Deism. From the Latin deus, "god". Historically, the term "deism" was generally taken as synonymous with "theism" (from the Greek theos, "god") in opposition to atheism and polytheism. In the 17th c., however, a tendency emerged, which came to fuller fruition in the 18th c., to repudiate all revelational religion and to seek instead a religion based upon reason alone. In the intellectual climate of that time and the mechanistic view of the universe that prevailed, the concept that developed out of that attitude was of a God who created the world but thereafter did not intervene in its operation. For if, as was commonly held, the universe is a machine, like a clock, then, if it is created by God, presumably the divine clockmaker is to be credited with making it perfectly. Any tinkering with it would imply that the divine clockmaker had done his work inefficiently. Deists, however, might recognize, as indeed many did, a moral law in the universe entailing an objective difference between right and wrong and even belief in an afterlife in which one's condition would be determined by one's conduct in the present one. The Socianians, who may be regarded as the forerunners of the modern Unitarians, represented a move in this direction. Some would regard Lord Herbert of Cherbury as the founder of deism. He set out five "pillars" of the deist position. The movement was expressed in what came to be called "natural" as opposed to "revealed" religion. Matthew Tindal, William Wollaston, John Toland, and Thomas Woolston, are among writers of the period who may be called deists. Voltaire was notably influenced by the English deists. The movement, however, had an influence far beyond those who could properly be so designated. Deistic attitudes were widespread among the educated classes in Germany, England, and France and indeed might be said to be characteristic of a majority of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence. Many churchmen held views, if only more or less privately, in that direction. Deism was even more explictly and widely held in France and Germany than in England. Voltaire and Rousseau were both deists, as indeed were the Encyclopaedists, and Kant may be regarded as a philosophical exponent of a system in which God was seen in characteristically deistic terms. The most vigorous critic of deism in the English 18th c. scene was Joseph Butler, whose Analogy of Religion ( 1736) was a classic refutation in its time. In the light of intellectual developments early in the 20th c. (not least in the light of modern physics), much of the deistic outlook became outmoded and irrelevant.
deism : (f.) devabhatti. (m.) issaravāda.
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