John Craig’s book Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Christian Theology) infuriated contemporaries when it appeared in 1699. Modern scholars also express reservations about the contents. Many read the work in association with Isaac Newton and view Craig’s calculation for the Second Coming in 3150 with bemusement and condescension. Historians of statistics give the book a fairer reading, but often they look to assess the closeness of Craig’s calculations to modern mathematics. In this article, I aim to situate Craig (...) and his book as part of the deist controversy. My goal is to illustrate that the perceived danger of deism in the later seventeenth century was such that it influenced the content of a variety of discourses and that Craig’s work is representative of a moment in which apocalyptic anticipations and anxiety over deism could mix freely with mathematics and conceptions of the historical record in a presentation reminiscent of Isaac Newton’s Principia. (shrink)

Voltaire’s creativity ismultifaceted, covering the problems of philosophical knowledge, the assertion of a deistic worldview, the implementation of the principles of human free will, a comprehensive critique of religion and the church, the beginning of the political concept of “educated absolutism.” The thinker became one of the greatest authorities of the French Enlightenment, being highly gifted, universally educated, owning the principles of critical thinking. The aimof this article is to determine the basic principles of the philosophical principle of deism (...) in Voltaire’s creativity and its influence on the formation of the philosophical-historical concept. The tasks of this article are perform an analysis the formation of the deistic worldview of the French thinker, the influences of the philosophy of sensualism and rationalism on the formation of the general foundations of social philosophy of the enlightener. Research methods are principles of unity of historical and logical, dialectical unity of analysis and synthesis, convergence from abstract to concrete, principles of objectivity and systematization. Research results: philosophical worldview of the XVII ‒ early XVIII centuries. had a one-sided character: on the one hand ‒ the philosophy of empiricism, based on knowledge of scientific facts using experimental methods of scientific research, and on the other ‒ rationalist philosophy, which took as primary the original theoretical generalizations. The integral system of philosophical knowledge in the first half of the eighteenth century was absent. Conclusion. The deistic foundations of Voltaire’s philosophical worldview determine not only the ontological and epistemological aspects, but undoubtedly forming the general principles of his philosophy of history, which have an abstract, mostly narrative character. However, the possibilities of a deistic worldview direct the thinker to search for an objective pattern of development of historical knowledge. They usually have a general theoretical value, as well as their practical implementation. (shrink)

This article encourages a reconsideration of Christian sociology. It explains how deism makes a decisive impact in the theoretical foundations of the discipline. Dutch neocalvinistic philosophy in its North American immigrant setting after World War II issued a challenge which drew attention to the dogmas of deism implicit in sociology, but this challenge has not been met. Christian sociology, however, still retains its God-given vocation to find ways to encourage people everywhere to positively form complex differentiated social settings (...) in the Spirit of the Suffering and Glorified Messiah. (shrink)

In eighteenth century England, there were thinkers who said they were Christian deists and claimed pure, original Christianity was deism. Most scholars do not believe these thinkers were sincere about their religious beliefs, but there are many good reasons to believe they were. Three English deists have the best claim to be considered Christian deists because they alone called themselves Christian deists or called their ideas those of a Christian deist. These three thinkers, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and Thomas (...) Amory, developed a theology in which Christianity was deism and natural religion. The important point, though, was that their version of natural religion included supernatural elements as well as true religious piety. When read closely, these three thinkers believed in miracles, revelation, prayer, and continuing direct divine inspiration. The Christian deists were neither conventional deists nor traditional Christians. Nevertheless, it is not legitimate to exclude them from either category as some scholars do. They cannot be excluded from the category of ‘Christian’ on the basis their contemporaries all saw them as non-Christian. They also cannot be excluded from the category of ‘deists’ because they were pious and believed in an active God. (shrink)

It is often claimed that belief in God is based on faith, while non-belief is grounded in rationality. This claim is inaccurate. Moral philosopher Carlo Alvaro takes the reader through his philosophical journey—a journey taken with the absolute absence of faith. Through reasoning alone, and with an objective assessment of the classical theistic arguments, Deism takes the reader from disbelief to a particular version of deism. Deism discusses such arguments as the Kalam Cosmological, the asymmetry against the (...) evil-god challenge, the anthropic principle, and the moral. Such arguments lead to the undeniable conclusion that there exists a timeless, space-less, wholly good, and infinitely powerful being endowed with freedom of the will, who brought the universe into existence a finite time ago. An objective appraisal of such arguments leads to the conclusions that atheism is an irrational philosophical position, that God does not interact with humans, at least not during our physical existence on earth, and that God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral value and duty. (shrink)

Thosewho still interest themselves in problems connected with God, Freedom, and Immortality are not accustomed to look to natural science for any light on these dark places. It is usually admitted that the scientific method operates with basic assumptions which are far from binding on philosophers, and which indeed have no very satisfactory metaphysical authority. In spite of a few protests by philosophers, scientific thinkers have on the whole felt entitled to neglect the philosophical consequences of their theories, and have (...) gone ahead in the investigation of nature by accepting only such hypotheses as explained the maximum number of known facts, irrespective of their possible results on other fields of work. When a strictly scientific theory is invested with philosophical importance, some form of materialism, however well disguised, usually results. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to clarify the conceptions of epistemic deism and probabilistic theism and to demonstrate that the two doctrines do not finally collapse into one. I would like also to point some reasons for the acceptance of a certain version of probabilistic theism which I will call in the last part of the article “open probabilistic theism”. Open probabilistic theism is not a version of the view called “open theism”. The reasons for the openness of (...) open probabilistic theism are quite different from the reasons supporting open theism. (shrink)

In 2013 I wrote a paper entitled “A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World,” in which I criticized the views of Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy, labeling their views as something that I called “epistemic deism.” Since the publication of that paper another,similar, view by Bradley Monton was brought to my attention, one called “noninterventionist special divine action theory.” I take this paper as an opportunityto accomplish several goals. First, I (...) take it as an opportunity to clarify and correct some of my previous claims. Secondly, I present and analyze Monton’sview. And, finally, I discuss the similarities that Monton’s view holds with those of Murphy’s and Tracy’s and discuss how they all can be reduced to being partof the same family of ontological views which are, ultimately, implausible. (shrink)

In 2013 I wrote a paper entitled “A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World,” in which I criticized the views of Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy, labeling their views as something that I called “epistemic deism.” Since the publication of that paper another, similar, view by Bradley Monton was brought to my attention, one called “noninterventionist special divine action theory.” I take this paper as an opportunity to accomplish several goals. (...) First, I take it as an opportunity to clarify and correct some of my previous claims. Secondly, I present and analyze Monton’s view. And, finally, I discuss the similarities that Monton’s view holds with those of Murphy’s and Tracy’s and discuss how they all can be reduced to being part of the same family of ontological views which are, ultimately, implausible. (shrink)

Lemay has brought together nine essays in honor of Alfred Owen Aldridge, a scholar of eighteenth-century English and American literature with a special expertise in the history of ideas. The articles contained in the volume are intended to complement as well as compliment the work done by him in the areas of deism, masonry, and the Enlightenment. Professor Aldridge's contributions to scholarship in those fields include studies on Shaftesbury, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Jonathan Edwards.

To suggest that Daniel Dennett is a deist is to invite ridicule. Dennett is both an avowed atheist and defender of naturalism in philosophy. Yet if we pay heed to the entirety of Dennett’s claims a curious picture emerges. My suggestion is that Hegel and Marx represent the rival responses to what we might call the modern predicament: what is the nature of existence in a world which seems a mechanism? Dennett’s response to this question is Hegelian, and involves a (...) commitment to a religiosity which might surprise those otherwise receptive to his arguments. (shrink)

Where religion is concerned, the best and most lasting contribution of America's founders was arguably more political than theological. They brought to fruition the idea of religious freedom. To be sure, this concept had already been articulated and underwent important developments prior to the eighteenth century.2 The Americans, however, began to make it a reality in the sphere of public life. This is nowhere more evident than in the Constitution of the United States and in the first article of the (...) Bill of Rights. Nevertheless, some of the founders had a great deal to say on theological topics, and it is this aspect of their thinking on which I focus in this paper. Some of the founders were orthodox Christians .. (shrink)

Given recent scientific findings suggesting that our world is part of a multiverse, Leland Harper argues that we ought to abandon the idea of an active God in Judeo-Christian theism. This shift results in a more coherent, cohesive and, ultimately, better account of God than is currently offered by the Judeo-Christian monotheistic tradition.

A majority of Americans say they are Christians. In fact, when you ask what they really believe about God you find that almost half are really deists. Let’s look at the data. A 2006 Pew survey reports that about 50 percent of Americans are Protestants and another 25 percent Catholics, which would indicate a strong Christian majority of 75 percent. Like most such surveys, however, Pew simply asked people to state their religious affiliations. A 2005 survey by Baylor University tried (...) something different and questioned people about what they actually believe. The results were surprising and have great significance in properly comprehending religious belief in the U.S. For some reason, they have received little attention. (shrink)

This article goes into the intentions and motives behind De Veritate (1627), famous apologetic work by the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). De Veritate will be compared with two other seminal works written by Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis (1625) and the Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (1641-1650). The focus will be on one particular aspect that comes to the fore in all three works: the way Grotius reduced the Christian faith to a minimal religion by singling out (...) the essential tenets this faith had in common with other religions. The core of Grotius’s argumentation consists in the idea that believers and, in particular, civil authorities have to distinguish between a few essential religious tenets that could be made rationally acceptable, and a set of supernatural dogmas, derived from divine revelation, that did not pass a certain, albeit very high degree of probability. As far as the second category was concerned, civil tolerance was called for. As becomes clear from contemporary correspondences, Grotius did not develop these rather controversial ideas in an intellectual vacuum. During his exile in Paris, he fostered contacts with members of the circle that formed around the French monk Marin Mersenne (1588-1648). This circle functioned as a kind of hothouse for the development of a minimal Christian creed. Members of this group saw promotion of a minimal creed as a solution to current religious controversies and the ensuing political turmoil and (civil) war, which were abhorred for their detrimental effects on the advancement of learning in the first place. On the other hand, it is also apparent that overt adherence to such an ideal was considered to be dangerous, because it would at least evoke the embarrassing and even repressive attention of the authorities in Church and government. An additional problem was that by defending such a religious stance, members of Mersenne’s circle laid themselves open to accusations of endorsing ‘rational beliefs’ like Socinianism, generally considered to be the worst heresy among all Christian denominations. (shrink)