Any Deists in the house?

I have a question. My wife and I were discussion our religious beliefs (or lack thereof) for some crazy reason the other night. She thought she was moving towards being a pagan. I felt she was a deist. She had not ever given considerable thought to that. Anybody know a good book that would provide an introduction to deism?

n/t

but isn't Paine more of an atheist? Or am I confusing him with Patrick Henry?

But I personally don't know of any books about it. If your wife is looking at spirituality, there are lots of books about that. I would suggest she check out local spiritual gatherings, sweatlodges, Dances of Universal Peace, as people from all walks of spirituality are usually attracted to them and are welcome. She may find what she is looking for there.

She generally considers him one of the most intelligent presidents we have had (behind Bush of course :P)

We attend a local UU fellowship, so I am sure they will get around to some classes/discussion on it.

Ben Franklin surely was, as were a few others, Hamilton and the elder Adams.

If you want more I suspect that Descartes might offer some insight, along with Hume and Kant.

A while back, I looked over wikipedia's definition - it was short, but quite nicely done. A good place to start.

Comparing paganism with deism is not unusual, but mainly in the context of deism vs. some organized cult like Protestants, baptists, evangelicals, RCs, or Lutherans, who have constructed entire human edifices and itty bitty rules and regs and pretend that they are the word of god. Actually, Deists say that something exists, but it ain't so human-error prone and egotistical to demand prayer, tithes or stone buildings as monuments. Pagans worship the life in all objects, from water, trees and forests, to the stars. Wiccans are actually closer to pagan beliefs. You will never see a pagan torture an animal or cut a tree down uselessly.

Pagan beliefs seem to arise first in europe in the central and baltic regions. the indo european tribes (liths, balts, original prussians before the Teutonic knights committed mass murder and stole their land at the request of an idiot Polish prince) had similar linguistic and paganistic structures as the Indian cultures from where they came. Even today, the linguisitic similarities are striking, especially in an IndoEuro language like Lithuanian and Indian tongues. Many similar words and sentence structures exist. What became Hinduism and Buddhism had great impact on the pagan beliefs that were brought to Eastern Europe.

This pagan love of nature grew and spread throughout Europe, especially in rural areas. After Constantine's brain spasms and mental disorders, christianity took root in the urban areas, and became centered in three places, Rome, Constantinople and in parts of what is now France. As its tentacles grew, church leaders did their best to root out pagan beliefs in rural lands. After many failures, they tried to co-opt the pagan beliefs by incorporating them, stealing them really. Christmas, Easter, in fact all the major holidays were stolen and adapted to their own uses.

Outside of Poland, there is a pagan revival in the Baltics, and the Roman Catholic leaders are getting pissed about it.

:-)

Here is a link to a post which I made a couple of months ago in which I listed a lot of web sites about deism, which are very informative about both classical deism, and deism as it is understood by people today.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=45662&mesg_id=45673

I am formerly a Protestant Christian, but found myself unhappy with some things about the faith, and since became an agnostic but not an atheist. (I considered myself to be just on the believing side of agnostic.) I recently discovered the above web sites about deism, and find that that is what I would now consider myself closest to being.