Deism: A World of Inconsistency

As the world began to be discovered, a new worldview emerged. Deism. Because of the many natural laws that had just been discovered, deists believed that the world operated like a very large and intricate clock. This "clock" had been invented in the beginning by God, and then left. Alone. Deists believed that God was not sovereign, not providental and uncaring about human affairs. We are just "gears" in the clock, run completely by the laws of cause and effect.

At the same time as Deism was taking root, men began to rely more on their own reason to understand the world around them than ever before. Deism taught that man can know all about God and the universe by reason alone, with divine revelation being impossible and thus unreliable. Alexander Pope(a deist), unintentionally showed a flaw in deism in one of his poems. He stated that the world is like a vast piece of clockwork, but at the same time he says that we cannot discern it. How then can we know it works on its own like a clock? It is an inconsistency that can only be resolved if we truly can never know what the universe is like, or if there is another way to obtain knowledge.

In another of his poems, Pope reveals another flaw. Since God made the world as is, and God is good and just, all that happens must be just! Yet deists are very interested in ethics, which must cease to exist if all is good!

Deism, because it was so unstable, only lasted about 70 years. It was preceded by Theism and succeded by naturalism. Man had begun to fall away from God and rely on his own reason, and the result was a worldview that was inconsistent, confused and chaotic.