Deist

A deist is defined today as "a person who believes that God created the universe and then abandoned it" with Deism being defined as "The belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws."

I have heard people say the "Founding Fathers" were mostly deists. But were they deists according to that definition?

A few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical Christians such as Thomas Jefferson, who constructed the Jefferson Bible which contained everything Jesus said but cut out a lot of commentary.

Benjamin Franklin was another who was called a deist but has been called a "Christian Deist". Benjamin Franklin was not only tolerant but supportive of all religions that promoted moral character and individual and Social Virtues. He was raised a Puritan in Boston, Massachusetts but seems to have identified himself as a Deist. He had a perception of virtue and moral responsibility.

Deism was a movement of the Enlightenment age.

French, English and German Deism differed from each other. In Europe some saw divine intelligence behind the complex and wondrous beauty of the natural world but did not believe that God intervened in human activity. Revelation and prophecy along with miracles were questioned by many deists but not universally. Deism appealed to those who opposed any group of vain clergy and would necessitate an anti-clerical Christian position.

Organized religion was not viewed by Deists as necessary for good people but then many of the religious institutions were becoming more interested in the loyalty of their members than the righteousness of Christ's teachings.

Thomas Paine challenged institutionalized religion in The Age of Reason'. He speaks of a Christian fraud and a neglect of the Creator in the views of Christians. But his views and interpretations of the Bible were dependent upon what was posing as Christianity at that time. Paine was also said to be a deists yet he quoted the Bible extensively in his pamphlet Common Sense.

He drew from 1 Samuel 8 arguments against the Crown and tyranny. Samuel, who was not a deist by any definition, was speaking to God and prophesying to the people what kind of government they would have if they elected men to exercise authority rather than follow their God given conscience.

Paine even went so far as to say:

“Where, Say Some, is the king of America? I’ll tell you, Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on divine law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the People whose right it is.”

Why anti-clerical

Churches at that time were sectarian and denominational based on doctrines produced by men and their private interpretation of what they imagined the scriptures said. Ministers of these churches often dictated what people were to believe and would set denomination against denomination. There was an anti institutional Churchanity among men who opposed the basics of Chris's teachings by dividing the people which had produced inquisitions, ostracized people and even beat and hanged them for nothing more than what they believed.

Christ only established one Church bound by not only mutual love but even commanded to love their enemy. In Fact if a Church is not established by Jesus Christ and conformed to these basic doctrines it does not meet the legal definition of a Church. It is not anyone's right to create an institutional Church to impose private interpretations upon others but it is everyone's right to conform to the virtue of God manifested in the life and character of Christ.

Paine opposed the authoritarian nature of a uniform church doctrines imposed upon society by these man made institutions but he and many others failed to recognize the purpose of the Church and the practice of Pure Religion. Men had already began to alter the meaning of words like Religion which was the duty to care for the widows and orphans or needy of society by charity alone. The Church was the appointed corpus of Jesus, who was a king. His Church was to facilitate that Daily ministration through faith, hope and charity and the Perfect law of liberty.

Ironically Paine proposed later in life to create a tax administered by government which would exercise authority over the people but could provide for old age benefits of those who had no family to care for them.

Paine wrote in the Age of Reason of Deism and Religion. He thought that at least the Quakers saw things clearer admitting that they were close to understanding the liberty bestowed on man but considered them to drab and colorless.

"How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical."

"The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers; but they have contracted themselves too much, by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gayeties, nor a bird been permitted to sing." AGE OF REASON by Thomas Paine, "TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

But had Paine simply forgiven the drab and colorless nature of Quakers he would have never been tempted to force his neighbor to contribute to his welfare through men who would call themselves Benefactors but exercise authority by compelling a tax to provide social Welfare.

Paine was not opposed to Christian principles as he understood them but did oppose that institutional religious system produced by men and their substituting doctrinal ideologies for Pure Religion.

"As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism— a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade." AGE OF REASON by Thomas Paine, "TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

Clearly Paine missed the essence of Christ's appointed Church and did not understand the Corban of Christ. Had more churches focused on the daily ministration through charity and less on dividing the people into sectarian groups based on private interpretation Paine might have embraced such a church.

Whose Father

The Founding Fathers also created an institution made by man. These men may have been the Fathers of a government institution but were not yet Fathers of the people. To say the Founding Fathers held beliefs very similar to those of deists might be fair but we would have to look at the similarities and essential differences of a deist at that time since there is a wide variety of philosophical deism and an even wider array of what might call itself "Christian".

"The name Deist was applied rather generally in the eighteenth century to all persons who did not belong to some recognized Christian denomination." A History of English Literature by Fletcher, Robert Huntington (1885 - 1972).

Gregg Frazer a historian argues that the America's Key Founders, Neither Christians nor Deists. He gives evidence that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and George Washington supporters or followers of a hybrid "theistic rationalism".

Theistic rationalism is a mix of natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism.

Theistic rationalists believe natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism typically coexist compatibly, with rational thought balancing the conflicts between the first two aspects.

Sense "Natural Religion is "religion, especially deism, based on reason rather than divine revelation."but Theistic rationalists believe that God plays an active role in human life, rendering prayer effective. So, this Deism does not allow one to accept the - "belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it..."

A deist that renders prayer effective does not believe God remains apart and would not qualify as a deist and to to call them one would be irrational. Together a common theme is to set the role of religion to be - to promote morality, but whose morality?

The traditions or rules or ordinances of society that set morality are either a product of right reason or revelation. Cannon law is defined as divine will or right reason. In truth divine will is based on revelation and right reason is codependent.

These deists are opposed to more modern views and accept parts of the Bible as divinely inspired, using reason and therefore personal revelation resulting from prayer and virtues including humility as their criterion for what to accept or reject.

Their belief that God intervenes in human affairs and their approving attitude toward parts of the Bible distinguish theistic rationalists from Deists to the point where if you chose to label them as deist would be a deception.

There are always some people that want to label important or influential people as deist so that they can use that label to write off those who are connected to religion, specifically organized religion.

Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason and ordinary experience of nature. This distinguishes it from revealed theology, which is based on scripture and/or religious experiences, and also from transcendental theology, which is based on a priori reasoning or what was traditionally accepted before.

What is based on scripture? Whose version is correct? Even if you use only the 1611 version of the King James there will be thousands of different opinions asserted about meanings, doctrines and dogmas.

All interpretations are private unless they are divinely inspired. So the Bible itself is not a standard except possibly on paper. The private interpretations of people who may or may not be divinely inspired or even rational and even if they are rational, are all the facts obtainable to reason with? This has resulted in over 40,000 denominations.

Who is right? And how do you know?

There seems to be a line of prejudice due to a myriad of opinions and factors concerning religion and what is rational. We must settle on definitions of words in order to understand. What is Religion and how are we using the term?

M. de Montesquieu was accused of being a deist also to which Thomas Nugent responded in 1752:

"The author first complains of his being charged both with espousing the doctrines of Spinoza, and with being a Deist, two opinions directly contradictory to each other. To the former of these he answers, by placing in one view the several passages in the Spirit of Laws directly levelled against the doctrines of Spinoza; and then he replies to the objections that have been made to those passages, upon which this injurious charge is founded."

de Montesquieu had already argued:

"Before I conclude this first part, I am tempted to make one objection against him who has made so many; but he has so stunned my ears with the words follower of natural religion, that I scarcely dare pronounce them. I shall endeavour however to take courage. Do not the critic's two pieces stand in greater need of an explication, than that which I defend? Does he do well, while speaking of natural religion and revelation, to fall perpetually upon one side of the subject, and to lose all traces of the other? Does he do well never to distinguish those who acknowledge only the religion of nature, from those who acknowledge both natural and revealed religion? Does he do well to turn frantic whenever the author considers man in the state of natural religion, and whenever he explains any thing on the principles of natural religion? Does he do well to confound natural religion with Atheism? Have I not heard that we have all natural religion? Have I not heard that Christianity is the perfection of natural religion? Have I not heard that natural religion is employed to prove the truth of revelation against the Deists? and that the same natural religion is employed to prove the existence of a God against the Atheists? He has said that the Stoics were the followers of natural religion; and I say, that they were Atheists, since they believed that a blind fatality governed the universe; and it is by the religion of nature that we ought to attack that of the Stoics. He says that the scheme of natural religion is connected with that of Spinoza; and I say, that they are contradictory to each other, and it is by natural religion that we ought to destroy Spinoza's scheme. I say, that to confound natural religion with Atheism, is to confound the proof with the thing to be proved, and the objections against error with error itself, and that this is to take away the most powerful arms we have against this error."

Samuel Adams stated, on August 1, 1776 within one month of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “Our Union is complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. We may justly address you, as the decemviri did the Romans, and say: ‘Nothing that we propose can pass into law without your consent.’ Be yourself, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends."

"Prior to the 17th century the terms ["deism" and "deist"] were used interchangeably with the terms "theism" and "theist", respectively. ... Theologians and philosophers of the seventeenth century began to give a different signification to the words... Both [theists and deists] asserted belief in one supreme God, the Creator... . But the theist taught that God remained actively interested in and operative in the world which he had made, whereas the Deist maintained that God endowed the world at creation with self-sustaining and self-acting powers and then surrendered it wholly to the operation of these powers acting as second causes." Orr, John (1934). English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits. Eerdmans. p. 13.

"All Deists were in fact both critical and constructive Deists. All sought to destroy in order to build, and reasoned either from the absurdity of Christianity to the need for a new philosophy or from their desire for a new philosophy to the absurdity of Christianity. Each Deist, to be sure, had his special competence. While one specialized in abusing priests, another specialized in rhapsodies to nature, and a third specialized in the skeptical reading of sacred documents. Yet whatever strength the movement had—and it was at times formidable—it derived that strength from a peculiar combination of critical and constructive elements." —Peter Gay, Deism: An Anthology, p. 13

As Thomas Paine wrote:

"As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin." —The Age of Reason, Part 2, p. 129

This is simply not true especially to apply the word "always". there certainly were priests who stifled knowledge but the role of priests included preserving and imparting knowledge for centuries.

Perhaps the first use of the term deist is in Pierre Viret's Instruction Chrétienne en la doctrine de la foi et de l'Évangile (Christian teaching on the doctrine of faith and the Gospel, 1564), reprinted in Bayle's Dictionnaire entry Viret. Viret, a Calvinist, regarded deism as a new form of Italian heresy.[17] Viret wrote (as translated from the original French):

"There are many who confess that while they believe like the Turks and the Jews that there is some sort of God and some sort of deity, yet with regard to Jesus Christ and to all that to which the doctrine of the Evangelists and the Apostles testify, they take all that to be fables and dreams... I have heard that there are of this band those who call themselves Deists, an entirely new word, which they want to oppose to Atheist. For in that atheist signifies a person who is without God, they want to make it understood that they are not at all without God, since they certainly believe there is some sort of God, whom they even recognize as creator of heaven and earth, as do the Turks; but as for Jesus Christ, they only know that he is and hold nothing concerning him nor his doctrine."

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