What about deism? (Introduction)

by Cary Cook , Thursday, June 19, 2008, 00:54 (5809 days ago) @ dhw

> "Once you are free from the scientific faith of atheism and the dogma of religion, you can pick any scenario you like, because they are all equally possible/impossible." - Equally possible: yes. Equally impossible: no.
Equally probable: You know what I think. What do you think?
Equally worth betting on: definitely not.
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>you said that you were not a deist, but you didn't explain why, even though you and I have agreed on various arguments in its favour. - I consider deism likely in the sense that If I created this universe, I wouldn't spend any more time than necessary messing with Earth. i.e. necessary to set it up so that it would be likely to produce whatever results I wanted from it. But I wouldn't leave it totally alone either, because dumb luck & human stupidity would likely ruin any plans I might have had. I'd put it under the care of either some government agency, or private kindergarten ... whichever is most likely to give me satisfactory results for the best price. (But that probably wouldn't be called deism.) The rules I'd set up would depend on the end results I wanted. Speculating on those results is beyond the scope of this post. - My personal experience is not inconsistent with the above scenario. It's also not inconsistent with a nihilistic(1) explanation. After the probabilities are recognized as hovering around 50%, the next question is what's most worth betting on, and we've pretty much been thru that.
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>Why do Christians and other believers reject the concept of deism ... or any other concepts of God, for that matter? Embracing one theory means rejecting others, so what are the decisive factors? - I think the biggest motivator for all religionists is fear. This is most effective on adults who figure they have probably done more bad stuff than good stuff, and therefore deserve punishment. The afterlife possibility becomes scary. Instead of figuring it out philosophically, they look to traditionally established answers, and fall into whatever Scripture-based religion appears to have the most to offer. The culture they live in is probably the next biggest influence. Intellect comes into play only on those who need rational consistency, and don't find it in their Scriptures & experience.