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God and the Philosophers

Deism: Traditional & Contemporary

Robert Griffiths looks into an anti-religion, pro-God way of thinking.

Deism is belief in the existence of a creator God who does not intervene in the universe, and in particular, in the lives of people. Cleverly, deists try to detach God from religion. As far as religion is concerned, they look and sound like atheists: they reject religious revelation, and often call religion ‘superstition’. But they hold on to God.

Deism seems to come in what I call a ‘hard’ or sceptical version, and a ‘soft’ version.

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