There Were Deists!

Of Course There Were Deists!
May 31, 2003

Commentary on a Media Bypass Article

"Deists Don't Appeal To God... Founders Were Not Deists"

So is entitled a truly disgusting and substandard article on page 20 of the May 2003 Media Bypass, by one Mike Smith. This article is worse than just one more tired attempt to recast the past in favor of the sick pseudo-Christian fantasy that the united States is a Christian nation, that the Founders were all Christians, and that nobody of any other religion deserves to be here; it is among the least scholarly and most offensive of its ilk. Media Bypass should be embarrassed to have published it.

As a person with strong Deist leanings myself, I have decided to challenge these ignorant lies and insults. It is fitting that I initiate the balance by taking up this particularly horrific piece of work.

Rudeness

Smith comes right out swinging, calling the fact that many of the American Founders were Deists a false claim, and saying of those who accept that there were Deists among the Founders, "One must be completely ignorant of the Founder's beliefs or unable to think logically or a liar, likely with an unAmerican agenda, to maintain that claim...."

Then he suggests that we must allow for combinations of those "explanations" -- "... for instance they could be liars and unable to think logically." Then to be cute, he apologizes to morons. Too bad that in his cleverness he neglected to mention 'ignorant and unable to think logically,' for then he might have left himself a place to live.

At the close of his article Mr. Smith reveals the depths of his religious bigotry when he blatantly identifies the people who disagree with him on this issue as not just unAmerican but outright enemies of the united States. I kid you not: this dolt must think he farts ambrosia.

Ignorance

To lay the foundation for his diatribe, Smith cites an unnamed edition of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language:

Deism: 1. belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of the supernatural revelation (distinguished from THEISM).; 2. belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it.

As a patriot and constitutionalist I find it embarrassing that anyone who might be associated with the things I hold dear could make such a blatant mistake as to rely solely on a dictionary from now to try to define a term from then. I would venture that Smith is probably right there with us all in the complaint that American education has been re-engineered into an exercise in brainwashing complete with texts rife with important omissions and full of alterations and lies. Yet he fails to use this knowledge as a guide toward finding an appropriate reference when choosing the lynchpins of his rant. Or to take a broad enough look at his subject.

Let's consider a reference that has been far more successful in resisting revision over the decades. There we find a much more competent discussion of Deism, though itself still weak, in the Encyclopćdia Britannica (in our 15th Edition (1980), it is found in Volume 5 of the Macropćdia, pages 561-63).

First, a major correction from that article to Smith's cited definitions:

Historically, a distinction between theism and Deism has never had wide currency in European thought. As an example, when encyclopćdist Denis Diderot, in France, translated into French the works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, one of the important English Deists, he often rendered "Deism" as thésme.

What this correction shows is that Deism is far from an opposite to theism, and thus it is imprudent, if not a itself a lie, to position Deism as atheism (a-theism). This in turn removes the argument that a Deist cannot refer to God. It even weakens Smith's contention that our Deist founders "appeal[ed] to God". Of course, to see the truth in these points, you must understand what Deism really is. I'll get to that.

Dim-wittedness

By way of his reference to at least some his of opponents as "unable to think logically," Smith promises to not only think logically but to present a well-reasoned case for his position. And by way of his reference to at least some of his opponents as being "likely with an unAmerican agenda," Smith promises to be objective. Yet he comes across as neither logical nor objective, and delivers anything but a well-reasoned position.

In my studies of languages, philosophies and religions I have come to understand that one must view events in their own time if one is to hope to understand them. As part of that same statement, it is not possible to understand events that occurred under particular circumstances from within a framework of different circumstances. Maybe Smith just hasn't learned that lesson yet.

Things were not the same in the 1600s and 1700s with respect to religion and social controls in New England. People were dunked, pilloried and burned at the stake for statements that didn't fit with popular sentiment. Given such an unhealthy climate of religious "reverse" persecution, and the fact that Deists and all other religious dissenters had to tread lightly to retain any type of social, commercial, or political position, it is not surprising that many of their references to the Creator were not as subtle as they might otherwise have been.

It's grating to think so, but early-American Deists probably had to do a fair share of ass-kissing with the Christians just to be allowed a voice next to the majority. And some Christians today wonder why so many non-Christians can't stand to have them around! More on that in a moment.

Smith argues that the many references to God, the Creator, Nature's God, etc., prove that the second of his dictionary definitions of Deism is not present in the Founders. In particular, he cites the Declaration of Independence "...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence..." as proof of a belief in an activist God. Yet in truth there is nothing in that phrase that requires any action of God, if you understand that Deists see the universe as God-in-action operating as natural law. Far from invoking a guardianship, the phrase affirms a function of existence, that if you act in accord with the natural order of things, you will be safe.

But Smith does not understand Deism, and so he is unable to proceed with unadulterated logic.

Further, you cannot be objective in the defense of an unquestioned article of faith. That should be obvious to all. One of the ways it reveals itself as an unconscious influence in Smith's reasoning (and a controlling one at that) is in his leap from citations of God in some of the Founders' writings to the "worship [of] the God that sent his only begotten Son, Jesus that they might have life".

There is absolutely no automatic connection between a belief in God and being a Christian. The fact that Christians believe in God is not proof that everyone who believes in God is a Christian. This is as absurd as saying that since all Englishmen are Earthlings, all Earthlings are Englishmen! Yet it is a fond practice of those who argue against Deism to try to make their case upon such insubstantial leaps.

Such leaps are easy to discount. Muslims believe in God, as do Jews, and neither are Christians. Many Muslem writings acknowledge Jesus as at least a prophet. And he is mentioned in Suras (chapters) 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 19, 21, 33, 42, 43, 57 and 61 of my copy of the Quran. Even so, only an unconscious person would try to use those facts as proof that that Muslims are really Christians or that Muhammad was a Christian. Verily, I am certain I have never met anyone that stupid. But then, I have not yet met Smith. Hopefully when I do, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Deism

What is Deism, what do Deists believe, and why is there a problem between Christians and Deists? Let's begin with our Encyclopćdia Britannica article, on the political aspects of this question.

The Deists were particularly vehement against any manifestation of religious fanaticism and enthusiasm. In this respect Shaftesbury's Letter Concerning Enthusiasm (1708) was probably the crucial document in propagating their ideas. Revolted by the Puritan fanatics of the previous century and by the wild hysteria of a group of French exiles prophesying in London in 1707, Shaftesbury denounced all forms of religious extravagance as perversions of true religion. These false prophets were directing religious emotions, benign in themselves, into the wrong channels. Any description of God that depicted his impending vengeance, vindictiveness, jealousy, and destructive cruelty was blasphemous. Because sound religion could only find expression among healthy men, the argument was common in Deist literature that the preaching of extreme asceticism, the practice of self-torture, and the violence of religious persecutions were all evidence of psychological illness and had nothing to do with authentic religious sentiment and conduct. The Deist God, ever gentle, loving, and benevolent, intended men to behave toward one another in the same kindly and tolerant fashion.

Wow, there's an insight. Today violent irrational fanaticism shrouds itself in Islam; in the 16-1700s it was Christianity, sowing the seeds of the problems it faces today.

It was this repulsive and fanatic "enthusiasm" that drove Christian conservatives of the time to brand Thomas Jefferson an "Infidel" because he so firmly resisted certain fundamentalist Christian sects' campaigns to disallow any but their own version of religion. And it was that contest that gave rise to Jefferson's "wall of separation between Church and State." (See below.)

And perhaps now we may finally understand the true scope of meaning in Jefferson's quote, immortalized in the architecture of his Monument, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --If we take that statement in context: Jefferson was not merely decrying political tyranny or he would have said so; he was railing against the efforts of a particular sect to achieve religious establishment within the government.

But what is Deism, anyway?

The defect in the contemporary explanation of Deism is easy to see as a consequence of Christians and Humanists dividing up the territory and then each group trying to understand yet a third thing in their own terms. Humanists don't believe in God at all and use a special definition for the idea of spirituality, and Christians generally can't conceive of God in any form other than as something of a superman, but a personage nonetheless. Deism isn't like either of that.

The Deist view of creation isn't quite like what the above definitions depict. In the pure Deistic view, the universe manifested spontaneously out of the very fabric of the Creator as the inevitable consequence of the Creator's own impulse to exist. In more conventional terms, the Creator created the universe out of itself, and rather than somehow remaining separate from that creation (involved or not), the Creator exists infused throughout the universe in operation as natural law. Far more than any other religion, Deism really means it when it says that "God lives in the details!"

The implications of the Desist view are astounding.

If the Creator exists through the universe as its very fabric, and operates through it as natural law, certain conclusions are strongly implied:

Whatever the intent of the Creator in the creation, the entire universe must reflect it. Assuming that the Creator meant itself no ill in becoming manifest but rather simply wanted to exist and experience the full spectrum of life, then the same would be the purpose of life for all things. Therefore it must be that the trend of natural law is toward mutual respect and decency. One result of this conclusion was that Deism rejected the damning idea of original sin, instead seeking alternative explanations for why inherently good people do bad things. An obvious expression of this conclusion was Shaftesbury's reference to the Deist God as "ever gentle, loving, and benevolent, intend[ing] men to behave toward one another in the same kindly and tolerant fashion."
Every thing is in some way a shard of the Creator, every living thing carries within itself the divine spark, and every intelligent creature (us) is in that respect created in the image of the Creator: out of its substance and with some measure of access to its Reason; therefore we have within us the potential to comprehend ourselves, the universe, life, and the Creator itself, and we can achieve this comprehension through skilled reasoning and observation.

It is the difficulty of understanding these ideas in light of the prejudices of other worldviews that has misdirected people into thinking several erroneous things about Deism:

That Deists believe that the Creator remained indifferent; on the contrary, the Creator is totally involved. Just not as an external self-centered individual.
That revelation is not possible; actually, it is only revelation from an outside benefactor that is not possible in the Deist's view, because the Creator is not "out there", it is "in here"! Therefore, revelation is possible, but the vista of the seeker is reversed, from looking out from the material to a distinct supreme being for the flash of understanding, to looking inward through the material to discover Creation in the workings of everything and the essence of self.

I can testify in my own case that there is no conflict between Deism and revelation if viewed this way. I consider myself to be proceeding from revelation, clear and simple. I suffered an epiphany one day sitting by a river contemplating the nature of life and the method of a hawk's flight, and every corner of my understanding, every aspect of my perspective, is even now informed anew from moment to moment by what I saw and experienced that day. I consider that kind of outrageous discovery no less than revelation, but I must also qualify that it arrived more in the form of an experiential realization than as some kind of cosmic telegram from somewhere else.

I understand that this makes me difficult for certain people, because it renders all important things non-negotiable. I cannot "listen to reason" when the other person is coming from blind faith. It doesn't matter if his faith is in Christ, Allah, Spirit or genetics (whether he is a child of the God of Abraham, or Humanist), I cannot abandon what I see in favor of what such people demand I accept on faith alone. Yet at the same time I can see all those other points of view. And I find most of them filled with secret pain and fear.

Pain, because faith, no matter how tightly asserted, is not knowing, and in that it is not a shield against doubt. And fear because where doubt festers eternally, being and having always been horribly wrong is a constant risk and a corrosive influence against confidence.

So I am not at all surprised that people of faith so often and so deeply feel compelled to enforce their view on others. When it's just you and your doubts, a little agreement is comforting, even if you're both wrong. And when your every breath is tainted by fear, having differently-minded people around must be a constant reminder of the danger of losing your religion and finding yourself without a frame of reference. Or worse, guilty of having been without justification for a lifetime's worth of action.

Yes, I understand the needs of people like our Mr. Smith to enforce their religion on others, or at the least to assign it superior status. Contrary to the saying, when you have nothing, you have everything to lose. It must be awful to live in the depths of desperation, just over the edge of an abyss of doubt and fear.

But enough about me, and we have clarified Deism well enough. Were any of the Founders Deists? Yes, many of them. Here again, from the article in the Encyclopćdia Britannica:

American Deists
By the end of the 18th century, Deism had become a dominant religious attitude among intellectual and upper class Americans. Benjamin Franklin, the great sage of the Colonies and then of the new republic,... The first three presidents of the United States also held Deistic convictions, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence.

Thomas Paine is always mentioned in such listings.

Christianity and the Common Law

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. In his own defense as a result of the persecution sent his way by Christian conservatives, he was driven to a singular accomplishment that in fact demolishes the contention that the US is a Christian nation in law.

Here's the story, from page 95 of Merrill D. Peterson's The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (Oxford, 1960; ISBN 0-19-500698-4)

The Sabbath might be desecrated, legislatures might not pray, fasts might not be proclaimed; but adherents of a Christian polity could always fall back upon the common law. Christianity had been recognized as part of the common law of England since the decision of Sir Matthew Hale at the King's Bench in 1676. The identical principle was incorporated in American law after a similar precedent-making decision by Chancellor Kent, of New York, in 1811. In a blasphemy case, People v. Ruggles, Kent declared that Christianity is "part and parcel of the laws of the land." The ruling became the cornerstone of the conservative theory, with far-reaching implications.
The sole authoritative brief against this judge-made doctrine was Thomas Jefferson's. Two years before he died, he wrote an amiable letter to the English radical John Cartwright, in which he offered his explanation of when and how the judges "stole this law in upon us." The usurpation originated in 1613, when Sir Henry Finch in a famous work on the Common Law mistranslated a phrase in an opinion by Prisot contained in the Yearbook for 1458. The opinion held that the common law credited those laws of the Holy Church which were in ancient writing (en ancien scripture), that is, those practices and precedents in the canon law which were shown to be part of the common law. But Finch translated "en ancien scripture" as "holy scripture," Jefferson said, thus taking Christian revelation into common law. Jefferson went on to trace Finch's error through Hale and to Blackstone and Mansfield, whence it came to America. He concluded his letter to Cartwright with a dare to any lawyer "to produce another scrip of authority for the judicial forgery.... What a conspiracy this, between Church and State!"
This was a remarkable tour de force. Jefferson was the sole discoverer of this alleged origin of the legal rule. Learned lawyers generally assumed that it had no specific origin--Christianity had always been part of common law. Jefferson's opinion to the contrary thus had considerable importance. Cartwright at once, and to the author's distress, had the letter published in the London Nation.

A great deal of controversy resulted, and the argument flared for years. It has since been resolved, says Peterson, when "in recent years the Supreme Court has explicitly recognized [Jefferson's] interpretation of the First Amendment--'a wall of separation between Church and State'--as the orthodox principle of American institutions.

Of course, one can simply choose to ignore all this. The other side argued that the common law and canon law developed together through history. But if that's the totality of the facts, then there was no law before the Christians! Yet we know that there was law before them, and that it was, as the primary influence in our history, Jewish, from the Old Testament. But then, that raises a really interesting speculation. Are the people who rely on the Old Testament, admittedly Jewish law, truly Christians? Or are they actually some kind of Jewish dissent group? After all, Christ's law is found in the New Testament, not the old, all jots and tittles aside. Could it be that fundamentalist Christianity is really some sort of identity-impaired hybrid adrift in a schizophrenic never-land somewhere between ancient Judaism and who-knows-which flavor of Christianity? Doomed never to be purely either?

Self-righteousness As Bad Manners

Most religious obnoxiousness comes from an enforced sense of being right, contaminated by a self-glorification in having a superior understanding. Thus it is in the nature of religious fanatics to be obnoxious (and also to remain unaware that they are in fact fanatics). Most manage to control themselves to some degree. Still, they might contain themselves a bit further, perhaps by realizing that they are likely being offensive merely by answering the telephone saying, "Praise the Lord!", without caring about the religious sentiments of the caller. Even so, such minor annoyances can be tolerated by reasonable people for practical periods of time now and then. It is their telephone, after all, and they may abuse it however they like. Never mind that this kind of behavior is an affront to their own religion's admonition not to stand on the corner with prayer beads making a spectacle of being pious.

If nothing else, such obtuse behaviors are a great way to guarantee that one will only be surrounded by like-minded people!

Unfortunately, it too often goes beyond minor annoyances. And it's not just fundamentalists. In fact, I'd bet that our Mr. Smith would be appalled to know that he fits so closely the description of the self-righteous condescending I'm-right-therefore-you're-evil liberal as so brilliantly exposed by Thomas Sowell in his excellent book, The Vision of the Anointed: self-congratulation as a basis for social policy. (Basic Books, 1995; ISBN 0-465-08995-X)

Amazing, isn't it, that Christians and Humanists spend so much time complaining about each other? Not, though, when you consider that they are each trying to do the same thing to the other! At least, that's the view from where I sit out here in left field, just south of the lunatic fringe: both are trying to force upon each other (and me and everyone else) what to think and how to live life, without respect for my/our own view of life or my/our own burden to free will.

Anyway, fanaticism combined with desperation and ignorance drive obnoxious behavior. And when it reaches a certain level, it has to be deflated, lest it succeed in "directing religious emotions, benign in themselves, into the wrong channels."

Tit for Tat?

What about the possible accusation that I have sunk to Mr. Smith's level and that therefore I am no better than him? Well, in the first place, no one is better than anyone else; we're all in this mess together. This isn't a personality pageant.

I firmly believe that the best service one may offer to an errant friend is to show him that he is doing wrong. One way you can do that is as suggested in Isaiah (58:1): "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." (Zondervan, King James) I can say that I do that. And I shout assuming the tone of the transgressor, for where he lives is where he listens. Whether I choose to do it with a voice like a trumpet or as a mirror in the shape of a shit-shovel, well, that's up to the other guy. I take the same approach to the martial arts. I can walk on by, or I can "step-in-&-smash" --it always depends only on how insistent the other guy is. I can live with it either way.

Recommendations

To All Christian Patriots

I must admit that I do not expect this issue to resolve easily. Stubbornness must run its course, it seems. Those who lack the capacity to comprehend a thing also lack the capacity to comprehend that they lack that capacity. And since they cannot doubt themselves, or apprehend the full scope of the issue (whatever issue it may be), they attack the messenger in all disagreements. I will predict, though, that this single point of contention is itself enough to forever doom the movement. I've seen it rip groups apart simply because the proselytizers could not or would not keep to the legal topics of the work at hand. Now more than ever we need to be united in defense of the constitution, not divided over which parts or interpretations of it we will defend.

Perhaps the most astounding (and disappointing) thing that I have come to understand over the past few years observing this phenomenon flows directly from becoming convinced by their behavior that most people, and the constitutionalist community is no exception, are rendered stupid and ineffective by their adamant attachment to proactive ignorance. People balk at learning new things about the world and themselves whenever they are confronted with the need to change something in their lives or their beliefs to accommodate new knowledge. The knowledge itself is not really new in fact, it is only new in the sense of being foreign to their cherished world-view. Generally, people will retreat into a fallacious but comfortable past rather than venture forth into an unfamiliar future, even if that retreat guarantees the loss of cherished treasures.

And what is the shocking discovery that flows from this? It is that, in order to preserve our Republic, it appears that we will have to protect it from its most subtle enemy of all: ourselves. And that to do so, we who are not bound by dogmatic ignorance must consider that the only way we will accomplish that task is to do the thing we detest the most when the more rabid Christians try to do it to the rest of us: we must save them from themselves.

I beg of you all that you set aside this unfounded and divisive non-issue, that you might cease your service to our common enemy by way of your devotion to our divisions, and that you instead begin to search out and build upon our points of agreement. To refuse to do so is to keep us fractured and ineffective, and to my mind that would be the unfortunate best example of Mr. Smith's "unAmerican agenda".

To Media Bypass

You've been developing a Christian-uber-alles undertone for quite some time now. But you need to consider the alienation factor with respect to the extent of the good you can do if you continue to drive away politically like-minded people simply because you over-vocalize the wierd idea that a person has to be Christian to apprehend and appreciate the Americal Dream.

You're beginning to remind me of a small congregation in Pahrump Nevada that refused to seat a group of local (legal) prostitutes one fine Sunday morning back in the mid-eighties. I can't speak for them all, but I can tell you that the one who organized the visit has never since considered Christianity as an alternative to her times of misery. What I'm telling you is that if you continue down this worsening path of exclusion and denigration, you will find your self-righteous self preaching only to the choir, just like that holier-than-thou congregation in Pahrump that was too proud of its Christian superiority to stoop to giving some truly lost souls a chance to find their way.

You can be sure that all these things will be strongly on my mind when your next renewal notice arrives in the mail.

To Mike Smith

You might consider visiting a few of the many rebuttal sites on the internet. (You did recommend researching this issue on the internet at the end of your article, didn't you?) I'd suggest this site, easily found with a mildly worded search through ask.com: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html Also, I'd ask that you apply a tad of that intellect you so proudly claim to have, and keep your opinions of the authors of the site separate from the material they present. (In other words, don't act like one of those self-anointed liberals and try to use some detested aspect of their lives or religious views as justification to dismiss their research without reading it.)

At the least I suggest to you, sir, the next time you get the urge to suck in a big draught of hot air with which to denigrate and insult people on matters in which you yourself are embarrassingly deficient, that you first detach your lips from your anus.

Conclusion

Okay, bring on the firestorm. Sure. Let's us go ahead and fight about all these secondary differences. It makes it all so much easier for the real domestic enemies of the constitution. It's even easier for us, in that it gives us yet another justifier to complain about as we allow our apathetic negligence to smooth the way for those who build their alternative upon the rubble of our un-maintained house.

I for one prefer to build something. Something that history only glimpsed once and never actually got to see.

I invite everyone to join me in that more worthwhile endeavor instead. If to make it happen we have to learn to play well with others, I'd say that would be a small price very worth the paying!

Allen can be emailed at either speaker@aescir.net or allen@lawfulgov.org