I started this Deism UK blog having come to the realisation that I am a Deist. Previously I had been a vague sort of none church going Christian, had dabbled a bit with Buddhism and, had I been challenged, would probably have described myself as an agnostic.
Atheism also had its appeal, but I always had an inchoate feeling of there being more to the universe than is dreamt of in any Man’s philosophy (to mangle the bard). My dad, a superb classical musician, insisted there are patterns to things, an organising principle.
Then I discovered a number of American Deist websites and I began to investigate. For the first time I had found a spiritual philosophy that made sense, to me at least. I no longer had to square some supernatural super-being called God with a rational outlook that naturally shied from such a concept.
When, as a Deist, I say that God is ineffable I actually mean it and it’s not an attempt to sidestep the issue. If humanity was truly able to understand God then we would have to be on a par with the divine.
This is a corollary with the atheist position of denying God: it’s insisting that something the human mind cannot conceive of cannot then exist. It really is arrogant in placing the human mind as the epitome of intelligence beyond which there is, and can be, nothing greater.
I might not be able to conceive what God is, but it is the flexible brilliance of the human mind that allows me intimations of divine being. That there is a universe and it is intelligible, not with standing creatures with consciousness enough to appreciate and investigate it, is at the very least suggestive of a greater Prime Cause of all subsequent effects.
Do I offer this as conclusive proof? Of course not! Deism makes no grandiose claims and certainly does not believe itself to be some sort of conduit for divine revelation. The onus is on each individual Deist to work out his or her “theology” (should that be “Deology”?) based on the only reliable scripture there is, the book of Nature.
Deism makes no promises of places in heaven, or threats of damnation to hell. Indeed, it has always seemed odd to me that a supposed omnipotent God requires bribery to secure adherents: “Praise me and I’ll let you through the pearly gates.”
I do not even know whether God is actually aware of my individual existence, but that does not prevent me meditating on what “God” means and my place in creation. I am also thankful to God for my span, however significant or insignificant, in the divine universe.
Deism is a concoction of the human mind, a way of viewing, incorporating a religious sensibility with a rational, scientific outlook. Undoubtedly, at some point in the future, Deism will be superseded by a better way of coming to terms with the wonder of existence. By then, it will have served its purpose of furthering human response to, and understanding of, being in creation.
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