My opinion of deism

What is my opinion of deism? Good question. I would not pretend to be any kind of expert on deism. I would assume, however, as is true with any other philosophy or worldview, one would find many different flavors of deism.

I suppose I tend to think of deism of sort of a "cousin" of theism. As I understand it, deism generally give preeminence to reason as a way of understanding the world, but also accepts that the existence of God, and attributes to Him what some call the "fine-tuning" of the laws of the Universe. I think many who subscribe to deism would also profess a belief in some form of Natural Law as a way of explaining morality.

Functionally, however, I suspect a deist's view of the world might not look too terribly different than that of an atheist. He believes God created the world, but does not (and has not -- an important point, I think) involve himself in the affairs of mankind.

I do think deism has some good points. However, I tend to view deism as something of a reactionary philosophy in that it seems to have been developed specifically as an opposing view to Christianity (and secondarily Judaism), rather than being based on its own merits apart from Christianity. As a result, they hold a certain quasi-monotheistic view of a creator with the proximate powers of the God of the Old Testament, but jettison what they see as the trappings of religion (e.g. scripture, miracles, etc.) Thomas Jefferson is one well-known example of someone who holds this view. His Jefferson's Bible (literally a "cut-and-paste" version of the New Testament Gospels denuded of any miracles or supernatural events) paints a picture of Christ as a great moral philosopher, a good man, if you will, but nothing much more.

I'll close by saying once again that I don't profess to be any kind of expert on deism. My comments here reflect my thoughts of deism as I understand it.

Maybe deism is to Christianity what atheism is to deism. That's one way to look at it.

Or did you have a more specific question about deism?