Deism

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: Deism

Post by Nick_A »

Thanks for posting this Henry. It is a powerful argument for defense. It remind me of Ben Franklin’s famous quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."


Bastiat...
henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:59 pmThe Law

Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

What Is Law?

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
But can the religious influence lessen the need to attack? I don't mean the demands of a personal God but rather the effects of an ineffable source beyond the confines of time and space. Defense is necessary but there are those dedicated to attack. I know there is no personal God for the Deist which doesn’t deny grace as an energy of our ineffable source which enables a person to feel the idea that there is more to life then just the tension between attack and defense.

I like the way Simone Weil reminds us of what would be necessary for mutual respect. As we are I see it as impossible yet it gives the impression of what the future of conscious human evolution would be. But since the collective human being is as it is, respect for defense is essential.
"The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.

Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.

This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also." ~ Simone Weil
The horizontal struggle between proponents of attack and defense is really animal dualism. Simone offers a third vertical choice; to receive help from above in our being through grace. The quality of attention exists as a potential for the great majority but offers the inner path for the small minority willing to work for it. But defense essential to create the quality of of a free society is the first consideration.
User avatar
Dontaskme
Posts: 16940
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 2:07 pm
Location: Nowhere

Re: Deism

Post by Dontaskme »

bahman wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 12:23 am There is no God, the creator of everything. I have an argument for that. Case closed!

The argument: If God is the creator of everything then there was a point that there was God and nothing else including time. God then creates everything including time. Any action, including the act of creation, requires time. This means that you need time for the creation of time. This leads to a regress. Regress is not acceptable. Therefore, there is no God.
You are the ABSOLUTE.. Irrefutable.

The idea of ''otherness'' is relative, a grist to the mill. Knowing is always one with itself, one without a second. Relative ideas about the absolute are absurd stories of an illusory past, ONLY known NOW as and through the only knowing there is...You are this knowing that cannot be known..

NOW never moves, so the idea of regress is an absurd notion.


.
User avatar
RCSaunders
Posts: 4704
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:42 pm
Contact:

Re: For Henry

Post by RCSaunders »

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
—Rudyard Kipling

Just thought you would like that.
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: For Henry

Post by Nick_A »

RCSaunders wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 4:08 pm
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
—Rudyard Kipling

Just thought you would like that.
“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self”.~ Einstein
Owning yourself or freedom from the self? Our founding fathers were astute enough to realize that idolatry or made up personal Gods devolved into tools of political manipulation. Yet it was influences from above that opened a person to understand religious principles which enabled a person to transcend might makes right.

Unfortunately modern man in America has forgotten the aims of its founding fathers so either denies help from above or believes in idolatry. The natural result is the fragmentation into diverse opinions and social devolution. The Deists understood much more then given credit for.
User avatar
henry quirk
Posts: 14706
Joined: Fri May 09, 2008 8:07 pm
Location: Right here, a little less busy.

Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 5:20 amcan the religious influence lessen the need to attack?
I can't see why it would, or should. Religionists may preach pacifism, but the world is not a peaceful place. And, as I reckon it, God didn't build it to be.
Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.
Sure, but for that respect to be, the other guy has to be worth it. Moreover, the other guy has to reciprocate. Plain truth: there's a lotta scumbags in the world.

-----
RCSaunders wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 4:08 pm
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
—Rudyard Kipling

Just thought you would like that.
I do... 👍

-----
Nick_A wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 10:36 pmOwning yourself or freedom from the self?
I reckon one owns himself from the start. But, that fact can get buried in a rather large pile of manure (the tyranny of we). What passes for civilization is a sausage maker blueprinted by evil men.
Dubious
Posts: 4000
Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 7:40 am

Re: Deism

Post by Dubious »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 07, 2022 4:26 pm
Deism isn't exactly a well-known religion. It has no holy book, no holy men, no places of worship...and no coffers to fill. Deists don't go door-to-door spreadin' the good news. Airports lack a contingent of deists chantin'. Seems to me: anyone who is a deist had to go lookin' for it and had to think about it.
That's a really good way to describe deism. Everything you mentioned regarding it is true. But instead of religion it's more likely to qualify as a collective Enlightenment philosophy intermediate to atheism...which I realize is still a dirty word for many.
promethean75
Posts: 4931
Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm

Re: Deism

Post by promethean75 »

"modern man in America has forgotten the aims of its founding fathers so either denies help from above or believes in idolatry. The natural result is the fragmentation into diverse opinions and social devolution."

That fragmentation and diversity of opinion is the result of religion, not something that happens from a lack of religion. Add to this the palpable disparity of wealth caused by the exploitation of one class by another, and you have what Henry called a sausage maker of a country.

When the day comes that people being to realize that the things they were told 'hold together' their country are really the things that are ripping it apart, they might be able to begin making some progress.
User avatar
bahman
Posts: 8791
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2016 3:52 pm

Re: Deism

Post by bahman »

Dontaskme wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 8:17 am
bahman wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 12:23 am There is no God, the creator of everything. I have an argument for that. Case closed!

The argument: If God is the creator of everything then there was a point that there was God and nothing else including time. God then creates everything including time. Any action, including the act of creation, requires time. This means that you need time for the creation of time. This leads to a regress. Regress is not acceptable. Therefore, there is no God.
You are the ABSOLUTE.. Irrefutable.

The idea of ''otherness'' is relative, a grist to the mill. Knowing is always one with itself, one without a second. Relative ideas about the absolute are absurd stories of an illusory past, ONLY known NOW as and through the only knowing there is...You are this knowing that cannot be known..

NOW never moves, so the idea of regress is an absurd notion.


.
So you are the only one who understood my argument.
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: Deism

Post by Nick_A »

promethean75 wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 2:21 pm "modern man in America has forgotten the aims of its founding fathers so either denies help from above or believes in idolatry. The natural result is the fragmentation into diverse opinions and social devolution."

That fragmentation and diversity of opinion is the result of religion, not something that happens from a lack of religion. Add to this the palpable disparity of wealth caused by the exploitation of one class by another, and you have what Henry called a sausage maker of a country.

When the day comes that people being to realize that the things they were told 'hold together' their country are really the things that are ripping it apart, they might be able to begin making some progress.
There are two kinds of religion. You are reacting against man made religion built on the idolatry of man made conceptions of God. The founding fathers who practiced Deism knew of the ineffable source of meaning for Man. This isn't atheism but rather inwardly maturing from dependence on idolatry for meaning into freedom of contemplation for the real. This required the separation of church and state or freedom from the many idolatries of the state and free to pursue the meaning of life in the context of the ineffable.
promethean75
Posts: 4931
Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm

Re: Deism

Post by promethean75 »

So there's a religion that man didn't make? Do tell, please.

(warning: this will not end well for you)
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: Deism

Post by Nick_A »

promethean75 wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 8:05 pm So there's a religion that man didn't make? Do tell, please.

(warning: this will not end well for you)
I couldn't explain this to you but the conscious unity or the transcendent source of religions is perennial. It always was so has a conscious origin. The founding fathers of America realized it so were drawn to Deism to avoid premature idolatry. The point is that the founding fathers were more astute then those of today.

On the Transcendent Unity of Religions by Frithjof Schuon,
https://integralscience.wordpress.com/1 ... religions/
As Huston Smith writes in the Introduction to Schuon’s book,
“the defect in other versions of this
[esoteric/exoteric] distinction is that they claim unity in
religions too soon, at levels where, being exoteric, true
Unity does not pertain and can be posited only on pain of
Procrusteanism or vapidity.” Once we identify any
particular thought system, no matter how comprehensive, as
the truth, then we have excluded other thought
systems and denied the Truth its unity and its infinite
possibilities for expression. The unity of Truth must
therefore be a Transcendent Unity. “The fact that it
is transcendent,” Smith writes, “means that it
can be univocally described by none.” Thus, while
there is one and only one Truth, there are many expressions
of it.
User avatar
Dontaskme
Posts: 16940
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2016 2:07 pm
Location: Nowhere

Re: Deism

Post by Dontaskme »

bahman wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:50 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 8:17 am
bahman wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 12:23 am There is no God, the creator of everything. I have an argument for that. Case closed!

The argument: If God is the creator of everything then there was a point that there was God and nothing else including time. God then creates everything including time. Any action, including the act of creation, requires time. This means that you need time for the creation of time. This leads to a regress. Regress is not acceptable. Therefore, there is no God.
You are the ABSOLUTE.. Irrefutable.

The idea of ''otherness'' is relative, a grist to the mill. Knowing is always one with itself, one without a second. Relative ideas about the absolute are absurd stories of an illusory past, ONLY known NOW as and through the only knowing there is...You are this knowing that cannot be known..

NOW never moves, so the idea of regress is an absurd notion.


.
So you are the only one who understood my argument.
I understand what you are saying, yes.

Am I the only one who understood your argument, I do not know.
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: Deism

Post by Nick_A »

"That is why the most beautiful Church for me is the church of conscience, found in the silence of one's own presence. Unselfishness, humaneness, service to your brother - these are the values which the Church should practice for once, instead of con­stantly trying to gather in more souls. A cosmic religion is the only solution - then there will be no more Church politics of supporting the mighty at the cost of the human rights of the poor." Albert Einstein, in Einstein and the Poet – In Search of the Cosmic Man by William Hermanns (Branden Press, 1983, p. 106.)
Deism is correct in avoiding personal God concepts. But it opens the possibility of of becoming able to experience universal conscience. But what would a church of conscience be like? It couldn't be based on indoctrination of personal God dictates but rather on awakening to what we are; a potentially conscious being capable of conscience. But who understands how it would be structured? Those who came before and became able to experience conscience. But how can they be found when charlatans are a dime a dozen offering their professional services?
User avatar
henry quirk
Posts: 14706
Joined: Fri May 09, 2008 8:07 pm
Location: Right here, a little less busy.

Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

Nick_A wrote: Sat Mar 12, 2022 12:17 amwhat would a church of conscience be like? It couldn't be based on indoctrination of personal God dictates but rather on awakening to what we are; a potentially conscious being capable of conscience. But who understands how it would be structured? Those who came before and became able to experience conscience. But how can they be found when charlatans are a dime a dozen offering their professional services?
This comes to mind...
And God appeared on a mountain

by *Jon Rappoport

December 22, 2014

On August 4, 2074, God appeared on a mountain in Colorado. For some reason, he’d failed to notify the networks, so they had to rush in drones and choppers with cameras and interrupt regularly scheduled programming and go live to the whole planet very quickly.

He was tall and wide. He was wearing a white robe. His hair was wild and long and gray, and his beard was silver.

The first thing he said was, “I’m from El Salvador and I need a place to stay.”

Then he laughed and muttered, “Joke.”

“But really,” he continued, “you people amaze me. Why haven’t you been paying attention to artists for the past ten thousand years? What’s wrong with you? Sure, I created the universe and laid down all the natural laws, but that was a provisional thing. It wasn’t meant to be permanent. Space, time, energy, law of conservation, the basics…that was just to give you a place to live. Ever since, though, you’ve been fixated on it.

“The artists caught on soon enough. They began inventing their own spaces and times—ever heard of music?—but nobody took them seriously. I’m really disappointed in you.

“You were supposed to realize you could create worlds of your own by the ton, with different rules, any rules, but instead these priests came along and hardened the whole deal into religions.

“Whatever gave you the idea I was in favor of religions? Are you kidding? “Do you really think I want people falling on their knees worshipping me? Why? What kind of a guy do you think I am? Some bloated preposterous dictator? I’m an artist. Isn’t that obvious? And that’s what you should all be by now.

“I’ve got a good mind to uncreate the whole shooting match and force you to start over from scratch on your own, but I know that wouldn’t work. You’d just sit around in the void in a puddle of your own tears and whine and wonder and blather.

“And I certainly don’t want to watch that. The crux of the whole business is you’ve got free will. You can do or not do. By the way, I didn’t give you free will, you always had it. It’s yours. Not mine. You were all homeless vagabonds wandering around and I gave you a place to stay. But not so you could screw it up.

“Long ago I told you, ‘Here, a world, a hundred thousand million trillion worlds and space enough.’

“I wasn’t talking to you as groups or collections or races or anything like that. I was talking all at once to each one of you. I really thought you were artists.

“I don’t know who you thought I was.

“You keep talking about me creating the universe, but it’s apparent that most of you don’t know what that means. You believe it means I have ALL the power. Wow. Where did you get that one from?

“Talk about fairy tales.

“I’m painting in my studio. I’m playing the piano. I’m writing symphonies. I’m inventing different kinds of science. That’s what I do. I took a little time off a few billion years ago to make this universe, but since then I’ve only shown up now and then to peek in.

“This planet of yours…it looks like one big hospital now. Is that what you want to do? Play doctor for the next few thousand years? Diagnose each other? Pretend all twelve billion of you are victims? Where did you get that gig from?

“If you’re staging one grand play on that theme, I have to tell you it’s a flop. It should have closed way back when. It’s a dud. That’s my review.

“Maybe I made it too easy for you. Invented too much space and time. Maybe I should have brought in monsters, real ones, not the ones in your heads. You know, created a threat from the outside.

“Who knows? But try to get with the idea that…how can I explain it…if this universe started out as an idea in my mind, you can see it as an idea in your mind, too. It’s a temporary housing project.

“Yeah, I made it with symmetry and harmony and balance and repeating ratios, but that’s just because I was in a hurry, so you could get out of the rain, so to speak. I used simple blueprints.

“Believe me, I can do other things.

“Anyway, don’t get hung up on the housing project. And if you have any sense, you’ll stop listening to those priests. They’re petty little control freaks.

“I could take you on a tour of history and show you how they grabbed on to what poets were writing and stole it and edited it and used it to found their cheap cosmologies, their religions.

“But I don’t have much time. I have a meeting with Vin Van Gogh—you don’t think he’d come back here for another go around, do you, after what happened to him the last time? And I’m having lunch with Orson Welles. I wrote a script and he’s looking it over.

“Figure this whole thing out, okay? Space, time, energy, they’re butter. Melt it, freeze it, eat it, drop it in soup. Make some worlds. Get with it.

“Peace out.”
*I don't know if he's a deist, but he describes a deist's God. As for a church of conscience, in a roundabout way, he describes one.
User avatar
henry quirk
Posts: 14706
Joined: Fri May 09, 2008 8:07 pm
Location: Right here, a little less busy.

Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

Bubba, in another thread, posed these questions...
iambiguous wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 1:52 am 1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
...I'll answer 'em here.

1. Man is the proof. In a determined universe, he's the wildcard. As a free will, he starts, ends, and bends causal chains. He is a point of creative power. He does what no other matter, or life, can: he self-directs, self-relies, and is self-responsible. He reasons, chooses, and considers consequence. There's nuthin' about a blind, deterministic interplay of forces that could have brought him into existence.

2. I'm a deist. Best I can tell The Creator created. He left behind no religion. Man has a conscience and certain inherent rights. Man, however, is also a free will. He's not bound to recognize or respect conscience or natural rights. God, it seems, gave man the tools (reason, conscience, free will) but leaves him to his own devices. Does He care for man? I'd like to think so, but I can't say for certain. That man is, as I say, the wildcard in a determined universe, that he recognizes he belongs to himself, that he can consider consequence, seems to indicate he has a purpose. Perhaps discovering that purpose (or purposes) on his own is part of the deal. Perhaps being told what his purpose is nullifies that purpose.

As I say elsewhere: an afterlife -- Valhalla-like, with drinkin' and wenchin' -- would be nice, but I have no reason to believe that, or any other, afterlife exists. This life may very well be our only shot, so we better make the best if it. As for salvation: I don't think man fell. I think man falls or rises in the here & now.

Alexis Jacobi, in that other thread, wrote: the world in which we are incarnate, exists between two poles: the world of God and 'angelic being' and Satan and 'demonic being'. Both of these *beings* are categories of spirits that are angelical. That means: non-physical, without material bodies, and yet with intelligence and also (importantly) will, that in terms of intentionality and purpose do not coincide. These purposes oppose one another.

I think this is, in some way, true. I believe this position of the world, of man, between these poles is related to man's ultimate or overarchin' purpose. Man may be the soldier, the battlefield, and the prize, but he can't be drafted, he has to choose.

None of this stuff about man sittin' between & betwixt Light & Darkness is addressed by a vanilla deism, by the way.

3. I don't believe Datsun is a real thing.

4. Man is a free will. He can choose good; he can choose evil. God, as I see Him, appears to highly value that capacity to choose in man (so much so, man can willfully, knowingly, ignore conscience and violate natural law/rights willy-nilly [though not without consequence]). Evil, then, may be the necessary price for free will just as free will is the necessary precursor to authentic good.
Post Reply