One thing that is apparent to me when I look for information about Deism on the Internet is that there is a lack of good info on Deism.  Beginning with Wikipedia, I see that

Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme natural God exists and created the physical universe, and that religious truths can be arrived at by the application of reason and observation of the natural world.  (March 23, 2009)

This is just wrong.  It is a good example of why Wikipedia is not autoritative.  Deism is just a belief or acknowledgment of God and a non-acceptance of divine revelation.  You see this in various writings where people point out beliefs or statements and refer to them as forms of Deism.  Culture, not individuals define Deism.  The Wikipedia reflects certain individual’s ideas about culture, but it does not define culture. 

In the case of the Wikipedia entry, God is “natural,” which is absurd.  God is the creator of nature, therefore God is not necessarily natural. 

For me, the rest of the comments in Wikipedia about Deism and Deists is only worth reading if I need a good laugh because it is so inaccurate it’s funny. 

There are a number of other sites on the Internet that are supposed to be about Deism.  Most of them describe Deism as a belief in God based on reason.  Yet a lot, maybe most, Deists are people who fall into two groups.  One group is people who were brought up in a religious family, who came to believe in God, but never really accepted the revealed teachings.  The other group is people who did believe in revealed teachings at one time, but eventually lost their belief in revelation, and kept their belief in God.  I think these two groups may form the majority of Deists.  Reason has nothing to do with their beliefs.  They did not sit down and think out and rationalize their belief in God.  They just believe in God because that is their culture. 

Yet there are so many web sites that promote the incorrect idea that Deism is the belief in God based on reason.  When I google “deism” I see a lot of web sites about Deism, and I’ve visited the overwhelming majority of them.  These sites are written by folks who are Internet pseudo-intellectuals projecting their own beliefs onto the rest of the world.  Some of them are a little nuts, to be quite honest.

I wish there were good web sites with good information on Deism.  If you come across a good one, please drop me a comment or email.

Stumble it!