Deism

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

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henry quirk
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Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

There is an self-evident fact about man; an ethic, simple and minimal, can be derived from it. It requires no God to undergird it. All it asks is that each man give up any claim to any other man. It provides a measure against which right and wrong can be judged. And it leaves all men to their own devices: to worship as each likes or to not worship at all, to live as each chooses alone or with others, to think and feel as each likes. Oh, yes, it requires self-direction and self-responsibility (this is a bad thing?).

It is that simple.
Not big enough: you.

Okay.
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iambiguous
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Re: Deism

Post by iambiguous »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:38 am
There is an self-evident fact about man; an ethic, simple and minimal, can be derived from it. It requires no God to undergird it. All it asks is that each man give up any claim to any other man. It provides a measure against which right and wrong can be judged. And it leaves all men to their own devices: to worship as each likes or to not worship at all, to live as each chooses alone or with others, to think and feel as each likes. Oh, yes, it requires self-direction and self-responsibility (this is a bad thing?).

It is that simple.
Not big enough: you.

Okay.
Oh well, back to his substance-less posts again. Or what he calls substance.
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henry quirk
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Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

There's more substance in...
henry quirk wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:38 amThere is an self-evident fact about man; an ethic, simple and minimal, can be derived from it. It requires no God to undergird it. All it asks is that each man give up any claim to any other man. It provides a measure against which right and wrong can be judged. And it leaves all men to their own devices: to worship as each likes or to not worship at all, to live as each chooses alone or with others, to think and feel as each likes. Oh, yes, it requires self-direction and self-responsibility (this is a bad thing?).
...than in the entirety of your posts in this forum.

But, it isn't what you want.
iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 2:02 amMe, I'd embrace the Christians God's immortality and salvation in a heartbeat if someone could convince me that it is the "real deal".
I get it now.

My apologies for wastin' your time.
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iambiguous
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Re: Deism

Post by iambiguous »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:54 am There's more substance in...
henry quirk wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:38 amThere is an self-evident fact about man; an ethic, simple and minimal, can be derived from it. It requires no God to undergird it. All it asks is that each man give up any claim to any other man. It provides a measure against which right and wrong can be judged. And it leaves all men to their own devices: to worship as each likes or to not worship at all, to live as each chooses alone or with others, to think and feel as each likes. Oh, yes, it requires self-direction and self-responsibility (this is a bad thing?).
...than in the entirety of your posts in this forum.
:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

Note to others:

He's all yours. :wink:
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iambiguous
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Re: Deism

Post by iambiguous »

Henry bringing me into this thread created an interest in Deism I had never really had before.

The idea that there is a God, the God but, after providing us with the capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature", He leaves everything up to us, had never really been something I'd thought much about.

Let's consider it...

First up: a critique of Deism from someone at the Puritan Board, described as...

"The Puritan Board provides Christian discussion in a Confessionally Reformed Evangelical context. We are Evangelical because we protest the authority, truth claims and idolatry of the Roman Catholic Church. We are Reformed because we believe that men and women are dead in trespasses and it requires the power of God in salvation through Christ. Christ has broken the power of sin to enslave us and has purchased our faith so that, in Him, we rise to newness of life. We are Confessional because we believe that the Scriptures are clear regarding matters of life and salvation. Confessions are not the Scriptures, but they faithfully represent the core truths of the Scriptures and provide a unifying body of teaching that has stood the test of centuries."

You know, whatever that means "given a particular context".

But this is a critique of Deism from a religious perspective.

From ReformedChristian posted May 8, 2018
Deism is defined as the belief that reason and and the Natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of God. Deists believe God is not knowable and untouchable. God is seen as the first cause of all creation, but he is not interactive within creation. Here is an analogy, think of God as a watchmaker that winds up a clock by setting up the creation process that are guided by laws which can only be known through reason and logic.
Here, of course, I make the distinction between grappling with Creation in the either/or world and in the is/ought world. From my frame of mind Henry doesn't really make this distinction. From his dogmatic moral perspective [as "I" understand it], following "the dictates of Reason and Nature" in the is/ought world is exacly the same as following them in the either/or world. Thus there is no difference between the knowledge needed to manufacture bazookas and the knowledge needed to establish that all rational men and women have a "natural right" to buy and sell them.
The following are a sample of beliefs that are held by Deists
Six of therm:
1. The rejection of divine revelation because it can not tell us anything about God.

How does a Deist know this? Given in the introduction, we see according to their beliefs, God is neither knowable nor can be defined. How does the deist know God has not given divine revelation to creation? Is the deist all knowing and all powerful? To make this claim the deist has to know something about God to reject this claim.
Exactly. A Deist can "think up" or be told by another that this is true...but how can this be known about a God that we cannot really know anything about?

Is there the equivalent of a Bible/Scripture in Deism? Where did the origins of this Deist God come from?

I suspect it was thought up by those who, like Harold Kushner advocates, are looking for a way to explain away all of the terrible pain and suffering that exists in a world that God created. Here God may be omnipotent but He has chosen not to use that power in regard to us mere mortals on Earth. He's given us the capacity to follow "the dictates of Reason and Nature" and it's up to us to replicate everything that Henry does.

Or is that not the way it works with Deism?
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iambiguous
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Re: Deism

Post by iambiguous »

ReformedChristian from The Puritan Board:

2. A belief in God is based on reason and an understanding of nature. It is deduced from one’s person experience and the observance of nature.

How does a Deist know that his reasoning is valid? They have to presuppose it in order for it to be valid. Is it possible that the Deist can be wrong about everything he claims to know about God and Nature?
This of course revolves around connecting the dots between what the individual Deist believes God means by "following the dictates of Reason and Nature" and what existentially his own life prepared him for. Clearly, unless all Deists share the very same moral and political convictions regarding things like abortion and owning bazooka, they can all share a belief in the same God yet be in conflict. If that is the case, what do Deists fall back on to to link their own subjective belief in God with their value judgments as mere mortals. For Christians there's the Bible. Whereas if Deists believe "religious truth should be subject to the authority of human reason rather than divine revelation", what unfolds when reasons clash?
If a belief in God is deduced from personal experience how does the Deist know his experiences and observance of nature is valid and not prone to self-deception? Maybe their experiences are an illusion created by an acid trip or perhaps in another reality he is strapped down in a psyche ward somewhere.
Self-deception [from my frame of mind] because their own individual experiences may nothing at all like the experiences of others. And this, in turn, is always profoundly linked to ever evolving and changing historical and cultural and interpersonal contexts. What is the common denominator that Deists can turn to when conflicts occur.
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henry quirk
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Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

Cleaning out my drafts folder I found this...

-----
I merely maintain that there is no "wisest" resolution here. That, instead, each of us as individuals comes to think this instead of that given the manner in which their experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge inclined and motivated them to embody one existential point of view rather than another.
And, of course, you're wrong. Men of good conscience may dicker over the details of what, for example, constitutes property, but every man of good conscience recognizes the inviolate right to it.

Or, regardin' the subject that supposedly robbed you of your objectivism: men of good conscience may differ as to exactly what a woman carries during pregnancy, but every man recognizes, at some point, well before birth, she carries a person, a person with the (same) claim to his life as the mother has to hers.
-----

...apparently I had a notion for a post, but -- for whatever reason -- I didn't finish.
promethean75
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Re: Deism

Post by promethean75 »

listen henry. human beings have an instinct to want and acquire property for obvious reasons we don't need to get all anthropological about. Safety, security, pleasure, power, etc. This instinct is recognized by everyone, but nothing of this instinct and the ability to obtain and hold property, is a 'right'. Of course you say it is, and you base that on some notion of a 'god' creating man and endowing him with 'rights'... and so we are at an impasse.

you'd never believe 'rights' are merely manmade conventions, contracts and laws that exist only because large social groups need them and agree to abide by them.

So while I'm arguin that intersubjective agreement of the majority is enough to justify the creation of 'rights', that they need not be thought of as objective in any transcendental platonic or Kantian sense, and that they're essentially Hobbesian contracts by nature, none of this is thought to be possible by you because you're a deist.

but at the most fundamental level thrasymachus wuz right and stirner was even righter.
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henry quirk
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Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

you base that on some notion of a 'god' creating man and endowing him with 'rights'
ass backwards...recognizin' natural rights and free will brought me to God, God didn't bring me to natural rights and free will
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Deism

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Is a joke
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henry quirk
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Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:09 am Is a joke
mebbe so

why do you care?

you do, at least enough to insult me without cause

really, what I have I done to you to warrant such spite?

🤔
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Deism

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

henry quirk wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:34 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:09 am Is a joke
mebbe so

why do you care?

you do, at least enough to insult me without cause

really, what I have I done to you to warrant such spite?

🤔
I have many faults, but spite isn't one of them.
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Dontaskme
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Re: Deism

Post by Dontaskme »

promethean75 wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 2:30 am and so we are at an impasse.
This too will pass, will come to pass, over the pass age of time, passover.

What goes in must come out...The in comes from the out and the out comes from the in...it's an inside out - outside in jobby.

More looney tunes to come...as thy will be done, and the job ain't finished until the paper work is done, in digital format. :mrgreen:
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henry quirk
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Re: Deism

Post by henry quirk »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 7:08 am
henry quirk wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:34 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:09 am Is a joke
mebbe so

why do you care?

you do, at least enough to insult me without cause

really, what I have I done to you to warrant such spite?

🤔
I have many faults, but spite isn't one of them.
Okay.

So: what's your beef with me?
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Deism

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:36 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 7:08 am
henry quirk wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:34 am

mebbe so

why do you care?

you do, at least enough to insult me without cause

really, what I have I done to you to warrant such spite?

🤔
I have many faults, but spite isn't one of them.
Okay.

So: what's your beef with me?
I was referring to so-called 'deism'. Personally, I rather like you.
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