The Creator Gators

The Simplicity of Deism

“Why is the world the way it is, if there is a God”?

“Why do bad things happen to good people”?

There are many people, young and old, who are self-thinkers and can’t find any answers to the big spiritual questions that make any real sense. To many of them, atheism doesn’t work, but neither does any known religion including fundamentalist Christianity. They seem to be on a long-term quest for truth, and seem resigned to the fact that they may have to keep searching all their lives, or simply give up and just enjoy life, agnostically. Ironically, just enjoying life (in a way beneficial to all) is often what their soul most needs.

A common element in quotes like this is frustration. These seekers don’t understand why apparently no one has figured these things out, in a form that they (the seekers) can believe. They don’t understand why the world is as it is, if the divine exists. Why have all the traumatic events in their life happened, with no response from a higher power. The frustration can be so intense that it leads to depression.

In fact there is an explanation that works logically, and it is not new. But it has been overlooked and rejected because it doesn’t fit closely enough with the accepted norms of spirituality.

Deism is a religious philosophy that flowered briefly in the Enlightenment of the 1700’s. It is a very simple belief system in which the existence of a Creator is accepted axiomatically, but beyond that, only logic and reason are valid ways of arriving at truth; all other kinds of revelation including scripture are invalid. God does not intervene in human affairs, and lets humanity run its course. That’s right – God (whatever that means) is making us fend for ourselves. But it’s part of a larger plan that makes sense.

Matthew Tindal and a few other English philosophers championed Deism. It resonated with some of the American Founding Fathers including Franklin, Jefferson and Thomas Paine. But it never caught on later because it seems incomplete somehow. On the face of it the whole thing seems pointless.

The missing component is the concept of reincarnation. If each person has a permanent aspect of themselves called the soul, that evolves by means of multiple lifetimes, then it all makes sense.

Hinduism and other Eastern religions understand spiritual reality better than Western religions. They know about the large variety of beings in the spiritual realm, and the learning cycle called reincarnation. But they have become encumbered with unnecessary ritual and detail. Taoism was/is relatively pure and unburdened with arbitrary formalism, but Taoism is too undefined to answer most people’s real questions.

Disbelievers in reincarnation can continue to disbelieve in it, and that is fine with spirit; it just means they will come by their learning the longer, and often the hard, way. Everything that everyone does goes into the cosmic computer that controls the reincarnation mechanism, and eventually everyone will come around to full realization.

Is all this provable? Not in a hard facts way. A better question is, does it make sense more than any other belief system, including atheism?

Speaking of that, if you are an atheist you have to accept that life is the result of a series of accidents. If any of those chance events didn’t happen, reality would just be the physical universe. Think about it: does a universe with no life make any sense?

The CreatorGators.com website looks at this view of spirituality in cartoon format, using humor to get its points across. It offers plenty of food for thought and may even offer hope to some of those disillusioned persons I mentioned at the beginning.   - PWB (1-1-21)