What do you think of Deism & Pantheism? (believe, rejecting, Creator)
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Do you find these two positions logical? Deists believes in a God that created the universe and Earth, but plays no interactive role in our day to day life. Pantheists believes all life and the universe is God.
Now,......let me think about this for a moment or two. Hummmmm, well...I certainly do not believe in a single diety, or a single devil, if I can not bring my self to believe that there is a god, why??? in the world would I try to convince myself that there are a bunch of these mythological gods?
Believing that everything is God, or nothing is God because there isn't one, seem to have the same bottom line to me. It's somewhat like saying that everyone is special.
As an atheist, no. It's just more BS made up by people looking for feel-good easy answers to some difficult questions.
LOL, I see myself as an Atheist(with an Agnostic side) now. Before then, I kind of identify as a Deist for a brief period as it made a lot of sense at the time after I no longer believed in the Biblical God. The problem with a Deist God is why would this God even create the universe and not intervene?
LOL, I see myself as an Atheist(with an Agnostic side) now. Before then, I kind of identify as a Deist for a brief period as it made a lot of sense at the time after I no longer believed in the Biblical God. The problem with a Deist God is why would this God even create the universe and not intervene?
People create a variety of things and then lose interest. In Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon God is an artist and the Universe his artwork, but this is not too rosy a view. Basically he realizes that to God we're like some rough draft that God keeps on a shelf somewhere and would be fine to throw away. C. S. Lewis deemed the book "practically demonic" but even as a Christian I think that's an overreaction. He was taking the idea of God as a creative being far advanced of us and working on what he felt that would mean. The God he describes is "inhuman", and I don't agree with it, but I don't think it's a malign God. (Also Stapledon was an agnostic more than a deist or atheist)
The original deists sometimes saw the Universe as a clock. Many people made clocks to sell or lost interest in them at some point.
It is not logical as either position requires a presupposition of a creator.
Having said that, since we really do not know how matter got started (though we can make some educated guesses as to how life got started) it is understandable that postulating a big invisible human is an easy explanation. That was the only explanation the primitives had. All the questions had to be answered by guesswork based on the world they knew. The various myths and legends bacame known, retold and, eventually, written down.
When science got started it was, of course, just seen as learning about god (name your own)'s creation and how it worked. However, the discoveries took more and more of the mechanisms out of the hands of any god and so the creator became more and more remote.
Darwin's evolution was the biggest single closing of a gap for god. No wonder it is regarded as the primary target for so many of the more ..well, fundamentalist...theists.
The present situation is not so much being Deist or Agnostic because it the only explanation that makes sense about our world, but it is the only way of maintaining a belief in a god wth anything like credibility.
Those theists who are not agnostic or deist are of course, quite illogical and, where they try to find evidence for god in logic, philosophy, science or history it is still illogical no matter how well they reason because it is based on the unsupported a priori assumption about a god. An a-priori refusal to make such an assumption is, of course, logical, for all that some wallies represent it as making an assumption.
Agnostics and Deists escape the worst of this as they are just on the side of being persuaded that it all seems a bit too lucky to put down to being unplanned. It's a good case as Anthony Flew and even Dawkins concedes. But it is illogical to base a belief on that.
Those theists - god-believers - who are not agnostic or deist go beyond even that illogic by thinking in terms of a particular god with particular attributes. The illogic here is in additionally rejecting of all the other gods. As we atheists say, these people are atheist in respect of all the gods - except one (unless they are polytheist).
The ones who go even further - taking the Bible as substantially reliable - are even more illogical, as we see from the denominational differences, the ones who don't believe in a hell or even salvation. They haven't thought through the implications of that and, what's the most illogical is that, when you ask them why one should embrace that belief when, following Pascal's Wager, one should always believe a religion that threatens some kind of hell, otherwise there's nothing to escape, they ignore the question. Every time, I've posed it, anyway.
So, in view of all that, yes, agnostics and deists, assuming that to mean those that actually believe in a 'god' of some kind (as opposed to accepting it as an unproven possibility - with which any atheist can agree) are strictly illogical as belief in an unproven entity is illogical. But so long as it is just a belief that something must have 'dunnit' it is tolerable.
Belief in a particular and personal god is illogical, and adduces more sorts of illogic. And the more unproven and unsubstantiated claims are made, the more illogical it becomes.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-31-2009 at 06:03 AM..
Having done Deists (and also agnostics) Pantheists are perhaps on the logical side of agnosticism, depending on what they take pantheism to mean.
Pantheism may mean 'all gods are one'. This is actually slightly on the theist side as it supposes (or can include the supposition) that there is a god of the 'personal' persuasion. That neatly gets around the problem of 'which god' by saying 'all of 'em'.
That is (following from my post above) less illogical than a particular personal god as it makes less claims about it. It probably doesn't even make a claim that it is male. It only claims that there is some planning ability. some intelligence. That is very much the Deist god and in only as illogical as that, depending on whether (as I said above) one believes in it or only accepts it as an unproven (or undisproven) possibility.
If one doesn't insist on some intelligence or planning ability, then all that the pantheist is doing is calling matter and its inherent physical laws 'God'.
This is pretty much an atheist position dressed up in theist trappings. I don't even say it is illogical but I don't feel too easy about sticking god - labels onto things that are not usually what pop into the mind when one talks of 'god'.
Such a position is that 'other' kind of agnostic. Not the 'atheist' agnostic who says that it is a knowledge position of not knowing anything about it but the other use of the term 'agnostic' which is actually the more popularly used, if not actually correct. It is the fence - sitter and the undecided. And though I say that is not a logical position, I can be pretty tolerant towards it.
The Deist Concept of God is also very individualized, but more entity like than I prefer. I think of God as a concept, and ideal, not a being or an entity. Something very personal and individual as it is something that can exist within one's own concept.
Deism is excellent though because it shows the futility and uselessness of religions. Deism adheres to the fact that all religions, and I mean ALL religions, are creations of man. Since Religions are created by man, the deistic idea of God is very distant.
Thomas Paine was a founding father of our great nation and one of the greatest minds and voices of reason. A lot is owed to him for keeping religion OUT of governement. He was a deist.
Do you find these two positions logical? Deists believes in a God that created the universe and Earth, but plays no interactive role in our day to day life. Pantheists believes all life and the universe is God.
Uh...hello, atheists here (and a few agnostics). Can't speak for the agnostics but do you know what "atheist" means? Apparently not, since you're asking a question about whether or not we think the idea of gods is logical.
Atheists don't believe in god. Any of them. So no, neither of those positions is logical AT ALL.
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