Edwin Just Called Me A "Deist"
In one of his comments on mideastyouth.com, Edwin called me a “deist.”
A what? A “deist.” Well, “them’s fighting words,” as far as I was concerned, but before reaching for the boxing gloves, I thought I’d better look up what the word “deist” means. It can’t hurt to understand the insult, before getting insulted.
Deism is the belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation and supernatural events such as prophesy and miracles. Um… Believing in God on the basis of reason, as opposed to prophesy, miracles, holy books, and the like.
Well, maybe Edwin is on to something. I do believe that we can ascertain the existence of God through reason. It goes something like this: Some 13.7 billion years ago there was a great explosion, appropriately called The Big Bang. Right before this calamitous event there was nothing; not even time and space. Right after, there was everything; the entire universe in all its glory.
Whatever caused that explosion to occur is indeed worthy of being called God, if the word God is to mean anything. Therefore, God is the Prime Mover, who caused the universe to come into being. To do that, He needed to use an infinite amount of all sorts of energy: heat, electricity, radiation, and even the energy of intelligence. Therefore, God, who is the Creator of all things, can be thought of as the sum total of all the creative energy in the universe. His energy flows through us, and our energy flows through Him.
It’s just a thought. I’m not about to jump on a horse and kill you over it. But it’s simply a way of trying to make sense of the mystery that is God. Does it help us to think of God as an infinite ocean of energy? Does it make sense to universalize the notion of God by using reason to ascertain His existence and His essence?
I say yes. I am not against religion. I believe that religion, properly understood, could be a legitimate pathway to God. But here’s the problem. When we rely solely on our holy books, and the prophesies and miracles that are recounted there, we divide ourselves from one another. “My holy book says this and that, and you better believe it, or else.”
And since we’re talking about something as important as God no less, the divisions we create between us can run very deep indeed. And since a belief in God can move us to extreme emotion, and to absolute conviction, we can feel entitled, somehow, to take liberty with the lives of others, in defense of our deeply held beliefs.
However, coming to God through our power of reason, is different than coming to Him from our holy books. Reason, by its very nature, is less divisive. Two plus two equals four; here and in China as well. There is not much room for argument here. Reason underpins the universal notions of Common Sense. Common Sense is “common,” because it is universal. Common Sense makes “sense,” because it is logical, rational, and self-evident. Common Sense unites. Religion can often divide.
So if there were a way to come to God through the power of intellect, as guided by reason, and in conformance with universal notions of Common Sense; would this not be a less divided world? Could religious strife be neutralized to a much greater extent? Could there emerge a consensus with regard to a belief in God, which would then help people find common ground with respect to the more mundane matters of life, matters which beg for our attention even as we speak?
So Edwin, at a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists are at each other’s throats, over words written long ago, and about beliefs which may no longer be palatable to the modern mind; at such time, I don’t mind being called a “deist,” especially if accepting that label could hint at the possibility of peace. It may well be time, before time runs out, to find new sources of inspiration for our beliefs, and new pathways to God, even as we continue to embrace our religions. Using reason, and the common sense notions born of it, is a good bet, because whatever else He said or did, God certainly created a world that is capable of being understood, and being made sense of.
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Very well-written piece, Nissim.
Nissim
You have a beautiful vision and a beautiful way of reasoning out, your vision of hope is a prophecy in itself 
Whew! Glad to hear there won’t be a violent “Deist Jihad” anytime soon.
“Take note that the amazing intricacy and beauty of nature and science is surely evidence of the existence of God or I’ll stab you!”
Excellent post Nissim! Just the kind of thing I’d expect from a Deist.
Thank you Goran, Elinor, and Eric. You are all very kind.
Actually, I was hoping for some controversy to spice things up. So here is a corollary to the post, just to get on your nerves:
“Where there is no contradiction between the two, religion should be used to teach ultimate truth.
Where there is a contradiction between the two, religion should take a back seat to ultimate truth.”
A penny for your thoughts.
While reading this post, I was reminded of “God’s Debris” – a short book by Scott Adams (yes, Dilbert’s creator).
It’s a very interesting read, and quite difficult to describe in a few sentences. If you haven’t read it, it’s available as a free e-book.
Nissim Dahan, it is a very long while since I have been on this site. I thought I may come back in, in hopes that the “yahoo” who was offended by my non acceptance of his particular superstition, had left. I was surprised to see this article. I did not realize that a compliment to someones way of thinking might be construed as an insult. The universe contains within it the possibility of intelligence and self awareness. We know this, because there are a number of intelligent humans and even more self aware ones. It is easy to imagine a limited god on the basis of our capabilities. The authors of the books of the Bible and the Qu’ran have imagined a god that is limited and motivated by human scale desires. None of these books adequately describe a “Prime Mover”, but then the people who imagined these various gods and wrote their imaginings were very limited in knowledge and experience. Most of the superstitions imbued into the gods of the Bible and the Qu’ran were for the purposes of controlling human behavior according to the desires of their rulers. Prophecy itself was an invention to add weight to these gods.
Yet we manifestly exist, constructed of matter, that in turn is constructed of energy. All of us animals have more similarities as than we have differences. We are motivated by hunger, the drive to survive and reproduce. The biochemistry that makes us all go, is the same.
We like to fool ourselves, because we experience individuality, locked inside our own heads, into believing that we are each a separate life. Religions, particularly Abrahimic one, like Islam, Judaism an Christianity have invented a special place for humans in the pecking order of life and ascribed to us an individual soul, that we can lose in hell, if we disobey, or send to heaven, if we do as we are told. This classic carrot and stick, to obtain human obedience is what these religions are about.
We can look rationally at the world outside of ourselves and see a whole that we are a part of. At the immediate level, this is the ecosphere in which we exist in cooperation with other creatures, but at an extended level, we are a part of a living earth, not separate from it. The earth is a part of a living solar system and that solar system is a part of one singular living universe. As a deist, I believe there is only one life and we are just manifestations of it. From my point of view God can be seen in the rules that govern physics, chemistry, biology.
When God manifested Itself in the creation of what we currently know to be our universe, It gave rules to energy, which condensed into matter and for nearly 14 billion years, that matter has been following the same rules, unerringly and without variation. Those rules that matter has followed include gravitation that has lead to hot spheres we call stars and cooler ones we call planets. Matter agglomerated into increasingly complex forms, that had the capability of copying itself, and still following simple rules of competition has evolved into what we are now.
Just because we find ourselves to be here and now, does not mean that we are an end result. We are just the current end result. Change will continue and our type of animal will continue to change.
Those who claim that “man was made in the image of God” limit God to what they can imagine. But if God is at least as big as the universe, then those who make this claim cannot possibly be correct.
Within Deism, there is the possibility of everything that we can imagine. You may well imagine it differently to me, but I still stand by original assertion that you sound like a Deist to me.
Edwin, it’s good to have you back.
I don’t want you to think that I was insulted to be called a Deist. On the contrary, it’s an honor to be in the company of people such as you, and a great many of the founders of U.S., who also considered themselves Deists. I was just making the point, in a humorous way, that sometimes we get insulted, without even knowing what the words mean. We’ll pick a fight just for the hell of it, and then try to figure out what the other guy intended to say.
Once again, I agree with most of what you have to say. Religion can be a good thing, and can be a pathway to God, but often, it is used politically to control human behavior. Heaven and hell is a carrot and stick approach, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me at least.
When you say that the universe contains matter, which is constructed of energy, I can relate to that as well. In fact, as I have said, one way of understanding God is to say that God is the sum total of all the creative energy in the universe. God’s energy flows through me, and my energy flows through Him.
And like Einstein, you see God in the fixed laws of nature. Einstien didn’t believe in a personal God, but he thought of God as setting the laws of nature in place, and sort of walking away from the scene. I don’t really see it that way. I think that we do interact with God on a daily basis, since we live using the energy He lends us, and He uses His energy to make certain things happen, some of them seeming like “coincidence,” but still very much reflecting His intention.
For me, God is like an artist. All you have to do is to look at some of the pictures from the Hubble telescope and realize the extent of God’s artistry. Yesterday, I visited a huge aquarium, and saw dozens of different types of frogs, each one “painted” as you would paint a porcelain toy.
If God is an artist, an artist that uses energy to make all things possible, then it would seem to me, that like any artist, He would want to know that His creation is indeed “good.” And if He created a creature like us, a creature that was able to contemplate the existence of his Creator, then it could be up to us to validate the efficacy of God’s creation. If, in the face of evil, we behaved well, then this would at least be some measure of evidence that God’s creation was indeed good. If you were God, how could you know that your creation was good, but for the behavior of your creatures, especially those created in “your image.”
I do believe that we were created in God’s image, because like Him, we too are creators. The trouble is that we often end up creating the wrong things. For example, as you suggest, we end up creating an image of God that is more reflective of our inadequacies, than of the true nature of God. We say, for example, that God is angry, because it is we who are angry.
In any event, I think you’re right, I am a Deist. I choose to know God rationally, and by using whatever common sense I possess. It doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to know God. It is one way, the way that I am comfortable with.
I also believe that at a time when the whole world is coming together economically, and technologically, and when the world is facing some global challenges, that it is time to come up with an ideological framework, based on common sense principles, which we can use to talk to one another with common sense and with a sense of personal dignity. Religion, or any spiritual path for that matter, should help us to find common ground, so that we can begin tackling some common problems. If it doesn’t do that, then we may have to step back from some of what we believe, in favor of something we can believe in even more, like, peace, prosperity, freedom, and sustainability.
I do enjoy our talks. Hopefully, we can continue down the same road together.
Hi Nisim Dahan,
I like so much of what you say, it is food for contemplation. A part of the beauty of creation (Gods Artistry) is that each of us can have a part of the view, and agree that we see things as we prefer to. To me, the entire universe of all known and unknown things are made out of God. I do not see a separation between us and God. The energies that are coalesced into matter are the energies of God. God gave rules, not many and simple, for those energies to follow, and self aware entities like us are a result of the progression of those rules. Your view in my mind, tends to separate us from God, in my mind there is no distinction. Einsteins view is based on Spinoza. I have friends who also have the same view. Ultimately it does not matter what the minor differences in point of view are, and we should all strive to enjoy the fact that all our views are speculative and based on imaginative interpretation of the physical evidence around us. Imaginative interpretation is a fact of the universe, and therefore a representation of God.
I cannot stay long at the moment, but am looking forward to our future chats.