This question is partly inspired by what I read in my Webster’s dictionary. Under the entry “Deist” (the 18th century doctrine that belief in God could be based on reason alone), it had as synonym “Atheist”. This seems a little contradictory, since Deist explicitly means belief in a deity (as the term suggests) and atheist would seem to mean the exact opposite of this. But I guess what they mean is the movement of Deism freethinking eventually lead to atheism today (though someone please correct me on this if I am wrong).
Then this got me to thinking. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was a Deist. What if we could somehow bring Mr. Jefferson to the present. And let’s say for 10 years we got him fully acclimated to our time: he goes back to college and learns everything there is to know about politics and science in our time, and he learns about people who share the same rationalist and liberal-leaning views he does. What would Jefferson become? Would he still be a Deist? I once had an atheist teacher who called himself a secular humanist. Would Jefferson be a atheistic secular humanist?
You are wrong. Atheism goes back way before Deism. Socrates was charged and convicted of atheism in ancient Greece. There obviously were were atheists in ancient Greece.
Well firstly I don’t think Jefferson would convert to modern American style liberalism. The idea of social security, the welfare state, stuff like that I don’t think TJ would ever accept. His views would conform very nicely with the libertarians, Jefferson was a “classical” liberal and I don’t see his views changing to a completely different form of ideology just because the party he started changed to that ideology.
As it is many of the deists of the 18th century basically had views like this, “They believe in the existence of a greater power, but didn’t give much credence to a lot of the doctrine or specific teachings of any church.” Ben Franklin was a deist too. In a lot of ways I’ve read quotes of theirs that make me think they were pretty close to agnostic, since they basically rationalized that God could exist, but maybe he didn’t, they were pretty philosophical about it.
Jefferson was actually accused of being atheist in his time during his Presidential campaigns.
I’ve actually only heard that Socrates was convicted of sedition against Athens and undermining the State Gods. Socrates was specifically accused of trying to substitute his own personal god for State Gods, so it certainly wouldn’t make sense to say he was an atheist in the modern sense since he had his own spiritual force he believed in.
Socrates: “Then I appeal to you, Meletus, in the name of these same gods about whom we are speaking, to explain yourself a little more clearly to myself and to the jury, because I cannot make out what your point is. Is it that I teach people to believe in some gods–which implies that I myself believe in gods, and am not a complete atheist, so that I am not guilty on that score–but in different gods from those recognized by the state, so that your accusation rests upon the fact that they are different? Or do you assert that I believe in no gods at all, and teach others to do the same?”
Meletus: “Yes, I say that you disbelieve in gods altogether.”
The prosecution theory was muddled in that Socrates also in the trial is said to have believed in false gods. This is logically inconsistent with atheism. However, in the above passage Socrates is said to disbelieve in gods altogether.
I really have a hard time myself getting my head around the notion that deists are not a variety of theist, but, well, deists. Whatever. Suffice to say I see no reason why Jefferson couldn’t be a deist today, using whatever the justification was that brought him to that position in his time. There are certainly plenty of deists running around in the present, despite the advances in understanding of the natural world, and the developing theories of our universe that make no reference to an “intelligent designer”, nor require one.
I do think it would be damn hard for him to be President and admit to anything other than a belief in a personal God of revelation, of the sort the deists to not recognize. Whether he would really be a deist, agnostic, atheist, or what-have-you, we would never know.
I think he would be an athiest. The major holdout for many deists was simply that they couldn’t imagine how life could exist without being designed: essentialy the Paley’s watch argument. They didn’t think the designer had to care about creation, but something intelligent had to have done it. With that rationalization at least no longer a necessary and obvious one, I think many of the classical deists would have basically just dropped their theism.
Probably more agnostic as he’d see atheism as asserting the unprovable. (Of course he’d be majorly pissed off with today’s bankruptcy laws as chances are he’d be the owner of 29 maxed out platinum Master Cards.)
That was a fairly common position among the later Greek philosophers – the Greek gods were just superpowered humans, and the mythology was the equivalent of a batch of superhero comic books (i.e. entertaining, and sometimes even edifying, but hardly satisfying as a foundation for serious moral or intellectual contemplation).
From what I can tell though we still don’t see socrates ascribing to the views that would make him an atheist. He still believed in a greater supernatural power, just not those that the Athenian leaders did, it is only his prosecutor that makes the accusation that he disbelieves in gods altogether.
So even if Socrates was convicted of atheism I’m doubtful we can consider him an atheist.
Yes, but Jefferson and Franklin were incredibly smart men, both very unwilling to accept the absolute of anything unless it was completely proven.
So while modern geology and biology could explain how the earth was formed and species developed I think the fact that no one can explain where the matter initially came from would make Jefferson still hold back from proclaiming the non-existence of any deity. He’d be agnostic and I don’t think he could ever be atheist unless we found a way to conclusively prove there was no God.
To a man with Jefferson’s type of thinking unless it is disproven you cannot simply assume it isn’t there.
There’s no evidence I know that believed in gods different than the Athenian leaders did. (All the prosecution charges were obviously trumped up and not credible.) About all we really know about Socrates is from Plato. Plato never depicts Socrates as an atheist or believer in strange gods. And the Athenian religion at the time didn’t care much about whether someone was a true believer. So long as someone made the right sacrifices at the right temples, and didn’t go around telling all on the streets their gods were false, nobody would notice them.
Based on the Phaedo, Socrates, despite his reputation for relentless skepticism, really had no basic problem with asserting the unprovable. As Bertrand Russell put it, “As a man he might rank as a saint, but as a philosopher he requires a long residence in a scientific purgatory.”
I have a hard time reconciling this with what Franklin said in his Speech to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. (“I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men.”) If Franklin actually said this, they’re hardly the words of an agnostic or atheistic-leaning deist.
Of course, the religious and philosophical views of any thinking person (such as Franklin or Jefferson) might well have evolved and been different at different points in their lives.
The “deism” of the time had a certain tone to it. More than just a set of beliefs or principles, it was a way of feeling about the world.
I think this way of feeling is very much a clasher with modern atheism. Their deism did not seek to root out “false thinking” about monotheism but was, in tone, Christianity without the fins and chrome (see, however, Paine’s Age of Reason, which is rabidly anti-Christian/Jewish/Islamic while being rabidly pro-Deism. Strange stuff!).
Irrelevant. Unless proven, you cannot simply assume that it IS there, and that is exactly what deists thought WAS proven: that life could not exist without design. Pull that support away, and it is theism that is the unfounded belief. “Pro-claiming the non-existence of any deity” is largely a theistic straw man.
Well if you are a deist then you do simply assume there is a good if it isn’t proven there is not one.
Anyways I see a hard time understanding what your post has to do with mine.
I was saying in the modern world (after two centuries of scientific understanding and philosophical thought) Jefferson probably would be agnostic as atheism is a stance that is “too set in stone” for many and I don’t see him buying in to such a thing. While I also don’t see him being a deist in the modern era because 1) It’s a rare stance and 2) I think agnosticism is the natural progression that most deists would go to if they lived into the modern era.
