What is Deism? by Dr Leonard Long
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- By Leonard Long, 23rd July, 2015. Deism is the belief that a God made the universe, and then was all hands off. Deists believed in God but denied that he was active in the history of Israel or in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Deist debate exploded in Britain around 1700. Deism developed from the "Scientific Revolution" in the 17th century and then became the philosophical basis of Critical Liberal Theology, which broke the tie between Western academic theology and Christian theism. Deism was the isthmus between the continents of theism and atheism and developed into one-way traffic from theism to atheism during the 18th century. However, in 2005 Antony Flew, probably the most eminent atheist philosopher of the 20th century, converted from atheism to deism before his death. Is this the beginning of the reversal of flow across the isthmus of deism?
Leonard Long provides an overview of the deist debate in Britain and show its relevance to our current situation. It should help us to understand our history and the forces that have affected our culture.
I've just converted to Deism, thanks.
Deism is the true theology!
Deist beliefs cannot be defined so rigidly as either the title's description or message attempts. It is a wide general belief in a single Deity and that the evidence for Creation is all around us. As a rule, it argues for evidence, logic and critical thinking over a purely received faith in revealed religious doctrine. It is not a "bridge to atheism", and the Deist is free to accept or reject religious texts in this context, though those texts will usually be vetted and tested for truth rather than just accepted because they are part of this or that canon of some library of books, or because some religious figure carrying a sun staff and wearing some robes and a funny hat "said it was so".
+Strav777 I mainly agree. Deism is a broad category. Leonard claims that Isaac Newton and John Locke were deists, but they were very different from Thomas Paine or Jefferson. Isn't the main thrust of deism that God created the universe but does not subsequently intervene in a personal way? Deism can also be a bridge to theism.
+Michael Hurwitz That is interesting. By your definition I am a deist too. I believe that the existence of God can be argued from reason and evidence too, I believe that the resurrection of Jesus can also be argued from evidence and reason as well. My beliefs are conventional Christian beliefs. Am i a deist?
+ReasonableFaithSA I wouldn't say you were a deist. Deism's main belief is "freedom from revealed religion" we don't believe in revelations of God to man. We believe in a creator through logic and reason. God created the universe. Some believe the creator intervenes from time to time, but for the most part not really. For me personally, I found God not in a book, but amongst the stars in nature. Christian deists believe in the teachings of the bible, but not the divinity portions. Christian deists don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus because that would be divine. Pantheism is the belief that God is the universe. Pandeism is the belief that God created the universe and then went away and became the universe. We bridge many religions. Deism however is a philosophical religion in itself.
+Brandie Grant I substantially agree with your main definition. I have had recent discussions with Leonard Long, who was the original presenter. He was talking about British deism in the 17th and 18th centuries. It had a much more narrow definition than seems to be used in more recent times. In those times deism meant belief in a God who does not intervene including the rejection of revelation. (Jefferson was not British, but he was an interesting example. He had a high regard for Jesus' ethics, but rejected the miraculous.) According to that definition, I am not a deist. However, some of the people who have commented on this blog have much more diverse definitions of deism where it seems difficult to distinguish them from theism or Christian. Imposing modern definitions on the deism of over 200 years ago misses the point. It was probably partly my fault. I shortened the title of his talk to make it less complicated, but I lost the point that his talk applied to deism at that time.
I think there is easily SOME overlap between deism and various forms of theism.
Deism is the only belief system that makes any sense to me. I was Christian for 30 years until I realized virgins don’t give birth to god men. Now I consider myself a deist.
If God created the universe, could he perform a virgin birth or a resurrection?
@@ReasonableFaithSA I think you missed the point, if God created the Universe, performing a virgin birth or resurrection is not needed.
Why do people feel the need to take cheap shots at my country, the USA?
Do all Australians resent the fact that the USA undoubtedly save Australia from certain defeat by the Japanese. Would Australians prefer to be part of the Japanese empire?
Leonard seem to be unaware that the word "deism" in 18th century America had a different meaning to the common modern meaning of belief in a 'hands off God'. In 18th century America (and perhaps elsewhere), deism typically meant belief in God (whether or not he was hands off) but rejection of inspiration of holy scriptures. This is evidenced by dictionaries from the time period. The word deism sometimes also just meant "theism", for example, Jefferson in his 1803 letter to Priestley says the Jews practice "deism". I think Leonard makes a leap when he says the deist founding fathers were not Christians. Their form of deism was often compatible with Christianity, as belief in biblical inspiration is not definitionally essential to Christianity. There was a spectrum of views among the founding fathers, including traditional Christians, Biblical Unitarian Christians, Christian Deists, and only a few non-Christian deists.
Your comment looks quite sensible. I have passed it onto Leonard.
Here is Leonard's reply:
G'day Kevin,
The word 'deism' (from Latin) and the word 'theism' (from Greek) were a muddle for quite a while, and it is too easy to impose our later finely defined and delineated words back in history, as is a problem with imposing words back onto the classical world in regard to their creationist debate.
The bigger problem was, as one book title put it, that Europe invented and America instantiated the Enlightenment. Americans were a chaos of invention of all sorts of religions and other belief systems, so much so that I cut that chapter on America out of my deist study - it was all too hard to pin anyone down.
It was hard enough of the British Deists, as our Aussie Wayne Hudson described in his two-volume study of them, The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment of 2009, Pickering and Chatto, and Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists and Reform, same publisher details.
I can't find at the moment my copy of Jefferson's expurgated New Testament, in which he physically cut out all the miracle stories, which would put him somewhere in the Deist camp, methinks.
Cheers
Leonard
Biblical inspiration is not essential to Christianity?
@@mattr.1887 What is and isn't essential depends on one's definition of Christianity, but arguably Christianity is about following Jesus, who predates the biblical cannon as we know it today. Sure, Jesus probably believed at least some of the OT was 'God breathed', but it's a leap from that to full blown biblical inspiration as we think of it today. Alternately, Christianity may be thought of as being about believing the ecumenical creeds, which don't mention biblical inspiration. Even Gresham Machen, in "Christianity and Liberalism", acknowledges that there are some legitimate (not liberal in his view) Christians who don't believe in biblical inspiration.
IMPORTANT: i believe that i have solved for Deism, i can prove it with Mathematica. I do not say this lightly, i am also a descendant of B’n’li, and before we moved to Basel we were in Antwerp with Erasmus.If we met you would not deny wha on I claim to be, nor would you deny my math. I have real answers. Who do i show my work to? Who do i talk to?
I will, in real life, absolutely blow the butterflies from the back of your mind with the elegant simplicity of how simple it is to prove Deism.in a manner that no one has ever seen.
Who do i talk to?
Show me the mathematical proof.
@@berteloth6512 i’m finishing up the editing. While the basic idea is understandable through a few pages i go on with examples, careful definitions, restating my point in other ways for another 300+ pages. Is mostly pages of simple illustrations, not a mountain of text, an easy read. keep in mind i begin before the cosmos and explain all the way to your existence. to be correct the entirety of the cosmos must ‘fit’ and be congruent.
again, i do not rely on any doctrine, or assumption. not one. it is parsimony.
i wrote it completely by hand so that no word can be altered, this has happened to many books in history. I’m going to put it on patreon since money is necessary in life, hope that doesn’t disappoint. i’ll let you know when it’s ready. unsure how much to charge given the massive amount of work i put in.
i think it would be best if i make into a video and narrate so there’s no misunderstandings.
It is primarily relevant to the west, but western values have a significant impact on the rest of the world.
+ReasonableFaithSA That's why I said it depends on your definition of deism. One definition of deism is that God started the universe and then took his hands off. Thus God does not intervene at all. This rules out the miraculous or any divine revelation. Newton did not believe this. He wrote more on scripture than he did on science. Newton was not orthodox. He was an Arian and did not believe in the trinity but he was not a deist according to the above definition. He did believe in divine intervention both in history or in science. He predicted that planetary motion was unstable and proposed that God occasionally intervened to stabilize the orbits (which is actually wrong). He also believed that the Bible was inspired by God. This is quite different from Thomas Paine, who thought the Bible was complete rubbish and it is also different from Jefferson. He believed that Jesus was a good moral teacher but he did not accept the miraculous, whereas Newton did. People may well call Faraday a deist, but that is simply quite wrong, as there are a lot of ridiculous claims on the web. Read any biography about him. He was a deeply Christian man.
A 40 minute straw man followed by an unintelligible group discussion.
It is easy to make these accusations if you have a different world view, but what do you mean by a straw man?
I mean that everything the speaker said about deists is an intentional misrepresentation of their position, their motives, etc., ReasonableFaithSA.
Ok. I didn't agree with some of what Leonard said as well. I don't think that Newton and Locke were deists in the classical sense at all. They both had very strong views of the Bible. FYI Leonard Long is a retired doctor who has since done a Masters in Philosophy. He is quite knowledgeable but is by no means a world expert. As far as the group discussion is concerned, anyone can attend our meetings and make comments or ask questions. So, if some are fairly ignorant etc, then this is not surprising.
What I took particular exception to was the assertion that naturalism is based on "blind faith" in the laws of nature. I do agree that the laws of natures are abstractions based on our observations -- after all, they rely heavily on mathematics, which is itself an abstraction -- but the reason we call them laws is because they appear to be unbreakable (we could get into a debate about how Newtonian mechanics break down at extremes of size, speed, etc., but that's an entirely different discussion). When it is possible for billions of people to repeat the same experiments billions of times all over the world, and get the same results *every single time*, that is not blind faith.
Science is supported by evidence. It also makes no claims about the existence of god(s). The supernatural is by definition beyond our ability to examine. Science does not stand in opposition to religion. While many *scientists* do, many others do not. In fact, some scientists are able to reconcile their professions with theist beliefs. At one point in time, religious institutions were at the forefront of many sciences. Sadly this has gone by the wayside.
I was referring to the audio quality of the group discussion. I could only understand a small fraction of the dialogue. If you intend to publish these discussions on RUclips, perhaps invest in some high quality condenser microphones, or at least pass a microphone around?
I re-watched his talk and saw the statement you were referring to. Laws describe the 'regular' behaviour of nature. It is debatable whether they are unbreakable. My understanding is that deists believe that God created the universe (which is miraculous) and then believe that God no longer intervenes. Theists believe that God may choose to intervene from time to time in a miraculous way. If God is creator then the odd miracle here and there should be chicken feed. According to Leonard, deists reject any historical evidence for a miracle as unbelievable because miracles don't happen. Therefore there is no evidence for miracles. This is a circular argument and the interpretation of evidence is based on an apriori "blind" assumption.
By "God", would they generally mean the Judeo- Christian God revealed in Scriptures, or any god in whom one may choose to believe?
By God they mean Nature's God, the anonymous Creator of the Universe.. not the God or Gods of any so called revealed religions or man made creeds. The Deist God is an unknown being but one we as Deists come to know through our God given Reason, that a Creator exists by perceiving the works of Nature.
@@faysaleladdouti8394Worship him, then?
wanyed to watch this fadcinating video but the volume is too low for my phone
DEIST IS BEST
Really?
Sorry did you just say Locke's epicurean materialist view? That's not a thing that exists... Discredits the rest of your arguments as well
very poor lesson. why can't academicians at least profess as well as teachers?
Is this mostly of relevance to the West?.
Is Deism related to Freemasonry ?
Not that I am aware of.
I before E except after d
Can't you just FEEL it when an enemy of God starts talking. I'm sure this is just one long discourse against Jesus Christ.
I know Leonard very well. He tries to do what is right and is not an enemy of God. Your feelings have led down the wrong path. You have misread him. This is not a discourse against Christ.
@AmazingTaterNator No
@AmazingTaterNator Are you talking about the professor? I agree, didn't watch more than sparsely though. As an Orthodox Christian deism is just another form of Protestantism but with even less reverence, fear, and worship for the Lord. But I guess that's better than being even more secular like a communist or modern person etc.
@@RedShnowbefore Jesus, Judaism WAS deism.
Deism….goooofyness
I could barely listen due to his constant dry mouth. For God's sake, drink some damn water!
biased and condescending presenter 2/10
Can you justify that comment? Leonard has studied this topic and provided arguments, but you haven't provided arguments. One could more plausibly claim that your comment is biased and condescending.