Gosh, another great questioning thread about Deism. I am starting to feel at home here!
Ok, First, stating "Deists believe this" or "Deists believe that" is somewhat problematic. Other than the Three core beliefs (God Exists, Reason is the tool we use to understand the universe, We should also use Reason in how we live our lives), Deists go all over the spectrum in their beliefs.
So, I can speak from my Deist beliefs, and I can speak in General about the beliefs of other Deists... Deists are free to follow where their Reason and experience take them.
So, with that proviso... here we go....
The Creator God gave us the gift of Reason, how does faith interact with reason, or does it? Can human emotions, (love, hate) be Reasonable? Thomas Paine wrote that the revealed creation story appeals to the simple explination of why God created man, How do Deist or Reason explain that it was man that was given Reason, and not some other animal?
Ok, many Deists believe that there was one, and only one event that we know God was the motivational factor behind... and that was the creation itself. Some of us (including me) believe that God created the natural laws, and the universe was created according to those laws. Some Deists do not even believe the Universe had a creation moment, but rather subscribe to a "steady state" model of the Universe always existing in some form.
And PanenDeists believe that the Universe itself is God (very simplified).... I recently was allowed to host an excellent essay on panendeism by one of the premier thinkers in this field, Travis Clementsmith.
http://dynamicdeism.org/library/panendeisticmodel.htm
One of the common threads among Deists is that we believe that God either does not interfere in the Universe, or that he does so in ways that we cannot perceive. Humans obtained the ability to Reason at the level that we do because the evolutionary process has led us to this point. When Deists usually use the term "Gift of Reason" what we mean really is the Gift of the natural laws which led to our ability to Reason.
So, God did not specifically decide that humans would be able to Reason, but he designed a Universe that created a beings able to Reason at different levels. Man is just the being that has the most of this ability.
Deists come to their belief in God in several different ways. Mine, boiled down, is that the universe simply does not make since to me without a purpose... and ascribing that a purpose would seem to exist... there then logically would need to be a force that can percieve that purpose.
My point of this question is to explain why man was chosen to evolve as he has from the Deist perspective.
We were not "chosen"... we simply did evolve into the beings we are according to the natural laws of the universe... And we have evolved to the level that we can begin to Reason, and perceive the universe around us in more than local terms.
To the Deist, Humans are not the end all be all of the Universe... we are simply a part of it. We may be an important part, because we have begun to percieve our universe beyond our local areas and concerns. We have learned to think in symbols. And we have learned to Reason....
As such, thinking about the great questions of life, from a reasonable perspective relying on experience, is the quest of the Deist...
Reason and Respect in all you say and do,
David Pyle
