Activist Judges - California Of Course

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"The first step toward knowledge is getting rid of thinking that you know...for it is impossible to get a man to understand that which he thinks he already knows. "

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I think this is more of an epistemological statement than a deist one.

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So...deism begins from nothing...

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I disagree with this... the very foundation of deism is that a god created the universe, since the question of what created this god is never addressed, deism has the starting point of god and the end point of complete understanding. Once we understand the universe, this is the same as revelation and since the lack of revelation is a crux of deism...

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god is usually the first reasonable assertion

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How is something incomprehensibly infinite "reasonable"? ;)

I think the idea of getting rid of what you "know" and origins in nothingness fall more appropriately under the realm of nihilism. Deism, in my opinion has always seemed to me as a simpler atheism. Atheism inspires so many religious people to suddenly feel like they need to question the atheist about every aspect of the universe... with the intention of either getting all the answers and becoming and atheist themselves or having their own faith reaffirmed. If you throw in a god at the start of everything... now you have an answer for all those tough questions "god did it" but still allow yourself to be a thinking individual.

Anyhow, I think this conversation is far more entertaining than the "you're going to burn in hell" rebuttal I'm likely to receive from OverdueSpy.

cheers,

catch

Hi catch,

All study begins with the first thought ' I know nothing '...because if you already know...then why study? It's not a Deist principle...but a general rule of any philosophy that you must begin a study from the standpoint of nothing.

Deists do not believe that god created the universe...but ' caused ' it to come into existence...god was the cause.

It is a ' reasonable assertion ' because of many factors...the existence of god can neither be proven nor disproved...however...there is more evidence to suggest that ' some form of a god does exist ' than evidence to the contrary.

Deists do not, as a general rule, suggest god is responsible for anything other than the cause and order of the universe...religion tries to establish a personal relationship with this god...deists, as a general rule, do know know if such a thing is even possible.

Deism, like any religion and/or philosophy is not fixed...you will have as many veiwpoints in Deism as you do in any other field of study.

Generally with Deism you have 2 constants...some form of a god exists...and this god must be rational....therefore anything not rational cannot be attributed to this god.

Eg ;)

High reasoning......

Deism..... what is the mental benefit received by the believer in any life?

I know 14 judges judged the pharaohs and then they did their afterlife thing....that was their benefit to believing. What's yours?

hi Imitation,

The only benefit derived from Deism is knowledge.

Religion is primarily dependant upon ' faith '...not knowing...acceptance...and for this blind obedience to ignorance they hope heaven will be their reward.

Deism is philosophic in the sense it is the pursuit of truth/knowledge...the end benefit is an understanding...knowledge is the reward.

Eg ;)

Let me put this to you...an atheist has no belief in god and no desire for heaven...what benefit is there to being good?
If you have no belief in god and no hope for heaven why not do whatever you can get away with...after all, if you can do it and not get caught what's to stop you?

for the religious it is punishment that keeps them in check, and the hopeful reward of heaven...
for the deist it is knowledge that keeps them in check...

what keeps athiests in check?

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The only benefit derived from Deism is knowledge.

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Well... not really. The only advantage is that deists feel they can attain a more useful if not complete understanding of the universe through reasons rather than faith. No system assures any greater knowledge... some systems just lead to different thinking patterns than others.

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If you have no belief in god and no hope for heaven why not do whatever you can get away with...after all, if you can do it and not get caught what's to stop you?
for the religious it is punishment that keeps them in check, and the hopeful reward of heaven...
for the deist it is knowledge that keeps them in check...

what keeps athiests in check?

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Yet atheist by and large seem to be just nicer people (not to mention to huge discrepancy between historical atrocities committed in god's name and those committed by atheists.)

Atheists are kept in check by empathy, which is a far better "check" than divine punishment Why? Empathy is based on what the potential victim may feel, as opposed to what the religious person thinks is ok with their god... which tends to be based on little more than whatever is handy at the time.

I suppose however... that this would merely be a result of the fact that most religions seems to spiral toward fundementalism ( http://www.austinuu.org/sermons/loehr020302.html ) and that is an enitrely different issue.

cheers,

catch

I keep Athiests in check by the "I'm going to pound the crap out of you if you get out of line with me" attitude. Since this usually works, I'm not too overly concerned with their own system of self-restraint. What really torques me though are these folks I meet in the store that are 'devout churchgoing God fearing Christians' on Sunday, and yet they shoplift, panhandle, and sometimes outright steal both beer and gasoline from me any other day of the week. I can name at least a dozen I've dealt with directly in the past 2 days. Amazingly enough, I can't name a single Athiest who freely admits it to me face to face, nor a Deist for that matter although I'd tolerate one quite a bit better than an Athiest I'm sure - amazing how religious discussions can degenerate into barroom brawls isn't it?

On a serious note - I do my best to discuss neither religion nor politics in either my workplace or on social occasions. Keep your religion in your church, or home, or closet, or wherever you practice it. I'll keep mine where I practice it too, and we can get along just fine.

And on topic -
Let us discuss for a moment our founding fathers, specifically George Washington since he's the most widely known. George was a Freemason. He was also instrumental in founding Freemasonry in the United States, and is hailed as our first Grand Master. One of the principal tenets of Freemasonry is that no athiest can be made a mason, because we swear solemn oaths to whatever power we worship. Since an athiest cannot make such a solemn oath to any power, such an oath cannot be binding - hence he can't be a mason.

Keep the masonry aspect in mind for a moment when I tell you that over 70 percent of our founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence and 100 percent of the delegate members of our Continental Congress were masons. Evidence of this in the form of masonic symbols and phrases run rampantly past your noses and you never see them - check the cornerstone of your own town hall if you don't believe me, or study a bit on masonry (all our 'secrets' are published) and then re-read our 'historical documents'.

Now if I'm in with a group of bretheren (what we masons call ourselves) and we all believe in a God, is it not proper that we should include him in the plans when we build a new nation? Annuit Coeptis, In God We Trust, and the lot of it all were part of this original plan. Even Thomas Jefferson, who so elequently scribed the Declaration of Independence said 'they are endowed by their creator' within it.

Yes our bill of rights says congress shall make no law establishing a national religion etc... this was because good old King George I had done so in merry old England - and is why the Pilgrims first sailed to Plymouth to begin with; to escape religious persecution. This amendment wasn't intended at all to eliminate the mention of God in everything associated with our government, it was to make us able to prevent from occurring precisely why we came here in the first place. If you don't like reading "In God We Trust" on your money, then substitute another word for God there in your head... Frankly I'm quite sure that folks won't care where you place your trust - even in three-headed chickens if you so desire.

Now let us apply this to the Pledge. One nation under God. Ok, so substitute the three-headed chicken there if you'd like too, just don't say it aloud...again, we don't care. In fact, I've known a three-headed chicken or two that'd probably do a better job at running our government than recent Presidents have, but that's a different topic altogether now ain't it?

Get off it guys. It's a freaking sentence in a paragraph. Leave it as written because that's the way we learned it at mama's knee, and for no other reason. Who's it hurting and how? Does it cause you physical pain to hear a group of folks say 'under God'? Does it make you violently ill to spend any denomination of money? If either of these things are true, feel free to seek psychiatric aid. If you're just offended, tough ****. We're all offended by a lot of things on a daily basis. We deal with them not by attempting to remove or change them, but mostly by ignoring them. Go walk through your local bowery, homeless shelter, or hospice if you don't believe me.

Just my 857 pesos.

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Originally posted here by |3lack|ce
...Get off it guys. It's a freaking sentence in a paragraph. Leave it as written because that's the way we learned it at mama's knee, and for no other reason. Who's it hurting and how? Does it cause you physical pain to hear a group of folks say 'under God'? Does it make you violently ill to spend any denomination of money? If either of these things are true, feel free to seek psychiatric aid. If you're just offended, tough ****. We're all offended by a lot of things on a daily basis. We deal with them not by attempting to remove or change them, but mostly by ignoring them. Go walk through your local bowery, homeless shelter, or hospice if you don't believe me.

Just my 857 pesos.

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Having items of national import continually reinforce the opinion that you could not possibly exist is hardly on the same par as calling someone names in a bar. If it was, I would simply shrug it off. This isn't a debate about two words. Every day people are living in this country, just as American as everyone else, yet this country -- a country they may be called upon to defend, or may be defending already -- doesn't feel the need to acknowledge that their belief system even exists. And it's not a matter of simply "substituting your own belief for the word 'God'". That's an internal rationalization that only occurs if you are one of the people that isn't included. When seeing the words "Under God," would a Christian substitute God with "Whatever other people believe too?" Probably not.

What about this: How would you feel if the US Constitution didn't begin with "We the people of the United States...", but with "We the women of the United States..." Would you feel a little slighted? If it didn't bother you at all, you didn't imagine hard enough. Now carry that same feeling into the modern day -- the feeling that on many issues your interests as a man are only considered as an afterthought. What if your legislators neglected to mention you in their legislation? What if your city officials forget that there are "men" around during city business. Imagine you enter a public restroom for men, but find only stalls because no one makes urinals for men -- okay, that one's a little far fetched, but similar discrimination (and not necessarily against atheists) is still very much around today. The point is, you might start to feel like your government is saying, "Well, we know you guys are around but we don't really want to take the time to acknowledge you in any official documentation." Yet every day young Americans are growing up "on Mamas knee" and learning those documents for the first time and adopting the same unintentional discrimination. Every day, in this example, men are being treated as an afterthought.

I fight this battle not as an atheist (which I proudly am), but simply as one of a minority. There are literally thousands of similar cases of institutionally embedded discrimination occurring against all minorities in this country daily. I fight this battle as merely one of those thousand, in an attempt to perhaps change a few more opinions into recognizing that the "status quo" in many cases is not good enough anymore.

It's true, it all comes down to two words, but the concept is much deeper than that. By leaving them in there you're reinforcing the institutional discrimination that is all over the place in the US. Again, it's up to the majority to recognize when the system is unjust and correct it.

"Deism is knowledge." How can someone be knowledgeable of a supernatural being? As if the information they carry is fact....information based on real occurrences.

Because:

1. X is too complex to have self-occurred (have no cause).
2. X must have been created by an intelligent being.
3. God is that intelligent being.
4. Therefore, God created X.

High reasoning tells me that's not fact. It's conjectured knowledge not factual knowledge.

Hi Imitation,

if you had read my post to catch you would have seen that I already explained that there is a difference between ' causing the universe ' and ' creating it '...
you're assuming that by knowledge I'm refering to the knowledge of god...wrong assumption...I've already stated that it's impossible to know whether or not god exists.

I gather the reason why you are claiming things that I've already stated were untrue is because you're fixated on the belief that Deism is an alternative religion...it's not...as I said again it's more in tune with philosophy than religion.

Deist's do not fixate on god...god is very much a secondary consideration...whereas religion primarily focuses on god....we simply acknowledge that some form of a god exists.

Your 1.2.3.4. relates to the general belief of Christians, Jews, and Muslims...not to the belief of any deist.

Eg ;)

!mitationRust this is a better cosmological argument:

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
P2. The universe began to exist.
P3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
P4. Since no scientific explanation can provide a causal account of the origin of the universe, the cause must be supernatural, i.e. a god.
C1. Therefore, a god exists.
P5. Gods create humans in their own image.
P6. The brains of humans resemble a bowl of spaghetti.
C2. Thus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the one true god.

A visual aid: Creation

cheers,

catch