I try not to write about religion very often as it is a touchy subject for most people. I have been somewhat of an amateur religious scholar for the bulk of my life. It began when I experienced religious persecution at an early age even though I wasn't particularly religious. They would assume I was a thing (in my case Satanic) without talking to me and treat me as such. You may be wondering what were my crimes and stains? I had long hair, listened to heavy metal, and had band patches on my jackets. I'd wear concert t-shirts. I draw logos for bands on my notebooks.

It didn't help that Geraldo Rivera pushed out his Devil Worshipper documentary which told people SIGNS to look for. The signs were vague and general enough I had my mother ask me if I was a closet Devil Worshipper.

I also got written up in a newspaper of a nearby town that described me to perfection in terms of appearance. It was a newspaper article about satanism. I lived in a small mountain college town not far from some ski resorts. At the time it was mostly ranchers, and mostly granola/Grateful Dead fan college students that were in the area. So me, as the metal head I stuck out. I didn't hurt people, I did not drink alcohol (was actually very anti-alcohol at the time), I did not do drugs though I had friends (long hair, and normal looking alike) who did drugs. I never had anyone from that newspaper actually speak to me or anyone that actually knew me. This is why my name was not in the paper, only my description.

I remember passing a catholic priest a couple of times walking on a side walk to have them turn their head away from me and stick their nose into the air.

I have a strong sense of justice, and of right and wrong. I have no doubt those of you that have been reading my material are chuckling and thinking "no shit?" with a sarcastic tone.

I began voraciously studying religion. I also ate up all kinds of scholarly works about Christianity, and the Judaeo-Christian faiths. After time I actually knew more about the history of the religions than the priests I would encounter. They could rattle off scripture, and they had memorized passages in whichever version of the bible their denomination happened to use, but I actually knew the history of their religion. I also studied every other religion I could.

I am walking in the airport and a moonie offers me a copy of The Baghavad Gita and I said "sure" and thanked them. It ended up on my shelf with a growing collection of bibles. I would eventually read even Anton Lavey's The Satanic Bible, and I'd read the Necronomicon. I read everything I could get my hand on. I read them with a critical mind and looked for common threads. I tried to see if I could determine where an idea may have originated from.

I questioned things that made no sense. I am a huge enemy of hypocrisy. I don't know that I've ever found an organized religion that doesn't have some hypocrisy. Some of them have an extensive amount.

By the time I was in College if the Jehovah's Witness came to my house. I'd invite them in and debate with them. After awhile one of my roommates grew frustrated with them and scared them off by saying "We don't care what the bible says, what do you think?" because they would always try to fall back on a piece of scripture. They stopped coming over, but that was not my doing and I gave my roommate shit for spoiling my fun. For I was young and I liked the term "Mind Fuck" at that time and I seriously felt that was what I was doing when having these debates. I eventually would grow out of that. I have no interest in messing with people's minds anymore. It is actually easy to do, but ultimately doesn't accomplish much that I would call positive.

Life would change, eventually I'd get married, and have some kids. Yes, this changed me a lot. Yet I kept collecting bibles, religious texts, esoteric books, etc. I still do to this day.

Enter the arrival of web pages and one web page in particular that I highly recommend.

www.religioustolerance.org

Is jam packed with essays, bibles, and information about virtually every religion, non-religion, atheism, spiritualism, etc in one place. It's goal is to simply present this information in a non-biased format.

I fell in love with this website. Even with my years of scholarly pursuits there were many different religions I had never heard of.

I remember this is where I first heard of the Unitarian Universalists (aka UU) and I thought it was neat they had a church but welcomed ALL faiths under one shared roof. This could even include welcoming atheists.

I thought that was pretty cool, and I liked the solidarity of it. Yet, church is not really my thing. I am an individual. I really do not feel the need for a church.

Yet, one day I stumbled upon a hidden gem. It was something that had been around for quite some time and some rather prominent intellectuals (especially in what is known as the Age of Reason) were of this "faith" if you can call it that.

This was called Deism. It is not to be confused with the word Theism which is very different, and it is Theism that Atheism as a term is applied to. I wrote about Deism many months ago in one of my favorite blog posts I've written. It didn't receive much notice. Yet, I do like to mention it from time to time for as a blog entry I've written it is one I am proud of.

Deism

Basically they believe there was some creator. They do not seek to define that creator. They do not seek to tell you how you should live your life based upon religion. They do not believe a book written by someone is the revealed truth about everything. They do not believe in revealed religions and prophets. They believe in using observations and reason. They believe if you wish to read the word of God it is written into nature, it is written into physics, it is written into chemistry. It could be the golden mean, the Fibonacci sequence, fractals, etc.

They don't believe a human standing in front of you is super human and thus wiser than them and that they must listen to what that person says.

They use their own mind. They may still read books to get some good historical records, some common sense teachings on morality, etc.

An example of this would be Thomas Jefferson (yes a U.S. President, writer of the declaration of independence, and a founding father). He was a Deist. He wrote the Jeffersonian Bible which took the Christian bible and removed references to revelation, etc and simply left it as something historical with good examples of morality. He saw value in the scriptures, but did not see them as the word of God.

So why is deism so obscure?

I asked this same question in that post I referenced above.

I suspect because it is not very good for controlling and manipulating people. In fact it is the antithesis to that. It is thus not a good tool for divide and conquer. It is not a good tool for making someone hate people of another faith. It is not a good tool for telling someone they are "blaspheming" to try to keep them in line.

In other words, it undermines a lot of the tools that those with power have traditionally used to control the populations.

Today we have people talking about "What if reality is just a simulation?" and having some great debates. One of the things I find interesting about that discussion is that if reality is a simulation then that actually fits nicely within the concept of deism.

It does not define creator, or God. It doesn't even state they are necessarily superior. It doesn't state they are omniscient. It offers no definitive definitions for the term creator or God. In reality, all it boils down to the CATALYST for what we perceive around us.

Is this true? I cannot state for sure. I talk about this more in the post I shared above and I talk about atheism a bit, as though this seems the opposite of atheism, they actually get along quite well in some cases and I explained why in my other post.

I sometimes refer to myself as an atheist/deist. :) It seems a contradiction, yet with a little thought it is not as contradictory as it may seem. And no I am not saying Agnostic. That is quite different.

So why write about religion?

There are people here delving into similar thoughts that were not around during any of my earlier journeys into these subjects. I wanted to share some information, as it is very likely most people have never heard of Deism. I know they've heard of Theism, but they are very different things.

What some people are describing in their personal journeys actually often sounds like Deism, and I'd like them to know there were some respected individuals in the past that have had similar thoughts, and they have a label for this thing.

Deism.

Steem On!