Deism – Physicotheology and Atheism
PART 1
Session n°3a of April 4, 2024 – English translation – original Dutch
Location: Mezzaverde in Belgium
Visitor: Malvantra Melchizedek
Received by Wivine
Introduction:
I heard about deism on a TV program a few months ago; the definition
being someone who believes in God but does not adhere to an institutionalized
dogmatic religion. I thought, well, that might apply to me.
Apparently, I was satisfied too quickly because this word ‘Deism’
continued to haunt my thoughts until I realized that I needed to explore it
further.
Furthermore, I was left with questions for many years without
satisfactory answers:
- why are there so many secret societies, the best known of which is
Freemasonry? Why this secrecy?
- Why has science separated itself so strongly from religion or from the
recognition of the existence of God? Is it true that God created science to
then superimpose His existence and His teachings on it?
So I started searching the internet in different languages. I found lots
of articles that I had to translate first to understand. Which takes time. To
finally keep only the articles which can contribute or constitute a basis for
illustrating the conveying message of Malvantra Melchizedek.
As the session became too long and it still had to be translated into two
languages, I am editing it in two parts.
Session 3 - Part 1: illustrates the history of the origins of deism,
atheism and other –‘isms’ where I found/received many answers intuitively.
Session 3 - Part 2 is Malvantra's message
which completes and clarifies the spiritual view of the existence of God and
the palpable or non-palpable presence of God in the universes, as well as the
purpose or plan of God regarding creation and the development of human souls.
Wivine.
DEISM
Deism, an unorthodox religious
attitude that found expression among a group of English writers beginning with
-
Edward Herbert (later 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury) in the first half of the 17th century and ending
with
-
Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, in the
middle of the 18th century.
These writers subsequently
inspired a similar religious attitude in Europe during the second half of the
18th century and in the colonial United States of America in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries.
In general, Deism refers to what
can be called natural religion, the
-
acceptance of a certain body of religious knowledge
that is inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason and
-
the rejection of religious knowledge when it is
acquired through either revelation or the teaching of any church.
Nature and scope
Though an initial use of the term
occurred in 16th-century France, the later appearance of the doctrine on the
Continent was stimulated by the translation and adaptation of the English
models. The high point of Deist thought occurred in England from about 1689
through 1742, during a period when, despite widespread counterattacks from the
established Church of England, there was relative freedom of religious expression
following upon the Glorious Revolution that ended the rule of James II and
brought William III and Mary II to the throne.
Deism took deep root in
18th-century Germany after it had ceased to be a vital subject of controversy
in England.
In the 19th and early 20th
centuries, the word Deism was used by some theologians in contradistinction to
theism, the belief in an immanent God who actively intervenes in the affairs of
men. In this sense, Deism was represented as the view of those who reduced the
role of God to a mere act of creation in accordance with rational laws
discoverable by man and held that, after the original act, God virtually
withdrew and refrained from interfering in the processes of nature and the ways
of man.
So stark an interpretation of the
relations of God and man, however, was accepted by very few Deists during the
flowering of the doctrine, though their religious antagonists often attempted
to force them into this difficult position. Historically, a distinction between
theism and Deism has never had wide currency in European thought. As an
example, when encyclopaedist Denis Diderot, in
France, translated into French the works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of
Shaftesbury, one of the important English Deists, he often rendered “Deism” as
théisme.
The historical Deists
The English Deists
In 1754–56, when the Deist
controversy had passed its peak, John Leland, an opponent, wrote a historical
and critical compendium of Deist thought, A View of the Principal Deistical
Writers that Have Appeared in England in the Last and Present Century; with
Observations upon Them, and Some Account of the Answers that Have Been
Published Against Them.
This work, which began with Lord
Herbert of Cherbury and moved through the political
philosopher Thomas Hobbes, Charles Blount, the earl of Shaftesbury (Cooper),
Anthony Collins, Thomas Woolston, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Chubb,
and Viscount Bolingbroke, fixed the canon of who should be included among the Deist
writers.
In subsequent works, Hobbes
usually has been dropped from the list and John Toland included, though he was
closer to pantheism than most of the other Deists were. Herbert was not known
as a Deist in his day, but Blount and the rest who figured in Leland’s book
would have accepted the term Deist as an appropriate designation for their
religious position.
Simultaneously, it became an
adjective of opprobrium in the vocabulary of their opponents. Bishop Edward Stillingfleet’s Letter to a Deist (1677) is an early
example of the orthodox use of the epithet.
In Lord Herbert’s treatises five religious
ideas were recognized as God-given and innate in the mind of man from the
beginning of time:
-
the belief in a supreme being,
-
in the need for his worship,
-
in the pursuit of a pious and virtuous life as the
most desirable form of worship,
-
in the need of
repentance for sins, and
-
in rewards and punishments in the next world.
These fundamental religious
beliefs, Herbert held, had been the possession of the first man, and they were
basic to all the worthy positive institutionalized religions of later times.
Thus,
-
differences
among sects and cults all over the world were usually benign, mere
modifications of universally accepted truths;
-
they were corruptions only when they led to barbarous
practices such as the immolation of human victims and the slaughter of
religious rivals.
In England at the turn of the
17th century this general religious attitude assumed a more militant form,
particularly in the works of Toland, Shaftesbury, Tindal, Woolston, and
Collins. Though the Deists differed among themselves and there is no single work
that can be designated as the quintessential expression of Deism, they joined in
attacking both the existing orthodox church establishment and the wild
manifestations of the dissenters.
The tone of these writers was
often earthy and pungent, but their Deist ideal was sober natural religion
without the trappings of Roman Catholicism and the High Church in England and
free from the passionate excesses of Protestant fanatics. In Toland there is
great emphasis on the rational element in natural religion; in Shaftesbury more
worth is ascribed to the emotive quality of religious experience when it is
directed into salutary channels.
All are agreed in denouncing every kind of religious
intolerance because the core of the various religions is identical.
In general, there is a negative evaluation of
religious institutions and the priestly corps who direct them. Simple
primitive monotheism was practiced by early men without temples, churches, and
synagogues, and modern men could readily dispense with religious pomp and
ceremony. The more elaborate and exclusive the religious establishment, the
more it came under attack. A substantial portion of Deist literature was
devoted to the description of the noxious practices of all religions in all
times, and the similarities of pagan and Roman Catholic rites were emphasized.
The Deists who presented
purely rationalist proofs for the existence of God, usually variations
on the argument from the design or order of the universe, were able to derive
support from the vision of the lawful physical world that Sir Isaac Newton had
delineated. Indeed, in the 18th century, there was a tendency to convert Newton
into a matter-of-fact Deist—a transmutation that was contrary to the spirit of
both his philosophical and his theological writings.
When Deists were faced with the problem of how man had
lapsed from the pure principles of his first forebears into the multiplicity of
religious superstitions and crimes committed in the name of God, they ventured
a number of conjectures. They surmised that men had fallen into error because
of the
-
inherent
weakness of human nature;
-
or they subscribed to the idea that a conspiracy of
priests had intentionally deceived men with a “rout of ceremonials” in order to
maintain power over them.
The role of
Christianity in the universal history of religion became problematic.
For many religious Deists the
teachings of Jesus Christ were not essentially novel but were, in reality, as
old as creation, a republication of primitive monotheism. Religious leaders had
arisen among many peoples—Socrates, Buddha, Muhammad—and their mission had
been to effect a restoration of the simple religious faith of early men.
Some writers, while admitting the
similarity of Jesus’ message to that of other religious teachers, tended to
preserve the unique position of Christianity as a divine revelation. It
was possible to believe even in prophetic revelation and still remain a Deist,
for revelation could be considered as a natural historical occurrence consonant
with the definition of the goodness of God.
The more extreme Deists, of
course, could not countenance this degree of divine intervention in the affairs
of men.
Natural religion was sufficient and certain;
the tenets of all positive religions contained extraneous, even impure elements.
Deists accepted the moral teachings of the Bible without any commitment to the
historical reality of the reports of miracles.
Most Deist argumentation attacking the
literal interpretation of Scripture as divine revelation leaned upon the
findings of 17th-century biblical criticism. Woolston, who resorted to an
allegorical interpretation of the whole of the New Testament, was an extremist
even among the more audacious Deists. Tindal was perhaps the most moderate of
the group. Toland was violent; his denial of all mystery in religion was
supported by analogies among Christian, Judaic, and pagan esoteric religious
practices, equally condemned as the machinations of priests.
The Deists were particularly vehement against any
manifestation of religious fanaticism and enthusiasm.
In this respect Shaftesbury’s
Letter Concerning Enthusiasm (1708) was probably the crucial document in
propagating their ideas. Revolted by the Puritan fanatics of the previous
century and by the wild hysteria of a group of French exiles prophesying in London
in 1707, Shaftesbury denounced all forms of religious extravagance as
perversions of “true” religion. These false prophets were directing religious emotions,
benign in themselves, into the wrong channels. Any description of God that
depicted his impending vengeance, vindictiveness, jealousy, and destructive
cruelty was blasphemous. Because sound religion could find expression
only among healthy men, the argument was common in Deist literature that the preaching
of extreme asceticism, the practice of self-torture, and the violence of
religious persecutions were all evidence of psychological illness and
had nothing to do with authentic religious sentiment and conduct. The Deist God,
ever gentle, loving, and benevolent, intended men to behave toward one another
in the same kindly and tolerant fashion.
Deists in other countries
Ideas of this general character
were voiced on the Continent at about the same period by such men as Pierre
Bayle, a French philosopher famous for his encyclopaedical dictionary, even
though he would have rejected the Deist identification. During the heyday of
the French Philosophes in the 18th century, the more daring thinkers—Voltaire
among them—gloried in the name Deist and declared the kinship of their ideas
with those of Rationalist English ecclesiastics, such as Samuel Clarke, who
would have repudiated the relationship.
The dividing line between Deism and atheism among the
Philosophes was often rather blurred, as is evidenced by Le Rêve de
d’Alembert (written 1769; “The
Dream of d’Alembert”), which describes a discussion between the two
“fathers” of the Encyclopedia: the Deist Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and the atheist Diderot.
Diderot had drawn his inspiration
from Shaftesbury, and thus in his early career he was committed to a more
emotional Deism. Later in life, however, he shifted to the atheist materialist circle of
the baron d’Holbach. When Holbach paraphrased or
translated the English Deists, his purpose was frankly atheist; he emphasized
those portions of their works that attacked existing religious practices and
institutions, neglecting their devotion to natural religion and their adoration of
Christ. The Catholic church in 18th-century France did not recognize
fine distinctions among heretics. Deist and atheist works were burned in the same
bonfires.
English Deism was transmitted to
Germany primarily through translations of Shaftesbury, whose influence upon
thought was paramount. In a commentary on Shaftesbury published in 1720,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a Rationalist philosopher and mathematician, accepted
the Deist conception of God as an intelligent Creator but refused the
contention that a god who metes out punishments is evil. A sampling of other
Deist writers was available particularly through the German rendering of
Leland’s work in 1755 and 1756.
H.S. Reimarus,
author of many philosophical works, maintained in his Apologie
oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (“Defense
for the Rational Adorers of God”) that the human mind by itself without revelation was
capable of reaching a perfect religion.
Reimarus did not dare to
publish the book during his lifetime, but it was published in 1774–78 by
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, one of the great seminal minds in German literature.
According to Lessing, common man, uninstructed and unreflecting, will not reach
a perfect knowledge of natural religion; he will forget or ignore it.
Thus, the several positive religions
can help men achieve more complete awareness of the perfect religion than could
ever be attained by any individual mind. Lessing’s Nathan der Weise
(1779; “Nathan the Sage”) was noteworthy for the introduction of the Deist
spirit of religion into the drama; in the famous parable of the three rings,
the major monotheistic religions were presented as equally true in the eyes of
God.
Although Lessing’s rational Deism
was the object of violent attack on the part of Pietist writers and more
mystical thinkers, it influenced such men as Moses Mendelssohn, a German Jewish
philosopher who applied Deism to the Jewish faith.
Immanuel Kant, the most important
figure in 18th-century German philosophy, stressed the moral element in natural
religion when he wrote that moral principles are not the result of any
revelation but rather originate from the very structure of man’s reason.
English Deists, however,
continued to influence German Deism. Witnesses attest that virtually the whole
officer corps of Frederick the Great was “infected” with Deism and that Collins
and Tindal were favourite reading in the army.
By the end of the 18th century,
Deism had become a dominant religious attitude among intellectual and
upper-class Americans.
Benjamin Franklin, the great sage
of the colonies and then of the new republic, summarized in a letter to Ezra
Stiles, president of Yale College, a personal creed that almost literally
reproduced Herbert’s five fundamental beliefs.
The second and third presidents
of the United States also held Deistic convictions, as is amply evidenced in
their correspondence. “The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain
my religion,” John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1816.
Influence of Deism since the early
20th century
Certain philosophical and
religious movements starting in the 20th century have been characterized as Deist in
nature, mainly in the United States. For example, many Unitarian
Universalist congregations have Deist members and even Deist discussion groups
and fellowships. Further, such modern variants as “pandeism,”
which attempted to unite aspects of Deism with pantheism, held that
through the act of creation God became the universe. There is thus no
theological need to posit any special relationship between God and creation;
rather, God
is the universe and not a transcendent entity that created and subsequently
governs it.
The American logician and process
philosopher Charles Hartshorne considered Deism, pandeism,
and pantheism as reasonable doctrines of the nature of God; however, he
rejected all of these in favour of panentheism, the
belief that God is present in the universe while being greater than it.
The English philosopher Anthony
Flew also stirred controversy when he publicly abandoned his personal
conviction in atheism in favor of what he called a “weak” form of Deism that
asserted God’s existence yet eschewed positions on such traditional theological
matters as God’s relationship with the world or revelation.
{The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica}
Physicotheology
Wanted to know God and talk about
Him outside of Revelation based on rational proofs of God as well as the visible
manifestation of God's power. In Physicotheology, the efficiency and
systematic nature of creation have been repeatedly emphasized, as well as the
order of the cosmos, based on the laws of nature created by God. The
authors continually emphasize how everything works in an orderly, harmonious, planned,
and efficient way in nature.
The most important Dutch author
on physicotheology of this period was Bernard Nieuwentijt. His most important
work is ‘The Right Use of World-Views, Demonstrated to Convince the Impious
and Unbelievers (1715)’. In half a century, the work was reprinted seven
times and translated into French, English and German.
In physicotheology, this design
argument was an important weapon in the fight against atheism, materialism and deism.
Based on available knowledge about natural phenomena, the authors wanted to
convince the readers of their books of the existence of God and his enduring
concern for creation. God was often referred to by terms such as Supreme
Administrator, Guardian and Ruler.
They primarily preached the
belief that nature is so planned and intentional that nature without God is
inconceivable and impossible. Physical theologians were able to reconcile each
biblical text in which nature was discussed with the then-current scientific
theories about what was discussed in that biblical text. They urged their
readers to know the greatness of the Creator by doing their own research into
nature.
The physicotheologians' argument
was popular in 18th century poetry, edifying literature, and works of natural
history. At first this was a theme that mainly concerned people other than
theologians, but from around 1730 preachers also began to write on this theme.
The work Catechism of Nature (in four parts) by Zutphen preacher Jan
Floris Martinet, published in 1777-1779, was important for the education of
young people. A sixth edition was published in 1827-1829, while the author also
wrote a Small Catechism of Nature for children in 1779, a sixth edition
of which was published in 1818. The Small Catechism has been translated
into English, French, German and Malay, while the great original work has been
published in English and German translations. Both of Martinet's works were
extremely popular. Many followed his example and also wrote similar catechisms.
In the second quarter of the 19th
century, the usefulness of physicotheology began to lose its appeal. The
idea of a consciously created and planned nature was given a further blow later
in this century by: Darwin with his principle of natural selection.
ATHEISM
Atheism is the absence of belief
in one or more gods. The concept has multiple meanings, sometimes overlapping,
sometimes exclusive, but this definition gives it scientific utility as an
overall concept.
Antiquity
Ideas sometimes considered
atheistic were described as early as the Vedic period of ancient India. The
Charvaka was a materialist school originally written around 600 BC. and
declares that religion is only an invention of priests. Another early form of
atheism was the Indian Sankhya system which had a naturalistic view of the
world.
Writings from classical antiquity
show that among the ancient Greeks it was customary to call someone ἄθεος (atheist)
if they did not accept traditional views regarding the gods.
However, defendants like Epicurus
never completely denied the existence of gods. Epicurus simply stated that
whatever gods are, they do not care about people and therefore do not want to
punish them in this or any other life.
The Roman philosopher Cicero
claimed in his book De natura deorum that Diagoras of Melos and Theodore of Cyrene were atheists and
did not believe in the existence of gods.
In the Roman Empire, it was
common to stigmatize religious opponents as atheists: polytheistic (pagan) Romans called Christians (monotheists) and Jews atheists and vice
versa, while they denied vehemently being it themselves.
New atheism
In 2004, an atheist movement
emerged, since 2006 called new atheism. The movement was shaped notably by the
books of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
According to Victor J. Stenger,
traditional atheism differs from new atheism in this sense
- traditional atheism is
conciliatory towards theism,
- new atheism adopts a hostile
attitude towards it.
Ideological
atheism
Certain ideological movements
have been associated with atheism, as is the case of:
- socialism,
- anarchism
- communism.
After the Second World War, this
was no longer the case for the social democratic movement that emerged from
socialism.
In 1967, Albania's communist
regime, led by dictator Enver Hoxha, declared the country atheist. This already
happened in Cuba under Fidel Castro in 1959.
Atheist
religions
There are also atheistic
religions, such as certain forms of Buddhism. Anatta - a teaching of Buddhism,
which excludes the existence of separate gods, spirits or human souls, or at
least calls them an illusion (maya).
Atheism is not necessarily in
contradiction with religiosity: see for example Leo Apostel, Klaas Hendrikse and Rik Pinxten, on atheist religiosity and religious humanism. The
question is therefore justified as to whether these are true religions and
should they not be better described as philosophies of life.
Religious
response to atheism
A 1922 cartoon by E.J. Pace's
describing that Christians who embrace modernism are on a downward staircase
that leads to atheism.
Religious responses to atheism
vary widely.
For example, in some Islamic
countries, apostasy is punishable by death. Such strong negative reactions have
also occurred in Christianity in the past.
Catholic
response to atheism
Shortly after the Second Vatican
Council, Pope Paul VI created the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with
Nonbelievers. The purpose of this council was to study atheism and achieve
meaningful dialogue with atheist and humanist organizations. This papal council
later became the Pontifical Council for Culture.
The Prefect of this Council,
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, organized several
meetings between believers and non-believers. An exhibition was also organized
on his initiative in the Vatican Museums where Christian and atheist artists
exhibited side by side.
Pope Francis emphasized during a
general audience in May 2013 that Christ died for all. He literally added that atheists and
Christians are on the same page if they both do the right thing. These
statements were greeted with enthusiasm by atheist organizations.
Atheism and
belief in the scientific community.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ath%C3%A9isme
‘La Recherche’, citing the
American journal Science, reported in 1997 the positions of a certain number of
believing scientists.
Astrophysicist George Smoot is
said to have suggested that the cosmic background radiation, one of the pieces of
evidence supporting the "Big Bang" theory, is the "signature of
God."
Nobel Prize winner in physics
Charles Townes, co-inventor of the laser, prays every day.
The very active Francis Collins,
co-discoverer of the cystic fibrosis gene, defines himself as a convinced
Christian. He sees no contradiction between the Darwinian theory of
evolution and religion: “Why wouldn't God have used the mechanism of evolution to
create? ".
The Belgian Christian de Duve,
Nobel Prize winner in biology in 1974, states: “Many of my scientific friends are
violently atheists, but atheism is neither supported nor founded by science”.
Another Nobel, the evolutionist
Joshua Lederberg said: “Nothing invalidates the divine. It is indisputable that
the scientific quest is driven by a religious motive.”
Physicist John Polkinghorne was
ordained an Anglican priest. For him: “God can act in subtle ways, inaccessible to
physics”.
However,
statistics show that disbelief is more widespread among scientists than in the
rest of the population.
In 1916, psychologist
James Leuba estimated that
-
40% of American scientists believed in the existence
of a personal God,
-
and 50% in
immortality.
In 1997, according to ‘La
Recherche’, which is based on studies by two American researchers. Only
- 7% of American scientists
elected to the National Academy of Sciences were believers,
- 20% were agnostic and
- 73% could be classified as atheists.
There are therefore far fewer
believers among scientists than in the general American population, in which
-76.5% say they are believers and
-7.1% declare themselves to be
atheists or agnostics.
END.
MEZZA VERDE GROUP.