Deist Video Podcasts

I came across this channel on YouTube and thought it might be of some interest.

Quote :

Deist Reality Channel

"To conceive God as a person is a simile, and to think of him as a father is an allegory. The simile is appropriate, and the allegory is beautiful;
but we must not forget that parables, although they embody the truth, are not the truth.
The fact is, God is not a person like ourselves;
He is not a father nor a mother like our progenitors;
He is only comparable to a father; but in truth he is much more than that;
He is not personal, but superpersonal.

He is not a great man, he is God.

He is the life of our life, he is the power that sustains the universe, he is the law that permeates all;
He is the curse of sin and the blessing of righteousness; He is the unity of being;
He is love;
He is the possibility of science, and the truth of knowledge:
He is light;
He is the reality of existence in which we live and move and have our being;
He is life and the condition of life, morality.

To comprehend all in a word, he is the authority of conduct.

Such is the God of science, and belief in God must not mean that we regard as true whatever the Scriptures or later traditions tell us concerning him."
Paul Carus

https://www.youtube.com/user/DeistReality

That's surprisingly intelligent and insightful to be on youtube - lol.*

Interesting guy.


I like the Paul Caras quote though, I'd never heard of that guy before. Thanks!


*His ultimate proof for god's existence, beginning around the 4:30 mark, is pretty lame though.

Uriah wrote:

His ultimate proof for god's existence, beginning around the 4:30 mark, is pretty lame though.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I like his spirit though.


Here's some more information on Paul Carus. He looks like he was an interesting guy.

Quote :

Carus's world view and philosophy

Carus considered himself a theologian rather than philosopher. He referred to himself as "an atheist who loved God".[9] [10]

Carus is proposed to be a pioneer in the promotion of interfaith dialogue. He explored the relationship of science and religion, and was instrumental in introducing Eastern traditions and ideas to the West.[5] He was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism, to the West[4], sponsoring Buddhist translation work of D.T. Suzuki, and fostering a lifelong working friendship with Buddhist Master, Soyen Shaku. Carus’ interest in Asian religions seems to have intensified after he attended the World’s Parliament of Religions (in 1893).

For years afterwards, Carus was a strong sympathizer of Buddhist ideas, but stopped short of committing fully to this, or any other, religion. Instead, he ceaselessly promoted his own rational concept which he called the “Religion of Science”. Carus had a selective approach and he believed that religions evolve over time. After a battle for survival, he expected a "cosmic religion of universal truth" to emerge from the ashes of traditional beliefs.

Religion of Science

Carus was of the opinion that Western thought had fallen into error early in its development in accepting the distinctions between body and mind and the material and the spiritual. (Kant's phenomenal and noumenal realms of knowledge; Christianity's views of the soul and the body, and the natural and the supernatural). Carus rejected such dualisms, and wanted science to reestablish the unity of knowledge. The philosophical result he labeled Monism.

His version of monism is more closely associated with a kind of pantheism, although it was occasionally identified with positivism.[10] He regarded every law of nature as a part of God's being. Carus held that God was the name for a cosmic order comprising "all that which is the bread of our spiritual life." He held the concept of a personal God as untenable. He acknowledged Jesus Christ as a redeemer, but not as the only one, for he believed that other religious founders were equally endowed with similar qualities.

His beliefs attempted to steer a middle course between idealistic metaphysics and materialism. He differed with metaphysicians because they "reified" words and treated them as if they were realities, and he objected to materialism because it ignored or overlooked the importance of form. Carus emphasized form by conceiving of the divinity as a cosmic order. He objected to any monism which sought the unity of the world, not in the unity of truth, but in the oneness of a logical assumption of ideas. He referred to such concepts as henism, not monism.

Carus held that truth was independent of time, human desire, and human action. Therefore, science was not a human invention, but a human revelation which needed to be apprehended; discovery meant apprehension; it was the result or manifestation of the cosmic order in which all truth were ultimately harmonious.