I've come across so many people who believe in God but not in the terms told to them by their church, synagogue, mosque, temple whatever. I'm sure that most people do believe in God in some manner but instead of just considering themselves Deist, meaning they just believe in God but not really according to organized religions. Still most of them are nominally whatever, usually the denomination of the religion they were raised in. Basically I guess I'm saying I understand why people choose to believe in a God but for those who don't believe in most of the dogmas of organized religions I don't see why they won't just reject the dogmas entirely and pursue their faith in God however they see fit?
Isn't this kind of along the lines of what New Age people do? I've known some people who cling to Christianity but consider themselves New Age now.
My thought is that there are more of these people than you might think. They're just not organized because that would eventually lead to the dogma and "organization" you referred to. In fact, many of the people I know fit into this category. They just don't feel the need to talk about what they believe in. It's kind of like Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is...
Nah, to my mind the problem is that nobody really believes in a deist god. The whole thing smacks of an attempt to shoe-horn a medieval belief into a world that was radically changing at the time deism developed. Sorry.
Couple of thoughts. And feel free to criticise if you know more about deism than I do (which, admittedly, isn't all that much): 1) As I understand it, the deist position usually believes that the deity is the "non-intervening" type as opposed to theism which believes in a deity that occasionally intervenes in human affairs (e.g. answering prayers, sending down a son to die for us or communicating information to prophets, etc.) To use an analogy, the the deist deity is like a God who lights the touchpaper on the big bang but after that just sits back and watches everything unfold. The theist deity, on the other hand, is intervening in its creation, tweaking it here and there as it progresses. Since the deist deity will not respond to appeals or prayers there's generally no reason or motivation for people to want to believe. 2) Belief in a deist deity doesn't require believers to proselytize, so it has less "survivability" than belief systems that actively use persuasion or coercion to gain followers.
Well I go by a broader definition of Deism basically it acknowledges the existence of God but the nature of that God is defined differently from person to person. God would still be considered a moral figure but the role God has with people and the proper way to worship that God would be different from person to person. IE a belief in God w/out dogma or organized religion. Now I recognize the classical definition of Deism which was the belief that God created the world and just observes it, "the clockmaker" so to speak. While that belief system is probably when the word "Deism" was introduced I think Deism is applicable to any believer of God who doesn't follow common dogmas.
The problem being that nobody actually believes in a god like that. People believe in powerful, vengeful beings. Not 'clockmakers' or any pansy nonsense like that. The whole thing smacks of an attempt to shoe-horn a medieval belief into a world that was radically changing at the time deism developed. Sorry.
I think there's tons of ppl who believe in a God of some sort. I don't think they outnumber the ppl who believe in the God presented by the major religions but I'm willing to bet upto 30% of any given predominantly monotheistic country has a large number of ppl who believe in God but not the more established versions of God.
As I have come to observe from my years in the church, people instead of being true to themsevles prefer to cling on tradition. They avoid branching out and exploring other religions and philosophies and when they do (if they do), they do so with a bigoted mind. I would say that those that follow a religion such as Christianity (despite statistics) are a minority in the country I live in. Most people I have meet and seen are agnostic. Not sure whether if God exists or not, or its impossible to know, cut them in half you'll find they either believe that God most likely doesn't exist or that there is a God but without the characteristics that organized religion has placed on the entity. They go the church for traditions sake, they proclaim to be who they aren't out of fear of rejection from their peers, or simply because its all they know and all they want to know.
