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Academy Resources Glossary of Philosophical Terms Timeline of Philosophy A Timeline of American Philosophy Diagram: Development of Philosophic Thought Diagram: Divisions of Philosophy The Philosophy Resource Center The Religion Resource Center Books about Philosophy in The Radical Academy Bookstore Books about Religion in The Radical Academy Bookstore Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click Here for College Education Information & Study Resources Shop Amazon Stores in the Radical Academy Bookstore Magazine Outlet Music Store Classical Music Store Video Store DVD Store Computer Store Camera & Photo Store Computer/Video Games Software Store Musical Instruments Outlet Store Cellular Phones Toys & Games Tools & Hardware Automotive Store Outdoor Living Consumer Electronics Home & Garden Kitchen & Housewares Baby Superstore Apparel & Accessories Gourmet Food Grocery Store Sporting Goods Jewelry & Watches Health & Personal Care Beauty Store		Deism and Theism by John Laird   Certainly it may be argued that a creative God, in the more usual sense of creation, is volitional as well as intelligent, that mere intelligence may be as much of an abstraction and as little of a concrete reality in heaven as it is on earth, and that there would be a shocking lack of intelligence if an orderly world were created for any other purpose than the bringing of beauty or of moral excellence or of some other great value into existence. If so, it might very justly be inferred that the philosophy of a bolder and more opulent theism is more readily defensible than the precarious because over-cautious doctrines of a spare, unadventurous deism. From this point of view the appearance of anthropomorphism may be simply another way of saying that man, in the finer part of him, is made in God's image and a little lower than the angels, or, more modestly, that God is less inadequately portrayed when he is represented as akin to man's nobler attributes than when all such resemblance is denied. Anthropomorphism itself, some would say, is defensible, and theism is the stronger for employing such conceptions. However that may be, it is preposterous to assert either that mere deism is the sum of "natural" theology, or that there can be no philosophical grounds for a theism that exceeds mere deism. My plea for the recognition of deism in natural theology is not conceived in any such spirit, and I am anxious to say that it is not. On the other hand, the deist's caution, even if it is mistaken, should not be summarily condemned. His reluctance to wander blithely and almost carelessly on the resilient turf of familiar Christian apologetics is reasoned and may not be unreasonable. Deists may be illiberal and short-sighted in their views, and their opponents may be better cosmologists than they are; but even a narrow cosmology may be better than a perfunctory cosmology. If cosmology is an embarrassment to theism, such a theism is self-condemned. Deism, to be brief, is a species of philosophical theism. It is a cosmological theory of the origin and stability of the universe, conceived upon principles that philosophical theism may rightly decide to incorporate. It is bad policy on the part of a theist to neglect what deists assert through distaste for what more deists deny. If deists draw their boundaries in the wrong places, their mistake, as regards the philosophy of it, has to be shown by philosophical argument to be a mistake. It has also to be shown that there are no similar boundaries in any other place for example, regarding God's "personality"; and the notion that there are such boundaries, to certain apologists, is an idea almost as distasteful as mere deism itself. Frontiers are obscured but not removed by raising a dust in their neighborhood.   Excerpted from Theism and Cosmology, by John Laird Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine... Academy Showcase Specials     Introduction & Directory
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