Millions of people in the US are practicing deists and don’t know it.  In fact, most deists in the US have never heard the word “deism” before.  Sad, but true.

A couple of important definitions before I go on:  Deism is freethought that includes a recognition of God in some form.  Freethought is when you think about spiritual things without following a learned religion.  When you wonder about God and spiritual things, and you do so without studying a system of religion you are practicing freethought, you are a freethinker.  If you study the Bible or Koran as a believer, and you do so with the intent of strengthening your religious faith, you are definitely not practicing freethought.

When your freethought leads you to believe in God in some form you are a Deist.

Some Deists believe in a God who intervenes in the universe and creates events that affect people’s lives.  Some believe in a distant God who created the universe and sustains it, but doesn’t get involved.  Some Deists believe in an afterlife.  Some don’t.

I have to argue that all US citizens are Deists by virtue of citizenship.

Deism is the civic religion of the US.  We begin Congress and other civic events with a prayer of thanks to God.  We put phrases like “In God we trust” on government items like our money.  In legal documents we refer to natural events like hurricanes and earthquakes as “acts of God.”  We celebrate the Fourth of July, the date on our Declaration of Independence, as our national holiday, not the date of the signing of our Constitution.  We do this because the Constitution is primarily a legal document describing the technicalities of government, while the Declaration of Independence is our statement of spiritual values.  The values in the Declaration of Independence are Deist, not Christian.

And yet, Christianity insists on declaring incorrectly that the US is a Christian nation.  They propagandize away the Deism that is the spiritual foundation that makes our nation great. They claim that Christianity is the foundation of the US.  Where are the Christian beliefs in the Declaration of Independence?  There are none.  Does the fact that the Declaration of Independence refers to “Nature’s God” make it Christian?  No this phrase was written by Deists and it means the Deist idea of God as the author of the universe.  Can you point out even one value in the US Declaration of Independence or Constitution that is Christian and not Deist? Good luck with that. There are none.   All the spiritual values found in those documents are Deist.

Christianity has done a lot to destroy the concept of Deism in the US.   Christianity was designed from the beginning to be a tool for social control.  The Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome so he could use Christianity to control his empire.  The Church did its job well, and continues to do so today.

Christianity is an organized religion.  Deism is not; it is is more of a mindset or way of thinking about things.  Christianity’s organization gives it a large degree of control over our society, as Constantine designed it to do 1,700 years ago.   Christianity’s social control has allowed it to misappropriate its defining role in our culture.  We are a Deist nation of Deist values, not a Christian nation of Christian values. When a conflict exists between Deism’s natural truths and Christianity’s unnatural “truths,” Deism always wins (at least it does outside the walls of the Christian church).

The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”  Since Deism is a mindset, not a religion, Deism can be a civic “religion” without violating the Constitutional requirement of the separation of church and state.  Christianity can make no such claim.

That is why all US citizens are Deists. The US is a Deist nation.

Some Christians don’t believe that Yeshua is literally the direct son of God.  They believe that Yeshua was just an enlightened teacher whose stories were over exaggerated.  These folks are called Christian Deists.  Thomas Jefferson was a Christian Deist.

Agnostics haven’t found an understanding of God that they can accept.

Atheists simply reject any idea of God.  They argue against God as the creator of everything by asking “If God is the creator of everything, who created God?”  That is where atheists are completely irrational.  The Creator of natural law must be outside of natural law, and not subject to natural law, because the Creator is “before” natural law.  The natural law of “cause and effect” that Atheists argue about cannot apply to the Creator of natural law. Atheists stubbornly and irrationally refuse to see the obviousness of this fact.  The universe must have an Origin, and that Origin must be outside of natural laws.

Deists generally ignore religious training and propagandizing, but come to believe in God by thinking for themselves or through cultural beliefs or because of a wanting to believe in God.  Some Deists are people who left their old church because they became disenchanted in their faith and they adopt a form of spirituality that accepts God, but not their old faith.  Millions in the US are simply practitioners of Moral Therapeutic Deism (http://www.ptsem.edu/iym/lectures/2005/Smith-Moralistic.pdf). 

So, are you a Deist?

Stumble it!