What's Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions by Anderson James N

Author:Anderson, James N. [Anderson, James N.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781433538957
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2014-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

You’ve reached the end of the trail. However:

To reconsider the Salvation Question, go here.

To reconsider the Divinity Question, go here.

To reconsider the Resurrection Question, go here.

Worldview: Deism

Deism is the view that there is a God, but he remains “at a distance” and doesn’t intervene at all in the natural workings of the universe. For the Deist, the universe was created by God, but it now operates entirely according to natural principles, such as the laws of physics, and there are no supernatural events such as miracles or divine revelation (e.g., God communicating with us through prophecies or visions). Deists sometimes use this analogy: God is like a watchmaker who designs and constructs a watch, but after winding it up, he lets it run on its own, with no further supervision or intervention.

Self-described Deists often consider themselves religious—they believe in a Creator God, after all—but they tend not to associate closely with any of the major world religions, simply because belief in supernatural intervention and divine revelation is central to those religions. On the other hand, it’s fair to say that many people in the West who identify themselves as Christians or Jews have worldviews closer to Deism. Deists typically believe that there are objective moral laws, but they say that these laws are derived from nature or human experience rather than divine revelation (such as the Bible).

Some Deists have held that God isn’t a personal being. (If you agree with them, go back and review your answer to the Personality Question, here!) However, if the Creator of the universe isn’t personal, that raises some difficult questions (for more on this point, go here). Deists who believe that God is a personal being are in a stronger position, but even so, they face a very perplexing scenario: Why would a personal Supreme Being create intelligent personal beings with the capacity for verbal communication and then never speak to them? Not even a quick “Hello”?

Here’s an analogy to drive the point home. Imagine that a brilliant and benevolent scientist creates an intelligent, humanlike robot that has the capacity for meaningful conversation with him (think Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation or Sonny from the movie I, Robot). This scientist, however, never actually converses with his creation. Wouldn’t that be very odd and surprising? Why would a scientist create a robot with that capacity but never give the robot an opportunity to exercise that capacity? In the same way, it would be very odd and surprising for God to create us with the capacity for verbal communication but never say a single word to us!

This oddity of Deism is compounded by the problem of evil. Clearly we’ve made a mess of the world God created. We’ve dug holes for ourselves that we struggle to escape. There is a great deal of suffering in the world, much of it caused by us and much of it beyond our control. If God is truly all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, as Deists believe, wouldn’t we expect

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