Why is there no 'deist religion'?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by SpaceCricket79, Jun 16, 2015.

  1. SpaceCricket79

    SpaceCricket79 New Member Past Donor

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    Why do nearly all major religions have a "theist" version of God who performs miracles or overrides natural laws?

    Why are there no religions with a deist version of god, similar to what the Founders believed about god?

    After examining religion I've decided that deism makes a lot more sense, than a theistic god who can snap his fingers and intercede with the world on his whim anyway.
     
  2. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    Actually the Founders were overwhelmingly professing Christians.
     
  3. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    especially when said theistic god intercedes by finding car keys, but not feeding starving children.

    meanwhile, I wish you well on your journey, Mr Cricket. there are quite a few deists here, so someone is bound to respond sooner or later :)
     
  4. SpaceCricket79

    SpaceCricket79 New Member Past Donor

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    No, some where Christian, but they were not devout, evangelical Christians.

    There are some people claiming the Founders were mainly inspired by the Bible, but this is not accurate to history.- Jefferson for example wrote his own abridged version of the Bible and didn't believe that things like the virgin birth were literally true.

    The "Christian heritage" in America comes mainly from the Puritan settlers, not the Founders

    - - - Updated - - -

    I agree with this - this leads to an authoritarian "might makes right" view of God, where anything God does is good for any reason just because "he's God"

    Thanks
     
  5. UnknownGause

    UnknownGause Member

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    Yes, I'm actually quite intrigued with deism, or more specifically Rousseau's idea of civil religion combined with deistic thought. I've always wondered how France would've ended up if the Cult of the Supreme Being continued...
     
  6. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    Yes.

    Yes, you could substitute "some" for "the overwhelming majority" without lying outright. The question, of course, is why you would.

    I don't know where you get the idea that an evangelism is a requirement of being a Christian, but it's not from anything in the words of Christ as recorded in the Gospels.

    Doesn't matter. What matters in the present context that Deists constituted a tiny minority of the Founders.

    Of course atheists like to pretend there were like half a dozen Founders who counted for anything, because that's about how many said and wrote things they can twist to make it look as if Christianity was a non-factor, but obviously the Founders must include the signers of the DoI at the minimum.

    I'm afraid that view is rather difficult to square with the fact that the Founders were overwhelmingly professing Christians.
     
  7. SpaceCricket79

    SpaceCricket79 New Member Past Donor

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    You keep saying these things but failing to prove it.

    Whether the professed to being Christians or not, they would've been considered heretics by the Christian fundamentalists for having a "modern" interpretation of Christianity without a lot of regard for the authoritarian parts of the Bible - in fact many Puritans of the day disliked them.

    If they were around today, they'd definitely not be in the camp of evangelicals like Jerry Falwell, for example.
     
  8. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    So what?
     
  9. SpaceCricket79

    SpaceCricket79 New Member Past Donor

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    Based on your views you seem to be a Christian fundamentalist, so if the Founders were around they'd likely consider you too extreme.

    So why does it matter to you so much that they identified as "Christians" when they didn't share the same literal interpretation of the Bible as you? - your views are a lot closer to those of the Puritans than the Founders.
     
  10. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    You have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

    See above.
     
  11. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because the ancient Greeks had too many gods always stabbing each other in the back

    There is one. It is called "deism" :smile:

    There are deist societies here and there but the nature of deism offers no reason for there to be anything organized.


    Perhaps, but the want of the finger snap leads to a lot more currency ending up in the ducket plates than "We can't do anything for you. Sucks to be you."
     
  12. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    I honestly don't think deists would go for organized religion.
     
  13. robini123

    robini123 Well-Known Member

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    Deism is the antithesis of religion as we Deists reject dogma there is no foundation for a religion to be built upon.
     
  14. Finley99

    Finley99 New Member

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    I prefer believing what these men believed and lived by:

    "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human fraility. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature."
    ~Albert Einstein~ at the time of his death in April, 1955

    "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
    ~Thomas Jefferson~ excerpt from a letter he wrote to John Adams in 1823
     
  15. Junkieturtle

    Junkieturtle Well-Known Member Donor

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    Jefferson was a smart dude. I think he understood the social need for religion(it's a set of morals that tell you to behave or the omnipotent higher power will know and punish you for eternity) but he never believed in all the voodoo and magic except for the parts he couldn't explain like the origins of life and the universe. Where he alive today with access to scientific knowledge unavailable in his day that makes the need for a god story to explain the universe unnecessary, he'd probably just be an outright agnostic or atheist. Possibly a pantheist like Einstein.
     
  16. Finley99

    Finley99 New Member

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    That's all any religion is......voodoo and magic. I prefer "Jack and the Beanstalk" when I'm thinking fairy tales.
     
  17. BoDiddly

    BoDiddly Member

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    I always enjoy the attempt to downplay religions role in the history of mans rise to a free society.

    The entire debate between founding fathers on the separation of church and state or established religion was framed in terms of which arrangement would be best for Christianity.
     
  18. Finley99

    Finley99 New Member

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    Christianity is based upon an ancient fairy tale written by ignorant sheep and camel herders who thought the earth was flat and believed in witches. All religions....no exceptions...came from the ignorant, arrogant dreams of early mankind's developing imagination...well, there is Mormonism and Scientology LMAO!!

    (Don't get too close to the edge.....click image to enlarge)
    FlatEarth-300x227.jpg
     
  19. BoDiddly

    BoDiddly Member

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    And yet science, ethics, and philosophy spawned from religious thinkers. Go figure.
     
  20. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    The Freemasons almost operate as a such a religion. Deists and theists are both welcome, but the only focus on God is as a generic creator and architect, and it was extremely popular among deists during the time of our Founding Fathers.
     
  21. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, ​

    Kind of a shame he didn't see fit to extend his contemplative faculty to the question of why the crown jewel of God's creation would be designed as a throwaway item.

    Yeah, we get it. Yer a dog with a bone.
     
  22. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    I think the appeal of Deism is that the Deists do not believe in the type of people who would organize them into a religion. A lot of the founders (Jefferson for one), were not fond of clergymen.
     
  23. Finley99

    Finley99 New Member

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    LOL!

    I seem to remember everything from public floggings to burning at the stake. The Catholic church damn near fixed their britches over Galileo's scientific view of the solar system. Have you never heard of the Crusades or the Inquisitions? The church is a poor example to use for anything:

    For more than a thousand years the church required infant baptism. When ordinary folks began to doubt that kind of requirement and their attendance/donations began to falter the church made it optional. The scripture is still there but is never mentioned in that way.

    For thousands of years the church conducted witch hunts and tortured and put to death a conservative estimate of 100,000 innocent young women because they had been accused of witchcraft. When the general population caught on to the fact that there is no such thing as a witch the church backed away and shut up. The scripture is still there.

    For thousands of years the church supported slavery, often accommodated it. When ordinary folks realized slavery is a practice for which there is no justification...guess what? The church backed away and never mentions the numerous scriptures in the bible which lend support to the practice.

    The Ku Klux Klan had two requirements. The applicant had to be White and they had to be a Christian. I guess that makes the best candidates for torturing and lynching Blacks.

    Now the thing is hell itself. After millions of preachers preaching hundreds of millions of hell fire and brimstone sermons and the very concept of eternal torture and misery for non believing individuals making mistakes while living their lives has become extremely distasteful to the common man, the church is adamant in their insistence that it's all been errors in translation and are now preaching that hell is merely the eternal separation of man from god. All the scripture is still there but once again they have changed their position.

    The church owns more real property in this world than any other entity except the governments. The Vatican City has a building which covers blocks and is loaded with rare treasures and art works which conservatively are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. All this while more than 900,000,000 humans are starving to death or suffering from the effects of malnutrition. By default the starving are mostly children, about 12,000 die each day.
     
  24. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    then like now it's easier to say your a Christian then to say your not, so even those that are not Christians often say they are

    I think many Christians are truly deists, even today

    .
     
  25. TBryant

    TBryant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Unitarians would accept a deist member.

    Deism fits okay with any non-theistic faith. Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and so on. Non-theistic faiths don't really care whether you believe in a creator god or not.

    Western tradition really likes personal gods though, even back before Christianity pagan gods were all in peoples business. So finding a western based religion that accepts deism is going to be difficult.
     

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