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Paine's book followed in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism. These deists, while maintaining individual positions, still shared several sets of assumptions and arguments that Paine articulated in The Age of Reason.
The most important position that united the early deists was their call for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion. Saying that early Christianity was founded on freedom of conscience, they demanded religious toleration and an end to religious persecution.
They also demanded that debate rest on reason and rationality. Deists embraced a Newtonian worldview, and they believed all things in the universe, even God, must obey the laws of nature. Without a concept of natural law, the deists argued, explanations of the workings of nature would descend into irrationality. This belief in natural law drove their skepticism of miracles.
Because miracles had to be observed to be validated, deists rejected the accounts laid out in the Bible of God's miracles and argued that such evidence was neither sufficient nor necessary to prove the existence of God. Along these lines, deistic writings insisted that God, as the first cause or prime mover, had created and designed the universe with natural laws as part of his plan.
They hold that God does not repeatedly alter his plan by suspending natural laws to (miraculously) intervene in human affairs. Deists also rejected the claim that there was only one revealed religious Truth or "one true faith"; religion could only be "simple, apparent, ordinary, and universal" if it was to be the logical product of a benevolent God. They therefore distinguished between "revealed religions" (which they rejected), such as Christianity, and "natural religion", a set of universal beliefs derived from the natural world that demonstrated God's existence (they were, thus, not atheists).[1]
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.
It cannot be forged;
it cannot be counterfeited;
it cannot be lost;
it cannot be altered;
it cannot be suppressed.
It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.
God is not a person; God is a mythic personification of reality. If we miss this we miss everything.
ALL images and concepts of God are more or less meaningful interpretations and personifications. And it didn't take a genius to figure out that if you trust, or have faith, in what is ultimately inescapable, your life works better than if you judge or resist what is real. This is not theological rocket science.
Religion Is About Right Relationship to Reality, Not the Supernatural
All religions offer maps of what's real and what's important. So contends philosopher-of-religion Loyal Rue in his 2006 book, Religion Is Not About God (Youtube clip here). Religions offer practices, too, that help adherents live in right relationship with each other, their society, and with reality as a whole—regardless of how that "reality" is mythically personified.
Darwin didn't kill God. To the contrary, he and Alfred Russel Wallace offered the first glimpse of the real Creator behind and beyond the world's myriad mythic portrayals of reality.
...scholars of comparative religion and/or evolutionary psychology and neurobiology remind us that we cannot understand religion and religious differences if we don't understand how the human mind instinctually relationalizes, or personifies, reality. (Shermer refers to this deep-seated tendency as "agenticity".)
Think of the movie "Castaway" with Tom Hanks. The personified volleyball, Wilson, was the only thing that kept Hank's character sane (sort of).
[color=prange]Evidence from a wide range of disciplines, from cognitive neuroscience to anthropology to cross-cultural studies of the world's myths and religions, all support the claim that God is (and always has been) an interpretation, a personification. Furthermore, there is no counter-evidence supporting the claim that God is a person! This fact alone makes sense of the hundreds of competing stories around the world as to what God supposedly said or did.
But deism seems to be my kind of thing, because at least it kind of rules out everything mankind would be trying to glean from it, in terms of pride and subservience and finding a reason to look down on everyone else and all these old fashioned superstitious rules and beliefs and whatnot.
In his communications, he gives information about his decisions and actions, and making decisions implies having a will.
There are reasons why the Biblical God can't be described as "impersonal".
For one thing, the Biblical God communicates- the act of communications is one of the running themes of the Bible.
In his communications, he gives information about his decisions and actions, and making decisions implies having a will.
Having a conscious will and being able to communicate suggests something analogous to what we humans call "being a person".
The "impersonal God" concept belongs to a different kind of religion.
Originally posted by wildtimes
God "willed" the universe into existence (I'm giving you that one); but, at its inception, it was already "done!"
God is the indescribable, uncreated, self existent, eternal all knowing source of all reality and being...
Originally posted by AfterInfinity
Also, there's one little problem with your post: the premise of this thread doesn't accept the Bible as an authority,
My point is simply that the "impersonal God" viewpoint and the Biblical viewpoint can't be reconciled. They are two different kinds of religion.
I just wanted to clarify that the God described in the OP wasn't the Biblical version.
If that's understood on all sides, I can drop out.
Originally posted by wildtimes
Do you have a suggestion of how to reconcile the two?
Either God does communicate, in which case the more "personal" view must be valid, or he doesn't, in which case the "personal" view doesn't have a leg to stand on.
But I've been reminded that this thread is really about expressing the Deistic view, and I promised to drop out.
Originally posted by wildtimes
Why do you want to drop out?
What do you think "God" is? And why?