Religions make claims as to the intervention of God in the world, when the natural order is contravened: the raising of Lazarus, for example. Such are cited as evidence of divine beneficence.
However, like claims for revelation by God, miracles are, at best, second hand accounts. Sometimes someone will claim to have benefited through miraculous intervention, such as the sole survivor of a crash.
This does not account for the others who died, nor why God would choose to spare this particular person after subjecting them to the terror of the event. Religious sects often persuade the gullible to rely on faith, invoking miracle cures rather than seeking medical intervention, often with disastrous results.
Deism makes no such claims, recognising that God is beyond human comprehension and may or may not be aware of individual existences. Evidence for God is necessarily circumstantial, the basic order in nature, which functions according to identifiable laws.
It is claimed, especially by Chaos Theorists, such order is only apparent, while at the sub-atomic level order breaks down and randomness is the rule. There is though an emerging strain of scientific thinking suggesting such randomness is illusory, as there are patterns even at this level. It is only because they are so complex they presently lie beyond human understanding.
Nature is also the source of miracles for those who crave them. The theory of evolution gives a perfectly good account of how life has become variously manifested. What it does not do is explain how inorganic matter became living organic matter, or why.
Not only did organic matter emerge, it eventually achieved consciousness so that, in its highest expression Man, matter became conscious of its own existence. By extension, the universe becomes evermore aware of itself as humans probe its secrets.
This is not to suggest some bearded celestial figure in a long white gown reached down and, in an act of divine prestidigitation, conjured life from non-life, just like that! An anthropomorphic God is not being proposed here.
In the universe there is no effect without a preceding cause: that there was a big bang (or whatever) as a first effect requires a primary cause, behind or beyond or outside the universe, responsible for the apparent designs immanent within creation.
Such is God, a simple word for a concept so profound it is really ineffable. What is certain is that consciousness is a natural aspect of the universe, perhaps a product of increasingly complex structures. Maybe animists had apriori intuition of all matter being imbued with spirit (consciousness) which becomes manifest in higher organisms.
Deists concur with materialist scientists (indeed, Deism is a materialist religion as it draws on nature as its source of “divine revelation”) that consciousness is an emerging property, a latent process inherent in the big bang.
Having accepted consciousness as an emergent property some Deists believe it cannot continue when the material host, the brain, ceases to function. In other words, there is no consciousness beyond death.
Consciousness remains a sacred gift and those who have been conscious have been truly blessed. There are, though, Deists who argue that a God who could arrange a universe might also have some purpose in maintaining emergent consciousnesses in some manner beyond the scope of our present understanding.
It is the case that we do not know and there is likely to be a great deal that we know little or nothing about. It is an arrogance to assert we comprehend enough about the universe to make absolute, categorical statements that are beyond contradiction.
So, let consciousness be celebrated and employed to discover as much as possible about universe, drawing on it as an inspiration for further understanding of the divine source of creation. That understanding may always be deficient, but at the very least a Deist can say/pray for the one certain miracle:
Thank you, Deus, for being.
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