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Author Topic:   Percy is a Deist - Now what's the difference between a deist and an atheist?
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 19 of 375 (498390)
02-10-2009 6:03 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by RAZD
02-09-2009 8:51 PM


RAZD writes:
The atheist believes there is no evidence of god/s and that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence (all A is B, B therefore A logical fallacy).
We're often told by theists (and deists are a sub-category of theists) what atheists believe. In fact, an atheist is just anyone who lacks Faith/belief in any gods. In the same way that a weak agnostic will tell you, as an irrefutable statement of fact, that he or she personally does not know if there are any gods, I can tell you, as an irrefutable fact, that I personally don't believe in any gods.
Agnosticism is a sub-category of atheism. If you do not know whether there are any gods or not, then you do not believe in any gods. It is strong agnosticism and weak atheism that are close to being the same, not deism and atheism.
It must always be remembered that belief in evidenceless supernatural propositions is what requires Faith, and this belief is active. Atheism is passive. Anti-theism is politically active, but requires no Faith. Not all atheists are anti-theists or anti-religious by any means. Perhaps most atheists are just people who don't require a father figure or an imaginary guiding friend, and the various positions have more to do with emotion than reason.
So, in answer to the O.P., deism and atheism are clearly not the same things, but they are seldom in practical conflict, because the universe would be the same either way, so both groups are very likely to accept methodological naturalism as the way in which to discover our environment. That's the reason for the confusion. We only come into disagreement when talking metaphysics, not when talking physics, and that shows clearly on EvC science threads.
The non-theists and deists sound the same on science, with people like Percy and RAZD often accused of atheism by our creationist members. It makes sense, and is in accordance with the two "philosophies" that it should be that way. The deists are certainly not contradicting themselves, because methodological naturalism is not metaphysical naturalism.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 27 of 375 (498432)
02-10-2009 10:21 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by Dr Jack
02-10-2009 9:48 AM


Mr Jack writes:
In fact, my atheism has little to do with god or no god, I simply believe in a world without any supernatural elements.
I think you're a metaphysical naturalist, which would include being an atheist, of course. But, although I'm sure most atheists are metaphysical naturalists, quite a lot aren't. I know that Wiki is not necessarily an authority, but this article's quite good on the evolution of the word atheist into its modern sense (or senses!).
Atheism - Wikipedia
That's the key difference between deism and atheism: deists are happy to accept the existence of the supernatural.
Therefore, no, it's not. The difference is that one lot believe in some kind of deity, and the other lot doesn't.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 44 of 375 (498481)
02-11-2009 3:22 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by RAZD
02-10-2009 7:47 PM


Subjective "truths".
RAZD writes:
Some may, some may not, however those that do would only use a heavily modified version (no miracles, no revealed truths). It is more a philosophy of belief than a religion, there is no central "church" and no "dogma" to follow. Each is pretty much on their own.
No surprises. So there are lots of different deists believing in lots of different deities. How should we then estimate the probability of a particular one of these deities actually existing? Taking one at random, the RAZD deity, for example, the estimated probability would be very low. Far to low to justify an active belief in the thing (whatever it is).
For me, personally,....
Ah, the world of subjective "truths".
The way I see it is that religions have formed afterward, by the followers of enlightened people, and those followers have interpreted things according to their cultures and their understanding of reality. Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, all had followers that created the religions based on their interpretations of these people.
Those three have teachings that contradict one another. Mohamed's are about as enlightened as the rantings of your average psychopath. What about L. Ron Hubbard? Was he enlightened? And John Smith? And the inventors of religions that involve human sacrifice?
Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns reach the same state of spiritual awareness in tests that compare them, and I would not be surprised to find sufi dervishes also compare the same. In native america we had spirit walks, and in australia there is the walk-about.
Which tells us that all Homo Sapiens have Homo Sapiens' brains. Similar phenomena occurring in different cultures is hardly surprising. Many cultures have invented the idea that evil spirits cause contagious diseases and mental illnesses, which is clear evidence of the human capacity to invent mystical bullshit.
Many different deities have been invented in many different cultures. That's hardly a reason to invent your own, and then believe in it.
Having said all that, if people feel they have to be religious, I wish they'd all be deists!
{ABE} Or perhaps even better, animists.
Edited by bluegenes, : addition

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by RAZD, posted 02-10-2009 7:47 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by RAZD, posted 02-11-2009 7:37 AM bluegenes has replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 47 of 375 (498499)
02-11-2009 8:09 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by RAZD
02-11-2009 7:37 AM


Re: Subjective "truths".
RAZD writes:
Missing the point. If god is unknowable then how do I know which god? How does anyone? The real question is not the probability of a single defined god but of the existence of any god.
I'm not sure if there's a point to be missed. Indeed, as you say, how does anyone know which god? And how does a deist believe in something when he doesn't have a clue what it is that he's believing in, and when he seems to admit that he cannot know whether whatever it might or might not be exists or not? Belief is active, remember.
It sounds as though believing in your deity might require a sense of humour, which I know you have.
You may be close to presenting evidence for Moose's point that there seems little difference between a deist and an atheist, or at least, some deists and some atheists. Perhaps he would have hit the nail on the head if he had suggested that it's a fine line between deism and pantheism as well as atheism. In respect to the word "god", what's the difference in people believing in something that could be everything, or nothing, or anything else, and people who have no beliefs in anything described by the word?
But what I'm objecting to are your Buzsaw-like attempts to justify deism. Humans invent non-theistic religions, polytheistic religions, and mono-theistic religions. That fact is no justification for any individual's religious beliefs. If anything, the opposite.
You claim that all these religions have something in common, but that thing is not a mono-deity. It's the concept of a human soul that seems to exist in every human religious culture, and nothing else.
Would the many independent inventions of the human soul justify a belief in the concept? I say no, because I can think of several reasons why the concept would occur in any group of humans, and why it would appeal and stick in any culture. But what's certain, the only common point in human religions is not a mono-deity, so your argument in no way justifies deism.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by RAZD, posted 02-11-2009 7:37 AM RAZD has replied

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 Message 51 by RAZD, posted 02-11-2009 7:16 PM bluegenes has replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 56 of 375 (498568)
02-11-2009 8:55 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by RAZD
02-11-2009 7:16 PM


Re: Subjective "truths".
RAZD writes:
Curiously, I was thinking that the blanket rejection of this evidence as mere hallucination, invention, etc, was similar to the creationist rejection of the evidence for evolution: they just don't consider it valid.
That certainly is curious. I mentioned the widespread belief that evil spirits cause diseases. Your line of thinking means that you should accept this as "evidence". Should medical students study these spirits?
One doesn't [know which god]. Even whether any concept currently known is even close, just that there is something there that we don't understand and likely never will, something - or somethings - with abilities beyond\outside nature\time.
(My brackets above) We could be in a multidimensional multiverse, and many things could be possible, but:
RAZD writes:
bluegenes writes:
Belief is active, remember.
Is it?
Yes. If there are things we don't know (and there are) and things we cannot know, we have no need to play "god of the gaps". Mysteries do not equal deities.
No, not the religions, the initial spiritual experiences. As noted, these states have been tested in Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns and found - to the extent they can be measured - to be the same.
I don't doubt it. Brains don't differ from east to west. I've had many strange mental experiences, some even not involving drugs , but I've no reason to believe there was any magic involved.
RAZD writes:
You are free to believe that. Not having claimed any mono-deity, this is rather irrelevant.
You feel there isn't sufficient cause to believe, I feel there is. I also feel that everyone needs to find their own path, so I don't ask you to believe what I believe.
I feel there's no evidence for deities, and no pressure to believe in anything unless or until there's evidence. I'm also pointing out that the kind of thing that leads our species to have "spiritual" beliefs does not involve deities. The non-theistic religions illustrate that deities are cultural. Monotheism is definitely not innate in anyway, as evidenced by the fact that it took Christianity about 8 centuries to take over in Europe from numerous other beliefs.
So, the common trances of Catholic nuns, Buddhist monks, Shamans and many others do not have anything to do with deism, which is a cultural phenomenon.
My apologies for assuming that you are a mono-deist, but deists generally are.
Deism - Wikipedia

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 60 of 375 (498583)
02-11-2009 11:36 PM
Reply to: Message 58 by RAZD
02-11-2009 9:29 PM


Re: To summarize then
RAZD writes:
The atheist believes it is purely rational to believe there is/are no god/s, they believe that absence of evidence is indeed not just evidence of absence, but sufficient proof of absence. They believe that they know all {A} such that there is no possible {A} that is not {B}.
quote:
Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of belief in the nonexistence of a god or gods, or the rejection of theism. It is also defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism
Many self-described atheists are skeptical of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities. Others argue for atheism on philosophical, social or historical grounds. Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere; and some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, do not require belief in a personal god.
Atheism - Wikipedia
We're a broad church RAZD, and wiki does a lot better with its definition than you do. Atheists do not necessarily believe any of what you've said above.
We're all born pure atheists, then absurd cultural influences corrupt most.
As for deism:
quote:
Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme natural God exists and created the physical universe, and that religious truths can be arrived at by the application of reason and observation of the natural world. Deists generally reject the notion of supernatural revelation as a basis of truth or religious dogma. These views contrast with the dependence on divine revelation found in many Christian, Islamic and Judaic teachings.
Deism - Wikipedia
Intelligent Design! God is evident when we look at nature, the bacterial flagellum for example!
Deism, as described in that article, is certainly monotheism, and certainly not atheism. However:
quote:
Other, more radical deists rejected Christianity altogether and expressed hostility toward Christianity, which they regarded as pure superstition. In return, Christian writers often charged radical deists with atheism.
Christians perceiving deists as atheists is nothing new. It's not just on EvC that this happens!

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 Message 58 by RAZD, posted 02-11-2009 9:29 PM RAZD has replied

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 Message 68 by RAZD, posted 02-12-2009 6:44 PM bluegenes has replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 72 of 375 (498705)
02-12-2009 10:19 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by RAZD
02-12-2009 6:44 PM


Re: To summarize then
RAZD writes:
Deism is also a broad church, it is individualistic, there is no "church" or standard belief. One wonders how anyone could conclude that there is a single god if you believe that understanding god is outside human capability and there is no communication.
I'm perfectly happy with the flexibility. The more the better, but it was that Wiki article that consistently used "God" in the singular, and although it does describe different kinds of deism, the belief in a god (singular) seems to be a consistent element. Wiki articles, I recognise, are not necessarily anything to go by!
RAZD writes:
The topic is what the difference is between deist and atheist, and from reading the posts from atheists here it appears that a consistent element is to deny that any evidence of spirituality is anything other than hallucination and an effect of the way the human brain works. The claim is that this is a rational conclusion.
That may be true of most atheists here, but remember the Jains, Buddhists, Animists and babies. Some of the confusion here is because we're pointing out to you that atheists are not a group with a common philosophy, as wiki puts it. Then, each one of us will give personal opinions which are not meant to represent other atheists.
RAZD writes:
bluegenes writes:
Atheists do not necessarily believe any of what you've said above.
When you claim that it is a rational conclusion, then that is what you do believe. To me it is one salted with confirmation bias (the only evidence is negative) and cognitive dissonance (all evidence that appears positive is hallucination or a product of brain function, NOT of spirituality).
The comment of mine you quoted above was in response to your attempted definition of atheists, and it relates to my point above.
Now, to make it clear, I'll give you a bluegenes opinion on what you call "evidence of spirituality" while emphasising that I speak for no other atheists.
Firstly, from decades of observation of people who talk about having spiritual experiences, I see no evidence that they are tapping into any kind of extra-universal information, but rather, that the experiences, although certainly genuinely felt, are personal, emotional, and highly subjective. When such a person starts talking about confirmation bias on the part of others who don't take the "spiritual experiences" seriously, that person is on very shaky ground, and needs to examine whether the phrase might be used the other way around. If you seriously think that there is not a strong element of desire involved in religious beliefs, then you haven't noticed much about the creationists that you deal with regularly on this site.
But the important thing about these spiritual experiences is that they vary enormously by individuals, and the conclusions drawn from them by one can be the opposite of the conclusions drawn by another. That doesn't fit the hypothesis that there is anything genuine or objective about them. A bluegenes type comment is that there maybe as many gods as there are theists, because I think that there's strong evidence of different people in the same sect of the same religion actually believing in very different gods. They seem like subjective constructions.
It's not something that I've only thought about for a few years, but for a long time. I don't think that there's evidence that we can have short cuts to "truths" through these things called spiritual experiences, and that we should be wary of them. Remember, bluegenes' opinion, not that of all atheists.
I consider it rational to say that the evidence is not conclusive either way, and that an open mind cannot dismiss it out of hand. I also consider that my belief is not rational, but it is also not contradicted by evidence - it is faith, after all.
I agree that it's faith, and I also agree that it should not be dismissed out of hand, but I am claiming decades of observation and thinking about it, which, even if I'm completely wrong, is not "out of hand". I'll also mention a popular misconception about atheism. Not believing in any deities is not the same thing as believing that deities are an impossibility, or that "intent" behind the universe is impossible. I personally don't think that at all.
The defining difference as I see it, is that the deist believes in (some undefined) god/s, while atheists don't.
Quite right. And I'll mention again the reason why this topic's probably here, and that's because most atheists and deists have no philosophical reason to disagree on science, so that creationists often unwittingly compliment deists by calling them atheists.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 93 of 375 (498849)
02-14-2009 9:28 AM
Reply to: Message 84 by RAZD
02-13-2009 7:05 PM


Re: To summarize then ... or not ... or then again ...
RAZD writes:
Deists see {B} as much larger than {A} and full of possibilities, while atheists seem to see {B} as narrowly different from {A} and with any significant difference being "deeply and highly improbable" - to use your phrase.
You couldn't be more wrong. In relation to the questions of the formation/creation of the universe, it is you, as a creationist deist, who has an active belief that limits you to being in a universe created by deities. Even a strong atheist who claims deities to be impossible is only limiting himself by excluding deities from the effectively infinite number of possibilities we could speculate on in such an unknown area. Other non-theists, including weak atheists, are open to all possibilities.
So, deism is an invisible point in the blue circle of your diagram. It is thinking with the confirmation bias of one who comes from a theistic culture to suppose otherwise. The probability of any proposition in relation to the ultimate origins of the universe being correct is always extremely remote, so there's no point in believing anything in that area.
And I am still amazed at the virtual absence of acknowledged agnostics. Anyone want to propose a reason for this?
Enjoy.
It does seem surprising. However, it maybe that an increasing number of agnostics in an environment like EvC are realising that they are atheists. It doesn't take a genius to realise that, if you take the agnostic point that we cannot know if there are gods or not, then we also cannot rationally believe in any gods, belief in evidenceless propositions being active and requiring Faith. Agnostics lack faith in gods, just as I do, and they're included in the broad definition of atheism.
I'm sure that many of us on this thread can and probably have described ourselves as either or both at some time. We are the Faithless and you are the Faith-full. Religious faith automatically leads to confirmation bias in discussions like these, and when theists try to justify their faith, reason gets up and leaves the room pretty quickly.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by RAZD, posted 02-13-2009 7:05 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 94 by RAZD, posted 02-14-2009 10:25 AM bluegenes has replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 95 of 375 (498854)
02-14-2009 12:27 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by RAZD
02-14-2009 10:25 AM


Re: To summarize then ... or not ... or then again ...
RAZD writes:
Not really. The deist belief in god/s explains why, not how. Science only explains how, ergo no conflict at all.
Really? So you mean that the deities don't do a "how"? They don't create the universe. They play no physical role that could have been played by things other than deities? And, even more interesting, a faith in unknowable gods about whom you know nothing can tell you the "whys' of the universe? Wow!
But let's concentrate on the "why". If you don't know why the universe "is", or whether there is a "why", why believe anything on the subject other than that? Isn't honesty preferable to this strange thing called "Faith"?
RAZD writes:
You are trying to criticize philosophy and faith with science, and it just doesn't have the tools to answer the questions of philosophy and faith.
I'm not aware that I'm using scientific arguments against your deities. It's difficult when neither of us seem to actually know what they are. Have you picked up the idea that faith can answer questions? Or rather, that it could answer them truthfully? Thinking of most of your fellow faithful here on EvC, for example, wouldn't you say that the word seems to have a stronger association with delusion than truth? Without the existence of this thing called faith, you'd never have a single argument about the age of the earth, would you?
Philosophy still uses logic, however assumptions are required that are inherently untestable (or it would be science), and faith takes a step away from logic. Outside of faith lies concepts that no one has even begun to conceive, and the delusions of the insane?
Outside? I'd suggest that there's an overlap.
To refute this position, one would need to demonstrate actual flexibility in considering possible pieces of evidence than has been shown. Instead every suggestion of possibility has resulted in ad lapidem fallacy, arguments from incredulity, and straw man falsehoods all the while claiming it is a more rational argument. Strangely, I don't find that behavior supportive of your position on atheism.
I think what your doing is trying to manage to have a faith in deism, while implying that you're flexible. In my flexible opinion, you don't actually know (and cannot know) anything about the "whys" of the universe. Therefore, deciding to have a faith that you do (if that's the case) is a symptom of rigidity, not flexibility. I haven't actually seen any convincing positive "possible pieces of evidence" for deities presented. You've speculated about people feeling that they've had spiritual experiences possibly meaning something, then you accuse people of fallacies when they reject such speculations. Let's deal with that one, flexibly.
Here on EvC we have plenty of members who claim spiritual experiences which have led them to be "born again" and filled with the holy spirit, etc. The end result is often that this holy spirit enables them to know more about cosmology than the cosmologists, more about biology than the biologists, and more about geology than the geologists, etc. You spend a lot of time and effort trying to break through these supposedly inspired "spiritual" delusions, but to little effect. So, although that in no way proves that there are no such thing as true spiritual experiences, it does offer very strong evidence that the world is full of people who have false ones.
Hence, your only real effort to present what you call "possible evidence" cannot be said to be being met with inflexibility, rather, as we can both see that same evidence on EvC, your suggestion that the confirmation bias in relation to "spiritual experiences" is on the side of the atheists seems to rather backfire.
Anyway, I'm sure we'll never agree on all this. In relation to the topic, we could claim that we're inadvertently doing a good job of refuting Moose's suggestion that deists = atheists.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by RAZD, posted 02-14-2009 10:25 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 97 by RAZD, posted 02-14-2009 1:17 PM bluegenes has not replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 127 of 375 (499289)
02-18-2009 5:53 AM
Reply to: Message 126 by RAZD
02-17-2009 11:37 PM


Re: Moving The Debate Forward?
RAZD writes:
Straggler writes:
But, as I have stated, I do conclude that the probability of any individual god actually existing is so negligible as to be all but non-existent in practical terms.
How is this different from the absence of evidence being evidence for absence?
In a way, different, although the view is partially based on absence of evidence, it also involves probability. But perhaps Straggler could have said something like "any particular described god" to make his meaning clearer to you. This means that a specific "god proposition" like "the universe was created by a racist god who particularly favours one middle-eastern tribe and who selects prophets exclusively from that tribe" is extremely unlikely on a probability assessment, because the absence of evidence makes all competing defined god propositions equally likely, even if there is a god.
So, going by some of the things you've been saying in this thread, it's something you should agree with. That's because even if deities or a deity exist, as soon as you start defining one as anything other than unknowable, they start to have Russell's teapot level of likelihood because of all the other (essentially infinite) possibilities. It is common for deists to be just as dismissive of the gods of "revealed" religions as atheists tend to be.
Getting back to the topic of differences between deism and atheism. Deism is an Intelligent Design movement. It may be, RAZD, that you are not very representative of deism in much of what you are saying here. Many deists would claim that their belief in God (it seems to be invariably singular) is based on evidence, rather than faith.
It is I.D.
The designs and laws of nature are the evidence for god. Not religious experiences, or prophets.
I think that all of us participating in this discussion should trawl around this site.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 138 of 375 (499456)
02-18-2009 5:42 PM
Reply to: Message 135 by New Cat's Eye
02-18-2009 4:36 PM


Re: Back to Basics: is the distinction correct or not? That is the question.
Catholic Scientists writes:
You do not. A random made-up entity doesn't have the same weight behind it as the idea of a god put forth by deists.
The deists' god is not the same as the Christian god, so either one of them or both must be "random made up entities".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 135 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-18-2009 4:36 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 145 by Phat, posted 02-19-2009 7:01 AM bluegenes has replied
 Message 157 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-19-2009 12:52 PM bluegenes has replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 149 of 375 (499560)
02-19-2009 7:50 AM
Reply to: Message 140 by RAZD
02-18-2009 11:32 PM


Re: magnum opus response
RAZD writes:
To be able to calculate probabilities you have to know the possibilities, or you are just using assumptions that fit your world view and pretending they are valid. Curiously this is what I am accused of doing, and that it is invalid when I do it.
I gave you an example which you don't believe in, but others do. You've made a rough assessment in your mind of the likelihood of the universe being created by a racist god who particularly favours one middle-eastern tribe. It's an evidenceless supernatural proposition, so there's no reason to believe in it, and you don't.
If we sit down and describe over a million different possible gods, all of them zero evidence propositions, then we can safely say that the probability of any one of them taken at random existing is less than one in a million. It's easy.
RAZD writes:
So let's assume that god/s are undefinable. That's not a stretch from the position that they are unknowable, is it? Consider the problem of the blind men defining an elephant, with each one touching a different part. They disagree and none of them would define the elephant reality.
Blind men using their senses on something that definitely exists is in no way analogous to people believing in different evidenceless supernatural propositions. Do you accept that there's strong evidence of humans making up supernatural entities, or not? If you do, then what makes you think that the deity of deists is different from all the others; the one supernatural being that isn't a human invention?
You seem to be implying that you believe in something that is unknowable and undefinable. Frankly, why bother? I'm sure that there are plenty of things that are, at least at present, unknowable and undefinable, but calling them gods is just playing a "deities of the gaps" game. Unknowable and undefinable means you have no reason to believe if your gods are important. Even if they exist, they could be trivial. Deities who sit in eternity knitting, for example, and never bother with the messy business of creating universes.
RAZD writes:
It is older than what is currently called ID, and what is currently called ID is not deism per se but a hack straw man version made by christians trying to outsmart the legal system into supporting christianity. If you want to see what I think of ID see Is ID properly pursued?
I agree that the D. I. version of I.D. is Christian motivated. However, in the link I provided, your fellow deists were claiming that DNA is evidence of their god, so that appears to be an overlap.
...There's only one of me.
I'm aware of that, which was why I dropped out for a while. Good luck, but it won't be easy arguing for your deities when you certainly don't know that they're there or what they are. It's a bit like a blind man trying to feel an ethereal elephant.
Edited by bluegenes, : missing quote inserted

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 151 of 375 (499563)
02-19-2009 7:58 AM
Reply to: Message 145 by Phat
02-19-2009 7:01 AM


Re: Back to Basics: is the distinction correct or not? That is the question.
Phat writes:
bluegenes writes:
The deists' god is not the same as the Christian god, so either one of them or both must be "random made up entities".
don't follow. Why must?
Because they're mutually exclusive.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 145 by Phat, posted 02-19-2009 7:01 AM Phat has not replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 173 of 375 (499819)
02-20-2009 7:52 PM
Reply to: Message 157 by New Cat's Eye
02-19-2009 12:52 PM


Re: Back to Basics: is the distinction correct or not? That is the question.
Catholic Scientist writes:
bluegenes writes:
The deists' god is not the same as the Christian god, so either one of them or both must be "random made up entities".
Nope. They're only mutally exclusive in their enitrety. Both positions could be partially correct.
Not really. A god who comes to earth to save us from our sins and a god who does not do that are different gods, and what they have in common, like being the one true creator of the universe, is what makes them mutually exclusive. More specifically, as we're talking about deism, the deists' god is described as not giving revelations to prophets, and yours does, so these are different characters.
As soon as theists start describing their gods, we can see that there are many different ones, and I don't think it's correct to avoid that point by pretending that these are merely different theological interpretations of something that actually exists, even when the gods in question share historical ancestry.
In the same way, your god is different from the god of protestant young earthers in several important ways, so either one or both must be made up entities because they are both the "one true God".
In that case, if only one is a false god, it's obvious which one as there's actual evidence against one of them, because the created universe described is clearly non-existent.
Deism is actually (usually) a more specific belief system than RAZD and Percy seem to suggest.
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.deism.com/
These guys sound like some atheists when they're attacking your scriptures!

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 Message 157 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-19-2009 12:52 PM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 195 of 375 (500538)
02-27-2009 6:02 AM
Reply to: Message 193 by RAZD
02-26-2009 9:43 PM


Re: Why the reluctance to accept the objective reality of world views?
RAZD writes:
Why the reluctance to accept the objective reality of world views?
Indeed why? Of course different world views exist.
It's the way in which you're using that fact in argument which is invalid.
Look at the popularity of the "world view" argument here
3160 uses of the phrase "world view" on one website. Are all world views equally valid when there's only one world?
The AiG people believe in a deity who does miracles. They argue that science classes exlude this possibility because of an arbitrary "secular world view". A deity who can do miracles can magic the world into having a world wide flood, then magic it into its present appearance. It can also magic changes in the laws of physics. So, when their attempt at "creationist science" fails, they can always resort to omphalism, using the world view argument in the way that you do.
In this view, because ~47% of Americans have a YEC world view, such a view should take up ~47% of the teaching time in relation to historical science in your country.
So, in your opinion, are all world views equally valid when it comes to a discussion on supernatural propositions? The existence of miracles and the existence of deities are things that cannot be conclusively disproved. But is it reasonable to include them in one's world view without positive evidence for them? And does the fact that belief in miracles of some kind is (and has been throughout known human history) a majority belief constitute positive evidence for it?
I put forward the suggestion that one of the practical differences between deists and atheists is that it's harder for deists to argue against the people we call creationists due to built in contradictions related to their deist "world view".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 193 by RAZD, posted 02-26-2009 9:43 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 197 by RAZD, posted 02-27-2009 7:57 AM bluegenes has replied

  
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