The Establishment of Nature’s God at the US Godhead

Politics played a primary role in forming our American Deist society. Before the founding of the United States, early American Deist had different deistic beliefs.  There was no single form of Deism that all Deists followed.  Jefferson was a Christian Deist who believed in God, and rejected the divinity of Jesus while still valuing the teachings of Jesus. Franklin believed firmly in heaven and an afterlife, while other Deists did not. Paine was simply antagonistic towards Christianity.  George Washington was most likely deistic in his beliefs, but somewhat indifferent on the topic.  Washington was more interested in socializing, and seemed more interested in Freemasonry than anything else.

When the first Americans wanted to create an independent nation, one of the first political issues they ran into was the attachment of the American Anglicans to the king.  The American rebels needed to break their ties to the king without offending the Anglicans.  In fact, the Anglicans could not reject the authority of the king on their own because doing so would in effect require that they deny their own faith.

The rebellion could not come from other Christian faiths either because that would be a direct challenge to the Anglicans.   If another faith succeeded, the other faith would have social dominance.  This would not sit well with the Anglicans of course.

The solution to the rebel’s problem was to have a politically neutral outside agency to take the lead role.  Deism provided this.  “Nature’s God,” meaning the Creator of the universe, was a generally neutral term that did not exclude any church, while at the same time it left the door open to all faiths.  Deism was the politically correct solution to the political problem of gaining the support of the Anglicans, or at minimizing their resistance to the rebellion.

The Deism that the US founders wrote into the Declaration of Independence was an act of expedience with respect to the Anglicans.  If the rebels did not succeed in overthrowing the rule of the king the Anglicans could say that it was not themselves who rebelled.  Rather, it was those darned Deists.  If the rebels succeeded, the Anglicans still had an “in” to the government because it was founded under the Creator of the Nature, Who would be God as they understood God.

That is one of the main reasons why the US is today a Deist nation.

Natural Rights and the Role of Nature’s God in Government.

Having a right means having access to the use of something. You don’t own property in the sense that it becomes a part of you. Property is part of the universe. Ownership of property means having the right to use it. If you buy a loaf of bread, you have the right to consume or distribute it as you see fit. After you eat it, it truly becomes owned by you because it becomes a part of you. Socially, when we refer to ownership we refer to the social assignment of rights.

The ownership of property is assigned as part of a social contract which is enforced through an empowered government.

Natural rights are rights we are born with which do not require a social contract. A tree in a forest will grow its branches to reach out to get the maximum sunlight, and the roots will grow out to reach the best nutrients from the soil. The tree is using its right to pursue a happier state of being. Early naturalists observed this phenomena and recognized that this is the nature of all living things. All living things seek out a happier state of being. We cannot legislate this away.

Liberty is a natural right for people because we all make choices. We cannot not make choices.

Life is a natural right because we are all alive. As a part of our pursuit of happiness we desire to continue to live. Through my government, I will do my best to deny you the ability to arbitrarily take my life away.

This phrase “…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” most brilliantly defines the context of living.  We have been granted (by our Creator) this right, the gift of life.  Within the context of our life we are granted the right to happiness.  Through our right of choice (Liberty) we are able to make the choices that we believe will lead us to a happier state of being.

Equality is also a natural right. When we drop the assumption of divine intervention and look at things naturalistically, all things are equally natural. We are all equal in the eyes of Nature’s God.

Natural rights are unalienable.  They cannot be separated from you because they are not a social contract. They are natural (“self-evident”) truths as opposed to artificial socially imposed truths or non-natural truths.

As an aside: In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson’s used the word “inalienable.” This was changed to “unalienable” in the final draft. “Inalienable” has its origins in English laws and it was used in reference to the inheritance of title: “prince,” “lord,” etc. “Unalienable” has it roots in naturalism.  The English titles were not natural, so “inalienable” was changed to “unalienable.”

In the purest form of Deism, Natural Rights are our tenets handed down directly from God, much like the Ten Commandments are the Jews, or the Koran is to Muslims. Just as a Christian nation would create its government based on the teachings of Jesus, or a Muslim country would create its government based on the teachings of Mohamed, a Deist nation would create its government based on Natural Rights. And we have done so here in the US.

When we created the US government we drew on the right of happiness to create a government that was more likely to meet the people’s desire for a better quality of life.  The founders understood that the people themselves knew what would lead to their greatest happiness.  By having the people make the decisions, the people make choices and benefit or suffer from those choices. This creates a system of feedback.  If the people choose wisely, the people benefit.  If the people choose unwisely, the people suffer and have no one to blame but themselves.  We have no one to blame but ourselves as a whole, although within our society we tend to blame each other.

The authors of the US Constitution did their best to ensure that our choices are not limited by the tenets of any one religion, and that we are not forced to accept principles of law that originate in tenets that are clearly unnatural.

Nature’s God, the mysterious Creator of Nature, is essential to government. When we established the subservience of the US to Nature’s God, we did two important things.

First, we created the groundwork for natural truths as dominant over the unnatural truths of revealed faiths. When natural truths and supernatural truths are in conflict, the natural truth is assumed correct. This principle gives social guidance when naturalistic people come into conflict with religious people who hold stubbornly to unnatural beliefs.

The invocation of God, the Creator of the Natural Universe, as the highest authority in government also invites religious people to participate in politics. When we invoke the name of God in government, people who believe religiously in a creator God have a sense of ownership and, very important, responsibility.

In theory, a government can be formed based on naturalism. In fact, there are a number of such governments today.  The problem that was faced when the founders formed the US government is that free people who are governing themselves need to accept and support the government. If God was absent from government, religious people might not accept and support the proposed government. Without this buy-in a strictly naturalistic government may have collapsed from lack of involvement from the people, perhaps descending into tyranny.  As a matter of necessity God was included in government.  Today we see this God in government in the form of ceremonial prays before governmental events, the saying “In God we trust” that is printed on money, etc.

A Christian God would have been unacceptable to non-Christians.  If a Christian God was brought into government, there was a problem with which Christian sect would be the central faith.  Christians themselves experienced or observed abuses of their own religion when it became involved in the affairs of state.  God was necessary in the newly formed government, but the Christian God clearly could not be used.

The Deist God was already established as the highest authority by the Declaration of Independence.  This understanding of God was well suited to the role of the American God, so the Deist God became the God of government.

Establishing Nature’s God as the highest authority in government brings in social benefits.  It establishes naturalism as the highest authority in decision making.  The naturalism of Deism helps prevent highly irrational unnatural beliefs from becoming the rule of law, while at the same time it helps involve the religious segment of the population in their own governance.

The Use of Religion in Politics

Politicians in a democratic society desire to sway public opinion.  In the US society politicians use religion to garner public support. Politician find this instrument useful, so it would be difficult, if not impossible, to de-entrench it from US politics today.

One of the most important speeches on Deism came from the great Deist, Abraham Lincoln, in the Gettysburg address. It begins:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.“

Part of the reason this line is so important is because with it Lincoln reaffirms the beginning of the US as 1776. He referred to year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The US was formed as a unified nation by the Constitution in 1787, the year the Constitution was signed. The Fourth of July was celebrated as Independence Day.  The Constitution was only a legal agreement between the States that established a foundation for a common government. The Deist Lincoln needed to unify the country so he called upon the Declaration of Independence because he understood that it defined a common set of principle values. A legal contract was not enough to hold the nation together. The Deist values in the Declaration provided a common spiritual ground, not just a legal contract.

The Declaration of Independence refers to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”, self-evident truths, “their Creator”, “unalienable Rights”, etc. These are all Deist concepts. The Declaration  defines the US as a Deist nation. When the Deist Lincoln clearly defined the US as beginning with the Declaration he established the US as a Deist nation. And that is why that first line from the Gettysburg address is so important with respect to governmental Deism.

The Constitution is a legal contract between the people of the different states for creating and having a common government. The Constitution reflects the Deism found in the Declaration of Independence. With the famous phrase “We the people…” it denies the authority of revealed religion, and establishes the people, not religion, as the source of the empowerment of government. The Constitution draws on the idea of natural rights as the foundation of national law, as opposed to having a church define what is right.

The practices of acknowledging the value of religion, of acknowledging God as the creator of the natural universe, of denying government intervention from religious sources, of valuing the reasoned opinions of the people; these are our Deist political practices.

As for Deist concept of Reason, we have to understand that reason and rationality are two different things. I think that some classic Deists didn’t completely get the difference. Reason means thinking. When you lead someone to see reason, you are leading them to agree with you in thinking or at least in action.

Reason is thought. Thought isn’t always logical. Art, religion, culture, and love are all part of thinking, and they are not rational, but they all come into play when we perceive reasonableness.

Rationality on the other hand is when we think strictly in terms of logic. It is effectively mathematics.

Politics in a Deist government are strongly based on marketing. Deist politics aren’t based on rationality. Deist politics are based on reason. Politicians want other people to be reasonable and go along with them. To do that they use marketing techniques. So politics is a form of marketing, one that sells promises of happiness instead of commercial products and does so for the price of commitment to action.

The most common form of political marketing require the politician to inspire passion in the people they are trying to sell to. When the audience becomes emotional it stops thinking rationally. After the audience becomes irrational enough they’ll believe and do anything. Think Hitler speeches and the things the Germans did.

The Germans at the time were being reasonable. They were not being rational.  (Sometimes being reasonable simply means doing what was necessary to stay alive while a gun was held to your head.)

You can watch politicians do this. They first try to excite passions, and then follow that up with a suggestion to commitment to support. The politician who excites the most passion gets the most power.

A Deist government is based on clearly defined natural rights. Without those rights the politicians would end up defining the government and its courses of action. The government would become like a Nazi government.  Natural rights define our government and its courses of action. We grant politicians some leeway in making decisions and choosing courses of action, but only within the constraints of natural rights. And we always give ourselves the ability to recall those politicians if they go outside those clearly defined natural rights.

Natural rights come from God. We the People empower government, giving it governmental rights to act on our behalf. Through government, we give legal rights to ourselves in order to establish justice, provide for our common welfare, address issues of competition for resource, etc.  We elect to create governmental rights and legal rights as a way to fulfill our pursuit of happiness.  Sometimes our citizens don’t recognize the difference between natural, governmental, and legal rights.

We do have natural rights other than those listed in the Declaration of Independence.  For example, we have the right to love. At first that right might seem simplistic.  But consider, do I have the natural right to love sexually someone who is the same sex as myself?  How should government address that?  What laws should and should not be enacted to address that?

We are only free to the degree that we understand and protect our natural rights. A true citizen Deist is committed mind, body and soul to do these two things.

Stumble it!