(This posting is a continuation of the previously posted Part I of the same title.)
Whenever we use one word to describe different things, we end up not knowing what we are talking about. Sometimes this linguistic confusion is part of a deliberate deception, like in the case of libertarianism (or, rather, “libertarian capitalism,” detailed by me in the Contradiction section. Whatever the reason is here, I suspect that much of the confusion is perhaps due to an innocent misunderstanding of the alleged difference between the terms deism and theism in the professional jargon (confusing deism with theism, and also with monotheism, as Thomas Jefferson appears to be doing [my entry on this subject, titled Jefferson’s Bible, will be posted later) by those who have used it… well, liberally, with the resulting “imprecision” then taken as a definitely conscientious effort by some smarter-than-thou interpreters of other people’s wisdom.
No matter what we think of it, or how we define it, deism is an intriguing phenomenon, or, to put it more precisely, a fascinating word, hiding something quite interesting behind its vague façade, and, as such, most worthy of a closer look. As a result, three entries have sprouted on its fertile ground: Deism As Religion in the Religion section, Deism As Philosophy in the Philosophy section, and Deism As History in the History section. Each of them raises a particular aspect of the same subject, which is deism, of course, and together they are, hopefully, presenting a fuller picture of my own, than a single entry in any one selected section can possibly provide. (All three of them will be posted in due course.)
But let us leave all the confusion aside and open Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (III), where Paine talks about deism in a forceful and definitive fashion, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that in his, Paine’s, mind this awfully tricky term has now received a distinctly different meaning from what the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions have historically understood as the belief in one God:
"Deism teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all which is necessary or proper to be known. The creation (he is probably talking about the physical Universe, and what we jokingly refer to as “Mother Nature”) is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator Himself, the certainty of His existence, and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries." (Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason, #III)
Thomas Paine’s elaboration of the meaning of deism is rather scandalous, in form more than in substance, and I submit that he was properly chastised and denounced for it, plus I do not think that, by writing this, he made any contemporary deists particularly happy, as he unnecessarily scandalized them, too. But, anyway, the time has come to write down, while trying not to repeat myself from the previous entries on this subject, a few additional notes on the history of Deism. Several sources are being used here, Britannica the foremost among them, but also including Webster’s Biographical Dictionary.---
The high point of Deism in England occurred during the fairly liberal period of 1689 through 1742, but its acknowledged father goes back to an earlier time. He was Edward Herbert, First Baron of Cherbury (1583-1648), Oxford-educated philosopher and diplomat, author of several works, most important of which is his De Veritate (1624), his chief philosophical work advancing his theory, which became known as Deism, in the most technical, albeit effectively obsolete since then, sense of this artificial word.
In Lord Herbert’s writings, the word Deism is explained as the adherence to these five basic religious ideas, recognized as God-given and innate in the mind of man: the belief in a supreme being, in the need for His worship, in the pursuit of a pious and virtuous life, as the most desirable form of worship, in the need for a repentance for sins, and in rewards and punishments in the next world. These fundamental beliefs were in possession of the first man (according to Herbert), and they were basic to all great religions of later times. The differences between the great religions were only benign modifications of the universal truth and were not to be tolerated only when they led to bigotry and persecution of religious rivals. Thus manifestations of religious fanaticism and enthusiasm were deemed dangerous and corruptive to the peaceful coexistence of all world religions, and all of them were strongly denounced as perversions of true religion.
In conclusion of this particular discussion of deism, in its most technical sense, even though there is some philosophical merit in the doctrine of Lord Herbert, the term itself has become so blatantly politicized and abused in subsequent usage, especially by the opponents of all unorthodox theology, who had appropriated it as a curse word for the latter, as to become essentially unusable for serious purposes, serving propaganda objectives instead.
Returning now to the befuddled meaning of theism, we have already seen some very serious problems with the usage and understanding of this word, which make it just as unusable for serious purposes as its abject counterpart deism. There have been attempts made to make the word theism look respectable, but I find all of them quite pathetic. Judge for yourselves, from this heavily abbreviated by me explanation of theism in the Britannica:
Theism is the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality, of which one may also speak in personal terms. Theism’s view of God can be clarified by contrast with deism, pantheism, and mysticism.
Deism closely resembles theism; (here is a big surprise already, as for the religious opponents of deism, it is anathema, whereas they readily call themselves theists, in sharp opposition, and would never concede that deism and theism “closely resemble each other”!) but for the deist, God is not involved in the world in the same personal way. He has made it, but allows it to continue in its own way. The theist, on the other hand, seeks to bring man’s relationship to God into a closer involvement. (This distinction seems too arbitrary to be decisive, at least in my knowledge of several serious believers. I think that many self-proclaimed theists actually hold certain elements of deism true, such as the fact that God does allow the world to continue in its own way, which is consistent with the thoroughly “theistic” doctrine of ‘free will” and also explains the phenomenon of evil in the world!)
Theism also sharply contrasts with pantheism, which identifies God with all that there is. By contrast, the theist considers the world to be quite distinct from its Creator, human life being, thus, in no sense strictly the life of God, while also making room for a peculiarly intimate involvement of God in the world and in human life. (Here is an uncharacteristically shallow for Britannica, and extraordinarily clumsy explication of pantheism. God’s omnipresence provides the common ground for theism and pantheism, while the best expression of their true connection is the so much quoted by me already gem of Moses Cordovero: “God is everything, but everything is not God!”)
Mysticism in practice comes close to theism; but mystical thought, and much of its practice, has involved a repudiation of the proper reality of finite things and sometimes tends to dismiss all of the finite manifold or multiplicity of things as some wholly unreal phantasm which has no place in the one undiversified Being, which alone is real. Theism is far removed from ideas of this kind. (This is already complete nonsense. In Russian religious thought, consummate “theism” goes hand-in-hand with consummate mysticism, and the two of them are unthinkable without each other. I would argue further that theism as such is in large part a direct product of mysticism!)
In conclusion to this discussion of the rather vacuous term “theism,” which a normal person should not even try to distinguish from the simple “belief in God,” I could only reiterate that both deism and theism are artificial and ambiguous terms, which have obtained their meanings mostly through defective usage, but I insist that neither can properly sustain itself in a serious philosophical context. So much for them both.
However, being important for the understanding of certain salient points in history and theology, we cannot dismiss them on the grounds of their inherent inconsequence: there are unfortunately too many things in our strange world, which are inconsequential in themselves, yet rising to the heights of consequence, as a result of their most unfortunate misapplications into practice.
Whenever we use one word to describe different things, we end up not knowing what we are talking about. Sometimes this linguistic confusion is part of a deliberate deception, like in the case of libertarianism (or, rather, “libertarian capitalism,” detailed by me in the Contradiction section. Whatever the reason is here, I suspect that much of the confusion is perhaps due to an innocent misunderstanding of the alleged difference between the terms deism and theism in the professional jargon (confusing deism with theism, and also with monotheism, as Thomas Jefferson appears to be doing [my entry on this subject, titled Jefferson’s Bible, will be posted later) by those who have used it… well, liberally, with the resulting “imprecision” then taken as a definitely conscientious effort by some smarter-than-thou interpreters of other people’s wisdom.
No matter what we think of it, or how we define it, deism is an intriguing phenomenon, or, to put it more precisely, a fascinating word, hiding something quite interesting behind its vague façade, and, as such, most worthy of a closer look. As a result, three entries have sprouted on its fertile ground: Deism As Religion in the Religion section, Deism As Philosophy in the Philosophy section, and Deism As History in the History section. Each of them raises a particular aspect of the same subject, which is deism, of course, and together they are, hopefully, presenting a fuller picture of my own, than a single entry in any one selected section can possibly provide. (All three of them will be posted in due course.)
But let us leave all the confusion aside and open Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (III), where Paine talks about deism in a forceful and definitive fashion, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that in his, Paine’s, mind this awfully tricky term has now received a distinctly different meaning from what the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions have historically understood as the belief in one God:
"Deism teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all which is necessary or proper to be known. The creation (he is probably talking about the physical Universe, and what we jokingly refer to as “Mother Nature”) is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator Himself, the certainty of His existence, and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries." (Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason, #III)
Thomas Paine’s elaboration of the meaning of deism is rather scandalous, in form more than in substance, and I submit that he was properly chastised and denounced for it, plus I do not think that, by writing this, he made any contemporary deists particularly happy, as he unnecessarily scandalized them, too. But, anyway, the time has come to write down, while trying not to repeat myself from the previous entries on this subject, a few additional notes on the history of Deism. Several sources are being used here, Britannica the foremost among them, but also including Webster’s Biographical Dictionary.---
The high point of Deism in England occurred during the fairly liberal period of 1689 through 1742, but its acknowledged father goes back to an earlier time. He was Edward Herbert, First Baron of Cherbury (1583-1648), Oxford-educated philosopher and diplomat, author of several works, most important of which is his De Veritate (1624), his chief philosophical work advancing his theory, which became known as Deism, in the most technical, albeit effectively obsolete since then, sense of this artificial word.
In Lord Herbert’s writings, the word Deism is explained as the adherence to these five basic religious ideas, recognized as God-given and innate in the mind of man: the belief in a supreme being, in the need for His worship, in the pursuit of a pious and virtuous life, as the most desirable form of worship, in the need for a repentance for sins, and in rewards and punishments in the next world. These fundamental beliefs were in possession of the first man (according to Herbert), and they were basic to all great religions of later times. The differences between the great religions were only benign modifications of the universal truth and were not to be tolerated only when they led to bigotry and persecution of religious rivals. Thus manifestations of religious fanaticism and enthusiasm were deemed dangerous and corruptive to the peaceful coexistence of all world religions, and all of them were strongly denounced as perversions of true religion.
In conclusion of this particular discussion of deism, in its most technical sense, even though there is some philosophical merit in the doctrine of Lord Herbert, the term itself has become so blatantly politicized and abused in subsequent usage, especially by the opponents of all unorthodox theology, who had appropriated it as a curse word for the latter, as to become essentially unusable for serious purposes, serving propaganda objectives instead.
Returning now to the befuddled meaning of theism, we have already seen some very serious problems with the usage and understanding of this word, which make it just as unusable for serious purposes as its abject counterpart deism. There have been attempts made to make the word theism look respectable, but I find all of them quite pathetic. Judge for yourselves, from this heavily abbreviated by me explanation of theism in the Britannica:
Theism is the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality, of which one may also speak in personal terms. Theism’s view of God can be clarified by contrast with deism, pantheism, and mysticism.
Deism closely resembles theism; (here is a big surprise already, as for the religious opponents of deism, it is anathema, whereas they readily call themselves theists, in sharp opposition, and would never concede that deism and theism “closely resemble each other”!) but for the deist, God is not involved in the world in the same personal way. He has made it, but allows it to continue in its own way. The theist, on the other hand, seeks to bring man’s relationship to God into a closer involvement. (This distinction seems too arbitrary to be decisive, at least in my knowledge of several serious believers. I think that many self-proclaimed theists actually hold certain elements of deism true, such as the fact that God does allow the world to continue in its own way, which is consistent with the thoroughly “theistic” doctrine of ‘free will” and also explains the phenomenon of evil in the world!)
Theism also sharply contrasts with pantheism, which identifies God with all that there is. By contrast, the theist considers the world to be quite distinct from its Creator, human life being, thus, in no sense strictly the life of God, while also making room for a peculiarly intimate involvement of God in the world and in human life. (Here is an uncharacteristically shallow for Britannica, and extraordinarily clumsy explication of pantheism. God’s omnipresence provides the common ground for theism and pantheism, while the best expression of their true connection is the so much quoted by me already gem of Moses Cordovero: “God is everything, but everything is not God!”)
Mysticism in practice comes close to theism; but mystical thought, and much of its practice, has involved a repudiation of the proper reality of finite things and sometimes tends to dismiss all of the finite manifold or multiplicity of things as some wholly unreal phantasm which has no place in the one undiversified Being, which alone is real. Theism is far removed from ideas of this kind. (This is already complete nonsense. In Russian religious thought, consummate “theism” goes hand-in-hand with consummate mysticism, and the two of them are unthinkable without each other. I would argue further that theism as such is in large part a direct product of mysticism!)
In conclusion to this discussion of the rather vacuous term “theism,” which a normal person should not even try to distinguish from the simple “belief in God,” I could only reiterate that both deism and theism are artificial and ambiguous terms, which have obtained their meanings mostly through defective usage, but I insist that neither can properly sustain itself in a serious philosophical context. So much for them both.
However, being important for the understanding of certain salient points in history and theology, we cannot dismiss them on the grounds of their inherent inconsequence: there are unfortunately too many things in our strange world, which are inconsequential in themselves, yet rising to the heights of consequence, as a result of their most unfortunate misapplications into practice.
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