Deist vs Theist

In your original post you stated "faith in God is all that matters". What God do you place your faith in, and how did you come to "know" this God? Once again, if you would choose not to do this on open forum, I respect that, and you could PM me.

 

Unless you believe that God inspired the writers of the Bible,in that way you are putting your faith in God.

 

No then you would be putting your faith in your own intuition. Unless one is directly communicating with God in a literal sense they must first put their faith in men (including themselves) and then God.

 

But see what you believe if not given as a direct order from God (in a literal way not metaphorical) is you putting your faith in yourself that the God you want to believe in must exist.

I'm not a deist but everything I know about deists tells me that whether or not he can communicate with his creation is irrelevant. A deist looks at the things I mentioned in my last post as evidence that God does not communicate with his creation because the evidence that he does actually better supports the idea that he doesn't.

Take all the people throughout history who have prayed to their Gods and they will tell you that it works yet MOST of them are praying to the wrong Gods, heathen Gods, and yet the same percentage of their prayers are answered as everyone else’s.

As I said there is nothing beyond some mans word that God does communicate with them. Unless you are in direct contact with God and he tells you that yes he can and does communicate with his creation you are putting your faith in yourself and other humans that he does.

 

Doesn't a deist do the same thing ? (putting their faith in their own intuition) How can they arrive at the belief that there is a deity by just looking at nature,logic and reason ?

 

Sure they do but the leap of faith is just a tad bit shorter than telling people what Gods name is, what he likes/dislikes, what he thinks, feels, does, doesn't do, etc..

Looking at how the universe began and saying it must have been a God is far more reasonable than saying it must have been my God and if you eat meat on Fridays you're in big trouble.

 

I would say that it isn't a shorter leap. Its either faith or it is not. And to say that communication with "god" is irrelevant, is senseless. You've already taken the leap of faith to say theres a god, so why not at least investigate the claim. To say that theres a god, but not investigate the idea is ridiculous. Now, as far as secular worldview goes, agnostic would make more sense than diest or atheist.

 

If you believe in God,it doesn't hurt to investigate the claims of the ancients to see if you relate to anything about their testimony and experience with God, so I can't say that I think Deism is "a wiser" stance than theism because to know where the ancients came up with God's name and what it means, why they weren't supposed to eat swine and how they viewed their God under what circumstances,etc... can be enlightening.

I would say deism is wiser in the way that they aren't so easy to argue against but to say that you believe in God (on faith) but to know he doesn't interact or intervene is to say you know THAT much about God and the Leap is no shorter,IMO.

But to say "my God doesn't intervene or interact with his creation" isn't any better.

 

Trying to communicate with God does not equal investigating the claim anymore than trying to summon a spirit to heal someone is an investigation into medical science.

Once again you have failed to understand the point. Deist have investigated and their conclusion is that there is nothing to suggest that God is an interventionist nor that one can communicate with him.

You completely ignored the reason your position is almost juvenile. Your "communication" with God is nothing short of you communicating with yourself or other men who were doing the same.

There is nothing beyond yourself to claim your communication was valid making it irrelevant.

 

Do you believe you would be able to relate to something you are not predisposed to relate to? Can you honestly quanitify why it is you related to your religion and not say paganism? Or how about why it is that millions of others related to the religions you did not? I mean it almost appears as though God doesn't change people but rather that people change God.

Your position is in support of everything I've been saying, you must first put your faith in man (which includes yourself) before you can put faith in God.

Having faith in something with no evidence to support it is not the same as not having faith in something because there is no evidence for it.

Unless the evidence and or lack thereof supports it. And Deist don't say "my" god.

 

In Christianity, a popular religion in this neck of the woods, it means that those who reported their story, those who preserved and related that oral tradition, those who first recorded it, those who transcribed it, those who translated it, those who edited it, and those who printed it were all infallible, thus, elevating men to divine status.

 

So must a deist and a non believer, it always starts with 'self.'

"Evidence" is subjective in this case.

I'll rephrase. - But to say "God doesn't intervene or interact with his creation" isn't any better.

Again, evidence is subjective which separates the deist from the theist. Many theist claim to be given evidence of their God and what constitutes evidence for 'that person' doesn't necessarily constitute evidence for 'another'.

 

I just believe in God. As a deist I don't classify God with a name other than the generic term God. I have no need to have an in-depth understanding in God. All I need to do is to quiet my mind, pray, listen, and follow. I shake my head at those who try to explain God... it is akin to explaining the unexplainable.

The 80's were a rough time for me, I was living the fast life and it was killing me. So one faithful day I just had enough, knew that of my own power I would lead myself to ruin, so I decided to give this whole God thing a real try. Met some men who spoke to me as an equal, had been down the path that I had, overcame their problems, and said they would show me a path to God. They made it clear that their job was not to tell me who God is, they said their job was to give me the tools so I could find out for myself.

Why do I know God is real? Because I have seen things happen that I believe to be the work of God. I have been able to help people when in the past I could not even help myself. I overcame things with God that I could not face alone. I have had men sitting before me crying saying that I had just saved their life... and me telling them that I did nothing, all glory be unto God. I explain that I am just the conduit through which God's power flows... that I am not the source of the power and that I am just like them... alone and lost without God. Its an amazing thing to talk with a desperate man, looking into those black pits for eyes... and in the space of an hour over a cup of coffee seeing those eyes light up with hope... seeing the life flow back into them... to me that is the power of God in action.

Now an atheist could easily say that my change could have had nothing to do with God, that I just got sick of living a futile life and I used my will and chose to better myself and help others. I have no way to prove an atheist wrong on that point. But that is where faith comes in. I tried over and over for years to climb out of the rat-race, and I failed over and over. It was only when I looked up into the heavens and said "I give up God, you win, lets try it your way" did I finally find success.

I believe in God because of the experiences I have had in my life, not because I read someone else's experience in a religious scripture. When it comes to the divinity of Jesus, its not that I can absolutely say He is not God, its more that I cannot say that He is... I was not there during the Crucifixion and Resurrection, so I don't know. But none the less I do know God is real because of the miracles I have seen in my life and the lives of others.

As for the exact tools I used to find God or the spiritual group that helped me to find God... those will remain a secret. Why? Sometimes its just better to be anonymous in-order to avoid misrepresentation. I am just a guy who found God with the help of a spiritual group of people, where the path led each of us is as varied as the people in the group. Some became Christians, others Jewish, yet others Buddhist... etc. I became a deist.

 

How does a diest investigate their claim, that leads to their conclusion? Oh and one other thing, belittleing my "position" does little to advance your claim. In fact it shows a severe lack of credence to your own position.

 

No, faith is the belief in something for which there is no proof. A non believer doesn't believe in God because there is no proof that a God exists. This is just as logical as not believing in all the other things for which there is no proof. I don't have to put faith in myself to reject what over 60% of Irish people believe which is that leprechauns either exist or did at one time.

Evidence IS subjective in the case of revelation which supports my position perfectly. How do you know where you end and God begins? Unless God has literally spoken to you how do you know you didn’t create the evidence for his existence? Honestly how do you know?

How does that change the answer? If there is no proof or evidence of any kind that he does, if there is nothing to suggest that God does intervene why should anyone believe that he does? On top of that how do you know its your God and not someone elses? Did God tell you? Did their God tell them?

On a side note more than 10 million children die each year, most from preventable causes and almost all in poor countries. If God is an interventionist he’s not that impressive.

Again you support my position. With so many different truths, with so many different ideas of what constitutes evidence, with so many different revelations and people who believe theirs is correct and yours is wrong how can you possibly believe you put your faith in God before man?

The one constant in the above is not God, it’s man, if it was God there would be no differences.

 

For the first question how do you investigate nothing? If there isn’t a monster in my closet how can I investigate the merits that there is one? Deists are often people who have knowledge of theism like the founding fathers and often times it’s a rejection of revelations that prove false that lead people to deism. The harder you look at scripture for example the more fallible it becomes and the more faith is required to believe it.

There would be no way for you to investigate the claim that fairies don’t exist but I would assume the fact that there has never been any evidence that they do is enough for you. God is different for you because you have bias towards him for reasons you probably can’t explain in a way that would validate it for other people but that says more about you than it does about any God.

Calling your position “almost juvenile” is not a personal attack it was an observation of your position and the fact that you ignore major parts of my post to keep it intact.

 

So you can't investigate nothing. Then theres been no investigation, correct?
So diest have a knowledge of theism? Where did this knowledge come from?
As for scripture, I have no problems with it, maybe we can investigate this fallibility, care to share?
While you're correct, I do not care to investigate a claim of ferries, therefore I would remain agnostic to them, which as I recall, I said is the more intelligent secular worldview.

 

Why investigate ancient claims when we have credible contemporary ones? (That are VERY different from the ancients, FWIW.) Look into the following books: "My Big TOE" by Thomas Campbell, and "Journey of Souls" by Michael Newton. "God" is not an entity, it is Source, and it is All that Is. We, our consciousness, are all little tiny pieces of that greater consciousness, separated in order to learn and experience. Our reality frame doesn't even physically exist, it's just an illusion experienced by our higher selves through a selective data stream. We reincarnate thousands of times, sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere, in our journey towards enlightenment.

 

Religionists of diverse flavours are actually obsessed with arbitrarily defining selected aspects of creation as "not God" stuff, but this inclusive, encompassing definition is unassailable.

To simply enjoy the experience of existence itself is the ultimate identification with the divine.

 

That is because they are so attached to their dogma, such a thing cannot possibly be true. "You mean everyone goes to "heaven"?? Codswallop, that's just you deluding yourself so you can behave in whatever manner you like without guilt."

See the thing is, even though I don't believe you go to hell for murdering someone, I choose not to murder. Ditto for rape, plunder, and pillage. And while I do live a non-traditional sexual lifestyle (my wife and I are consensually non-monogamous AKA "swingers"), that brings harmony and joy into our lives, not deception, strife, and combat, so it cannot possibly be a bad thing.

Do I think I'm fully enlightened? Far from it. I have trouble dealing with anxiety and fear, and I'm not doing a great job figuring it out, but it's okay, I'm still young, and if I don't figure it out during this lifetime, I'll have as many as I need in the future to do so.

 

...and a deists has to put their faith in themselves (self) first, that there is a God. A none believer would have to do the same if they were to ever become believers.Point being that a deist is no 'wiser' in this respect,that they too, have to put their faith in Man (self) before they put their faith in the believe in God.

It's is also subjective in the case that you believe there is a God and what you are basing that belief on. (deism)

1.It doesn't but as you saw the need to correct "my God," I equally saw the need to rephrase.
2. Intervention is subjective.Intervention is subjective just as the "evidence" that deist's are basing their belief in a God is. I can say that I prayed for a miraculous recovery and received it the next day while there may be a very logical medical explanation for it or not, COULD be evidence TO ME. = Subjective.
3. Whose God ? Now that isn't something that I could argue any better than a deist's "creator God."

You know, it is sad when a child dies but it is also sad when anyone dies and instead of me saying that God NEVER intervenes because people die of preventable deaths isn't evidence that he doesn't or can't intervene.

1.Your position states that both the deist and theist have to initially put their faith in self but the deist is wiser because they only put their faith in themselves and reject all testimony and religious texts.

2. A theist doesn't believe in everything they read in religious texts, in fact, they do not put their faith in a book or other men either but rather they read something and either become enlightened by it or they do not.This comes back to self. Testimony is a form of evidence when it comes to law and IF you believe in God such as a deist does, I don't think it is "wiser" to reject ALL testimony no matter what, which is basically of what religious text consists.

 

I do listen to contemporary ones.


EDIT: Thank you for the recommended reading material.

 

It's all "God" if that's the name you want to give to it all.

Religions are in the diminishing business.

 

I prefer Source. "God" carries too much religious baggage.

Thank God!! (Pun very much intended...)

 

Yes, I guess it does, yet "source" evokes an agent, a "creator" separate from "creation" in a finite spacial and temporal context, and that leads to the usual petty quibbling and vapid bickering amongst religionists attempting to diminish it all.

Maybe, all folks should say is an expansive, "Ooooooooooooooooooommmmmm ..."