Strengths And Weaknesses Of Deism

Deism is the belief that God created the universe but remains apart from it and that He permits His creation to administer itself through natural laws. (dictionary.com) In other words, God created the universe and then just decided to step back. Deist have many strengths and weaknesses to their belief system; first we are going to evaluate the strengths of deism and then discuss deism 's weaknesses; closing with how deism relates to Christian theism. The first strength of Deism is that they believe God created the universe. That is a great start to acknowledge that it all started with God and His words, "In the beginning God."(Gen.1:1) This verse not only shows that deists acknowledge the existence of God but also that they have faith whether they recognize it or not, their faith is a strength. Another strength of deism is that they hold their responsibility. Since they believe that God is not personal and no longer interacts with humans, then that means that we can 't blame …show more content…
The first weakness is that Deists believe that morality is built into human nature, meaning instead of turning to God for discernment we naturally know right from wrong. (Sire 56) The problem with this perspective is that every individual is going to have different opinions on what is good and evil. For example, abortion, a lot of people believe abortion is morally ok. While others believe it is completely wrong. Without God as the center point there is no line between good and evil. The second weakness is that overall, deists are inconsistent. The only solid belief is that God created the universe and went away, everything else doesn 't line up. Looking at cold and warm deists, for example, warm Deists believe that there is life after death while, on the other hand, cold Deists believe there is no life after death. (Sire 52) Inconsistency can make the world view very confusing if they do not have a solid foundation on what they