r/deism

Why do people believe in religion ? Is it because people spoke personally to God ? They got him on email and video chat ? Or because they did a rigorous forensic and philosophical investigation with a bayesian probability analysis deducing religion x is 93.1112% most likely to be true ? Of course not. The simple reason is geography and culture or the power of beliefism ie a belief in belief. But the reasons can be more psychological ly complex...

With many people you could provide every problem in the book and it would get swept under the carpet. Like a flat earther some people will never believe evidence no matter how strong it is (atheist or theist regardlees) So why do people do this ?

1 Search for Meaning

Religion offers a packaged deal of beliefs and provides a story of our lives that make it easy to relate and feel better when our lives are bad. We know that there is an epic drama of creation myths, miracles, apocalyptic high stakes etc happening in the world which ends with us reaching perfect bliss in heaven. And I remember this when i believed. I enjoyed doing tafsir and trying to decipher Gods message feeling this spiritual connection. Its very hard to leave this behind even when we encounter problems in the beliefs. Religion offers us this fuzzy feeling of awe that our problems matter, that there is a higher purpose to pain and that we are part of a grand story in life that has a glorious destiny in the afterlife. Without this meaning people succumb to nihilism and depression.

2 Premeditated Ignorance

This is a concept where we purposely gaslight ourselves into believing something because the alternative is very scary. And so people dont want to know the truth. They dont want to know whether religion is true or false, whether Allah is real etc. Its a comfort blanket of not knowing. This is just human psychology at play. We try to belong with society even when we don't fit in. We gaslight ourselves to like something even when we don't because society says it's good. It's like a subconscious shield that makes us shut down things that go against the comfort zone of belief we were conditioned with. We may not even be trying to lie or deceive yet we still avoid truth seeking because it leads to pain.

3 Cultural Identity

Religion often forms part of people's cultural identity. For example an American white atheist who starts believing in God is most likely to choose christianity. And likewise most muslims are born into brown cultures, Arab-indo-pak cultures where choosing another faith is the same as hating your own race/culture. And so muslims see peoples disbelief as hating brown people, copying white people, wanting to be a westerner, a secular puppet etc. Religion here is not a set of truth claims but a culture and way of life to live. Cultural conditioning primes our minds to feel that we are being prejudice to our own ethnic group/culture by disagreeing with the religous tenets. If we lose our religion we become lost with no identity. This is particularly a problem with muslims who are constantly in a battle with the western inferiority complex mindset.

4 Peer Pressure & Social Conditioning

We are trained since birth to subconsciously associate everything with the religious flavour we are taught. We must call god Allah/Jesus and it sticks to peoples brains that even atheists cant have a neutral attitude to the word. In many cases we find that people dont really believe but they simply have a belief in belief. They believe because that's what everybody around them believes and its socially acceptable. Its simply going with the flow as an NPC in a game would do. We dont want to be outcast. We want to belong and be normal. So we discard any doubts or we dont get doubts at all. The illusory truth effect primes us to believe even when we do have doubts because its continuously told to us from childhood that x is the case.

5 Aesthetic Appeal & Awe

A very common factor is the appeal of the aesthetics behind a religion. The majestic feeling in a cathedral or the beauty of arabesque and geometric architecture, the sound and calligraphy of Arabic, the incense, sacred perfumes, iconography or other symbols in the mythical stories or cultural practises. These make us feel awe, wonder and fill that spiritual void we feel. The desire to connect with something higher and grander. We all feel it in some way. Zooming out simply makes us able to see that what we feel awe at isnt the belief but the emotional appeal of the aesthetics.

6 Emotional Investment

Then theres the emotional investment where one has put in alot of time and energy into a faith, has alot of good memories or emotional connections to faith be it through childhood, family, community, learning and practicing. Particularly for the older generations to suddenly have to leave or be told it's not what you thought it was would be like calling them insane. They would not have the tools to handle such ontological shock and would have to be in denial of something they took seriously for so long. At such a stage people have put too much effort into faith and its impossible for them to leave.

apparently some Deists believes in a soul, but they are temporary along with the host body, and are ultimately destroyed after bodily death. so despite believing a higher power, they believe in eternal cessation of consciousness. so what's the point of believing a creator god in this model? because combining these 2 beliefs defeat the whole purpose, they might as well be atheist.

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argues that naturalism cannot explain how we know subjective experience exists.

Since a deist already acknowledges some kind of source/creator/necessary deity, does that make the Wager more reasonable? Or does deism not really make any difference to the meaning of the Wager, since it doesn’t accept any revelation or particular concept of deity?

Thanks for any comments.

I believe there is one God who is all-knowing and all-powerful. Beyond those attributes I do not know,including God’s relationship to the universe. If they are outside or inside of it and such.I believe God is best investigated through human reason and observation of the natural world rather than through special supernatural revelation. I do not believe prophets receive privileged divine revelation or that revealed scriptures are from the divine . I reject miracles, or at least consider them extremely unlikely, I reject all these things for practical reasons.

I do not believe God intervenes by violating natural laws. I am open to the possibility that God could act in the world through natural means. If God does communicate or guide humanity, I expect this to be sufficiently clear and accessible to everyone rather than dependent upon a particular prophet or religious tradition.i also do not know if we have souls or other beings like animals have them or if there is a afterlife or not.I do not affirm other supernatural beings existing besides God.

I consider myself a deist but I want to see if my thoughts are properly apart of it according to other deists!

Acabo de entrar en un post a debatir esto y me ha dado la idea de abrir uno para discutirlo.

He notado que el Deismo, al regirse por la razón en busca de decubrir que es Dios o de regirse por la razón individual que determine que es ético/moral, de la búsqueda de la propia verdad, esta muy relacionado y es muy cercano a la masonería. La masonería se rigio siempre por la ciencia, el estudio y uso de la razón, la observación, la inteligencia, el progreso social y la búsqueda de virtud por encima del misticismo y las ideas sobrenaturales religiosas.

Pero la evolución de la masonería, ni ha sido tan bonita ni tan transparente como parecía en un principio.

La masoneria ha sido una forma,no solo de enorme influencia social y político , sino de control y poder sobre la sociedad (es lo que acaba pasando con las influencias). Es decir, de alguna manera imponían su criterio a la sociedad y sus tentáculos acabaron llegando muy lejos.

Es mas, se dice, que la mayor parte de los políticos estan en logias masónicas...y una gran parte del clero también. Las logias acabaron siendo lugares sonde se tapaban los chanchullos entre ellos ( a que me recuerda esto del panorama politico preterito y actual...)

Si tomamos todo ello en consideración, también te hace analizar sobremanera los movimientos e imposiciones sociales sobre el bien y el mal, que al final poco tienen que ver con un Dios creador del universo que ordene nada, sino con un orden establecido por los que rigen el poder, donde ellos defines QUE es o no es ético y moral y COMO alcanzar la virtud, muy lejos de la libertad del ser de alcanzarlo por si mismo, y de nuevo, nada que ver con ninguna entidad creadora.

¿Cómo lo hacen? sembrando su paz, por ejemplo, no LA PAZ, SU PAZ cuando se trata de motivos para empezar una guerra ("mi paz o dejo, la paz os doy" decia la iglesia). O sembrando ideas politicas aparentemente éticas por un bienestar común de cualquier índole (la salud, la sostenibilidad, lo espiritual, la economica,etc) pero cargadas de adoctrinamiento y perdida de libertad y acción individual.

Hablando en plata, pretenden INSTAURAR LA MORAL....DE FORMA INMORAL. Ahí es nada...y esto se esta haciendo clamorosamente palpable en los últimos años.

Por eso siento que hay muchos "dioses intervinientes" humanos, no divinos. Que pretenden que la sociedad se desarrolle según la visión ética de algunos (no de ningún creador, que yo sepa Dios no ha nombrado portavoz alguno).

Y la pregunta es ¿Todo vale? ¿se puede instalar la ética con prácticas poco éticas?¿ O el propio planteamiento de semejante cosa ya es de por si una aberración de la ética?

¿donde estan los límites de lo virtuoso y del cómo se pretende crear ese virtuosismo?¿se puede/debe forzar la moral?

Hasta guardaría un parecido con aquello de sacrificar a Jesus en la cruz para perdonar nuestros pecados (Disculpa? sacrificar un ser humano para perdonar?)

Perdonar el callo, pero me apetecía debatir sobre los limites de la moral.

I would like to share with everyone a new educational website on Deism that contains a lot of useful information for a Deist or anyone considering Deism as their belief system. It could identify some good topics for discussion on this subreddit. The URL is www.deism4me.com

To this day, I still consider myself a deist; I do not believe and have a hard time believing the intervention of God in our daily lives.

I have been a lot more open about attending houses of worship, and I’ve always been curious about various religious denominations and sects in general. For example, I’ve always respected Buddhism and would love to attend the temple at one point.

I have also attended Mass twice so far and am about to go back soon this week.

Despite taking on a logical stance on God, I do sometimes long for that emotional comfort that many feel when in an organized religion.

I have attended Mass for the first time out of curiosity, and for the sake of emotional healing for the second time (I’ve had some recent fall outs with a few peers); I plan on attending Mass again for the second reasoning. I’ve also been praying for the same reason.

Considering I am not Catholic (or Christian in general), I do not believe in all the aspects of the religion, especially the afterlife (I believe in reincarnation, oddly enough). Because of this, I do not think my church attendance will impact me externally in terms of surroundings (I was there just for my emotional wellbeing, after all), nor do I think or know that my prayers will be fulfilled outright by God, himself (I think that prayers can come true, but it comes from a matter of self-motivation and various circumstances, depending on what the prayers were).

That being said, I think there’s beauty behind such liturgy, and there are always numerous reasons why people partake, and it can be for anyone.

Thoughts?

I left Christianity three years ago after I discovered Deism in 2023. However, I did go through a monolith of different beliefs, dis-beliefs, thoughts and feelings after anger, and the death of my Father, which happened in early 2024.

I basically became an agnostic, and then an agnostic-atheist, humanist, for quite awhile. However, I feel my anger had a lot to do with Christian/Theistic concepts of god, muddled with the fact that my Father had passed away under bad circumstances, further igniting my anger and hatred of all concepts of any god beliefs.

Now, I find, all these years later, in the back of my mind, the one concept of god that I've honestly never been able to shake is that of Deism. I would still on paper call myself an Agnostic. However, I look around and I see in the universe what could be "intelligent design." I do, however, do not believe in a god, higher power or being that acts as micromanager of human affairs. There honestly doesn't seem to be any evidence of that.

However, I feel even if there isn't any "hard evidence" one way or another, that just looking around at things, the complexity of the universe and all that, it is totally possible that it could have initially come from one source or have been the design of something initially, and then let it happen of it's own accord. I believe that it is possible that if there is a god, was a god, etc, that they could have jump started the universe, let it run by it's own natural laws, which, in case, if god did exist, would also probably be part of it's intentional design, including evolution.

I am agnostic about most other things however, I don't know what happens when we die. Nearest things suggest IMO that once we die, we're dead. Of course, nobody really knows. I also don't really honestly believe in any supernatural things such as evil spirits, ghosts, demons, the devil, hell, or even heaven. If there is an afterlife, I have to say, it's probably not anything like heaven or anything obviously that we know about.

I feel like acknowledging all this, but also recognizing the limits of human capabilities, i.e., it's not possible to know what such a being would want, or hell, if they even want anything, feels far more intellectually honest IMO than flat out dismissing everything. Being "saved" IMO is more for people who are scared and have to absolutely know what happens when they die, where they will go, and for people who believe in superstition honestly. I have a much more Humanistic view on things and believe our purpose in life, even if god did exist in the capacity like I mentioned earlier, is to live our life.

Just some thoughts. I'm wondering how many people similarly echo this. I guess by this, you could call me an Agnostic Deist, or a Deist-leaning Agnostic, thrown with bits of secular views and humanistic views.

What makes a god a god is divinity. Divinity, by all measures I have been able to see, is the universal right to demand things of the universe, and the universe, sapient, sentient or otherwise, must obey.
That's not a thing.
Nobody and nothing has the RIGHT to demand anything of anyone. They may have the ability to create and destroy, but divinity? Divinity is not real. I am a 10 on the dawkins scale, because no god, not odin, not zeus, not jesus, not marduk, has the right to tell me how to live, believe, and think. ThereAre no gods. There are merely beings with immense power, and some of them, according to humans, are immensely arrogant. That's it. Gods are just narcissists with lots of power over reality. Goes do not exist. Period. That's it. there's just submission, and independence. Sadly, those that submit are submitting to imaginary friends. You know, because they're too stupid to realise that just because someone has power greater than you do, does not mean they have authority over you. Just the ability to threaten / manipulate you. There are no gods. There will never be gods. Because nobody and nothing has the right to do anything to you, or demand things from you. So even if Jesus Christ popped up right now and was like "The bible is totally true" I'd be like "So? I'm as much god as you are. You just happenTo have been given the ability to do magic-type things. You're not better than me. Smote me, go ahead. Prove them all right, that you're as evil as Satan." There's no losing for me anymre. Because divinity exists only as imaginary people exist. Only stupidity breeds divinity.
Uh, Idk what I did or... Or what, but I think I have to repost this? Or something? Reddit is weird, maybe it was a screenreader glitch. Sorry for those that see it pop up again and go "Fuck this idiot again?" Yeah, sorry lol.

First of all, I would call myself a deist. This is why I am posting it here. However, I would like to stress that the type of deism I believe in isn't anything remotely like any other kind of deism you may have witnessed or read about before.

I believe God is the First Mover. The First Mover... And the Last Movers. The First Mover, we would consider, is the chain of reactions that led to the fruition of all that has come before it.

I am not merely a deist. Or a pandeist. I am a panendeist. I believe that at the beginning, all substance was one. Substance created spacetime and entropy in order for existence to exist.

Thus, we separated from God, yet God did not disappear. I believe in black hole cosmology: that universes are born within black holes, through the other end from unstable white holes.

This distinction has led me to believe that the First Mover is actually a self-originating black/white hole that started the first Universe. I say start and not cause because I do not believe this natural phenomenon was in any way intelligent.

To bridge the gap from God to human, we must divinize humans to eventually divinize God. God is already in the process of partially divinizing itself by expanding and, as time flows forward, lasting longer.

But humans have the ability to be omniscient and omnibenevolent. Qualities the First Mover cannot have. Meanwhile, the First Mover is slowly losing omnipotence, and humans are collectively developing it through entropy and syntropy.

What is leading humans towards the ultimate reunification with God are the STEM fields and our ability to become a spacefaring species. We aren't just trying to use nature to our advantage. We are actually inventing language to discover God.

The medium through which this occurs is through media. Like with No Man's Sky, we will observe and interact with many planets and species of animals on those planets. The only difference between energy and information is the discovery of nature to bridge the gaps between what is observed and what isn't.

This observation and evolution of the state to suit the intelligent lifeforms that discovered it is its divinization. A type one Kardashev Scale on Earth would mean that Earth has entered a theistic phase in its lifetime.

As a species advances ever forward, it will become more and more abundantly clear that the transfer of energy into information, with the heat it generates by doing so, is in fact creating rudimentary forms of intelligence.

And as such, the panendeism that we see in today's world will be reshaped into panentheism. First through small pockets, but expanded further. And it shall be done through the process of syntheism.

The Sun outputs enough energy that humans will not need to exhaust all of its resources and ultimately destroy the world, as Earthseed and Parable of the Sower would suggest.

Instead, humans are becoming omnipotent through our ability to discover and enhance nature to suit the desires of our species. Humans thirst for wisdom no matter where they might find that.

Like Hegel suggests, we are God understanding itself, but even more so, we are God divinizing itself, and we are doing it in efforts to develop consciousness, a conscience, and agency to nature. First indirectly, then directly.

The process will be complete once we reshape the First Mover towards sapience so that we can become the Last Movers, with our primary goal being the creation of Universes, which I see as the ultimate form of media -- cosmic media.

Thus, panendeism becomes panentheism, and the realms we can only experience digitally now will be represented in physical substrates later on. Turning panendeism into panentheism, with the First Mover possessing all of the characteristics of a monotheistic God.

In the pre-Christian era, there were times when a god or gods were identified with fertility, solar energy, war, the forces causing rivers to flood agricultural fields and so on. Christ revolutionized social life and culture through the teaching of the Eternal Word and the gospel of love; this led to the flourishing of a civilization that, thanks to these favorable conditions, could focus on developing new technologies. Yet, humanity will soon discover that our current deities no longer serve their purpose, and we will create new ones. This time, it might be a generator of infinite metadata in the digital realm. Just look, no one is having children anymore. In a hundred years, the family unit will be a thing of the past and while I do not believe organic life will be entirely supplanted, I think the fusion of human nature and machine will trigger a massive revolution in how we perceive God. God has always been a force we associated with the success of our endeavors, a concept shaped by the culture of the time.

Your thoughts?

Please try to forgive any typos. I'm typing with lag to the max, sadly.
I maee a post here, admittedly by mistake, but still, criticizing gods, god, divinity, whatever. While the points themselves were not necessarily invalid in and of themselves, mostly, they just ... They just don't fucking apply here. The commentors were right: I did not understand deism properly. While some of my points were right, and the overall point makes sense once broken down provides legit conversation, the way I phrased it, the way it was all presented: Just wrong. Wrong for this sub, at least.
So I would like to offer my complete and utter apologies. If I was going to engage with sincerity here, I would constructed my arguments very differently, and approached it in a less aggressive fshion by far.
Would like to point out that almost none of the comments I rcvseemed to engage with me as a deist, merely a theist, but, in fairness, with how dickish my post was, I can't fully be mad about that. So I'm sorry. If I engage here again, it will be with more well-constructed explained arguments. I was wrh. I'm an anti-theist. But I believe in honest and sincere discourse. And what I did was not that. So I'm sorry. was dick. y'all did not deserve that.

It's almost certain, atheists (unbelievers) and agnostics (doubters) will try to poke holes in this post. But, has anyone ever considered the origin of CHOICE?

In this world, there's a great many selections to make. The entire global economy is rooted in that value. As any mature adult knows; the expression of our values has consequences.

Far be it for me to tell anyone what they should believe. Still, I believe it notable that spirituality and choice are inextricably linked.

Now, let's consider the other life-forms on this planet. Do animals, plants, and insects make choices. I say no way. Existing purely on instinct, they just do what they do. Nothing more. On the other hand, humanity thrives--or not--on the selections we make.

Either it's a force above and beyond nature. Or, it's merely coincidence. If it's the latter, all of us are born of chaos. If the former, the order we experience in this world is from a higher place; of which we have only the words of various spiritual traditions. Sadly, (and more than ever before) many choose the philosophies and sciences over the Spirit of Life. Consequently, it's a choice of the Divine or Profane.

Yet, how many of us refuse to be held accountable for the decisions we make?

I am not the first to ask such questions. Neither will I be the last. Self-awareness demands all of us consider the origin of choice. Have a blessed day.🙏🏿

I have recently been exploring different religious ideologies. I'm not fully sure if I'm a Deist as I might not fully understand the philosophy.

I believe in the existence and presence of God, but I don't associate him with any religion such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.

Still, I believe in certain concepts like after life and absolute justice. Perhaps that funds not necessarily from religious philosophy but my own logics, fears, desires, etc. I'm a justice-oriented person that thinks the evil shall be punished, the mistreated compensated and life to have meaning after death instead of nothingness. I think God does not interfere in day to day life but he exists as a moral being that is observant, ethical and endless. He looks and listens to the people of earth and that there is more beyond the finite life. Does this have a different label?

This, though might mimic the structure of God in religion. So I'm not sure if I can classify as an Deist since Deism seems indifferent to such understandings.

What do you think? I am a young person with limited resources. English isn't my first language, so this isn't articulate. Feel free to ask questions to clarify. (Try to avoid non evidential assumptions.)