belief in God based on Reason, Experience and Nature (nature of the universe) rather than on the basis of pure faith, holy texts and divine revelation. Essentially, through the use of Reason, God’s existence is revealed by the observation of the order and complexity found within nature and our personal experiences.

2. Belief that the nature of God is generally incomprehensible and is beyond definition for humanity at this time. Furthermore, human language is limited and inadequate to define God; however, man can use Reason to theorize and speculate on what this possible nature is.

3. Belief that man’s relationship with God is impersonal and abstract. However, this does not create a feeling of a distant and cold deity but of one in which God has a profound and unfathomable relationship with all of creation (nature) rather than just one aspect of it.

4. Belief that humanity has the ability to use Reason to develop ethical/moral principles and through the application of Reason these principles can be used to implement moral behavior, which in turn creates a Utilitarian-Humanist morality. Essentially, humans can be guided by their conscience in matters of morality.

5. Belief that humans have the individual capability of experiencing God, which is defined as spirituality. These spiritual experiences are multifaceted and all of humanity has the innate capability to have these experiences. Essentially, each human is capable of having a profound experience of God and nature.

6. Belief that God should be honored in a way that the individual beliefs is best and most appropriate for them. Individuals must determine for themselves how best to honor God and only they can develop how to accomplish this. For many, it is a multifaceted and an individualized process.

7. Belief in the principle of Natural Law that states that all men and women are created equal to each other with inherent freedom and liberty so that no human has more worth than another. Essentially, each human is equal in terms of the freedoms that they have and in the eyes of the law.

8. Belief that mankind’s purpose is to use our reason to understand what it means to be alive in every sense of the word (to live life to the fullest) and to act in such a way as to secure human happiness and contentment for all involved.

9. Belief that Reason and Respect are traits to mankind and that we are to utilize them in all aspects of our daily lives thus creating a pragmatic approach to life. This includes respecting other alternative views and opinions of God (other religions) as long as they do not produce harm and/or infringe upon others.




The Deist's Glossary


Cult: In Deism, a cult is an embracing of unreasonable beliefs by a group of people. Based on this definition, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all cults because their members suspend their reason in order to believe or accept the unreasonable dogmatic teachings and superstitions such as God giving real estate as a gift to the Jews, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, faith-healing (as just one example of being a superstition, if was REAL innocent helpless children would not be dying from the attempts of their parents at Biblical ) and Mohammad's ascension to heaven, among many more false and unreasonable claims. Because Deism always promotes free and independent thought and reason, it is impossible for Deism to become a cult.

Deism: Deism is the recognition of a universal creative force greater than that demonstrated by mankind, supported by personal observation of laws and designs in nature and the universe, perpetuated and validated by the innate ability of human reason coupled with the rejection of claims made by individuals and organized religions of having received special divine revelation.

Faith: This word has been so terribly abused by "revealed" religions that it has come too really mean the suspension of an individual’s reason in order to accept, or at least to tolerate, an unreasonable claim made by a "revealed" religion. It is the only way "revealed" religions can get people to accept such insane and unreasonable claims and ideas as original sin, walking on water, healing the sick without medical care, splitting the Red Sea, etc. Deists prefer to use the word "trust" instead of faith due to the twisted meaning the word "faith" has acquired after centuries of abuse from the "revealed" religions.

One key difference between Deism and the "revealed" religion is that Deist 't believe faith is required to believe in God. This quote from Voltaire sums it up, "What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason."

God: The universal creative force which is the source of the laws and designs found throughout Nature.

Intelligent Design: Intelligent Design refers to the structures in Nature, such as that of DNA, which can be observed and the complexity of which required an intelligent Designer. In this context "structure" means something arranged in a definite pattern of organization. In Deism, Intelligent Design has absolutely nothing to do with the unreasonable Biblical myth of creation.

Natural Religion: Belief in God based on the application of reason on the laws/designs of Nature as opposed to revealed religion which is based on alleged revelations.

Philosophy: The study of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.

Reason: The mental powers used with forming conclusions or inferences based on facts. Deists look at reason as the second greatest gift from Nature's God to humanity, second only to life itself.

Religion: A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.

Revelation: The act of revealing or of making known. In the religious sense, revelation usually means divine revelation. This is meaningless, since revelation can only be revelation in the first instance. For example, if God revealed something to me, that would be a divine revelation to me. If I then told someone else what God told me it would be mere hearsay to the person I tell. If that person believed what I said, they would not be putting their trust in God, but in me, believing what I told them was actually true.

Revealed Religion: An organized system of belief in and worship of God based on the belief that God communicated/communicates with certain individual founders/members of the particular revealed religion. As mentioned above, by believing in any of the revealed religions a believer is not putting their trust in God, but in the person/people making the claim of receiving the divine revelation.

Trust: Trust is confidence in a person or thing based on reason and experience.

Frequently Asked Questions about Deism


What is the basis of Deism?


Reason and nature. We see the design found throughout the known universe and this realization brings us to a sound belief in a Designer or God. 

Is Deism a form of atheism?


No. Atheism teaches that there is no God. Deism teaches there is a God. Deism rejects the "revelations" of the "revealed" religions but does not reject God.

If Deism teaches a belief in God, then what is the difference between Deism and the other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.?


Deism is, as stated above, based on nature and reason, not "revelation." All the other religions (with the possible exception of Taoism, although superstition does play a role in both Buddhism and Taoism) make claim to special divine revelation or they have requisite "holy" books.

Deism has neither. In Deism there is no need for a preacher, priest or rabbi. All one needs in Deism is their own common sense and the creation to contemplate.

Also, "revealed" religions, especially Christianity and Islam, use greed and fear to catch and hold converts. The greed is belonging to their "revealed" religion so you can get rewards such as eternal life, and in Christianity, anything you ask for. In combination with greed they use fear of death. Deism does neither. Deism teaches that we should do what is right simply because it's the right thing to do. And Deism doesn't pretend we know what, if anything, happens to us after our bodies die. We love and trust God enough not to worry about it. As Thomas Paine wrote, "I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that He will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these matter to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter."


Do Deists believe that God created the creation and the world and then just stepped back from it?


Some Deists do and some believe God may intervene in human affairs. For example, when George Washington was faced with either a very risky evacuation of the American troops from Long Island or surrendering them, he chose the more risky evacuation. When questioned about the possibility of having them annihilated he said it was the best he could do and the rest was up to Providence. 

Do Deists pray?


Only prayers of thanks and appreciation. We don't dictate to God.

Are there Deist rituals, vows, etc.?


No. Since Deism does not attempt to control people, there is no need for rituals. Regarding vows, like wedding vows or words at a funeral, we believe they are too important to the individuals involved to have been written by anyone else. Deists are too independent to rely on a member of the clergy to do these important things for them.

How do Deists view God?


We view God as an eternal entity whose power is equal to his/her will. The following quote from Albert Einstein also offers a good Deistic description of God: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

Is Deism a cult?


It's impossible for Deism to be a cult because Deism teaches self-reliance and encourages people to constantly use their reason. Deism teaches to "question authority" no matter what the cost.

Unlike the revealed religions, Deism makes no unreasonable claims. The revealed religions encourage people to give up, or at least to suspend, their God-given reason. They like to call it faith. For example, how logical is it to believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, or that Jesus walked on water, or that Mohammed received the Koran from an angel?

Suspending your reason enough to believe these tales only sets a precedent that leads to believing a Jim Jones or David Koresh.


What's Deism's answer to all the evil in the world?


Much of the evil in the world could be overcome or removed if humanity had embraced our God-given reason from our earliest evolutionary stages. After all, all the laws of nature that we've discovered and learned to use to our advantage that make everything from computers to medicine to space travel realities, have existed eternally. But we've decided we'd rather live in superstition and fear instead of learning and gaining knowledge. It's much more soothing to believe we're not responsible for our own actions than to actually do the hard work required for success.

Deism doesn't claim to have all the answers to everything, we just claim to be on the right path to those answers.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Gaining Deeper Understanding of Deism

Below are a list of articles on this website related Deism and similar subjects. In my view the term is often abused and very vague, often representing hostility towards revealed religions such as Judaism and Christianity. I invite the reader to explore the many views of Deism and draw their own conclusion pro or con.

I also encourage the reader to explore the many facets of evolution at my Evolution Versus Creationism Archive.

As Ben Franklin noted in a letter to Ezra Stiles in 1790 (Salisbury, Dorothy Cleaveland. "Religion: As the Leaders of this Nation Reveal It." Daughters of the American Revolution Vol.106 (1972), page 541.) what American Deism is all about:

"Here is my creed. I believe in One God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render Him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion."

As Ben Franklin noted in a letter to Ezra Stiles in 1790 (Salisbury, Dorothy Cleaveland. "Religion: As the Leaders of this Nation Reveal It." Daughters of the American Revolution Vol.106 (1972), page 541.) what American Deism is all about:

Here is my creed. I believe in One God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render Him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion.

An interesting e-book on Rousseau entitled Rousseau and the Real Culture War by David Heleniak can be downloaded for free at http://www.lulu.com/content/844957. To quote, "In his examination of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Second Discourse, David Heleniak contends that libertarians are the heirs of the Greco-Roman pagans and the "modern pagans" of the Enlightenment, conservatives are the end product of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the American Left is the consequence of the doctrine as transformed by Rousseau." I've read this and highly recommend it.

An interesting e-book on Rousseau entitled Rousseau and the Real Culture War by David Heleniak can be downloaded for free at http://www.lulu.com/content/844957. To quote, "In his examination of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Second Discourse, David Heleniak contends that libertarians are the heirs of the Greco-Roman pagans and the "modern pagans" of the Enlightenment, conservatives are the end product of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the American Left is the consequence of the doctrine as transformed by Rousseau." I've read this and highly recommend it.

Deism Defined

Religious outlook, which assumed that God existed but having once created a perfect universe, no longer took an active interest in it. It is not a specific religion.

God was thought of as a divine clock-maker.

Deists do not believe in prophets or in the need for worship. If God does not actively participate in life on earth then there is no need for prophets to exist nor would God care if people worship him or not. In addition, there is no need for miracles or spiritual interventions as their is no need for corrections in God's creation. Miracles were considered superstitions.

Deists believe that God can only be understood through reason and the study of his creation. God is a rational entity. Religious doctrine, orthodoxy and dogma only leads to corruption, violence and intolerance.

Deists embraced many of the same rationalizations of the Protestant Reformation.

Furthermore, Deists believe that their is no need for organized religion because God does not need praise.

Deism beliefs were very popular during the Enlightenment.

Deism Definition and Explanation Reviewed by Dr. Ben Johnson, Doctor of Divinity: Original author unknown.

Understanding Deism

Most people have either never heard of Deism or consider it to be of historical interest only. Its roots can be traced to ancient Greece and it flourished for a while in the eighteenth century in Britain and America, a product of the Enlightenment. Many of America’s founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison and the British radical Thomas Paine – were Deists.

Deism was regarded by those who espoused it, to be a personal philosophy. Deists were not proselytizers striving to win converts which proved to be its weakness. While evangelical religion brought large numbers into its pews throughout the nineteenth century, Deism dwindled.

Yet despite reports to the contrary it did not disappear. Today, in the USA, Deism is resurgent, growing, it has been claimed, by over 700% between 1991 and 2001. This has largely been due to the internet allowing widespread presentation and discussion of Deist ideas. This at a time when there has been a search for alternatives to evangelical religion and it’s often equally fundamentalist counterpart, militant atheism.

Meanwhile, Deism remains virtually unknown in the UK outside a very small disconnected coterie. Yet there may well be a large number of Deists who simply don’t realise that is what they are. It is not uncommon to hear statements such as, “I’m not religious, but I do believe in God”, “The universe is just too ‘organised’ to be just a series of random accidents”, “I just get the feeling there’s something else, something beyond what we can see” and so on. The following bullet points are an attempt to give some definition to Deism. They are most certainly NOT a creed demanding adherence.

Observing the order and complexity found in nature (and the nature of the universe), combined with personal experience, reason leads to a belief in God.

Reason, not sacred texts or divine revelation, bring about a sense of divine being as a personal response.

Sacred texts and revelation are, at best, second hand, being the experience of some other person needing to be taken on trust.

God is abstract, ineffable, beyond human comprehension: language is inadequate to produce a definition of God. Yet reason allows for speculation and theorizing.

God is beyond the personal, while having an unfathomable yet profound relationship with all creation.

Humanity seems to have an innate sense of right and wrong even though their expression is culturally determined rather than a rigid deontology.

Every human has the capacity to have a profound experience of nature, a spiritual experience and such, for the Deist, is an experience of divine being.

Each individual finds a personal way to honour and celebrate God. This may be solitary or in fellowship with others, even some combination of the two.

As God is transpersonal no individual human has more worth than any other. In creation, all are equal.
God-given reason enables life to be lived to the full while acting for the mutual fulfilment of all.

There is no reason to suppose God has assigned a special place in creation for humanity. Microbes are as integral to this world as Man.

Whatever God is, the anthropomorphic “God-in Man’s-image” will not do for the Deist. Perhaps Divine Being points a little along the way.

Reason is the crucial element in Deism, allowing for the assessment and interpretation of the universe in its complexity and wonder. Intuition and logic harnessed to knowledge allows for inferences to be drawn based on empirical and circumstantial evidence. While many religions are based on prophets, scriptures and revelations, Deism chooses Nature, Experience and Reason. Nature is for Deists the metaphorical word of God, a sacred “book” open to inspiration, contemplation and reverence perpetually.

Science, rather than being a threat, is an ally Deists can learn from. A science denying God goes beyond its remit while a religion or philosophy that cannot cope with scientific advances has surely become moribund. Human knowledge has extended phenomenally over the last few centuries, but it would be misguided to presume that all, or almost all, that is worth knowing is now known.

Deism is not an unchanging and eternal truth. It is recognition of Divine Being within, behind and beyond a universe that surely inspires a spiritual as much as a materialist response. It is perhaps the kernel within all religions, a recognition that it is up to the individual to react in a dynamic way to creation. This is an invitation to all who are aware of a personal religious sensibility that has not found expression through more formal faiths and creeds to contemplate the possibility of being a Deist.

NB: Thanks to J. Hardwick of www.moderndeism.com for “Modern Deism: A Primer” on which this piece is based.