True, but it can also be a dangerously convenient get-out-of-debate-free card for people who are actually more traditionally theistic than their professed beliefs imply. e.g. one minute they’ll talk about an impersonal, ineffable, deistic creator-god whose nature is forever beyond the understanding of our finite minds, and the next minute they’ll be talking about Jesus of all things.
Oh, absolutely. The Intelligent Design folks are guilty of privileging the hypothesis for acting as if a proof of a Creator would be proof of Jesus. Nor is the argument unique to Christianity; I’ve heard Muslim and Hindu apologetics of much the same regard as the Paley watchmaker argument.
Nonetheless, there does exist a humble deistic position; one that does not assert that the arguer knows the mind or acts of God. Other than various classic sources affiliated with Freemasonry, such as Jefferson, I’ve also heard it from Quakers, Unitarian-Universalists, and Sufis.
True, but it can also be a dangerously convenient get-out-of-debate-free card for people who are actually more traditionally theistic than their professed beliefs imply. e.g. one minute they’ll talk about an impersonal, ineffable, deistic creator-god whose nature is forever beyond the understanding of our finite minds, and the next minute they’ll be talking about Jesus of all things.
Oh, absolutely. The Intelligent Design folks are guilty of privileging the hypothesis for acting as if a proof of a Creator would be proof of Jesus. Nor is the argument unique to Christianity; I’ve heard Muslim and Hindu apologetics of much the same regard as the Paley watchmaker argument.
Nonetheless, there does exist a humble deistic position; one that does not assert that the arguer knows the mind or acts of God. Other than various classic sources affiliated with Freemasonry, such as Jefferson, I’ve also heard it from Quakers, Unitarian-Universalists, and Sufis.