Deism: Reason Friendly Belief in God

by Bob Johnson

      From humanity’s earliest days, people have looked upon the Earth and up at the sky and at themselves and wondered why they are here and how everything came to be. In ancient times people attributed themselves and everything they could see in the Creation to a supernatural God or Gods. Some people set themselves up as priests, rabbis or some other type of “holy-man” with a special connection to God. They told their fellow humans that they knew what God wanted because God communicated with them and revealed to them His will.

      Over time, these “revealed” religions dwindled down to three major “revealed” religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Because all three of these “revealed” religions claim the ancient Hebrew who is said to have lived in the Bronze Age, Abraham, as their patriarch, these three “revealed” religions are referred to as the Abrahamic “revealed” religions each with their own “holy scriptures” which are purported to be communications from God.

      Followers of these religions, today, number into the billions. They believe that God revealed his will for humanity through their particular “holy scriptures”. The Jews believe it was through the Hebrew Bible, the Christians believe it was through the Old and New Testaments and the Muslims believe it was through the Koran. These differences in belief in which book is holy and which are not has lead to thousands of years of war and bloodshed as we can witness today in the Middle East as well as in India where “revealed” religionists, the Hindus, which are not followers of an Abrahamic religion, occasionally do battle against Muslims and Christians.

     As humanity pulled itself out of the Christian dominated Dark Ages a relatively small group of people in Europe began to evolve out of the ancient beliefs of the various and competing “revealed” religions into a more rational and reason-friendly belief system known as Deism. Deism is the belief in God based on the application of our God-given reason on the designs in Nature. Deists believe the designs presuppose a Designer. Instead of believing in God based on what a man tells us or through writings of men, Deists believe in God based on the reality of Nature and their own God-given reason.
     

     By the 18th Century many of the European philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau had come to embrace Deism. It also spread to America where key figures in the American Revolution were Deists. People such as George Washington, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen and James Monroe were Deists. Being Deists they were free of the Biblical prohibition of resisting and disobeying the government which is found in Romans 13:1-7 which instructs Christians to obey and to fear the powers that be.

     Thomas Paine wrote the thought provoking book about God, religion and Deism, The Age of Reason which does a great job of demonstrating the absurdities of the Bible and the Abrahamic “revealed” religions. Even though Paine was key in starting and winning the American Revolution, many Americans turned against him because of this powerful book.

     Ethan Allen also wrote a great book about Deism called Reason: The Only Oracle of Man. In this book he makes the great point that God-given reason is much more important than man-made “holy books”. He wrote, “Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, Whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone, but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.”

     Today the major organization for Deists is the World Union of Deists. The WUD was established in 1993. In 1996 the WUD started the first web site dedicated to Deism, www.deism.com, and now also has a book on Deism titled, Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You. The WUD also offers two Deist webzines you can subscribe to for free on their site at:
                              http://www.deism.com.