Anybody home? (Deists, Revelation, God, miracles, Deism)

[HopefulNikki]

Originally Posted by Epsilon

Yup I was right I am also a Deist. I just had to look at the definition on that site. Took me until now to find a decent definition. In otherwords: Hi! I'm here just joined too...

Hi!! I don't know about Ciaran, but I was starting to feel lonely here on RF with no other like-minded people to talk to! Thanks for making yourself known. Deism really needs to have more of a presence here, it's practically non-existant at this point.

[uumckk16]

Originally Posted by HopefulNikki

Well that stinks. The UUs seem nice enough, though

Thanks! I'm not sure if I would necessarily classify myself as a deist anymore but I do have deistic tendencies. I guess you could say I'm a deist who's open to the idea of God communicating to us (though only internally - not through external means such as miracles).

And I do adore Thomas Paine

[Very_Irreverand_Bill]

Originally Posted by roli

I am not but would like to hear your position as a deist.
Is it in relation to a prior expereince with God or just your own reasoning behind it all?
Do you believe that a supernatural encounter or revelation from God is possible?

I believe in a Cosmocrator{cosmos creative force**/GoDevil as PROBABLY either first cause and/or prime mover behind the Universe/Multiverse; I am deistically based, but am often of a more PanDeistic/PanenDeistic mindset as well. It is impersonal from what I can tell, and perhaps not even aware of us...and IF it is it seemingly probbaly views as nothing more than we as humans may view a single skin cell or a cluster of them in a petri dish, or how we feel towards or see or "know" a sub-atomic particle.

To answer your other questions:

Originally Posted by roli

Is it in relation to a prior expereince with God or just your own reasoning behind it all??

Reasoning. It just seems likely that there was some sort of intelligent first cause force.

Originally Posted by roli

Do you believe that a supernatural encounter or revelation from God is possible

Yeah Sure, anything is "possible". The question is whether it is "probable", to which my answer is ,No,probably not.

Allthough I should clarify a bit of a differnence between supernatural encounter and revelation. I do think a supernatural...or rather "extranatural" encounter with occult energies that originate from the first cause cosmocrator is something that can be probably experienced, but a direct revelation from the very personality of said cosmocrator force...not likely.

In Reason:
Irreverand Bill

[Comet]

Good to see some Deists in here!!! As a Monist I feel your pain in not finding many (or any others) of like beliefs. Be patient, they will come around. It is a good site and people find it eventually.

How did you all come to be Deists?

[Wandered Off]

Hi Comet. I ended up that way using the same tool most of us do, reason. I was raised as a fundamentalist Southern Baptist very fervent in my beliefs.

As I matured during my college years, I began to question as so many do. The first major lynchpin to fall for me was Biblical inerrancy. Once that went, the rest swirled away quickly behind. The more I thought about it, the more I concluded that the beliefs of my youth painted a terrible image of God. There were too many oddities, such as absurdity of thinking an omnipotent being would use second-hand revelation or agents, the absolute evil of eternal Hell, ethical issues around selective intervention, and the list goes on.

However, I couldn't get past the belief that there must be a single first cause, so *poof* I'm a Deist - though I didn't know there was a category for it until some research. It was a process that took years, with lots of pain and guilt, but afterward I have much more inner peace.

It's nice to have a belief system that aligns with reality as I see it, without a capricious and rather human-looking god setting up disastrous consequences for a decision but forcing us to make it on faith alone.

[Comet]

I guess that explains your user name to me a bit

[chipg]

Hi, I'm glad I found this site, although it's too bad that there is little activity on it. I am Jewish although my specific belief coincides exactly with Deism. I do not believe in any of the "miraculous" fables of the Bible, and I believe that organized religion is an effort to understand God and the afterlife in ways we simply can't know. It is also used as a means of power and control, and what bothers me most of all is that people "of faith" are elevated to such high status as good people, while I, who use the intelligence and reason that God provided for me, draw my own conclusions and am thought less-of because I do not have "faith". Somebody with faith acknolwedges that an event is without any reason, yet believes it anyway. Isn't it an insult to our creator not to use our own minds. I don't need to change religions, because as a Jews I can question all I want (and I believe that most Jews, begin reform, are quietly Deists anyway).

[Random]

Originally Posted by chipg

Hi, I'm glad I found this site, although it's too bad that there is little activity on it. I am Jewish although my specific belief coincides exactly with Deism. I do not believe in any of the "miraculous" fables of the Bible, and I believe that organized religion is an effort to understand God and the afterlife in ways we simply can't know. It is also used as a means of power and control, and what bothers me most of all is that people "of faith" are elevated to such high status as good people, while I, who use the intelligence and reason that God provided for me, draw my own conclusions and am thought less-of because I do not have "faith". Somebody with faith acknolwedges that an event is without any reason, yet believes it anyway. Isn't it an insult to our creator not to use our own minds. I don't need to change religions, because as a Jews I can question all I want (and I believe that most Jews, begin reform, are quietly Deists anyway).

Interesting. I take it you mean generic Deism: that God created the Universes and set their laws in motion (life to evolve etc) then abdicated His throne, so to speak, and abandoned Creation having no further interaction with it?

Am I to seriously believe Reform Jews accept this explanation?

[Wandered Off]

Originally Posted by chipg

Hi, I'm glad I found this site, although it's too bad that there is little activity on it.

Glad you found it too. Yeah, there isn't much activity on this part of the forum, but I usually find myself jumping in on other forums on this site. We can always use new perspectives. If you want to interact with Deists particularly, you may want to check out dynamicdeism.com.

[Mavrikmind]

Originally Posted by HopefulNikki

Deists typically would say that their belief in a God stems from reason and nature. That is, they see evidence for God all around them in the natural world. Most of them would typically also favor any number of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. I agree with both of these viewpoints in how I come to the conclusion that God exists. In terms of supernatural revelations from God, I don't really think they're necesary to learn things about God. I don't need a book to tell me that God exists. I don't need to view supernatural miracles, when the natural world is so miraculous as it is.

If that is fairly accurate then that would describe me as well
To furhter explain myself, I don't really need a "supernatural" explanation of God, After being raised in a babtist environment where nothing made alot of sense, I've come to my own conclusions and let my own idea's lead me.
Although I don't discount suprnatural occurances that people might have.