Deism may sound a lot like theism, and while they’re etymologically the same, the belief systems are more nuanced.
In this episode, we deep dive into Deist belief and its rise to popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries. We explain the core belief of the initial creator, but he’s not around anymore—kind of like the dad that left for a pack of smokes.
The Enlightenment made deism a popular belief system as people looked to logic, reason, science, and observation to explain the world around them, rather than revelation. Deist philosophers believe in a God that created the universe, but they also believe in science to explain how things work.
If you’re an American history buff, we also talk about the founding fathers and their religious beliefs. While we don’t have great records for all of them, it’s clear that some were Deists, most notably Thomas Jefferson and his book The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, aka The Jefferson Bible.
That’s right, Deism is a spectrum, and we talk about the different deism types and how they overlap with other faith groups.
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[00:00:11] Preston Meyer: Banana phone.
[00:00:14] Katie Dooley: Wrong! Watermelon phone.
[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: I've got this feeling. It's so appealing.
[00:00:20] Katie Dooley: You've got a good voice, Preston.
[00:00:20] Preston Meyer: Really?
[00:00:25] Katie Dooley: Not properly. Even that wasn't really proper. Well, here we are. Back again. I'm. I'm Katie.
[00:00:37] Preston Meyer: I'm Preston.
[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: And this is.
[00:00:39] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:00:42] Katie Dooley: We're getting more theoretical again for a little bit.
[00:00:46] Preston Meyer: A little bit, yeah. Today we're going to get back into a really nebulous category of ideas, I guess.
[00:00:54] Katie Dooley: You know it's rough when I text Preston to be like, I don't know what to research right now, and I definitely did for this. So, uh, today we are talking about deism. Not to be confused with theism, which we will get to.
[00:01:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah,
[00:01:09] Katie Dooley: The big D. Deism. Sorry.
[00:01:12] Preston Meyer: The frustrating thing we'll get right into it. My words saying deism and theism are etymologically identical. If you break down the parts of the words, there's no difference in their meaning. It's a little frustrating.
[00:01:25] Katie Dooley: It means there is a god.
[00:01:27] Preston Meyer: Well, it's. Yeah, the belief in a god of some kind and the belief that he exists and does things and whatever. Generally, there's the belief that he's the creator. It's usually a he. Yeah. The two words weren't differentiated in English until the 1600s. The oldest instance of the word in English literature, with its current meaning is in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621.
[00:01:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So Deism already. So deism was a popular movement in the 17th and 18th centuries that it. And of course, it's a spectrum. We'll say that a couple times, uh, generally, except that there's an initial mover or creator that has either picked up and left like a dad going for a pack of smokes or one that just watches and doesn't get involved.
[00:02:21] Preston Meyer: It's like when you seal off your little terrarium forever, and maybe you'll open that cork one more time to add just a tiny little bit more water. That's it.
[00:02:30] Katie Dooley: Like Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, I think it was a Treehouse of Horror and she created a real world.
[00:02:38] Preston Meyer: That sounds about right.
[00:02:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:02:40] Preston Meyer: I... I haven't watched all of The Simpsons yet. Amanda and I are about halfway through watching all of it.
[00:02:47] Katie Dooley: I like that the it's on Disney Plus because I love watching Treehouse of Horror and it's almost never mind spooky was over. It's December.
[00:02:58] Preston Meyer: Yep. Oh, well.
[00:03:04] Katie Dooley: Deism is in a category similar to agnosticism, so to deist believe in logic, reason, and scientific observation. So they believe in the existence of God based on reason. It would be irrational to have an initial mover for all this cool stuff we have, but not necessarily in any sort of divine revelation or prophecy.
[00:03:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah, of course it's a spectrum.
[00:03:28] Katie Dooley: We actually, I found a really great chart online, and it breaks down all types of modern day agnosticism. My goodness, all.
[00:03:36] Preston Meyer: Deism?
[00:03:36] Katie Dooley: Modern day deism. And uh, there's like 15 different kinds. And I didn't know it could get that specific, but it do.
[00:03:45] Preston Meyer: We'll post that on our Discord for everybody to look at. So the ideas of deism in some form or another have actually been around for longer than recorded history. We've been talking about gods for a long, long time. And for pretty much that same amount of time. There's always been somebody going. Sure, there is a God, but is he actually going to get involved?
[00:04:08] Katie Dooley: Maybe if we rain dance. I'm shimmying to the microphone.
[00:04:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but it's it. The existence of deism as a movement is only about a few hundred years old, dating back to the, well, the early 1600s.
[00:04:25] Katie Dooley: The Enlightenment.
[00:04:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:04:26] Katie Dooley: Along with the invention of the printing press and the popularity of reading, brought a bunch of splinter groups and novel philosophies branching out from the militantly dogmatic Church of Rome. Interesting how ideas start to change once knowledge is available.
[00:04:42] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. Of course, around this time, the Church of Rome is, you know, burning people for trying to get their hands on a printed copy of the Bible, the publication or translation of the Bible in any language other than Latin would really ruin your life. Yay!
[00:04:59] Katie Dooley: Yay! Can't wait for Martin Luther.
[00:05:03] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. So rationalism brought a new way of looking at God as unnecessary for the day to day operation of the natural world. Instead of having people saying, oh, yeah, God send the thunder and the lightning every time it shows up. So, you know, it's just a natural phenomenon that all of this was set in motion, the creation of the world. And now it just happens.
[00:05:24] Katie Dooley: I have a few friends who think that for, uh, like evolution versus creationism, but why not both? Kind of a deist idea. You put everything here, and then we evolved.
[00:05:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that fits pretty solidly into this framework.
[00:05:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:05:40] Preston Meyer: The cosmos are very often compared to a watch that can operate without the attention of its maker. It's just solid enough. That's the the basis of this entire philosophical principle.
[00:05:56] Katie Dooley: I didn't look into it at the time, which now I'm regretting, but it was almost answers the question of, you know, things, bad things that happen, you know? How can there be a God if we had a holocaust?
[00:06:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:06:11] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:06:12] Preston Meyer: Absolutely.
[00:06:12] Katie Dooley: Um, I mean, I can kind of get behind this.
[00:06:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. In fact, a lot of deistic thinkers, especially pantheistic thinkers, write a lot on this very subject.
[00:06:22] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:06:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:06:24] Katie Dooley: Interesting. So someone has got there.
[00:06:26] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
[00:06:28] Katie Dooley: This isn't a unique idea, Preston. No, no, there goes my master thesis.
[00:06:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And, of course, considering the corruption in the Vatican and the troubles of the Dark Ages, it was pretty easy for people to believe that God had abandoned the world.
[00:06:43] Katie Dooley: The plague...
[00:06:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So deism became relatively quite popular in Europe, especially England, in France, where For all of the great thinkers and writers were thinking about this particular thing at that time.
[00:06:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Cool. I'm having other thoughts. I'm...
[00:07:01] Preston Meyer: Well. What's our podcast about, if not our thoughts?
[00:07:05] Katie Dooley: Um. What do these actually believe? If they believe there's a God that doesn't hang around to do anything?
[00:07:15] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's that's what they believe.
[00:07:18] Katie Dooley: Can we. Wow. Okay, podcast is over guys. Nine minutes. Hope you liked it.
[00:07:26] Preston Meyer: So it depends on who you ask. Uh, one of the first big writers in deism in England was Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Uh, he's known as the father of English deism because he managed to get a little bit written to get things really moving. Of course, later on people are like, no, Herbert, your ideas are terrible. But for a little while, these were the things.
[00:07:49] Katie Dooley: And, well, I actually found him reading the list of Modern Deist beliefs. A handful of them still follow these five.
[00:07:55] Preston Meyer: Yes. But of course, nothing's monolithic.
[00:07:58] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:07:59] Preston Meyer: All right. So his principles included a belief in the existence of a deity coming from a Christian community. Makes perfect sense. This is the thing you cannot walk away from. Next, we have the obligation to Revere such a power. If you want to keep your popularity in a Christian nation, definitely keep worshiping God.
[00:08:20] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:08:22] Preston Meyer: And of course, there's some reverence that makes sense to afford to your creator if you expect there to be one. We have the identification of worship with practical morality, which is kind of an interesting thing. The idea that there's there is a best way to live, even though you deny that God is telling people what to do and how to live.
[00:08:45] Katie Dooley: I mean, it comes back to the story of the good atheist.
[00:08:48] Preston Meyer: Right? There's, you know, all of this is based on reason. If you can see the behavior does harm to the community, avoid that behavior.
[00:08:58] Katie Dooley: Wow, logic!
[00:08:59] Preston Meyer: Practical morality.
[00:09:00] Katie Dooley: I like that. Practical morality.
[00:09:02] Preston Meyer: Next on this list, we have the obligation to repent of sin and to abandon it, which has to rely on this idea of practical morality. Because you've got no other basis on how to judge what counts as sin. When you deny that God reveals what behavior he wants.
[00:09:18] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:09:19] Preston Meyer: But there's if there is sin, there is not only the need to abandon it, but also this idea that there is punishment for sin in the afterlife. Which of course, not all deists believe there is an afterlife. It's a mixed bag.
[00:09:36] Katie Dooley: Wow. Like Skittles!
[00:09:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, sure. And Divine Recompense not only offers rewards of a negative kind for sin, but also great rewards for good behavior, which of course pretty subjective.
[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: Yes. And, uh, of course, we're going to go into other schools of thought for deism, but this actually feels like very like regular theistic to me.
[00:10:07] Preston Meyer: It does.
[00:10:08] Katie Dooley: And I can see why it's not as popular.
[00:10:11] Preston Meyer: Remember, putting a line between deism and theism is pretty tricky.
[00:10:17] Katie Dooley: It's like wiggly and dashed and try to keep everything that you want. Yeah.
[00:10:23] Preston Meyer: I mean, it doesn't help that the words do literally mean the same thing etymologically, and it's just the way we use them that makes the difference and how people label themselves. It's a little frustrating from a scholarly perspective.
[00:10:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah. There are two other key beliefs or assertions in deism. Number one is that reason, along with the natural world, is a valid source of religious knowledge. And number two, that revelation is not a valid source of religious knowledge.
[00:10:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this is offensive to people who belong to revelation related religions. It's a lot of Rs, but I pulled it off without stumbling through it, and I feel good about that. I mean, you can't talk about revelation academically without acknowledging that people just make stuff up all of the time. We've got one of the Ten Commandments is don't pretend God told you things so that you can get people to do what you want so...
[00:11:22] Katie Dooley: Please see our episode on prophets.
[00:11:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:11:26] Katie Dooley: Because there's no way to know.
[00:11:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So instead of trying to suss out which of these prophets are good and which of them are just making stuff up, don't worry about it. Treat them all like they're making it up. Rely on the natural world to explain whatever it is you're your after and some science is really solid and easy to recognize. Oh yeah, this can shape my worldview and other things aren't answered by science. And so deism is like, let's not worry about it.
[00:12:01] Katie Dooley: Not answered by science... Yet.
[00:12:03] Preston Meyer: Right? But for example, let's say the question of why am I here? What is my purpose in life? You're not going to get something terribly useful that inspires you to continue living from science.
[00:12:21] Katie Dooley: Fair. Theists philosophers generally agreed with the common enlightenment concept that God exists and created the universe, and God gave humans the ability to reason.
[00:12:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that ability to reason is super important. That's the great thesis of the entire library of philosophy we got out of the enlightenment is... You can think for yourself and screw the church who tells you not to.
[00:12:51] Katie Dooley: That's how the Scopes Monkey trial was won.
[00:12:54] Preston Meyer: The what now?
[00:12:54] Katie Dooley: The Scopes monkey trial about teaching creationism in schools.
[00:12:58] Preston Meyer: I don't know about this particular trial.
[00:13:00] Katie Dooley: I made a whole movie about it it's a very old trial.
[00:13:02] Preston Meyer: Okay, yeah. Tell me more.
[00:13:04] Katie Dooley: I forget what the movie is called. Inherit the Wind. It's actually really good. Maybe we'll make it a movie night, but it is like a old black and white movie, and it's whatever this guy versus the state. On whether we should teach creationism in schools. And his argument is, uh, God, give us a brain. Why aren't we using it?
[00:13:21] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[00:13:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but it's actually pretty. I mean, I've never been an old movie fan, so I should say it's actually a pretty good movie. So deist philosophers believe, to recap, God created the universe and exists, and God gave humans the ability to reason but Preston, what do they reject?
[00:13:41] Preston Meyer: They reject most of the big important ideas of Christianity. They rejected the Bible contains divine revelation. They reject the incomprehensible notion of the Trinity and pretty much any other mystery. If there's something that's gate kept to just any sort of elite, obviously it's ridiculous. All that kind of fun stuff. They also reject the ideas of miracles and prophecy. Not that the God in question couldn't offer revelation or get involved in... Mess around with things, but that he just he wouldn't do so frequently because that would defy the whole absentee father motif that they're building on.
[00:14:23] Katie Dooley: And actually, that was the point I was trying to think of earlier is, you know, you read the Bible and there's all these miracles and God's intervening, and now it's what are the 16, 1700s? And you're like.
[00:14:35] Preston Meyer: Why hasn't he fixed this?
[00:14:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Why is it so hard for us to get a hold of him? Did he did he change his phone number? So I can kind of see how that develops. Right if miracles happen for one group of people, why are they not continuing to happen? Or if God's intervening for one generation, how come not another?
[00:14:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah
[00:14:52] Katie Dooley: I mean, if you talk to some Christians, I would disagree with that statement. But, uh, I think generally there are no zombies walking around.
[00:15:03] Preston Meyer: Right. That depends on how you define zombie.
[00:15:10] Katie Dooley: Lazarus.
[00:15:10] Preston Meyer: I don't know if Lazarus was a zombie. I mean, raised from the dead. Yeah, so halfway there, but. Uh depends how you define zombie.
[00:15:19] Katie Dooley: Okay, so conversation for our Discord
[00:15:22] Preston Meyer: Maybe most deists believe that there was a perfect true religion at some point, but that people screwed everything up, as you know, people do.
[00:15:33] Katie Dooley: Also, literally how every religion starts.
[00:15:35] Preston Meyer: Right? For the deists who believe in Jesus, most will claim that he was a deist. Which feels a little weird saying that he wasn't a Jew.
[00:15:52] Katie Dooley: Maybe he was a Jewish deist.
[00:15:54] Preston Meyer: That's a solid way to modify the claim, and I'm okay with its assertion.
[00:16:05] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:16:06] Preston Meyer: Most people reject supernatural superstitions of all sorts. Like throwing salt over your shoulder. Hokum.
[00:16:15] Katie Dooley: A good word.
[00:16:17] Preston Meyer: Many hope that there is a spirit that survives death, but there's an awful lot of difference of opinion on what that could look like, or if it is even a thing. Because deism is not one giant rock, it's a whole bunch of things.
[00:16:35] Katie Dooley: I actually found this great quote from the PBS Faith book. And I am citing that because I didn't change the quote at all. Some days I believe that God never intervenes in human affairs, while other days believe, as George Washington did, that God does intervene through Providence, but that providence is inscrutable. Likewise, some disbelieve in an afterlife, while others do not, etc. so.
[00:17:02] Preston Meyer: It's a spectrum.
[00:17:03] Katie Dooley: Yay, spectrum! So sort of to the point of religion being rational or logical or natural. As an atheist, that's where it thought to me. But we did speak in one of our very I think it was our second episode about why religion exists and why humans are religious. Um, and so in that episode, we talk about how it made sense for tribal and nomadic tribes to have an all powerful being, to keep people in mind, because there's nothing else structuring society at this time.
[00:17:36] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:17:36] Katie Dooley: There isn't even really a society. Like small groups of people.
[00:17:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't know. Does it take more than three people to make a society?
[00:17:48] Katie Dooley: That's a very philosophical episode. I don't know.
[00:17:52] Preston Meyer: Deism is a pretty philosophy heavy topic. The idea of that, that practical morality, it's a of all the different ways to try and keep a society in line, it's pretty solid. Pretty hard to find issue with it. Anyway, deism got relatively popular in England, France, 1700s, like we mentioned, and then of course spread its influence over North America. Then we get to see a variety of expressions of it here. Many of the American Founding Fathers were deists, but not all of them. In fact, there's definitely some that are commonly thought to be deists who probably weren't. It's some tricky business.
[00:18:41] Katie Dooley: Well, I think that's where deism is interesting and so hard to describe is because if you look at the spectrum of deism, it will overlap with atheism and it will overlap with theism.
[00:18:52] Preston Meyer: Well, okay. I'm okay with that. Second half overlap. Overlapping with theism is fine. You'll loads of Christian deists, but it can't overlap with atheism. That doesn't work.
[00:19:03] Katie Dooley: I mean, I think. The logic and the reason piece though.
[00:19:07] Preston Meyer: Okay. And that's, that's an overlap of values, but certainly not a religious overlap.
[00:19:13] Katie Dooley: How you think the universe works?
[00:19:15] Preston Meyer: Well, atheists don't talk about it being created by God.
[00:19:19] Katie Dooley: But I still think the universe works on science.
[00:19:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah it does.
[00:19:25] Katie Dooley: And we've talked about atheism being a religion.
[00:19:30] Preston Meyer: We have. But deists will deny atheism more than they'll deny any other religion.
[00:19:38] Katie Dooley: Well, their tips just touch maybe then.
[00:19:40] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:19:41] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:19:41] Preston Meyer: They share a wall. I'm okay with that. But nobody's trying to put a hole through this wall.
[00:19:54] Katie Dooley: Sorry. Back to America's founding father.
[00:19:57] Preston Meyer: Well, so we start out with a short list of the founding fathers who were deists. And I decided we need to explore this a little bit more. So Thomas Jefferson was raised Anglican, but did give up on Jesus completely later in life. Well, not completely completely. Almost completely. Denied that he was at all divine. Denied that he was the Son of God, but did appreciate him as a moral teacher.
[00:20:25] Katie Dooley: A historical Jesus.
[00:20:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Later in life, Thomas Jefferson described himself as a Unitarian. But I mean, Unitarians adopted a lot of deist beliefs, too. So it's not entirely separate. We'll talk more about Thomas Jefferson in a couple of minutes because he produced an interesting book.
[00:20:43] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:20:45] Preston Meyer: John Adams was a Unitarian rationalist, much like Jefferson, and also is fairly described as a deist, even though it's a little fuzzy on those lines there. James Monroe grew up in the Church of England, attended an Episcopalian church regularly as an adult, but he never talked much about religious matters in public or in written correspondence. Lots of scholars think he was probably a deist, but it is hard to be sure. Benjamin Franklin. He's an interesting fella.
[00:21:16] Katie Dooley: He really is.
[00:21:17] Preston Meyer: He was one of the presidents of Pennsylvania, I think. He was. He's considered the president of the United States who never got to be president of the United States.
[00:21:26] Katie Dooley: Often.
[00:21:27] Preston Meyer: So often.
[00:21:29] Katie Dooley: For actually being a president.
[00:21:30] Preston Meyer: Because he's on money. Yeah. You in America, you got to spend your money.
[00:21:34] Katie Dooley: So Alexander Hamilton, he was never president.
[00:21:37] Preston Meyer: What money is he on?
[00:21:38] Katie Dooley: $10. Founding father without a father.
[00:21:42] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:21:42] Katie Dooley: Got a lot farther, about working a lot harder by being a lot smarter. So that's two people that... They only have five bills!
[00:21:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There's a lot of people who think Alexander Hamilton might have been a deist, too, but hard to say for sure there, too. Benjamin Franklin's parents were English Puritans, but weirdly enough, they belonged to the most liberal of the Puritan churches in Boston. So they were like Puritan, but not like hardcore Puritan.
[00:22:09] Katie Dooley: Like you can't have alcohol unless you mix it with your coke.
[00:22:14] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:22:15] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:22:16] Preston Meyer: It's more like you don't don't uncover your ankles, but it's okay if your collarbone just peeks out of your collar.
[00:22:24] Katie Dooley: It's okay if you jump off the curb and get a glimpse of ankle. It's fine. Don't flog yourself over that.
[00:22:33] Preston Meyer: Ben did actually describe himself as a deist, but he also believed in a god that took an active role in establishing American independence. So he falls in that weird part of the spectrum where he says he's a deist. He does believe a lot of deist things, but he also doesn't believe 100% all of the core deist principles. It's kind of interesting. He interestingly enough, I thought also he tried to introduce Daily Common Prayer in the 1787 Constitutional Convention, which immediately got shut down so hard it didn't even go to a vote. So this dude was a praying man, wanted to make it requisite in government meetings.
[00:23:20] Katie Dooley: They were like, fuck no.
[00:23:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah, exactly. Which is interesting because there was still a lot of very religious people in that room, but they also agreed on this whole idea of disestablishment.
[00:23:34] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:23:37] Preston Meyer: And it's weird that those two are connected. You can pray without it being denomination specific prayer, but they decided, no, let's avoid the problem. Not happening, Ben.
[00:23:48] Katie Dooley: Well, because then you get people like me.
[00:23:51] Preston Meyer: Sure. People who don't want to pray.
[00:23:53] Katie Dooley: Don't want to pray.
[00:23:54] Preston Meyer: Yep. Makes perfect sense. I grabbed a little snippet out of Ben's autobiography. He says I never doubted the existence of the deity. He made the world and governed it by his providence, that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to men, that our souls are immortal, and that all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. So an awful lot of deists agreed with this, especially the ones that he hung out with on the regular, including the Founding Fathers. Of course, Americans really like to promote the documentation of all of the Founding fathers being Christians. There's only one exception who has never been associated with a church, but that's an outlier.
[00:24:41] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and that's where Preston did a great job digging into this, because if I googled, is Benjamin Franklin a Christian, you'd get yeah, for sure. And then is he a deist yeah for sure. Okay. Really good.
[00:24:55] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:24:55] Katie Dooley: Okay. Thanks.
[00:24:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's a little frustrating because well confirmation bias and Google, they are good buddies together. Very annoying. But there's a lot of scholarship on this specific subject, and there still remains a lot of argument on how Christian were these guys, how deist were these guys. So if you disagree with the conclusions that we're presenting, fine.
[00:25:27] Katie Dooley: Drop it in our Discord.
[00:25:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:25:30] Katie Dooley: I mean, your your research findings. Not just that you disagree with us.
[00:25:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, James Madison almost always counted as a deist. He wasn't really religious at all. He did grow up in the Anglican Church. He was taught by Presbyterians, and he did read a lot of deist writings when he was young. And that's usually enough to convince people, oh, yeah, he was a deist, because when he got to make his own choices, it was deist writings, but he wasn't religious enough to be a deist. And then we come to George Washington, who people love to highlight. Oh, yeah, of course he was a deist. I'm not convinced until the people are convinced, that's fine. Not that I have any vested interest in him being a Christian. I really don't have any concern on the matter.
[00:26:19] Katie Dooley: It doesn't keep you up at night.
[00:26:20] Preston Meyer: Not even a little bit. Okay, good. But I'll share some of the things that I found. So he was baptized in the Church of England, which, of course in the colonies came to be known as the Episcopalian Church after the Revolution. And he was a devout Christian, at least until after the Great American Rebellion. During and after his presidency, he avoided any public reference or preference for any religion, and limited his religious vocabulary almost exclusively to what you would hear in a lodge or the Freemasons Lodge, where he actually served as Master of Alexandria Lodge 22, in Virginia in 1788.
[00:27:01] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:27:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, I've heard people say he was only ever in Lodge nine times. That would make him a bad master of a lodge, unless they didn't meet very often. I don't know.
[00:27:13] Katie Dooley: I've been to lodge nine times. Not quite.
[00:27:19] Preston Meyer: Maybe someday it'll stack up to that much.
[00:27:21] Katie Dooley: I've been at least twice.
[00:27:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. This will be a little while. Okay. He loved the Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. And this is well attested, he would quote from both of them, especially the Book of Common Prayer. Really regularly that more than the Bible, actually. And religious tolerance was super important to him, which would actually be really annoying in, say, puritanical circles. Um, even the Episcopalian church wouldn't have loved that he was chummy with Catholics and everybody else.
[00:27:54] Katie Dooley: I was just going to say, we should point out that religious diversity at this point is literally just different flavors of Christianity.
[00:28:00] Preston Meyer: Yes. Uh, he would have meant he would have been counted as quite liberal for being not super pushy about religion. Anyway, contrary to popular accusations that started before his death, I don't think he was a deist. People accused him of it when he was still alive, and he was definitely a theistic Rationalist.
[00:28:27] Katie Dooley: Oh. Now we're splitting hairs.
[00:28:30] Preston Meyer: But a lot of Christians who don't come close to that deistic label are fairly labeled theistic rationalists.
[00:28:38] Katie Dooley: Would you consider yourself. I feel like you're pretty.
[00:28:41] Preston Meyer: Maybe.
[00:28:42] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:28:44] Preston Meyer: I don't know, probably.
[00:28:45] Katie Dooley: Never explored that part of yourself.
[00:28:47] Preston Meyer: Oh, I've never tried to label in that way, but, yeah, I would say probably.
[00:28:52] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:28:53] Preston Meyer: I think that's fair. He was buried as an Episcopalian. There's some question on whether that's just because Martha was still pretty committed to the church, his wife. But that's what we've got. There's also, interestingly enough, a weird rumor circulating among Catholics that he converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.
[00:29:14] Katie Dooley: Wooo... Was Mother Teresa nearby?
[00:29:21] Preston Meyer: Uh, Teresa's not that old.
[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: No, but..
[00:29:25] Preston Meyer: In fact, they're separated by many decades.
[00:29:28] Katie Dooley: Century. Two centuries. 1700s and 1900s.
[00:29:33] Preston Meyer: More. Than more than a century. Yeah. So what's interesting is that, you know, when somebody gets baptized. Well, so the story for George is that he had.. Oh I've lost the word, it's, uh. It's gonna bug me.
[00:29:53] Katie Dooley: Like a religious experience?
[00:29:55] Preston Meyer: No. It's, uh. Because I can't remember the right word for it. I'll call it a "just in case" baptism.
[00:30:04] Katie Dooley: Oh okay.
[00:30:05] Preston Meyer: It's a thing like.
[00:30:06] Katie Dooley: Oh, my God, what if there is a God?
[00:30:08] Preston Meyer: No, I if I can remember the right word for it. This just in case baptism exists for scenarios like just in case your preexisting baptism had something going wrong with it wasn't documented properly. We're going to do it one more time to make sure you're covered.
[00:30:28] Katie Dooley: Make sure Jesus knows you're.
[00:30:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so there's even a name for the priest who was specifically said to have been the one to do this baptism for George Washington on his deathbed. And the Catholic Church in, I think it was the 1960s, did a deep dive into all their records to see if there was any truth to it. Because, you know, if you're going to do a just in case baptism, like records weren't.
[00:30:54] Katie Dooley: There better be records!
[00:30:54] Preston Meyer: You have to record it because that's half of the point. And they found no record of it. So it's very likely that it's not true.
[00:31:05] Katie Dooley: Or both of baptsim were fucked up.
[00:31:10] Preston Meyer: Maybe.
[00:31:11] Katie Dooley: No. Poor George!
[00:31:14] Preston Meyer: Provisional baptism. It feels like that's the right word. I don't know.
[00:31:20] Katie Dooley: Final answer?
[00:31:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that might be the word I'm looking for. If I find that it's not the right word, I'll send it on Discord.
[00:31:30] Katie Dooley: Just send me an audio recording with a single word.
[00:31:34] Preston Meyer: Perfect. All right, let's get back to Jefferson.
[00:31:39] Katie Dooley: I love this so much because it's my kind of Bible.
[00:31:44] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:31:44] Katie Dooley: So Thomas Jefferson basically wrote his own Bible.
[00:31:47] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.
[00:31:48] Katie Dooley: Called it. He called the... It's called the Jefferson Bible. It is 48 pages long, and it is also known as the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. So he wrote this Bible by literally...
[00:32:02] Preston Meyer: I mean, he didn't do any writing except for putting the print on the cover page.
[00:32:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So he literally took, like, a razor blade and cut up a Bible.
[00:32:11] Preston Meyer: I think he would have had to have two Bibles 'cause the pages, yeah.
[00:32:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then you, like, would glue them on paper to make his Bible. So there is parts where it is a little bit disjointed and I saw pictures of like the OG one and there's like passages, like vertically, like squeezing shit in. But in this Jefferson Bible, it purposely removes all mentions of miracles, including the resurrection.
[00:32:37] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:32:38] Katie Dooley: Which is like what makes.
[00:32:40] Preston Meyer: It's the climax of the story, yeah.
[00:32:43] Katie Dooley: Uh, he would even cut text mid verse to remove any notions of the supernatural.
[00:32:50] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's what you got to do when this is what your project is.
[00:32:54] Katie Dooley: Uh, this confirms his deism to me.
[00:32:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I think so. I think that's fair.
[00:33:00] Katie Dooley: And, uh, so with him not including the resurrection, the Jefferson Bible ends with John 19, which says, now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid there, laid there they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed.
[00:33:20] Preston Meyer: The end.
[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: The end. I kind of like that story.
[00:33:25] Preston Meyer: Sure. I mean, that is the story until you add the rest of it.
[00:33:32] Katie Dooley: Until we flip the page! But wait there's more.
[00:33:36] Preston Meyer: But then you've left the description.
[00:33:38] Katie Dooley: That's true. Then we're transforming.
[00:33:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's quite the project. One I actually thought about buying one a little while ago. Like a facsimile of the book. I mean, when we get to that part of our Bible study, you will have read it and then some.
[00:33:56] Katie Dooley: There you go.
[00:33:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But, I mean, it's a quick read. What was it, 48 pages.
[00:34:00] Katie Dooley: 48 pages and, uh, there was a quote that I probably should have included but didn't. But basically, Jefferson believed that Jesuss morals and teachings were really great and didn't essentially need all the stuff that was the miracles and revelations and things that can't be proven. So he really, really believed in what Jesus talked about.
[00:34:17] Preston Meyer: Just not the things that everyone else said about him.
[00:34:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So yeah, it is an interesting project and yeah, a very short read. If you're like me and haven't read the Bible yet, the 48 page reading will give you a pretty good summary of the greatest story ever told.
[00:34:33] Preston Meyer: Right? In theory, you could do that and just a couple hours. If you're a slow reader, I'm a slow reader. That's one of my struggles. Read plenty, but I do not read quick. I hate skimming articles or books just to get the gist of it to move on. I like to sit there and absorb my reading.
[00:34:53] Katie Dooley: I skip emails and then regret it later. I can't handle long emails. I'm like a three sentence email person. Hi. Here's your stuff. Bye.
[00:35:02] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[00:35:05] Katie Dooley: So like any of the major religions, we've been any of any other religions talking about, not even major religions.
[00:35:14] Preston Meyer: Everything over the last two whole years we've been doing this show and then some.
[00:35:18] Katie Dooley: Yes, thanks to the internet, you can find modern day practitioners and believers of all of these religions. So even though the movement did, uh, decline and basically end by the end of the 1700s, there has been a modern day revival.
[00:35:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And then to make things a little bit more fun, a little bit more diverse and a little bit more exciting. We've got people who have taken each of those individual ancient religions and taken a deist spin on it.
[00:35:50] Katie Dooley: Yep. There's a list and it is confusing.
[00:35:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But generally speaking, deists rely less on mysticism, more on reason. And this has gotten a little bit more interesting and bolder in more recent centuries since it has emerged, because science is managing to explain more and more about the world around us, instead of the weather being weird and unpredictable, and we're just kind of getting the hang of it, recognizing, hey, the sun has something to do with it and all that fancy nonsense.
[00:36:27] Katie Dooley: Fancy nonsense.
[00:36:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the world can operate with a without daily divine control. I mean, that's easy enough to get on board with and most days, philosophy is written as being compatible with science, rather deliberately and deliberately flexible to new scientific developments and discoveries. Because, you know, reason, logic.
[00:36:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And even when we're first studying or first doing the research for these, and it really did feel like, uh, well, we can't explain it with science yet, but we know it's not religion.
[00:37:03] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:37:04] Katie Dooley: It's kind of how I felt about reading the early deist stuff.
[00:37:07] Preston Meyer: That's fair. Yeah.
[00:37:09] Katie Dooley: Many people wait. No I'm saying... So because humans there are lots of different versions of deism today. Again, we'll briefly skim them in the podcast and we'll put this great chart in our Discord. But this includes pandeism, panendeism, and polydeism. Not to be confused with their theism counterparts.
[00:37:32] Preston Meyer: Not that they're hugely different, but they're different enough to get different names and be worth talking about separately. In the same way that the deism that was popular in the 1700s was born from Christianity, new iterations are being conceived from other theologies and cosmologies. Many people want to say that deism is the irreligious belief in God, but it's still a little religious.
[00:37:55] Katie Dooley: I mean, this goes back to how do you define religion? It definitely doesn't have like the pomp and circumstance and the traditions isn't what I want. But the pageantry..
[00:38:06] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:38:06] Katie Dooley: They're regular...
[00:38:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Because we do avoid mysteries, but there's still organizations that are getting together and worshiping God and talking about their studies and sharing from the same book, all because of their belief in a God and about their belief in God. That's definitely a religion.
[00:38:27] Katie Dooley: Totally.
[00:38:28] Preston Meyer: We're not getting up into that area where Glen Faire told us, no, that's not really religious. That's ridiculous. And it's been kind of interesting looking at it through history. In fact, I found some notes about deism in Germany in the 1930s. The German nationalists liked deism. They were pretty comfortable with it. After the Third Reich took control of the churches in Germany, people decided, well, I guess I don't need church anymore because this propaganda is getting to be too much. I'm sure they had other issues too, but, you know, Nazis. So people are like, well, I don't need to be in church anymore. And eventually a lot of Nazi leaders also decided to leave the church, not because there was a big push to say, hey, don't go to church anymore. But there was growing distrust within the Nazi party against all of the churches, even though they had already kind of taken control, squeezing by the balls kind of business. Except Hitler. He never left his church. He insisted on being Catholic all the way through to the end of his life. Which is interesting because Goebbels and others said a lot of weird things about the things Hitler believed, religiously speaking. That definitely would have made him a heretic and...
[00:39:48] Katie Dooley: Hitler believed a lot of weird shit. Period.
[00:39:51] Preston Meyer: True story.
[00:39:52] Katie Dooley: If it was just his version of Catholicism, I think we would have been okay.
[00:39:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, you look at Mel Gibson, his version of Catholicism has a lot of overlap.
[00:40:04] Katie Dooley: I didn't even say that Right. Anti-semitism.
[00:40:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah. Things got gross. Anyway, deism was a popular label to drop on all these people who left the church, which feels a little bit weird to me because they were still Christians. They just weren't going to church.
[00:40:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:40:25] Preston Meyer: A lot of people would answer surveys saying that I'm a God believer, which is a decent English translation of a word. They'll just butcher in German anyway.
[00:40:37] Katie Dooley: I speak German.
[00:40:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Do you?
[00:40:40] Katie Dooley: I'm taking it on Duolingo. I took it all through high school, so.
[00:40:42] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:40:43] Katie Dooley: If you had written down, I could have done the pronunciation on it.
[00:40:46] Preston Meyer: I didn't even write it down.
[00:40:49] Katie Dooley: Gott in Himmel
[00:40:49] Preston Meyer: It's close to that. But that's not quite it.
[00:40:50] Katie Dooley: Well, Gott is God.
[00:40:51] Preston Meyer: I know.
[00:40:52] Katie Dooley: And Himmel is heaven.
[00:40:54] Preston Meyer: Well no... God believer.
[00:40:57] Katie Dooley: I know.
[00:40:57] Preston Meyer: But that's what's German for God believer.
[00:40:59] Katie Dooley: I don't know what believer is...
[00:41:00] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:41:01] Katie Dooley: Gott beliebt something.. Belieben is believe.
[00:41:08] Preston Meyer: There's there's a different word that that I'm after. And anyway, it's gone. But all of these people weren't deists. Just because they left church. They didn't really adhere to deist principles at all. They were just Christians who didn't go to church. But either way, deism wasn't a problem for the Nazis as long as you believed that infidelity would be punished by the creator, the government was happy.
[00:41:34] Katie Dooley: Perfect.
[00:41:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:41:36] Katie Dooley: Uh, even more modernly, in 1993, the World Union of Deists was founded in Virginia by Bob Johnson, which is the first formal organization of deists since the 19th century. That's kind of cool.
[00:41:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, in the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey report, they found that there were almost 50,000 deists in the United States. So not quite as many as Jedi, but it's still a big group. Yeah, I don't remember those numbers, but I believe you.
[00:42:06] Katie Dooley: It wasn't as huge as it feels like it is.
[00:42:09] Preston Meyer: I mean, it shouldn't be. They they do a good job of making themselves look big. Kind of like a lot of other groups.
[00:42:20] Katie Dooley: Do you want to go over this?
[00:42:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Let's take a look at some of these subsets of deists that have varieties of ideas.
[00:42:28] Katie Dooley: So we have the classical deists. So God is separate and distinct from the natural universe. This goes back to the watchmaker analogy that Preston had. And this would be a group that would follow Lord Herbert's five articles.
[00:42:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And the idea that God may or may not interact, but probably won't unless it's something big like the American Revolution.
[00:42:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:42:51] Preston Meyer: Modern deists are an extension of that, those ideals, uh, loosely following Herbert's five articles, but not super committed. Generally, they believe that God does not live in our universe, that there is multiple universes and God literally left completely out of our entire sphere of existence after creating it. Or maybe was never in it to begin with and created it entirely separate.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: Like, uh, like a ship in a bottle?
[00:43:24] Preston Meyer: Kind of. Yeah. Kind of an interesting philosophy.
[00:43:28] Katie Dooley: So don't confuse modern deists with neodeists. Uh, in this form of deism, God is not Earth centric and does not need to interact. God is this first cause or mover or creator that we talked about and doesn't give priority over humans versus Martians versus other planets that probably have life.
[00:43:52] Preston Meyer: They don't see God as personal. And certainly he has no need to intervene. And that's easy enough if you believe that he's not helping out. Yeah. There you are. The idea, the purpose of life is actually addressed by neodeists, that it is to further our understanding of the universe and teach future generations.
[00:44:15] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[00:44:16] Preston Meyer: I like that too.
[00:44:17] Katie Dooley: Then there's Christian deism. So this can be considered perhaps a transitional phase between your theistic and deistic beliefs.
[00:44:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Like some of our some of the American founding fathers who are like, I'm not so Christian anymore, let's lean into deism.
[00:44:32] Katie Dooley: Jefferson Bible. Great example of Christian deist. Yeah. You, uh, maybe believed in the teachings of Jesus, but don't believe that he was in any way magical, supernatural, divine and reject, yeah, church and miracle.
[00:44:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:44:47] Katie Dooley: I'm going to leave these two for you because I don't even understand the theistic version of these.
[00:44:53] Preston Meyer: All right. So for pantheist, there's that everything is God as or everything is a manifestation of God. That everything is part of God. It's complicated.
[00:45:10] Katie Dooley: Then pandeist.
[00:45:11] Preston Meyer: So pandeist believe basically that. And that God preceded the universe and created it more or less within himself or out of himself, and is now the equivalent of the universe. The God is the universe.
[00:45:32] Katie Dooley: Okay. I'm following.
[00:45:35] Preston Meyer: And so for this deist principle, if God doesn't intervene, we see that a pandeist God isn't troubled by the tummy aches that we're trying so hard to give him in the universe. And so it doesn't get involved terribly often. And then we have panendeists. Uh, so panentheism is that everything is within God, but God is greater rather than equivalent to the universe.
[00:46:04] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:46:05] Preston Meyer: And so the gods that... The God of pandeism, panendeism, the God of panendeism, uh, transcends all of nature and is fairly similar to the Native American concept of the Great Spirit. I guess that's fair. Spiritual deist.
[00:46:26] Katie Dooley: I love this one because we all know this person.
[00:46:29] Preston Meyer: So many people say I'm spiritual, but not religious.
[00:46:33] Katie Dooley: They're deists.
[00:46:34] Preston Meyer: I mean, not necessarily, but that the people in this category do say that. Spiritual deists will say that they're spiritual, but not religious. And that's fair enough, I guess. The idea that each person is an individualized expression of the divine is a pretty solid way to go through life, treating everybody like they are an expression of the divine. That's that's going to lead to healthy relationships, I think.
[00:47:04] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:47:06] Preston Meyer: And then there is the idea that there is a personal God manifested through the people you see day to day, which is kind of a kind of interesting, kind of complicated. This is what we got.
[00:47:18] Katie Dooley: Some of these are mental gymnastics, I find, but it's fine.
[00:47:22] Preston Meyer: It's the way it goes. It's not all solid reason, but they try.
[00:47:28] Katie Dooley: And finally, we have agnostic deists.
[00:47:31] Preston Meyer: It's, uh. Yeah, probably. But I don't have to worry about it if he's not worried about it either.
[00:47:36] Katie Dooley: We probably had a dad at one point, but he never came back for them from that convenience store, so I'm not going to worry about it.
[00:47:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:47:45] Katie Dooley: That's an agnostic deist. Logically I have a father because I'm here, but I've never seen him. Mom said he went for smokes and that was it.
[00:47:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There's no effort to build a relationship with him because there's the belief that he's not putting any effort either.
[00:48:02] Katie Dooley: Well. If he wanted to, he would. Mel Robbins.
[00:48:08] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:48:10] Katie Dooley: And that, my friends, in a nutshell.
[00:48:14] Preston Meyer: That's our diversity of deism.
[00:48:15] Katie Dooley: Deism. And here we go.
[00:48:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:48:18] Katie Dooley: Final thoughts feelings, questions.
[00:48:22] Preston Meyer: It's easy to see where this comes from and how it came to it. Be what it is. It's a religion of natural reason, denying everything that has no empirical evidence, but still believing there's a God. It's pretty easy to to get on board with that and and accept why people believe that. I think it's pretty interesting. And of course, a huge variety of ideas, a huge variety of philosophies come out of this.
[00:48:50] Katie Dooley: This is a very big spectrum.
[00:48:51] Preston Meyer: It really is. But we did our best to get you what we could in the time that you generously allowed us.
[00:49:02] Katie Dooley: If you want more of our time. What can. What can? What can you do?
[00:49:08] Preston Meyer: Oh, I mean, you can always go back and listen to our old episodes. You can get bonus episodes by signing up to our Patreon. Loads of fun there. Loads of social media content where we just blast out tiny little bits of data through the month.
[00:49:22] Katie Dooley: And of course, our discord, our growing discord community where we're having great religious conversations and.
[00:49:29] Preston Meyer: Some ridiculous meaningless..
[00:49:32] Katie Dooley: Rididculous conversations too.
[00:49:33] Preston Meyer: A two day, two day long chat about eyebrows actually stands out in memory.
[00:49:38] Katie Dooley: I have more on that. So please join our broader Holy Watermelon community and...
[00:49:47] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.
