Was/Is Deism the easy way out?

Question

It seems to me that as long as someone deduces that the Almighty Father God is outside of time and space and cannot be measured or calculated or understood and is unable and incapable(if I may) to change the world or intercept on this physical time/space reality plane, then anyone can still have faith in God and not be proven wrong.

Is/Was this the easy way out for modern day/past freethinkers to ease out of criticism(to put it lightly) of conservative religious individuals?

Answer 1

Yes.

Pantheism and deism are awesome troll stances agaisnt both athiests and theists.

Answer 2

Not as easy is nihilism.

But to the point.

Deism is valid as it is not completely without out merit, well at least it was not completely without merit.

The fine tuning argument would be a perfect example as to why it was/may still be a rational consideration.

In the standard model the constants of natural principles are simply a given, particle physics does not address the how behind these constants and their values that just so happen to be improbable and are required for the  existence of our observable able universe.

But more recently theoretical physics has taken up the challenge of attempting to understand why exactly the constants of nature have their precise values.

See multidimensional brane theory or m-theory for short.

Here science provides a testable theory (well for the time being we are currently unable to technologically engineer a means to test much of string theory but this will not likely remain the case indefinitely) but anyway we have a possible answer to the fine tuning of our universe and need not invoke deism to explain the conditions required for our existence. A point would like to make is that deism is not a religion because it does not require irrational beliefs in the form of faith and nor does it assign punishment for failure to accept its philosophical postulate.

Nor does deism assert a divine command theory of morals.

Deism does not assert that one must worship/form a relationship with the higher power.

For all these reason if you say to me that your a deist then I can not in all honesty call you irrational because the simple fact of the matter is that is remotely possible that your assumption is consistent with reality.

I consider it improbable but my considerations are not what determines reality.

But deism is not a theistic philosophy for the above stated reasons.

Being that I wish be as logical as possible in my philosophical inquiries the rational position is agnostic atheist.

Also being that deism is not a theology I feel no need to debate a deist for in the strict since the reasoning is not fallacious as is the case with every theistic system of belief I have encountered has been based almost exclusively on fallacy.

With a deist I do not find that I must point out that their belief that something is true is not the same as something actually being true.

But with a theist often the debate centers around the notion that believing something is true is the same as that something actually being true.

I simply do not agree that one should assume that a belief that something is true has any impact on what is true in reality.

Either reality exists independent of our beliefs and observations and thus truth is objective or truth is simply what ever a subjective observer decides it is and that reality conforms to the individuals beliefs.

Obviously evidence indicates the latter and we should assume that truth is objective based on logical empiricism as a epistemology but often theists are philosophically lazy and such considerations are not even probed and they simply believe something they were told was true from childhood.

Intellectually convenient sure but philosophically irrational and uneducated are the consequences of accepting theistic systems of belief, and more often than not deliberate ignorance must be maintained to keep an individuals theistic beliefs intact.

In others words you do not have to be unaware or ignore the facts to be a deist, but in my experience this simply is not the case with theism.

edit:

I suppose, judging from your edits, that you wish to force this issue into an either/or dichotomy, if you insist on forcing  an either or case then the rational position is no, deism is not simply the easy way out.

Answer 3

I basically agree with that.  Even today people of faith are more accepting of someone saying they are a Deist as opposed to an atheist.  Personally I see little difference in the two lines of thought.  For all practical purposes they are indistinguishable.

Answer 4

Do you have a problem with what people choose to believe? If you don't like it, well, I guess your shiite out of luck...huh?        Well, this is my opinion, so there :P

Answer 5

My exposure and experience with religion up to this point in my life has only led me to a place where I realise that Cause and Effect and Consequence are the things to keep firmly in mind in all our dealings.

I also believe that there is a Creative Force far beyond my comprehension, but I also think that if I keep the laws of nature and commonsense, He or She (lol) will be happy with me!