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?
