{"id":405,"date":"2010-08-27T08:45:48","date_gmt":"2010-08-26T22:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=405"},"modified":"2010-08-27T08:52:18","modified_gmt":"2010-08-26T22:52:18","slug":"deism-and-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=405","title":{"rendered":"Deism and Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question (sort of) from Jay:<\/strong>
\nYou stated: The atheist position is that there is no available, substantive evidence for the existence of any god. Therefore it\u2019s likely that there isn\u2019t one. (No, it is stil 50\/50. Likely, is a biased term)
\n
\nAnd the Deist position would be: As a Deist, I know that it cannot be proven nor disproven, that a God does or does not exist, therefore I have the right to choose to believe in one or not. Since at this time, we do not have an answer either way. I simply choose to believe, rather than disbelieve, because I feel that nature, life, the universe, and other sources, are enough to sway me to believe, rather than disbelieve.
\n
\nTherefore, who cares if you believe or not, it is a moot point. The only thing irrational here, is theism.
\n
\nAnswer:<\/strong>
\nThere is actually a bit of reasoning between the lack of evidence and the statement that there isn’t likely to be a god.
\n
\nA hypothetical theistic or deistic god created the whole universe, and a theistic god continues to influence it. (Some deists think God planned out world history and people’s lives in great detail, which is a kind of theism-in-advance.) The fingerprints of such a god would be everywhere, obvious and unambiguous. That’s not the case, most obviously because there are so many atheists.
\n
\nAn explanation for this, besides the simple absence of a god, is that the real god is hiding its work. This goes against something which is common to all theistic religions and some deistic ones: the idea that the god desires belief<\/em>. There are several theological conjectures about why a god that desires belief would be hiding its work regardless (to test us?), but they have to stack up against the simple and ridiculous fact that this hypothetically all-powerful being isn’t getting what it wants.
\n
\nThis argument from lack of expected<\/em> evidence is strongest against theistic and theistic-in-advance gods, though it does apply to deism to some extent. In the case of a straight deistic god which has no further influence on or interest in us humans, it is indeed moot whether we believe in it.
\n
\nThat said, I’ll reply to your position fairly subjectively. Firstly, I don’t think belief is a choice because we’re either swayed by what we see as evidence or we’re not. Secondly, while I respect your right to believe, nature, life etc. do not<\/em> sway me that way and I remain an atheist.
\n
\n– SmartLX<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“This argument from lack of expected<\/em> evidence is strongest against theistic and theistic-in-advance gods, though it does apply to deism to some extent. In the case of a straight deistic god which has no further influence on or interest in us humans, it is indeed moot whether we believe in it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,62],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-atheism","tag-deism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-6x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}