When did you first hear about Deism?

I'm interested when and how you first heard about Deism and Panendeism for that matter?

I first heard about Deism about 4 years ago while doing some research about "the real Jesus". It was right around the time that "the Passion of Christ" came out. I first heard of Panendeism on DD about a year and a half ago.

Let's see, I first learned about Deism about six years ago and about panendeism about, I think it was four years ago on the Yahoo board. I had actually heard of panentheism before that and had thought that came close to describing my flavor of deism, but I never put the deism into the panen till later.

-TC

I first heard about it when reading about America's founding fathers, many of whom referred to themselves as Deist.

Wow, I can't even remember.... I'm sure it was in high school. But I very distinctly remember when I was a freshman in college, in 1991, a friend introduced me to this visiting professor who had a roundtable discussion on alternatives in religion -- not part of a class or anything, just people getting together to share ideas -- and he gave a very convincing pitch on deism, pantheism, and pandeism. That was definitely the first time I heard of pandeism, and probably the first time deism had been addressed to me in a really complete way. I'll see if I can find the prof's name, and give him a ring!!

I heard of Panendeism only recently, by comparison -- I think it was only coined recently, tho. Saw it on Wikipedia about a year ago, before the admins deleted the article.

Yeah, IMO Panendeism has been around for a long time however the term was coined only about four or five years ago. (At least as far as we know.)

I heard about deism as a freshman in college, but not as a result of structured study but just informal discussions--such as these. I heard about pan/panendeism 2 or 3 years ago.

BTW, I consider myself a panendeist but only as a pleasing framework since I see no evidence or reason at all to favor any particular model of deism. I'm barely a deist over an atheist as it is.

For myself, belief in a Pan/Panendeistic model started from a rational perspective. More recently it has become more of a realization however. The realization is that ultimately we are all a part of "the one". I think that both science and phenomenology point to this "singularity".