Deism in Relation to Monotheism and Polytheism

To better understand deism it helps to view it in contrast to competing religious views. While deism does describe God as a singular entity it’s pretty distinct from your hymnal-toting grandmother’s version of monotheism. Abrahamic monotheistic religions are thrice-removed from deistic theory because they rely on revealed knowledge, stories of purported miracles, and arguments from emotion.

Occam’s Razor allows deism to dismiss any notion of multiple gods (polytheism) in favor of the simpler explanation that a singular entity created our world. To involve more than one god opens the door for an arbitrary number of potential gods which has historically led to divine delegation of important tasks like the overseeing of door hinges.

Photo by Nils

The reason miracles — individually and as a concept — are dismissed by deism is that there’s insufficient evidence that such things actually occur; in fact there’s some evidence to the contrary. A miracle is by definition the breaking, or at least pausing, of the natural laws that oversee everything we do in life and everything that’s ever been empirically observed or measured.

No single claim of a miraculous event has been verified with anything other than invariably-unreliable eye witness account or suspiciously-grainy photographs and that’s not for lack of incentive.

The stories of the Bible were passed down to the authors of the book decades after they supposedly occurred. What makes these sensational third-hand stories, from an era where the technology of a single sheet of paper would’ve astonished crowds, any more believable than the supernatural claims of your fishing buddy, the rambling, curb-perched winos, or the flat-earther YouTubers you dismiss every day?

Deism Vs. Atheism

With the Abrahamic monotheistic — and all polytheistic — religions markedly occupying a space outside the confines of the empirical deist perspective many wonder if atheism or agnosticism couldn’t just envelope deism. After all, there are more than enough self-identifying labels floating around these days.

They can’t.

Modern atheism is the complete rejection of belief in any deity. Some would argue it’s the certainty that any particular deity is a work of fiction. Richard Dawkins acknowledges that strict atheism is irrational, however, as one cannot safely rule out the existence of a god — at least no more than, as Bertrand Russel would say, one could rule out the existence of a celestial teapot circling our favorite space rock.

To resolve this somewhat-semantic issue Dawkins differentiates strict or “strong atheism” from the belief that the existence of a god is merely ‘highly improbable’ by calling himself a “de facto atheist.”

Deism is a mirror reversal of so-called de facto atheism. It is the belief that there is a god, to a varying degree of certainty depending on which individual deist you ask.

Deism draws the inference that God exists from the existence of natural laws and other seemingly non-random facts about the world that suggest we’re the product of a thoughtful creator.

Atheists are Often Well-Versed in Scripture. Photo by Alexander Michl

Agnosticism and Deism

Agnosticism is often seen as a middle-ground perspective between atheism and deism. It’s the belief that we don’t have enough evidence to analyze the likelihood of God’s existence. This annoying philosophical safe-zone is unwarranted and impractical.

We do have evidence of a creator, as I’ll describe momentarily, but suppose you find the evidence unconvincing.. wouldn’t that mean de facto atheism should be your position? How can one be half-convinced of something? When you wake and rise from bed you believe the floor will be there to catch your feet — or you’re paranoid and don’t — but either way you’re not indifferent or totally incapable of calculating a rough probability of it being true.

The possibility that God exists is perhaps the most important question humanity has ever asked so to lazily call it a 50/50 ‘unknown,’ which is what I perceive the agnostic position to be doing, is to detach yourself from the question solely for the sake of saving yourself the trouble of thinking.

Being temporarily undecided about something is distinct from declaring it a permanent mystery with unknowable probability. Actually, “Undecided” is a more respectable label but for Christ’s sake (pun intended) uncross your arms and form an opinion!

The Differences Between Deism and Pantheism or Spiritualism

Just briefly.. pantheism is a spiritual belief system that confers the natural laws and wonders we observe to a decentralized god. This stands in contrast to the monotheistic, more intention-bearing god of deism. Pantheists could be thought of as nature-worshipers, insofar as nature itself could be considered divine.

Einstein and Carl Sagan were likely pantheists. There are several variants of pantheism, many paralleling the countless variants of spiritualism which I won’t cover here for the — looks at camera Jim Halpert-style — sake of brevity.