Why is Deism Superior to Christianity?
Some Questions Require an Open Mind if an Answer is to be Given.
Let me say right up front this question actually pissed me off. It wasn’t from a person interested in Deism it was from a Christian who was angry that I had the damn nerve to be a Deist in the first place and choose it over Christianity. Frankly it wasn’t really a question it was more a demand…
Why is Deism Superior to Christianity!
As though I owed it to him to justify my choice, so much for free will! The truth is I believe Deism speaks for itself and it is a choice, I have no desire to convert anyone from anything to Deism. If any group is out there I most want to reach it is the atheist who I feel is missing out on so much and I know most have become atheists due to people like the guy that asked me this question. They feel religion is so unbelievable that atheism is the only answer. Most do not even know that there is such a thing as Deism or what it is. Those people I hope do at least learn there is a middle ground but I also respect their choice.
Christians though I have no desire to convert because it is generally difficult to even discuss faith with them. They tend to want to quote bible verses and don’t get something that is so important for them to understand in talking with a non believer in their faith. If you are a Christian please pay attention to this, I am not being offensive I am just trying to help you understand a fact
“When you quote the bible to people that don’t believe in the bible you are no more likely to convince them of something then if you quoted something from a Harry Potter book”
Again I mean no disrespect we just do not believe what you do, your book has no power over us and using it is pointless with us. You can chant John 3:16 for a hundred years and it won’t “save us”. I don’t object to debate with an open minded Christian but man is it more productive for both of us if they understand the above, sadly most don’t and next thing you hear is “But in Romans 1 we are told” and they just don’t get that we don’t care what it says, you might as well say to us, “but Dumbledore said to Harry” because it will mean about as much to us. We may see wisdom in some of it but we also find wisdom at times in things like a comic strip or a TV commercial too.
The person who asked me this question and demanded an answer was coming from this twisted view point. It would not matter what I said he would have never been happy so I simply didn’t respond. I have no desire to convert this man to Deism at all. He was looking for a fight and I simply didn’t give him one.
My view is Christianity is full of reasons in its own book to doubt it as the “divinely inspired word of God” hell the comparisons between Jesus and the Egyptian God Horus should give anyone pause, you can see them here. God testing a man by asking him to kill his own son? Stoning people to death for sin? The only man worth saving in a city was willing to give his daughters to a crowd and allow them to be raped? I am such an evil, vile piece of crap that Jesus took my place on the cross because that is what I deserve? God who is all powerful and wise killed everyone in his own creation because he was angry? God who is perfect is jealous? It goes on and on. Most Christians that want to debate non Christians are well versed in this stuff and convince themselves they are right, they call it faith.
I don’t bring up these issues to convince anyone who believes in the Bible in spite of them of anything. There is no point to that, I only point out that they exist and any Christian with a conscious will eventually find them in their own hearts. Some are so addicted to their faith they will accept nonsensical answers as fact and move on, others will begin to truly examine them though and it is indeed why many choose to leave what ever form or a Church they are part of. It is for such people only that I will answer this question.
Further I must add, I am not answering it in the way I would answer why is one football team better then another. I can analyze players for that, build a case, use their past records and make an impartial judgement based on known facts. In religion much isn’t known, it is about belief even for a Deist, much of what I consider to be true is based on what I believe based on logic and reason. For that reason I can’t say that Deism is superior to any faith for anyone but myself. These are my personal top ten reasons I feel Deism offers me more then Christianity ever could, if you don’t agree that is your choice and I honor your right to it.
1. Deism isn’t guilty of the false promise of free will. Christianity says you have free will then instantly says you have rules to follow. Not rules that you are guided by based on your own logic and reason but rules written for you in a book based on oral tradition. I truly have free will as a deist and that I consider a gift of my creation.
2. The God of Deism has never killed a child, hardened a heart, wiped out all life on a planet or sentenced anyone to an eternity of suffering for not doing what he wanted them to. In short as a Deist I at no time have to make an excuse for a judgmental, jealous, malicious and murderous God.
3. The God of Deism doesn’t consider any group of people based on race, creed, sexual orientation, etc. superior to another. In other words my god isn’t a bigot.
4. My God doesn’t require worship, why would anyone want such a thing, specifically a perfect being?
5. My God doesn’t judge me he/she/it trusts that I am capable of doing that myself.
6. The God of Deism has never resulted in a crusade, a witch burning, a holy war or death of anyone simply because they had a different belief.
7. The God of Deism doesn’t let me blame my failings on a mythical Satan which he himself created.
8. The God of Deism has never gambled on the fate of a human being with an adversary such as he did with Job. The Deist god doesn’t gamble with human suffering for his own agenda.
9. The God of Deism allows for a duality of the creator meaning possessing both masculine and feminine attributes. There is no way a male entity could be all knowing this entity would have to have feminine attributes as well to understand its own creation. In other words my God isn’t a male chauvinist.
10. Most importantly Deism doesn’t claim to have all the answers, there is no guarantee of what happens when we die, how humanity will or will not fail to adapt to the future. The end isn’t written, as a Deist I know I am literally a co-creator with God, that my actions as small as they seem are actually creating a future that is of yet unwritten. I know that I am responsible for more then just myself but yet I am free to choose how I help, who I help and why I do so it up to me. There is no get out of jail free card and no opportunity to say anything doesn’t matter because in the end we expect God to show up and establish a perfect kingdom anyway.
Again this is what I believe, personally. I am sure someone like the guy that asked the original question will show up here at some point and be offended by this and try to save me or others from my line of thinking. Just know you are free to believe what you want to, I wrote this not to change your mind but for the person who has already decided that they no longer will follow dogma and myth and is now exploring for answers outside of revealed religions.
Hi One problem I see here , If as we say there is one God ?
I do the writing the God “of the deist “is making another God,
What do you think ?
What you are talking about is co-creation, that is the concept that we are literally shaping the creation and changing it with thoughts, deeds and actions as co creationists with God. That doesn’t remove the singularity concept which is heavily supported by theoretical physics. It is like your toe is you but it isn’t you at the same time. You can stub it and it hurts, you can tickle it and laugh, you can use it to pick something up without bending over but if you lot it you would still be you and the toe would rot away in a heap somewhere. Your toe is only alive as long as it is attached to you.
That is sort of how I see all consciousness existing with the creator but it is really hard to explain. Imagine it this way, say you had remote cameras all over and could see them all at one time, processes them all in real time, future time and past time simultaneous, then imagine they were wired to your brain directly. Now imagine the cameras are actually the eyes of other people and you don’t just see what they see, you hear what they say, feel what they feel, taste what they taste.
In this thought experiment you are not judging them, they are actually part of you. You learn and know everything everyone of them knows, feel all they feel, and beyond that understand it at a level they cannot.
So when we act as the creations we are, we in some ways are co-creating, definitely perhaps even shaping God itself? To me god is the assembly point of all knowledge, and all knowledge is not yet known. We are the way by which knowledge expands, as are all living conscious beings. Thanks been brain locked on this stuff lately this will become a new article!
Think what you choose.
Many who now or believe what we call God is between you and God…….One Deist
Modern Deist,
My apologies for interrupting your discussion. I find this website to be quite interesting and wish to participate. According to the FAQ’s, I should be able to register and then join the forums. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the link or box for requesting registration. Could you point me in the right direction please.
Thanks,
AJ
You are not interrupting at all. Please come back near the end of July and I will have the forums installed, this site is a work in progress and I am tied up until about the 20th but do want to get the forums up this month and will do so.
Hello, I recently came across your website from the DeismUK website after looking up “monodeism” – a term someone from another forum mentioned.
I am excited to hear of your upcoming forums. Please let me know when you have it up and running as I would love to have the opportunity to become a patron 🙂
ModernDeist,
I will be checking the website frequently but if you could send me an email when the forums are ready, I would be most grateful.
Thanks,
AJ
The Forum is now live, https://moderndeist.org/forums/
Hi,
I’m a deist (formerly christian) and have a question. Where the hell is evil coming from? If we are a part of God, how can one (eg. Hitler) did evil things? Is it free will?
Wouldn’t he get punished for burning millions of innocent men, women, and children alive?
I drop my tears when I imagine myself in that situation. Seeing my children cries and burned alive. I cannot accept he get away with this.
If there is no punishment then there is no standard to do right or wrong. Everyone could do whatever he/she wants. This world could be very dangerous place to live.
How can you explain this?
Where does evil come from, the duality of all things. There is no dark without light, there is not black with out white, there is no cold without hot and there can be no good if we do not have what many call evil.
People coming off the revealed religions struggle with this indeed, because humans have a capacity for the concept of justice. He who harms another should not be free to do so again, etc.
Now justice for Hitler? Okay his empire crumbled around him, his belief that he was superior and could not be stopped destroyed and in a cold dark bunker he blew his own brains out. Is that enough? I don’t know I feel scum that kill themselves take the easy way out but dead doesn’t come in degrees.
Next though, if you believe in an afterlife and I DO think about what happens next.
Hitler blows his brains out, then he gets access to full knowledge, the full knowledge of all the suffering he caused. He gets to feel the pain and suffering on all sides, not just the jews and gypsies he killed. The Germans who were bombed by allied bombers included.
People who divest themselves of revealed religion but do serious work into near death experiences have almost universally reported when the experience lasts long enough, this type of thing occurs.
A book I really recommend is Saved by the Light by Danion Brinkley. You can get it on Amazon or you can actually find it for free in audio here, http://archive.org/details/Saved_by_the_Light
Thanks though this is a great question and likely will be the subject of my next article.
You seem to have mentioned MD that as a Christian there is the belief that nothing in this world is good, so to that mind it must be evil or bad if nothings good, right ?
Paveway,
You are a former Christian, so was I ,and I now understand evil came into my life as a Christian mindset,
“Evil is innate to us all” (as delineated by Christian doctrine,anyway)
When I came to the Deist mindset the thought that came to me is Christianity is evil”, what is true that is what an Atheist believes.
Hi Cindy,
You cannot say Christianity or any other religion is evil. Yes, there are parts of evil but there are also some parts good. They are just combination of books written by people who had different mindset and agenda. Evil people wrote evil things, good people wrote good things. However, It is just my opinion.
MD,
I take agnostic position when it comes to an afterlife. My mind cannot grasp how ordinary atomic and subatomic particles build very complex structures of the body. We have electron, proton, neutron, or quark, even string same as this LCD monitor with different number and energy. But, to my surprise, we are alive!
When a person dead, the brain is also dead. I cannot imagine how a spirit can see, hear, think or have memories/personality without eyes, ears and brain.
I do really hope there is an afterlife but it is hard to believe. A person didn’t have consciousness before he/she was born and I think it will be the same when he/she died.
To my speculation, we would be in the state of sleeping or might be dreaming. Heaven and hell might just be a nice dream or nightmare. Of course, good people would have nice dreams while evil people would have nightmares as consequences from their life experience. Once again, it is just my opinion. I don’t know what happen next to death.
This might help. new article.
https://alienstar.net/quantum-physicists-found-evidence-that-humans-have-an-immortal-soul/
Do you use a real name ?
I understand MD it is not Evil, people choose evil according to their own mind.
I think
Many people die in ignorance.
We might die from this living to attain a new conciseness, but, as yo know, we do not …… : )
Hi Cindy,
It’s not my real name. English is not my native language. You could find me on FB. Echo Bravo Uniform Delta is my real name 🙂
The phenomena of ghost might be the best evidence of an afterlife but I have never seen a ghost…
As evidence of ghosts and frightening spirits i have seen and was haunted by 1 spirit she. I was a teenager who came in if I remember right 3 or 4 different forms all frightening. Which led me to study different religions and let me to a state of near deism,
Forgive the strange word placements I forgot some commas lol
Do you drink Scotch? I’d like to buy you a double Macallan 18 y.o. sherry oak aged, neat, for this blog. Or just a brewskie, if that’s all you’d want.
Hello. I read some of your posts and do appreciate your work. I think I may be a deist but I’m not sure. Are you familiar with the term “theistic rationalism” (there’s a wikipedia page for it)?? That’s probably the closet to my beliefs so far though I’m very intrigued with some aspects of Theosophy too (but I only scratched the surface and haven’t studied it in depth).
I’m from Japan and was raised as an agnostic by my agnostic parents as most Japanese are apathetic to religions (most of them only follow Shinto and Buddhist rituals as some cultural thing). But recently I came to the realization that God indeed exists.
I’ve never been a Christian in a traditional way, I mean, in the way mainline churches teach, but I’ve come to adore Jesus as a moral teacher after reading the new testament (well, I only read four Gospels and Acts so far though). I have a very hard time accepting the old testament as the laws given by God. Many of what I see in there is certainly not what I perceive as the true message from God.
My question to you is, how do you as a deist interpret who Jesus was? Some theistic rationalists (aka Christian deists) seem to think Jesus was a deist, that’s why Jesus went against Judaism that misinterpreted God’s laws, kind of like deists today going against some of irrational/illogical Christian dogmas. So, I’m curious to know what your opinion of Jesus is…
I thought KNEW him personally ,as a so-called Christian of 25 ++years, but, as Jesus said if you have seen (his) Father you seen me.
God and I are ONE
ONE DEIST
A lot of Christians confuse Jesus with god Jesus is not god in the christian religion, into your hands, I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). My God, my My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Well I disagree. While I personally do not believe the bible, the bible (canonized new testament anyway) clearly makes a case for the deity of Christ in his words and in the words of his followers both.
The message is Jesus was both man and God. He had to be fully human and there by be separated from God but to be the messiah he also had to be fully God.
This is actually a Gnostic message but it isn’t about Jesus in that perspective, in the Gnostic perspective, that is all of us. We are all “children of God”.
That actually makes sense to me as I see us all as products of the creation and therefor we are all part of “God”. In the words of Richard Bach, “the Is”.
Hey!
I see what you’re saying, but I do have a question: you said at the bottom of your post that the “future as of yet is unwritten”, but then proceed to say that you “expect God to show up and establish a perfect kingdom.” That seems to contradict. How can you expect anything from God when the future is unwritten?
Just wondering.
How can you expect anything from God when the future is unwritten?
AMEN !!
I’ve had a long slog from catholicism to fundamentalism to universalism to deism. What pushed me to deism was the complete unreliability of the bible as the inspired word of God. Deism is the perfect compromise between fundamentalism and atheism: I believe in a God without question, otherwise how do we explain the creation of so complex an organism as the human body? But with deism I don’t have to wonder anymore why prayers aren’t answered; why miracles don’t happen; why God seems to not interact with the world; why naturalism rules; why things seem random (this Christian dies horribly while this Christian thrives). I do believe in an afterlife; I cannot fathom God creating us just for us to die and then disappear. I believe that we judge ourselves after death via a life review and learn how we hurt others, which helps us along the path to Godliness.
Hey Jack, nice comment, I think we agree on a lot from what you just said.
I just can’t agree with your statement about free will. Just because the Christian God punishes people for not obeying his laws doens’t mean that this negates free will. People having the free will to choose to obey or disobey does not mean there cannot be bad consequences for disobeying. In nature itself we are taught that depending on what choices we make, they can have lasting consequences, whether for good or for bad. In government we are also not restricted from making free choices but the outcome of whether or not we are punished or praise by society depend on which choice we make. The judicial system discourages wrong choices and stop them from being able to be made in a cause and effect way. But our moral free will to choose to do or not do as moral free agents (which is the type of free will Christianity teaches) remains intact. Even physically disabled people are limited in their free will to do certain things based on cause and effect, but never by the will inside.
do deists pray?
https://moderndeist.org/is-there-any-value-in-prayer-for-a-deist
How as a deism do you believe you were created?
Evolution with some sort of intelligence behind it. That is how I answer as to the how did humans get here. As to how I got here individually. I think I chose to be here now as did everyone. But that is a personal vs. larger fact based belief.
Well I believe the creator, the consciousness that is God created the universe and I am a product of that universe. The most accurate words available are I believe that evolution is a product of intelligent design.
Although Jack had commented 2 years ago I really enjoyed his comment because I can tell that I’m much like him. I enjoy your belief as well MD. I would very much like to spill my guts to everyone but if I do I feel like I will be judged thoroughly, on the other hand if I don’t I will be enabling my bad habit.