Christians and Bible Scholars...Deism Challenge!


HarvDog

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Re: Christians and Bible Scholars...Deism Challenge!

I am no bible scholar, that's for sure.

Deism is the belief that after God created the world and gave man reason, He retreated and left man to fend for himself, trusting man to use reason to solve all His problems. Man was expected to use reason to discover the laws of nature and employ them for his benefit and to discover the Universal Moral Law and obey it. Mainstream Deism included a Last Judgement based upon the individual's obedience or disobedience to the moral law. Some Deists believed in divine providence but not in answers to prayer or miracles.

The belief in a Universal Moral Law which is understandable by all men through reason. Deists seem to have borrowed the concept of a universal moral law from the Romans.

Deism is a half-way house to atheism or pantheism. and a halfway house to religious liberalism.

The Deists attempted to revise the Bible and strip Jesus of His Deity, His miracles, His Resurrection, and His stern judgements. There is no room for Jesus in Deism. No need for redemption at all since their walk is based solely on good works. you can discern the same strange spiritual flatness, or blank faith, if you go to a modern liberal pastor for advice.

I'm not surprised that Deism is making a come back in modern society. It sits right smack in the middle of most religions, but leans to the left.

Deism,atheism and pantheism is what your left with, when you take Jesus out of the bible and replace him with a man-made notion of a god, who has turned his back completely on mankind and left us only with a moral code to live by.

There is no Grace, there is no forgiveness..just a god who has better things to do.

The key to salvation is not in the law or some great biblical moral code to live your life by. The key is in Jesus. His blood and his resurrection was for us.

Why be a deist then ? Why not just be an atheist? crazy.gif

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Re: Christians and Bible Scholars...Deism Challenge!

Buckee...we started working the Jesus angle but then it almost seem like you switched to try to convince my to be an atheist. confused.gif

What do you say to the deist claim that there are no consequences to how ones lives his life since there is no after-live?

What about the thinking that no-one knows for sure if their "god" is the right one?

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Re: Christians and Bible Scholars...Deism Challenge!

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The religious views of George Washington are a matter of some controversy. There is considerable evidence that he (like many of the Founding Fathers) was a Deist - believing in God (he preferred more impersonal appellations, like Providence), but not believing in divine intervention in the world after the initial design. Before the revolution, when the Episcopal Church was still the state religion in Virginia, he served as a vestryman (lay officer) for his local church. He spoke often of the value of religion in general, and he often accompanied his wife to Christian church services. However, there is no record of his ever becoming a communicant in any Christian church and he would regularly leave services before communion - with the other non-communicants. When Rev. Dr. James Abercrombie, rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia mentioned in a weekly sermon that those in elevated stations set an unhappy example by leaving at communion, Washington ceased attending at all on communion Sundays. Long after Washington died, asked about Washington's beliefs, Abercrombie replied: "Sir, Washington was a Deist." Various prayers said to have been composed by him in his later life are highly edited. He did not ask for any clergy on his deathbed, though one was available. His funeral services were those of the Freemasons.

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On matters of religion, Jefferson was sometimes accused by his political opponents as being an atheist; however, he was actually most sympathetic to Deism, a philosophy which he shared with many other notable intellectuals of his time. Jefferson believed in a creator, and in the United States Declaration of Independence refers to "Nature's God". Jefferson believed, furthermore, that Nature's God endowed humanity with a number of inalienable rights, such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". However,"Nature's God", in Jefferson's view, was not a being to be worshipped through the practice of religion, but to be understood, if possible, through reason and science.

Jefferson was raised Episcopalian at a time when the Episcopal Church was the state religion in Virginia. Before the American Revolution, when the Episcopal Church was the American branch of the Anglican Church of England, Jefferson was a vestryman in his local church, a lay position that was part of political office at the time. He later removed his name from those available to become godparents, because his Deist beliefs opposed Trinitarian theology.Jefferson later expressed general agreement with his friend Joseph Priestley's Unitarianism, but there were no Unitarian churches in Virginia.

From 1784 to 1786 Jefferson and James Madison worked together to oppose Patrick Henry's attempts to again assess taxes in Virginia to support churches. Instead, in 1786 the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom, which he had first submitted in 1779, and was one of only three accomplishments he put in his own epitaph. Virginia thereby became the first state to disestablish religion — Rhode Island, Delaware, and Pennsylvania never having had established religion.

Like most deists, Jefferson did not believe in miracles. He labored on an edited version of the Gospels, removing references to the miracles of Jesus and material he considered preternatural, leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible, later printed in some 2,500 copies for the U.S. Congress in 1903. Though Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, he had high esteem for Jesus' moral teachings, which he viewed as the "principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform [prior Jewish] moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state." (Letter to Joseph Priestley, April 9, 1803.)

Jefferson also supported the erection of what he called a "wall of separation between Church and State", which he believed was a principle expressed within the First Amendment (see Letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association, 1802, Letter to Virginia Baptists, 1808). It is unclear what Jefferson meant by this "wall of separation".

"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

"We have solved ... the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."

— as quoted in the Letter to the Virginia Baptists (1808). This is his second use of the term "wall of separation," here quoting his own use in the Danbury Baptist letter. This wording was cited several times by the Supreme Court as an accurate description of the Establishment Clause: Reynolds (98 U.S. at 164, 1879); Everson (330 U.S. at 59, 1947); McCollum (333 U.S. at 232, 1948).

He further developed his thoughts in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779), quoted from Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 347:

"[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

During his presidency, Jefferson refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and thanksgiving. Moreover, his private letters indicate he was skeptical of too much interference by clergy in matters of civil government. His letters contain the following observations: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government" (Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813), and, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own" (Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814). "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government" (Letter to Roger C. Weightman June 24, 1826).

On the other hand, there is one anecdote by the Rev. Ethan Allen (1797-1879) in which Allen claimed to have seen Jefferson walking to church one Sunday with a large red prayer book under his arm. Allen claimed he overheard Jefferson say to a friend who had challenged him for going to church when he did not believe: "[N]o nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning sir." (handwritten history of Rev. Ethan Allen, Library of Congress). This anecdote seems to contradict statements in Jefferson's personal letters. As Rev. Allen was only 12 when Jefferson retired the presidency, there is large doubt as to the accuracy of Allen's diary entry.

Clearly, however, Jefferson's desire to erect a "wall of separation" did not include a desire to inhibit the personal religious lives of public officials. Jefferson himself attended certain public Christian services during his presidency. He also had friends who were clergy, and he supported some churches financially. Moreover, he personally believed, as did Deist and humanist John Locke, that human rights were endowed by a God: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever" (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-1785 Query 18). Though not religious himself, he viewed religious opinions in others, including public officials, as a purely personal matter with which the state should not interfere:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State" (Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT, January 1, 1802).

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Don't use the word liberal unless you know how to use it. At least you didn't call my post B.S. like you have before, probably realized it wasn't too "Christian."

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Re: Christians and Bible Scholars...Deism Challenge!

I'm not a scholar either, but I have an eye of sorts for human nature........not being familiar with Deism, it would appear to me that it is a religion by people that beleive in God, but don't want to be held accountable for the actions in the here-after........"ignore it and it will go away" kind of mentality.............

it's not worth the risk to me, I'll put forth the extra work and effort.....after all, the things in life (on earth, and in heaven) most appreciated are the things worked hardest to attain....

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Re: Christians and Bible Scholars...Deism Challenge!

[ QUOTE ]

I'm not a scholar either, but I have an eye of sorts for human nature........not being familiar with Deism, it would appear to me that it is a religion by people that beleive in God, but don't want to be held accountable for the actions in the here-after........"ignore it and it will go away" kind of mentality.............

it's not worth the risk to me, I'll put forth the extra work and effort.....after all, the things in life (on earth, and in heaven) most appreciated are the things worked hardest to attain....

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Good response!

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