Revelation, or revealed religion, is defined in Webster's
New World Dictionary as: "God's disclosure to man of Himself." This should
read, "God's alleged disclosure to man of himself." For unless God reveals
to each of us individually that a particular religion is truly His
disclosure to us of Himself, then, by believing that religion, we are not
taking His word for it, but we are instead putting our belief in the person
or institution telling us it is so. This is what we are doing when we
believe in any revealed religion, and that's all Christianity is. It's a
revealed religion like many others such as Islam and Judaism. Revealed
religion gets dangerous however, when it crosses over the line into
politics. This is the admitted goal of the Christian Coalition. God
allegedly revealed to Pat Robertson and his Coalition, that He wants them to
take over America and eventually the world with "His Word," so the laws of
the nations will mirror the laws in the Bible, which, if you know what's in
the Bible, is terrifying. This, too, is what the Ayatollah's goal was, only
his "revealed word of God" was the Koran, an other revelation. Are we to
believe Pat when he says the Bible is revelation of God's Word?
As THINK! has already offered several examples in the
above article, YANKING THE TEETH FROM THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT, taken directly
from the Bible itself to prove itself false and NOT the Word of God, reason
alone will now be used to demonstrate Christianity is NOT revelation from
God.
Thomas Paine, the man who elucidated Deism for the masses
and who is the primary personal impetus for THINK! and the World Union of
Deists, wrote:
"The
Calvinist, who damns children of a span long to hell to burn forever for the
glory of God (and this is called Christianity), and the Universalist who
preaches that all shall be saved and none shall be damned (and this also is
called Christianity), boasts alike of their holy [reveled] religion and
their Christian faith.
"Something more therefore is necessary than mere cry and wholesale
assertion, and that something is TRUTH; and as inquiry is the road to truth,
he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth. "The God of truth is
not the God of fable; when, therefore, any book is introduced into the world
as the Word of God, and made a groundwork for religion, it ought to be
scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of being what
it is called. Our reverence to God demands that we do this, lest we ascribe
to God what is not His, and our duty to ourselves demands it lest we take
fable for fact, and rest our hope of salvation on a false foundation.
"It is
not our calling a book holy that makes it so, any more than our calling a
religion holy that entitles it to the name. Inquiry therefore is necessary
in order to arrive at truth. But inquiry must have some principle to proceed
on, some standard to judge by, superior to human authority.
"When we
survey the works of creation, the revolutions of the planetary system, and
the whole economy of what is called nature, which is no other than the laws
the Creator has prescribed to matter, we see unerring order and universal
harmony reigning throughout the whole. No one part contradicts another. The
sun does not run against the moon, nor the moon against the sun, nor the
planets against each other. Everything keeps its appointed time and place.
"This
harmony in the works of God is so obvious, that the farmer of the field,
though he cannot calculate eclipses, is as sensible of it as the
philosophical astronomer. He sees the God of order in every part of the
visible universe."
"Here,
then, is the standard to which everything must be brought that pretends to
be the work or Word of God, and by this standard it must be judged,
independently of anything and everything that man can say or do. His opinion
is like a feather in the scale compared with the standard that God Himself
has set up."
Since we know we did not create the creation or ourselves, yet we and the
creation do exist, it is logical to believe that God, or an
Eternal Cause or Creator created us. This belief has absolutely
nothing to do with revealed religion. In fact, all the absurdities of
revealed religion are responsible for many sincere thinking people to reject
and close their minds to natural religion/Deism. The priests, ministers, and
rabbis need to suppress, or at least complicate, the pure and simple belief
and realization of Deism for their own job security. And the power elites
have no use for Deism because they can't use Deism to "inspire" mankind to
wage war against itself for the elitists' own selfish purposes. In fact,
Deism, by focusing on the first creed of all religions, belief in God, could
frustrate the war/money machine permanently.
The following quote from Thomas Jefferson points us in a direction free of
the confusion of priest-craft and revealed religion:
"I hold
(without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the universe, in
its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to
perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite
power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly
bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and
centripetal forces; the structure of the Earth itself, with its distribution
of lands, waters and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in
all their minutest particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly
organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and
uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there
is in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a
Fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their Preserver and
Regulator, while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their
regeneration into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the
necessity of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its course
and order."
Because Deism is based on nature, the laws of nature, and the creation, it
is a natural religion as opposed to revealed or man-made artificial
religion.
DEISM VS. ATHEISM
In George H. Smith's book ATHEISM - THE CASE AGAINST GOD, it is stated that
rationality will not lead to God. That instead, God can only be brought
about by rationalization. The book describes rationality as first finding
evidence, then arriving at the idea, like Newton seeing the apple fall to
the ground and then discovering the law of gravity. It then describes
rationalization as first accepting an idea and then searching for evidence
to support it, like someone inventing the idea of God and then saying God
created the universe. Deism says it is rationality and reason that leads to
God. To the Deist, the evidence is the creation and the idea of what brought
about the evidence is the Creator. There is absolutely nothing known to man
that created itself. For example, if someone shows us a computer, and tells
us that all the individual parts that make up the computer just came about
by chance, that they somehow just formed into a perfectly working computer
system all by themselves, we would be foolish to believe that person.
Reason, if we use it, won't let us believe a statement like that. Likewise,
if someone tells us the ever growing creation and its perfect order
"happened" by pure chance, we are under no obligation to believe them. From
our own experience we know everything created has a creator. Why then should
the creation itself be different? There is, however, one quality the
creation has that makes leaving its existence to chance even more remote.
That quality is motion.
Turning again to Thomas Paine we find the following pertinent observation he
made regarding atheism in a speech to the Society of Theophilanthropists in
Paris, France, shortly after the French Revolution:
"In the
first place, admitting matter to have properties, as we see it has, the
question still remains, how came matter by those properties? To this they
will answer, that matter possessed those properties eternally. This is not
solution, but assertion; and to deny it is as impossible of proof as to
assert it.
"It is
then necessary to go further; and therefore I say - if there exist a
circumstance that is not a property of matter, and without which the
universe, or to speak in a limited degree, the solar system composed of
planets and a sun, could not exist a moment, all the arguments of atheism,
drawn from properties of matter, and applied to account for the universe,
will be overthrown, and the existence of a superior cause, or that which man
calls God, becomes discoverable, as is before said, by natural philosophy.
"I go now
to show that such a circumstance exists, and what it is.
"The
universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion.
Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion, the solar
system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered
and undiscoverable thing called perpetual motion would establish itself.
"It is
because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an
impossibility in the hand of every being but that of the Creator of motion.
When the pretenders to atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till
then, they may expect to be credited.
"The
natural state of matter, as to place, is a state of rest. Motion, or change
of place, is the effect of an external cause acting upon matter. As to that
faculty of matter that is called gravitation, it is the influence which two
or more bodies have reciprocally on each other to unite and be at rest.
Everything which has hitherto been discovered, with respect to the motion of
the planets in the system, relates only to the laws by which motion acts,
and not to the cause of motion.
"Gravitation, so far from being the cause of motion to the planets that
compose the solar system, would be the destruction of the solar system, were
revolutionary motion to cease; for as the action of spinning upholds a top,
the revolutionary motion upholds the planets in their orbits, and prevents
them from gravitating and forming one mass with the sun. In one sense of the
word, philosophy knows, and atheism says, that matter is in perpetual
motion.
"But the
motion here meant refers to the state of matter, and that only on the
surface of the Earth. It is either decomposition, which is continually
destroying the form of bodies of matter, or recomposition, which renews that
matter in the same or another form, as the decomposition of animal or
vegetable substances enters into the composition of other bodies.
"But the
motion that upholds the solar system, is of an entirely different kind, and
is not a property of matter. It operates also to an entirely different
effect. It operates to perpetual preservation, and to prevent any change in
the state of the system.
"Giving
then to matter all the properties which philosophy knows it has, or all that
atheism ascribes to it, and can prove, and even supposing matter to be
eternal, it will not account for the system of the universe, or of the solar
system, because it will not account for motion, and it is motion that
preserves it.
"When,
therefore, we discover a circumstance of such immense importance, that
without it the universe could not exist, and for which neither matter, nor
any nor all the properties can account, we are by necessity forced into the
rational conformable belief of the existence of a cause superior to matter,
and that cause man calls GOD.
"As to
that which is called nature, it is no other than the laws by which motion
and action of every kind, with respect to unintelligible matter, are
regulated. And when we speak of looking through nature up to nature's God,
we speak philosophically the same rational language as when we speak of
looking through human laws up to the power that ordained them.
"God is
the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted
upon."
In addition to motion acting as a perpetual preserver, it also acts as a
continual source for the universe's constant expansion. Every second the
universe is expanding at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second).
According to Astronomy Magazine, 2/14/92, page 49, "Astronomers presently
believe there isn't enough mass in the universe, even with dark matter, to
stop its expansion." This exciting realization should fill everyone with
unlimited appreciation when we realize we are a part of this amazing and
spectacular universe! The Creator is immeasurably generous!
In ATHEISM - THE CASE AGAINST GOD, the author writes, " . . .when I claim
not to believe in a god, I mean that I do not believe in anything "above" or
"beyond" the natural, knowable universe." Deism teaches that the Creator is
knowable and discoverable through the creation itself. It is very
understandable how people could be turned off by man-made religions and
superstitions with their bombings and financial beg-a-thons, and confuse
artificial or revealed religion with God. However, the atheist attitude of
accepting things simply as not knowable is dangerous to the progress of
humanity. Many things were not knowable in the past that are knowable today.
At one time Europeans believed it was impossible to know what was on the
other side of the Atlantic Ocean: but they were wrong. As we learn more
about the sciences, we are learning more about the Power that put those
principles in place. An eternal Being, as Thomas Paine said, "whose power is
equal to His will."
DEISM AND DEATH
Revealed religions all teach different opinions on death. Even the different
denominations of the same umbrella religion preach different dogmas. A good
example is Christianity. Some of the Christian denominations say an
essential qualification to get into heaven (of course they all agree dying
is a key requirement) is that you have to be baptized "by submersion," while
others say just a "sprinkling" is fine. Which is it? Sprinkling or
submersion??
The fear of death is a big motivator for many people to support a particular
religion. We all know, without the possibility of doubt, that a day will
come for absolutely all of us when we will die. This realization brings fear
to many people. It also brings money to religious charlatans who aren't
ashamed to prey on this fear. In fact, it can be truthfully said that the
revealed religions of the world all use the fear of death to put cash in
their own pockets.
Contrary to this self-serving attitude of the revealed religions, Deism
teaches that no one knows for certain what happens after death, if anything
at all. It teaches that, based on the creation we are all a part of, we
shouldn't worry about it. That instead, we should be concerned for the
present and future of planet Earth and humanity. That we should work hard to
improve life and also enjoy it here and now. Why should we worry about death
when we have so much to do in life? And do we think so little of Nature's
God that we don't trust Him with our future? Ethan Allen, a Deist from
America's Revolutionary War era, wrote, "Ungrateful and foolish it must be
for rational beings in the possession of existence, and surrounded with a
kind and almighty Providence, to distrust the author thereof concerning
their futurity, because they cannot comprehend the mode or manner of their
succeeding and progressive existence."
Another Deist that had interesting thoughts on death was Benjamin Franklin.
One quote of Franklin's was, "Take courage mortal, death cannot banish you
from the universe."
Ben Franklin's epitaph on himself provides a look at his belief that our
life on earth is not the beginning and end of a personality. He, like Ethan
Allen above, seems to have believed that the state of our spirits or souls
is of an evolutionary nature. Franklin's epitaph reads, "The body of
Benjamin Franklin, printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn
out and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once
more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the
Author."
In Thomas Paine's the AGE OF REASON, we read on pages 177 and 178 the
following: "But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is
the only conceivable idea we have of another life, and the continuance of
that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, of the
knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form, nor to
the same matter, even in this life.
"We have
not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter that
composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are conscious of
being the same persons. . .
"That the
consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the same
matter is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the creation, as far as
our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration. A very numerous part
of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a
life hereafter. Their little life resembles an Earth and a heaven - a
present and a future state, and comprises, if it may be so expressed,
immortality in miniature.
"The most
beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects, and they
are not so originally. They acquire that form and that inimitable brilliancy
by progressive changes. The slow and creeping caterpillar-worm of today
passes in a few days to a torpid figure and a state resembling death; and in
the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a
splendid butterfly."
In an essay Mr. Paine wrote the following short and to the point passage:
"I
consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me
after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all
these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be
presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will
do with us hereafter."