A reply to More Faith

Steve, not too much to add. Just this:

"the correct response to that is to leave the questions unanswered."

Hmm. That's not exactly in keeping with the spirit of scientific discovery, is it? Granted, there are some questions -- "What is the meaning of life?", for example -- that are philosophical in nature, and as such, seem ill-suited for testing by the scientific method. However, I don't see what one gains by simply stating we should "leave the question unanswered." It seems to me that you're basically saying that any question that doesn't lend itself to a naturalistic explanation isn't worth asking.

But the fact that questions about meaning, purpose, etc. cannot be answered by science in any definitive way does not suggest to me they aren't worth asking, only that the answers to them, if answers can be found, will not be provided by science. These kinds of questions are hugely important to a vast majority of people and it has been so since the dawn of civilization.

You are certainly within your rights to say that the only important questions are the ones that science can answer, but it would be naive to think you could ever persuade the majority of people on this point. People want answers to these questions and they aren't going to (and can't, I suspect) stop asking them simply because a scientist says they're unimportant.

By the way, this is an interesting idea to consider when pondering the question of God's existence, as well as your statement about "test[ing] the God idea - to run the 'paternity test' for the Universe."

I'm curious. What do you envision as a good test for God's existence? Would would a "paternity test" for the Universe look like?

I'm not sure I have the answer, or even that there is an answer. Very interesting question, though.

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?