The Problem with God

Census data and other surveys indicate a declining propensity for people to associate themselves with a belief in God. Certainly, with a few exceptions, this is reflected in declining church attendance.

While the supernatural remains a popular form of entertainment, few regard it as an actual feature of life. Even at quasi-religious occasions such as church conducted funerals, how many really believe in the angels and archangels intoned by the prelate?

Religion plays at best a marginal role in most people’s lives and those who persist in professing a faith it is questionable how many of them seriously reflect on what it is they claim to believe.

Are they aware of the many contradictions and inconsistencies contained in the bible? Do they know that what they accept as the word of God is very much a human construct, a selective assemblage brought about at the behest of the Roman emperor Constantine?

Even the divinity of Christ was finally decided upon centuries after His time. Most of the accepted narrative of Jesus’ life story is a reworking of elements drawn from a number of previous sources such as classical mystery religions and the religious traditions of ancient Egypt.

For deists, not only is all this not a difficulty for people, but an opportunity for believers and non-believers alike. No longer can anything be regarded as literally the gospel truth.

Nor is there any requirement for anyone to declare them self steadfastly atheist. The very word, atheism, indicates opposition to theism, the belief in whatever form of denomination, in the biblical God. Deists, in that sense, are atheists.

Deism makes no appeal to scriptures of any kind, regarding all supposedly holy books and texts as very much the word concocted by Man. Nor is there recourse to the supernatural: the universe in all its aspects, however strange or awe inspiring, is natural.

Deists might accept the supranatural; that God transcends or is beyond the universe in ways exceeding human comprehension. For all practical purposes, however, the concept of God is an extrapolation from what humanity can comprehend: that there is a creation functioning according to discernable laws in which consciousness and intelligence are integral features.

This is in no sense a suggestion of an anthropomorphic super being, motivated by anger, jealousy, or love depending on pious point of view, who manipulates His creation according to His whim.

Some deists prefer to use the Latin “Deus” rather than “God” because of the entrenched associations of the latter word. Language is inadequate in that it cannot formulate a precise word or phrase to accurately encapsulate what is ultimately beyond human comprehension.

This is not some verbal sleight of hand. There are intimations of deliberation in nature; even what was until recently considered by physicists as the chaos of the sub-atomic is beginning to yield to understanding.

Reason and experience are the watchwords for deists who make no claim to having a definitive view or explanation. Science is embraced for offering insights and expanding understanding, revealing the universe to a marvellous creation. Deism makes the logical claim that creation is suggestive of a creator.

When pressed, people who claim no religious affinity will admit to seeing a pattern in nature, in their lives. Even atheists are usually loath to declare their lives purposeless. Deism offers the possibility of Deus without any requirement for religious observance.

Indeed, it’s possible to be a deist and deny being religious, accepting deism as a philosophy. This might actually become the most tenable position, with deism eventually transcending religion while meeting spiritual needs, however vaguely these manifest themselves.

It is also likely that deism itself will eventually be superseded by enlightened thinking going beyond present levels of understanding. Even then, deism will have been a valuable contribution to human development, just as theism and atheism served their purposes in the past.

Sacred Circles

Many, perhaps most, people would not regard an ancient stone circle as a house. A construction, yes, a significant construction even, one redolent of mystery perhaps. But, a house?

There seems to be a tendency to ascribe religious connotations to pre-historical sites, as if those who commanded the raising of stones were, in some fundamental way, different from people in the modern world.

The reality is, as far as it’s possible to know, those Bronze Age property developers were as we are. Certainly, so much more knowledge is available today and there is now a technology that might inspire those distant people with thoughts that we are as gods.

Except, that is to patronise them as being gullible, almost to reassert the nineteenth century concept of the noble innocent savage, when actually their ability to comprehend was equal to that of present people.

Confronted by a mobile phone it is likely a Bronze Age man or woman would have been initially wary. Yet rather than worshiping it as a conduit to the gods, within a very short space of time they’d be txting like the rest of us.

This means we should question the assumption that stone circles necessarily had mystical associations. Perhaps they were market places: after all, by limiting points of access tolls could be charged to traders wishing to do business.

Maybe, such circles served both God and Mammon, as did many of the medieval cathedrals and churches, being centres of prayer and trade. Then there would have been a secular return on the investment of time and effort required in quarrying, transporting and hoisting upright those stones.

However, I am willing to concede that stone circles, or at least one in particular, were, and still are, spiritual spaces. The one convincing me of this is Castle Rigg, just far enough beyond the bounds of Keswick to be of the Lakeland fells.

Stonehenge has become a theme park, as likely a source of profound insight as Disneyland. Hordes of grockles are herded along designated pathways roped off to prevent any actual contact with the stones. It is a photo opportunity before reloading the coach and off to the next itinerary item on the tourist checklist.

Castle Rigg on a sharp March morning, with snow on Blencathra still and a stiletto wind slicing through any number of gortex swaddlings to pierce skin and flesh down to the bone, has few visitors. It is beautifully bleak.

The sheer magnificence of the setting proves the aesthetic qualities of our ancestors. It is a site chosen not for comfort, being so exposed, but because solace is deliberately not being invoked.

Human fragility is emphasised, both in terms of how insignificant an individual can appear in such a wonderfully harsh environment and how easily that individual might be extinguished and consumed without leaving a trace on those fells.

Today, as our technology probes ever deeper into space and back in time towards the very beginnings, it is the universe providing such a perspective. For Bronze Age men and women the stone circle was their observatory.

The root of the word “church”, the Old English “cirice, signified a circle in much the same usage as a “circle of friends”. It could be that gathering in circles has always had symbolic meaning, reflecting the roundness of the horizon, the arc of the heavens.

Once, on an idle ramble through a Norfolk wood, I happened upon a long abandoned Norman church. No evidence remained of the community it once served and itself was little more than a roofless shell being repossessed by nature.

For me, it had a greater religious tenor in such a state, as an illustration of the impermanence and mutability of everything. This is a more profound truth than any supposed everlasting divine word.

Henges such as Castle Rigg were being built as many years before the designated birth of Christ as those passed since. Those four millennia or so being the merest fraction of time in Earth’s existence, let alone the universe in which it’s set.

It is the prevailing fashion, in Britain at least, to dismiss religion as the last pathetic refuge of the credulous. Everyone from tele-scientists to stand-up comedians confirm their intellectual credentials through public avowals of disbelief.

This is, intentional or not, surely a statement of arrogance. The implication is, that as far as we can tell humanity is the apotheosis of creation, there is nothing greater than Man.

Standing alone within the petrified boundary of Castle Rigg, looking out over the daunting splendour of the fells beneath a grand parabola of sky I have no sense of human pre-eminence.

Nor do I feel insignificant. Rather, I am an integral part of the whole vastness of creation, the purpose of which is far beyond my comprehension, but that it has a purpose I do not doubt.

For me the God is not a divine being, but is divine being and the only true gospel is unfolding creation. And a circle of stones on a windswept hill is a sacred house in which those with eyes prepared to see can catch an elemental glimpse of that which is so much greater.

Deism: A Personal View

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.

Consciousness of Miracles or the Miracle of Consciousness

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.

Observations of a Deist

It is easy to be an atheist these days. Celebrity scientists team up with popular comedians on TV programmes ranging from presentations of cosmology and nature to panel shows. The intelligently designed message, implicit or explicit, is that God is for intellectual losers.

There are even programmes dealing with religious matters in which the presenter is quick to deny any personal belief, treating the subject as anthropology. A recent Radio 4 broadcast about Jainism began with the presenter declaring she, of course, didn’t hold any religious beliefs.

Conversely, members of revealed religions continue to be socially significant. While many church congregations continue to be small if not declining it seems cathedrals services are attracting increasing numbers. And there is no denying the impact of Islam on Britain.

“Thought for Today”, Radio 4 again, features speakers from all three Abrahamic faiths with a bias towards Christianity. There are occasional contributions from Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists, reflecting the variety of religious traditions in Britain today. No invitation for a Deist contribution as yet.

So, atheism or belief? Perhaps a hedging of bets by embracing agnosticism is the really smart move. This appears to be the position of many people who forswear any religious affiliation and yet are not fully prepared to commit to a complete rejection of God.

The religious impulse is common throughout humanity; even non-believers recognise its force, otherwise why are humanist and secular societies so insistent denial?

What cannot be denied are the insights and advances of science. Revealed religions are often found wanting when some scientific breakthrough contradicts a traditional viewpoint based, so it’s claimed, on a divine diktat.

However, what science is revealing expands religious understanding. For a Deist, unencumbered by either scepticism or faith, a fundamental principle has been established: nothing occurs without prior cause.

That there is a universe signifies a universal creator. Some Deists invoke intelligent design, but this has the debilitating drawback of association with creationism. Perhaps intelligent creation might be a better concept. Creation is continuous and intelligence is an aspect of that creation, an obvious manifestation of it in humanity.

The universe is self aware: although it can appear that humans are in some way observers of creation we are as much a part of it as the earth on which we stand and the stars we look out upon. Therefore, if we turn an eye towards the universe it means the universe is looking at itself.

The objection usually raised against a First Cause is, doesn’t logic demand that also had a cause? This question presumes the creation can comprehend its creator. Laws established for the functioning of the universe have no logical necessity to apply beyond, or before, the universe.

The universe is a miraculous conception and for all the advances of science, how much is not yet understood, how much will remain outside our understanding? Every new discovery opens up whole new vistas for inquiry not previously dreamed of.

Deists refer to the First Cause as God or Deus, but do not presume to claim any profound understanding of what that means. God is an inference as, analogously, dark matter and energy, though unobservable, were inferred through their effects on what could be measured.

Therefore, it is possible to combine humanity’s basic religious impulse with an appreciation of scientific insight without sacrificing intelligent credibility. Look at nature, creation, and witness the divine expressed in material reality.

Perhaps we should not be so arrogant as to think we virtually know it all, or at least enough to dismiss a spiritual appreciation of creation. Clever jokes and sneering contempt cannot deny the Deist view there is something greater than we, for all our learning, can comprehend.

Deism and Poetry

Valley of Fire
(Nevada)
By
Dave Alton

To stand in the desert for a first time
Is to stand at the very beginning
Of creation, and at the very end.
Another world orbiting a different,
Bigger sun, a sense life is otherwise,
Invisible creatures with difficult
Intelligences and all seeing eyes.
Time is sculptor here, fashioning absurd
Abstracts from huge blocks of fiery sandstone,
Wielding wind as hammer, rain as chisel.
A cunning hand that long since gave up skin
And tendons, muscle and bone, precisely
Etched pictograms for snake, for long-horned sheep,
For spiral and labyrinth, and for Man,
Drawn out through black skimmed vertical flat screens
Of varnished canyons. Who now can translate
Such a strange, distant vocabulary,
Which might be magic or coarse graffiti,
Or menu of giants who once dwelt there
Before disbelief forced their extinction?
But, having stood and witnessed sudden gusts
Lift powdered earth whirling up into air,
Stood there in an absolute fog of sand,
Stood and peeked through squinted eyes while the land
Was re-arranged, the obvious declines,
A requirement for transliteration
Becomes an impertinence. Let rocks speak
For themselves, as do the wings of the bird
Of prey circling, its eloquent shadow
Echoing along the desiccated
Riverbed flooded to overflowing
With vibrant, infernal dust. It’s just those
Dependent on metalled ways who’re deafened
And blinded by desert’s shrill brilliance.

This poem expresses Deistic sensibilities in relation to creation, recreation and creator. Of itself it indicates the being of a poet. This is not some chance formation of words, but the product of mind operating within identifiable laws of language.

Much more can be reasonably inferred: that consciousness and intelligence exist, that there is a greater medium, poetry, of which this is a particular expression, that these are undeniable features of the universe.

The poem itself cannot be proved to be objectively true even though some of its detail is available for general scrutiny. It is a singular, subjective view of a moment in all the vastness of time. Whether the poem is good, indifferent or bad cannot be scientifically established.

However, neither is the poem an attack on science or scientific methodology. Indeed, the weathering referred to is most certainly open to scientific scrutiny and explanation. The scene is a product of evolution, formed through the action of weather and climate.

Creatures living there can do so because adaptation makes it possible; natural selection is the dynamic, favouring one feature over another, as a poet chooses this word and not that.

The pictograms etched into rock faces are mysterious because not only are the artists long gone, the people to which they belonged have also vanished. Their signs and symbols defy interpretation; are they sacred or profane or idle doodles?

Reason demands, though, not only can the existence of those folk not be denied, but also they are a part of a greater singularity, human being. What a vastly complex individual is human being and only a tiny, tiny aspect of the universe.

Although the possibility of the sacred is mentioned in the poem there is no explicit reference to God. For the Deist poetry expresses the abstraction for which the word God stands.

If a poem is its own universe, then the poet is its creator. Should there be some minute expression of the poet’s consciousness deep within the poem that became self-conscious, how much might it come to understand the entirety?

From the structure in which that conscious fragment existed it could reasonably deduce the existence of a poet without being able to comprehend what such a figure is.

Surely the multifaceted variety of poetry would be beyond its comprehension, as would the abstract overarching concept of The Poet. And even the individual poet is so much more than the poetry.

Analogies are always weak and ultimately flawed and that constructed here is no exception. This merely demonstrates the difficulty of writing or speaking of the ineffable.

Read a poem: better still, look around at creation and, employing reason, ask, is this all merely the product of purposeless chance or are there patterns suggestive of something greater?

Just because beneath that fascinatingly weathered rock resplendent with ancient pictograms there lurks a rattlesnake is no a denial of God. Rather, the existence of all and more is at the very least suggestive of the divine, whatever that might mean.

Deism and Religious Observance

“Common folk have no great need for the services of religious officials.”* So wrote Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century Islamic scholar who was blessed with this insight despite his own spiritual tradition.

The three Abrahamic religions have always insisted on religious observance: praising God and asking for His favour, protection and forgiveness of sins. Failure to do so is to invite eternal damnation, or the opprobrium of the religious authorities at least.

Synagogue, church and mosque have been presented as the portals through which the faithful pass from the profane world to the sacred. Even amidst the venal temptations of everyday life there is the imperative to pray. God must have His veneration.

Not that Sabbath day observances have always been piously adhered to. It seems that in medieval times services might well last all day, but while the priest was intoning at the front of the church, market trading and gaming occupied the back.

That the Church, backed by the state, resorted to compulsion suggests many “common folk” were perhaps not as keen as they might have been on regular Sunday attendance. In more recent times non-attendance has become the norm.

Not that this is a new phenomenon. With the move from the rural to urban communities following industrialisation in the nineteenth century so there appears to have been a waning of the Church’s hold over “common folk”.

Friedrich Engels, in his “The Condition of the Working Class in England” noted the absence of religious influences in many working class communities. Where religion did exercise a measure of authority it was revivalist non-conformist chapels, many of which were destined to become the designer dwellings of today.

The recent national census in Britain has revealed a falling off in the number of people claiming even nominal religious affiliation and it is more likely the shopping mall rather then the pew draws people to it on a Sunday.

The victory of Mammon and the vanquishing of God? Actually, it is just a more open and honest expression of what was going on anyway in the medieval churches. It also a demonstration of how correctness of Ibn Khaldun’s observation.

Khaldun was not being pejorative in his use of the word “common” in this context and it is, in any case, a translation. This is “common folk” in the sense of the generality of people as opposed to a specific group such as a priestly caste. He recognised that unless coerced by fear of the wrath of God, religious authorities, the state or a combination of all three, people are not so keen on formalised religious observance.

For Deists this is positive. God, as the ineffable originator of all creation, surely does not require to be repeatedly reminded of this by a miniscule element of that creation. People have been blessed with intellect and reason with which to grasp some understanding of the universe, appreciating the divine nature of it.

Humanity has evolved a moral sensibility and while how that is expressed is culturally determined, the concepts of Right and Wrong seem fundamental. Therefore, it is for people to work out their moral code and the facility of conscience supports external social enforcement.

This is creation working through human beings; so God is the ultimate source of the process by which what is considered morally acceptable is determined, not the enforcer. Morality, like all of creation, is not fixed, but changes and evolves: what was once a sin becomes acceptable through conscious human choice. “God’s will” expresses itself through our will.

For the universe to be as it is its dynamism has to be objective. If certain parts could be privileged and granted favours then the universe would be very different. If God could be appealed to and grant special dispensations then a faithful person might well be able to step from a very tall building in the sure knowledge angels would gently bear him safely to the ground.

This would remove any requirement for personal responsibility; all that would be needed for a near perfect existence would be faith and piety. It does not require a great deal of experience to realise this is not how creation works, there are laws operating, which means the faithful plummet from great heights as readily and as quickly, as the faithless.

That there are such identifiable laws, rather than a chaos of random chance, leads Deists to their assertion of there being a prime cause, God or Deus or what you will. There is no need for religious officials to bring the “common folk” into pious observance for the divine creation to continue on its way.

Indeed, the universe produced the human species, which will have its time then creation will move on without us. That God does not require our image can be seen from the absolutely minute amount of time of our existence.

This does not mean religious observance is totally vacuous. People will gather to ask profound questions, speculate on meaning (or the absence of meaning), share the appreciation of the wonder of creation, consider what is meant by such a word as “God”. They may also do all of this individually through meditation.

Will God be listening? Is God even aware of our presence? Could God actually be cognisant of every last particle in the universe? No one knows and Deists certainly don’t claim to know, but that does not prevent us from being aware of the divine nature of creation, of God.

*”The Muqaddimah” by Ibn Khaldun, 14th century Islamic scholar.

Deism and Occam’s Razor

William Occam (Ockham – c. 1285-1347) was a Franciscan who, having condemned Pope John XXll as “no true pope”, had to flee his order and spent many years writing on church-state relations.

He dismissed Platonism and proffered himself as the one true interpreter of Aristotle. However, his most popularly regarded gift to posterity was his razor, a philosophical principle profound in its simplicity.

As was the scholastic custom of his day, Occam expressed his notion in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda – entities are not to be multiplied. Indeed, his “razor” was to be employed shaving away all extraneous detail to arrive at the essential nub.

This is often expressed as, the simplest explanation is the one to be considered correct. Adding complications and complex arguments merely obscures the truth.

For Deists Occam’s razor is a most useful tool. Arguing for the existence of God from observation and experience of nature the formulation is straightforward: creation requires a creator.

Atheists ultimately have to propound a quite unbelievable conjuring trick: before creation (big bang) there was nothing. In fact, there wasn’t even nothing, as that is a concept and is, therefore, something. But, from or into this absence emerged everything for no reason or purpose at all.

Not only did this occur, this random act develops and behaves according to laws and through meaningless natural selection eventually spawns not only life, but life capable of reason and purpose.

Antipathy towards God is understandable if the divine posited is essentially a super-human, all the traits of Man, just on a grander scale. This is the God of theism of which atheism is the antithesis.

Deism transcends both positions. It makes no claims to defining what is meant by God or ascribing what the divine purpose of creation might be. Deists merely say that the most reasonable explanation for there being a universe lies with an originator.

And as creation is dynamic and on going the originator’s presence is still observable if ineffable: it is surely supreme arrogance to presume human understanding of the universe is so comprehensive as to exclude purpose and reason way beyond our ken.

Whether that originator/creator is called God or not is irrelevant; the word could be scrubbed from the lexicon and replaced by another unburdened by its associations and cultural accretions. Some Deists resort to the Latin Deus for this reason.

Ironically, Judaism, which eventually produced Christianity and Islam, originally avowed the divine could not be named. Of course, it then went on to variously name and attribute all manner of characteristics to God.

However, in principle there does seem to be a fundamental recognition that the divine is beyond comprehension and, therefore, beyond taxonomy. The problem is humans want to discuss these matters and so require language, a word to use.

So God, Deus or some other formulation will undoubtedly find continuing usage. It may require a word that is not just a noun but a verb and adjective concurrently.

Does this apparent complexity contradict Occam? Linguistically, probably, yet as an expression of a basic notion, not at all: Occam himself ventured propositions supportive of the Deist position, such as:
• Being cannot come from non-being.
• Whatever is produced by something is really conserved by something as long as it exists.
• Everything that is in motion is moved by something.

The latter is a forerunner of Thomas Paine’s argument against atheism: if someone can demonstrate perpetual motion, then the case for atheism can be proved. Otherwise there stands the case for the Prime Mover.

Deism can make good use of Occam’s razor to resist any temptation towards becoming overly complex. In simplicity is the profound beauty of its appreciation of nature and Nature’s God.

Deist Epistle 1

It is no small task to become free from superstition. In infancy children are exposed to prevailing religious ideas. Often before they can comprehend such an the event, baptism is performed and they are inducted, however nominally, into a church.

It is not long before Christmas begins to inculcate some basic notions. Perhaps twinkling lights, glitter and presents are what fascinate the most, but angels, stables wise men and mangers also start to appear. Then there’s the central figure.

The baby Jesus is something a young child can relate to as being very like themselves, only extra-special in some ill-defined way. At nursery simple carols are learned and sung and then on into school and religious education.

Even children raised in secular households are not immune from such religious influence. Modern society, having arisen from Christendom, is infused with its ideas and values so they appear to be a natural part of even an atheist’s personal ideology.

Atheists tend to be those who have made a conscious effort to liberate themselves from outmoded religious concepts. The bible has proven to be not the infallible word of God, but the all too fallible tale telling of man.

Science split not only the atom, but also heaven wide open, revealing great mysteries though ones susceptible to human interrogation and comprehension. However influential culturally Christendom might remain, its cosmic monarch has been toppled as surely as Byzantium.

God is dead! Nietzsche wrote the obituary almost a century and a half ago, and yet religion refuses to emulate Judas by slinking away and quietly perishing. Certainly, with notable exceptions, pews continue to be polished more regularly by aging volunteers with dusters, rather than the bums of believers.

The recent census demonstrated a decreasing number who laid claim, however tenuously, to religious observance of any sort. Regularly society is declared secular through the organs of the media; while celebrity atheists, some scientists, others stand up comedians, make mock of the few remaining deluded fools.

However, it is on the ship of fools many take passage against this rising tide of scepticism. Perhaps humanity should not consider itself so clever that it alone can now walk on water. Tides have a way of turning unexpectedly, catching out those who considered themselves safe on the moral high ground.

Reason is the faculty that has promoted humanity to its present lofty position. The world is no longer taken on faith; its ways and enigmas are challenges for reasoned investigation.

Science makes manifest the natural laws by which it is possible for there to be sentient life capable of such a task. Everyday experience confirms generally what science defines precisely.

Such thinking has been applied to religion for as long as science has been rising to its dominant position. The eighteenth century saw the emergence of Deism, the application of reason to religious and sceptical thinking.

If the universe operates according rational laws, then what is the source of such reason? God as the creator, the prime mover, emerged, transcending previous theistic revealed religion and confounding those promoting Man through their declared absence of God.

God is a concept of unfathomable depths, ultimately beyond human comprehension. As a word it is little more than a convenience, a sign allowing conversation to take place.

Perhaps “God” as a word is dead, due to the accumulated burden of all its previous associations. If the word has had its meaning crushed from it, then another will take its place. Deus is favoured by many Deists.

The word is not ultimately important; it is not in itself holy. Language has limitations that do not allow for direct and precise definition, which is why physicists use mathematics.

But, Deism is at least true in the sense that a poem is true, or a painting, or a piece of music. Nietzsche was aware that with the interment of Christendom’s God science, of itself, was not suitable to fill the vacant throne.

In “The Birth of Tragedy” he looked back to ancient Greece for indications of what might hold the key to human flourishing. In the Stoics he could have found the early development of thinking that has re-emerged in modern times as Deism.

Like all religions and philosophies, Deism is man made and as such will have its moment and then pass away. However, when it does so there will arise a new manner of thinking in which the timeless precepts of Deism will be inculcated, just as those of value from previous religions have echoes in the Deist heart.

Divining God

As church congregations continue to dwindle, triumphalist atheism proudly struts across TV screens in the personas of media scientists and stand-up comedians displaying their aggressive cleverness. Anyone daring to profess a belief in God must be prepared to be patronised at best or vilified as an anachronistic reactionary.

But for all it is garbed in modern fashion the arguments between theists and atheists would be better dressed in eighteenth century attire. It was during the Enlightenment, with the emergence of science as a significant force, that religion spawned its own nemesis, the sceptics, the free thinkers.

By the early nineteenth century militant atheism had become significant, typified by Ludwig Feuerbach who gathered a following for this position. His was a rejection of God, specifically the Christian God, on the grounds a recourse to the divine is to project the human onto some notion of the transcendent.

In other words, humanity has its worldly, historical and social content extracted and then moulded into a personification beyond this world in the idealised form of God.

Theists, meanwhile, maintained a fideistic theology, insisting on an absolute requirement for faith. For them, God existed beyond human comprehension, denying any possibility of rational justification.

However, as the century advanced so did thinking in this field. Karl Marx, often mistakenly identified with Feuerbachian atheism, rejected both Christian theism and the atheism of Feuerbach. He insisted each was equally replicating antithetically identical essentialist and abstract accounts of the sacred and the secular.

For Marx, humanity and nature exist for each other and people have become consciously aware of this. The idea there is a being existing above humanity and nature, with the consequent implication of the unreality of humanity and nature, has become practically impossible.

Therefore, the denial of such unreality, atheism, has become obsolete. Atheism negates God to assert humanity’s existence. But, such negation is no longer required as the positive self-consciousness of humanity has moved beyond the abolition of religion.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that subsequent regimes claiming the title Communist acted against religion, in the case of Albania outlawing it altogether, thus proving them Feuerbachian, not Marxist as they claimed, at least in this respect.

Effectively Marx moved the argument beyond the disputants of theism and atheism. Religion, specifically the Christian religion and by extension the other two Judao-religions, or its absence was rendered irrelevant.

Deism as a coherent and identifiable strand of thought also arose during the eighteenth century Enlightenment, emerging as a reaction to the clash between existing Christianity in its various denominations and atheism as a product of the emerging sciences. It was a strand of free thinking in its own right.

While Marx cannot be claimed as a Deist, his analysis can be drawn on by Deism in its rejection of both theism and atheism. The conclusion drawn, however, is markedly different from that of Marx.

Deists embrace rather than reject the concept of God, but in doing so they most certainly do not deny the reality of this world. In that sense they are as philosophically materialist as Marx. Nature is fundamental to Deism, its starting point, sometimes referred to as the one and only true gospel.

Deism is an apophatic philosophy recognising that what is referred to as God is actually beyond language to express. Many Deists prefer the term Deus to differentiate from theistic implications of using “God”. Perhaps it might be preferable to have no word at all, except that would make having any sort of conversation impossible.

Unlike fideistic theology, which also recognises the ineffability of God while rejecting any possibility of rational justification of their belief, Deists begin from a standpoint of using reason to identify in nature the consequences of God while accepting the divine is beyond the limitations of human comprehension.

Intelligent Design (ID) is often pressed into service at this point, but that has unfortunate associations with anti-scientific fundamentalist creationism. Perhaps it might be better for Deists if ID were to stand for Immanent Design, design integral to creation.

God or Deus signifies the source, the prime mover, the primal cause of all there is. Not a supernatural being or glorified superior humanoid dispensing favours on the faithful, visiting wrath upon the sinners. For Deists God is the X in the cosmic equation humanity is not equipped to solve.

That there is consciousness and intelligence in the universe is indisputable, humanity is both the evidence and witness to this. Reason leads Deists to the conclusion that such features play a crucial role in there being a universe at all let alone one that manifests those very features. It is how they divine God.