Deism and God

 

 The portrayal of God in the holy books of various revealed religions ranges from the wrathful to the insistence on turning the other cheek. What all these have in common is a God that is all too human, be it on a grand scale.

Deism differs profoundly by appreciating that God ultimately lies beyond our comprehension, so we are not in any position to ascribe a form. What God isn’t is a super being essentially like ourselves.

A certain quality of God is being eternal. This is an assumption, but a reasonable one, differentiating from the finite nature of the universe. There is a scientific notion supporting this view in that Einstein’s general theory of relativity suggests the possibility of there being parts within the universe that are void of time.

Rather than scripture of one sort or another, deists look to science as the best way humanity has of expanding our understanding of creation. For it is through studying creation we can discern some inkling of the Creator.

Deists also want to set aside anachronistic concepts relating to God. For example, God as a celestial king, and a rather despotic one, sitting on a throne in constant judgement over His vassals, humanity.

As our learning evolves, so must human religion, and religions are human creations, they are not ordained by God. In this deism is no different. It presently reflects a religious or philosophical view of current understanding.

Deism is likely, at some future point, to be superseded by a more advanced view taking into account new thinking. Although, not being hidebound by creeds, doctrines or supposed holy books, deism is open to adapt to new and developing ideas.

Arguing with Atheism

 

The easiest way of winning an argument is to concoct a premise flawed in its own terms and then demonstrate the superiority of its contrary position by comprehensively demolishing it. Such is often the method employed by atheists

For example, everything must have a cause, therefore the cause of everything is God. At least this is the atheist summary of the religious position. The cutting counter is then primed: if indeed all things have a cause, this has also to be true of God.

Therefore, God cannot act as the ultimate backstop to infinite regression and so the religious position is demonstrably unsustained. However, the atheist premise is at fault. God cannot be simply just one more component in the collection of components that constitute creation. Otherwise, that is not God.

God has to have a categorical difference from all else that exists, to be an element unconditioned by anything external to itself. Without such a concept we are left with a universe that wasn’t, there being literally nothing, which then produced itself and all that is in it, including the laws by which it operates.

There are attempts to mitigate nothingness with electrical, quantum or fluctuating fields in various guises, but then such is not nothing. Nothing is precisely that, no thing of any sort however tenuous or insubstantial.

What deists understand is that we don’t understand the nature of God. Deists are insistent that God is not some larger scale human and God’s existence can be inferred even while being beyond comprehension.

The God whose death is repeatedly announced by atheists would indeed be subject to dying by being very human. Such a God does figure in the simplified religions of the credulous, But we are capable of a much more sophisticated appreciation than that.

In a sense, deists are atheists in that they have moved away from the Abrahamic creeds of theism in its various forms, based on revelation and scripture, to embrace personal experience of creation illuminated by reason.

It just that deists are atheists who argue for God.

 

Attending To God

 

A recent Church of England report revealed that regular church attendance presently stands at 1.8% of the population. It went on to project that this would fall over the next decade to about 1%. The decline, it appears is inexorable.

No doubt secularists greeted this news as confirmation that religion has all but been vanquished, that we all now live in the Kingdom of Godlessness. Of course, it means nothing of the sort. What it does reflect is a diversity of views and an unwillingness to be martialled into any particular camp.

There can be no presumption that the corollary of the report’s findings is that 98.2% of the population are atheists or agnostics. Apart from members of other denominations and faiths, perhaps the majority of people rarely even give the matter much thought.

When they do it seems many profess a vague, inchoate sense that “there is something” or the order they see in the world around them can’t be the result of mere chance. Nothing more definite than that. A recognition they are part of something far greater than themselves, only there’s no need to go into some designated building every Sunday to sing about it.

Atheism has a fundamental problem most atheists seem to solve by denying it. That is, in a random, purposeless universe the only rational position is that of the nihilist. An assertion that Godless humans can find their own purpose, through existentialism or whatever, is to accept, at the very least, purposefulness does exist in creation.

After all, people are a part of that creation and are expressions of purpose. It is a similar realisation that the universe is self-aware: it must be, because we humans are aware of the universe, at the very least we are the universe’s self-consciousness.

Although atheism presents itself as a modern way of thinking, it is actually as ancient as religious belief. The per-Socratic philosophers were intellectually wrestling with the implications of materialism even as the chosen people of Israel were developing the early foundations of what have become the three Abrahamic faiths.

Deism is a dialectical product all the contending factors around belief and disbelief, informed by science. Like all religions it is man-made and, as such, has its own imperfections and contradictions. It does not claim to offer prefect answers, because they don’t exist.

Indeed, it may not even be a religion but a philosophy. It has no dogma or creed demanding obedience, rather the opposite, imposing on the individual the burden of drawing his or her own conclusions.

Deists cannot even say what God, or Deus, is. Not only is there no settled agreement amongst deists, there is a shared recognition that God must be, and remain, beyond human comprehension. Otherwise, God is little more than an idealised, but limited, human being at best, such as the God of the Abrahamic faiths.

Maybe the word God will eventually fall into disuse and some other arise to denote a less anthropomorphic designation. If so, it seems unlikely it will require the filling of pews on a Sunday.

Certainty

 

Are there intelligent beings, perhaps far more advanced than us, on other worlds scattered through the vastness of the universe? It is possible to construct reasoned arguments to support both positive and negative answers to this question. The one thing that cannot be stated categorically one way or the other is absolute certainty.

Certainty can be a dangerous concept, too often founded on an absolutist partial view. To be certain is to accept no contradiction, all contrary views must be summarily dismissed as erroneous.

Is there God? In Britain it has become the prevailing trend amongst those who would consider themselves to be most progressive and rational in their thinking to become unholier than thou. God of the gaps has become no gap for God.

Non-belief in God is perfectly rational, a reasoned conclusion drawn from some combination of scientific understanding with all too many execrable examples of religious dogmatism or malpractice.

Atheism, though, does not confer secular sainthood on its adherents. Atheists are as capable of all the foibles that too often are considered the failings of the religious. The uncomfortable truth is that such failings, from the trivial to the horrendous, are human, not God’s.

God is often cited to justify truly terrible acts committed by those claiming to be His most pious adherents. Whether they sincerely believe this or not their justification is a human falsehood, the crimes are theirs.

This is also the case for religious practices and books. They are human productions, not divinely ordained. Therefore they cannot be cited to justify persecution of those considered non-believers or claim a monopoly on truth.

Atheists who readily cite such religious malfeasance are conniving at the pious fallacy. False belief remains just that whether dressed in religious garb or sporting a secular appearance. Both are guilty of closed thinking if they profess absolute certainty in their ideology.

Deism begins with the view that all ideologies, religious or secular, are manmade, including its own. Therefore, an ideology at any given moment is provisional and will change over time, and may be supplanted at some future date when it has been falsified by new understandings.

The argument for God or Deus that deists profess is based on the application of human reason. Science provides an expanding knowledge of the universe, which is only possible because it operates according to discernible laws.

If creation was the product of just random chance then there would only be chaos, certainly none of the predictability science requires to function. Deists argue that universal laws rather than chaos are at the very least suggestive of something that can be referred to as God or Deus or First Cause or perhaps even X.

This is not certain, but it is a recognition that the age old belief in deity, expressed in such varied ways over millennia, is perhaps an a priori feature of human cognition. That it gets bound up in sectarian religious practices is a reflection of a desire for certainty about something which is ultimately beyond human comprehension.

It is far, far more likely that the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial advanced beings will at some point be possible than some absolute proof of God. However, inquiry should not be dismissed or even curtailed by a present insistence on an absolute certainty.

Does God Exist?

 

This question is considered by many philosophers to be one of the irresolvable conundrums. Essentially, it cannot be known absolutely whether God exists or not. Indeed, philosophically, the proper position to take may be agnosticism.

However, religion has played a significant role in human life to date, being manifested in a variety of ways. Today, atheism is widely considered to be the smart position to hold, with many claiming it to be superior to belief.

Faith is mocked as staunch belief in an entity for which there isn’t a shred of evidence: worse, it is akin to advocating the existence of fairies or Santa Claus. Here though there is a category error: fairies and Santa Claus demonstrably belong in the realm of childhood and most people, adults and children, know what they are and look like.

This is not true of God. Islam rejects any possibility of representing Allah and Judaism used Yahweh to signify God, originally not a name, rather an unpronounceable collection of letters. Christianity has given God a human face in Christ, but even then that is only an aspect of God who is ineffably greater.

The point is that while atheists could be correct, there is no objective way of establishing the case one way or the other, it is as much a belief system as theism, both being faiths profoundly held. It often seems the God atheists vehemently do not believe in is not a God theists do.

Agnostics draw a perfectly reasonable conclusion by recognising that neither contrary position can be verified. However, this does not prevent people from drawing another reasonable conclusion from their own observations and experiences.

The universe, possibly a multiverse, is a dynamic system operating by comprehensible laws. While chance does play its part, the cosmos is not just an agglomeration of random events. Is there purpose in creation? Human beings know there is at least purpose in their own lives, therefore purpose can be shown to be a factor.

This leads some to posit a Prime Mover or Grand Designer, which is not to suggest some human-like being on a grander scale. Both phrases can be picked apart if they’re taken literally, but accepting the limitations of language to describe what may always lie beyond human comprehension, they can be used indicatively.

Deism adopts this provisional position, provisional because it cannot be absolute and desist make no such claim to infallibility. They may also prefer the Latin Deus to the Greek Theas, to differentiate themselves from previous considerations and speculations about the divine.

So, does God exist? For deists, Deus does.

 

Easter

 

What does Easter mean today? For committed Christians it continues to be their celebration of Jesus’s resurrection, proof of God’s sacrifice of His own son for mankind’s salvation. For those not so committed to the Church it might, at best, be a welcome spring holiday.

Could it be that both are missing the point? Deists do not subscribe to the notion the Jesus was possessed of divinity, being the literal Son of God. It certainly seems, from Gospel writings, that he was not expecting to be raised bodily from the dead.

Indeed, given the option his stated preference in his prayers in Gethsemane was to avoid the whole nasty business. There can be no doubt he was very much aware of the likely consequences of his preaching: the Romans did not take kindly to those advocating alternative kingdoms to their own rule.

However, when it came to the final moment as he hung in agony on the cross, Jesus committed his spirit into the hands of God, he didn’t make an “I’ll be back” pronouncement. This followed on from his experience of absolute despair when he cried aloud his questioning of God, “Why have you forsaken me?”

This question resonates because it manifests itself in the manifold traumas humanity experiences. This is one significance of the crucifixion, the cross can be a symbol of personal agonies, physical and mental, or even of acts of genocide – that oft asked question, “Where is/was God?”

This can lead all too readily, as it has done for so many in Western society at least, to a complete renunciation of God. It seems that no matter how forsaken he felt, Jesus had faith enough to still entrust God with his spirit.

Perhaps Jesus recognised, as deists do, that God is beyond all human comprehension, appreciating the existence of his own life, and the lives of others, is the crucial evidence that God imbues creation with life.

Many deists conclude that God having set the dynamics of creation in motion does not intervene in the universe. When Jesus felt forsaken that was very much a human in distress reaction, not God arbitrarily deciding not to come to His son’s aid.

Nor was it to ensure the completion of some divine grand plan for human salvation through sacrifice. Certainly there is no evidence in the Gospels that Jesus held such a view. It was Paul, persecutor then militant apostle, who developed that concept.

Indeed, Paul insisted if the resurrection had not occurred then there could be no hope of life beyond death. That hope was then invested in the Church giving it its awesome power. For near two thousand years this has given the crucifixion a meaning it never had.

Other than what is written in the Gospels, some while after the event, and the pronouncements of Paul, there is no indication, certainly not contemporaneous, of such a miraculous event. Although Gospel accounts of the empty tomb and subsequent meetings with the crucified Jesus may not be fanciful.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is that Jesus did not die on the cross. When he committed his spirit to God it could be he slipped in unconsciousness, not unreasonably considering the scourging he’d suffered and then the crucifixion. A spear in the side wouldn’t necessarily elicit a response in such circumstances.

Jesus had been on the cross for six hours which, interminable as it must have felt, was actually a short time as it usually took days for a victim to actually die. It could be that some did die quickly, surely the shock would be enough for this to be possible.

Therefore, the guard being convinced Jesus was dead, broke the legs of the two crucified either side of him to hasten their deaths through asphyxiation. Get the business over with and back to barracks. Jesus then revived. While this may appear unlikely, the ability of human beings to survive great traumas is well attested.

Certainly it seems Jesus was able to convince his disciples of his presence by displaying his wounds. Interestingly, he did not instruct those disciples to go into the world preaching about his death and resurrection, rather repentance and forgiveness, consistent with his pre-crucifixion message.

Jesus then disappears from history. He might well have succumbed to his ordeal or been so badly traumatised as to simply withdraw. There can only be speculation. The importance of all this is that no supernatural element is required for Jesus to have continuing significance, even for deists, as a man, a son of God, as we are all sons and daughters of God.

 

What’s in the Word?

When the word is God, rather a lot. That the universe is of divine creation, that there is God, or Gods, are notions that humanity has nurtured since pre-history. The problem has been, and still affects the world’s religions, is that the concept of the divine has been limited to reflect society at any given moment.

Indeed, ideas about God often seem to lag behind social changes and should be obviously anachronistic to those who continue to espouse them, For example, the Christian Church still refers to God as King of creation: this suffers from the twin difficulties of being anthropomorphic and outdated.

The theist God is very human, all be it on a grander scale. In fact, king is not a bad epithet for a deity that is jealous, ruthless, angry, demanding of praise and fealty, loving the subservient, dispensing favour or punishment according to the divine whim. A despot indeed.

According to religious teaching, God created man in His own image. It would surely be more accurate to reverse that, man creates God in his own image. This is reflected in recent times by feminist theologians who insist on the female nature of God, as if this makes any real difference to such a limited concept.

If God is demonstrably a human creation rather than the other way around, why persist with the notion? Strip away all the cultural and religious accretions and religions have one element in common, God. It seems humans have an a priori knowledge that the universe in which we all exist was created, and continues to be created, by something way beyond our ken.

It is because this ineffable something lies way beyond our very partial understanding that it has become repeatedly dressed up in human attire. The word God allows us to indicate this mysterious something, to consider and speculate about, even have vague intimations of, the divine.

Deists celebrate reason because it enables us to have insights into creation and see in all the wonders science reveals laws and purpose. We know from human experience that creation requires a creator.

From the first primitive log role to the very latest automobile there has been conscious choices made by numerous people down the centuries. Even chance would have contributed, but a fortunate accident would require someone to choose to learn from and incorporate it into the process of development. This is evidence of human being.

On the very much grander scale creation requires a creator, divine being. That our view is limited doesn’t prevent us appreciating the significance of that of which we are a part.

Analogies are always flawed, so accepting this consider: Actors are filmed scene by scene in no particular narrative sequence. Often, they have little or no idea as to the story being made. Indeed, the director in the editing suit cuts the film and makes the story. We are like those actors, only we may never get to see the whole production.

Some deists choose to use the Latin Deus rather than God, considering the word God has too many cultural and religious associations. There are deists who argue they are not religious at all, rather they subscribe to a philosophy not a religion.

So, what’s in the word? An awful lot, it seems, but language is a living not a fixed entity, discarding outmoded meanings and adopting new ones. For the word God deists offer new definitions appropriate for our times, a word that can open thinking to new concepts and understandings that transcend religious boundaries. We might be defined by God, but we cannot define God.

Matchbox God

Matchbox God is a poem reflecting on what essentially is a panendeist philosophy. Panendeism is a branch of deism identifying God with being the sum total of all creation, but also greater than that, transcending creation.

As a partial component of creation we can appreciate that of which we are merely a part. What we cannot do is fathom the whole, even less so what transcends the whole. We comprehend the being of God, but not what God is.

God must always be elusive, beyond us, ineffable, otherwise that would not be God.

Matchbox God

There’s a modest looking matchbox
Neither very deep nor wide,
And yet it is remarkable
As God can be found inside.

Once the drawer has been pushed open
Folk look in, look up and glare,
Crying, “Even if we’re faithful
We can see God’s not in there.”

Although never readily seen
God’s not easily dismissed,
Being all that there is and more than
What does and does not exist.

The sum of every particle
And all the space in between,
Whatever was or will be, God
Becomes, is now or has been.

As the primary catalyst,
The cosmic key that unlocks
The door to creation, God is
Also inside that matchbox.

Dave Alton

Which God?

It has been suggested that deism is an expression of atheism. This is correct in that it denies theistic conceptions of God and the religions proceeding from them. Whatever their differences, all three Abrahamic faiths essentially subscribe to an anthropomorphic deity exhibiting all too human emotions such as jealousy, anger and forgiveness.

Knowledge of such a God is claimed via revelation and scriptures asserted to be the divine word or, at the very least, divinely inspired. A supernatural element if also employed to a greater or lesser extent.

Deists deny that any such detailed knowledge of God is possible. Holy books are the works of man and as such lack any real consistency, indeed are often contradictory, hardly the mark of the divine word.

Revelation has a particular problem. Even if it’s true, God puts in a personal appearance with Moses for example, it is only Moses that has the first hand experience. For everyone else the experience is second or third hand, needing to be taken on trust. Even if Moses is an honest fellow, no matter how convincing he is, it is still not a revelation for those to whom he relates his experience.

Deism requires none of this, indeed it is each individual’s personal experience and reflection upon the universe alone that can lead to the conclusion of there being God. That creation is amenable to rational study through there being identifiable laws makes it reasonable to accept there was/is a creator.

That there is something, a universe, rather nothing poses a problem if there is no creator: nothing emerges from nothing, no effect without a cause, no movement without a moving force. The prime cause, the prime mover is what deists refer to as God.

And God must be of a very different order of being as to be the instigator without having to be instigated. So, although humanity can have intimations of God, whatever that simple word refers to is beyond the partial understanding of human beings.

This is not a new concept or one unique to deists. In Hindu philosophy there is Brahman, an unchanging reality that’s in, behind and beyond the universe that cannot be defined.

Similarly, in Taoism it’s said that however the Tao is understood or defined, that is not Tao, which is outside the human capacity to comprehend.

That there are lesser deities spawned turning these philosophies into versions of theistic religion is a demonstration of a human need for the anthropomorphic: however, Micky Mouse being a fictional human creation does not invalidate the reality of mice.

God, as a word, does carry millennia of anthropomorphic associations which is why many deists have adopted the Latin Deus for their discourse to avoid theistic implications.

Deism does not proselytize for the very good reason, mentioned above, that it is for individuals to arrive at their own conclusions. People can be pointed in the direction of deism, but they must engage with it and become deists because they decide to.

So, while deism is not synonymous with atheism in its broader sense, not is it religious like theistic faiths. Many deists would regard themselves as not being religious at all, that deism is a philosophy not a religion. It certainly has none of the religious trappings such theocratic hierarchies, articles of faith, holy books or such like.

If there is a deist gospel it is written on the earth and in the stars and is not bound by the hand of man. The works of Deus are literally everywhere, and we are one of them.

Way of Deism

For anyone seeking truth, or something approximate to it, finding the way is not easy. If the first steps entail walking away from established religious tradition a sense of being bereft can become pervasive.

This often leads to a spiritual tourism where various religious alternatives are tried and found wanting. Their similarity to the established religious traditions they claim to eschew becomes apparent: formal or informal hierarchies, leaders who may or may not be charismatic and/or divinely inspired, some creed to be adhered to, an insistence their way is the only true way.

The result often is the experience of such schismatic sects reinforces a rejection of religion, with the adoption of an unsatisfactory agnostic or even atheistic position. However, a feeling that there is something more remains.

Careful consideration, and a determination not to be bound by previous experiences, can then lead to a rational examination of what can be personally observed. A starting point is questioning notion that the creation of the universe, unlike everything that is within it, had no cause of its own.

If there was an initial cause that brought the universe into being it was unique, different to all subsequent causation by not being the result of some previous effect. Otherwise it would, by definition, not be the First Cause.

Also, the order perceived in the universe, that it operates according to discernable laws and had to be precisely as it is for life to emerge and evolve into humans is surely not accidental.

There is nothing in the universe that isn’t the result of a chain of creation that continues to develop. It is hardly a step to then come to the conclusion that creation has a creator.

Such a creator is not the anthropomorphic Deity of the Abrahamic religions. The universe does not demonstrate geometric perfection or evidence of constant omnipotent correction.

It appears creation may well have been a singular act with little or no subsequent interference by the Creator. If there are continuing divine influences they must be according to the Creator’s purpose and not the result of human imprecations.

The universe is manifestly not perfect, but that may not be the point, rather that its being is in itself significant. Also, if perfection had been achieved the universe would surely have reached stasis as any further developments would have led to imperfection. The lack of perfection makes the universe a dynamic, continually developing process.

Perhaps, the Creator wants or needs creation to be perceived and understood, at least to some extent, and that is a role humanity presently plays. Indeed, we are active consciously in shaping our small corner of creation and in that sense we are the Creator’s agents.

Maybe humanity’s purpose to develop consciousness of creation and to employ this gift as part of the on-going dynamic development: through us at least we can be sure the universe is aware of its own existence. Might divine providence be channelled to us in this way?

Deism is more than a rational speculation about the existence of God. It is an understanding that we are of creation as much as any other feature, part of the whole. Nature itself is the Word of God and we have the ability to learn, understand and interpret that language.

The universe is an objective reality and while our reactions to it may be subjective they can be filtered through reason to reach conclusions in accordance with that objective reality. If there is an element of faith in deist belief in God it is not a faith in contradiction with objective reality.

Deism is not a licence to believe in just anything, it is demanding of the individual to use reason so as to draw conclusions verified by being in concert with those arrived at by fellow deists.

This is not to preclude differences; they will arise according to various interpretations of observations of nature. As the ultimate nature of God/Creator/First Cause/Whatever is beyond human fathoming perhaps the one shared conclusion deists can agree on is that Deus is not beyond reason.