debates about words again -doh!
One time I asked my 14 year old son if he had read a book that we were talking about he said "Yeah, it was just full of words".
"I can't think of how the universe could exist without being created by a god"
A god that doesn't interact with this world in any way and is undetectable is no different to a god that doesn't exist. Why would anyone believe in such a concept?
A least theist think that their god/s actually do something.
It is kinda the approach of " I don't know therefore god' It lends palusability to a creator of the universe that left the world as a bastard child in a since. This also conviently explains why there is evil in the world etc.
I see no valid reason to hold such a belief.
I believe it to be a good approach to questioning theism when coming from a theistic background. It works in the beginning but people tend to grow out of the idea. It was very popular at one time but the term for the most part is out of common usage.
Without evidence, there’s no reason to think this.
As I phrased it, It is the belief that god/gods MAY exist, thus leaving the possiblity much like an agnostic that Gods COULD exist. It was not the claim that they DO exist, in which case you are correct. This is a common transition from believer to unbeliever as people work out the problems of theism for themselves. Thank youi for the comment.
I was a deist in college. I guess it was simply a transition point from being Christian to an atheist. I started off believing the church stories, then I stopped believing them but still believed God existed, and then simply stopped believing in that god entirely.
I can't rule out the deist god entirely because it's impossible to prove that an uncaring god doesn't exist. So for that reason alone, I'm simply an agnostic atheist.
Ultimately, the label that fits me most snugly is apatheist. Even if God does exist, it doesn't care enough about our daily lives that anything I do will make a difference in whether I go to Heaven or not. And I see no evidence for a god anyway.
I did also for a very short time transition from theist to Deist and very shortly after i realized I was an antheist. I took me much longer to admit it to myself though.
Interestingly enough most Founding Fathers of the US of A were Deist.
[en.wikipedia.org]
My son's middle name was given after Thomas Jefferson perhaps one of the best known deist aside of Benjaman Franklin.