Copyright © 2019 by World Union of Deists

(www.deism.com)

World Union of Deists, Box 4052, Clearwater, FL 33758

Open source eBooklet except for commercial use

 Welcome to the Deism eBooklet Series
“Deism’s Principles”

Deism, belief in The Supreme Intelligence/God based on reason and Nature, is a beautiful and
wonderful religious/spiritual philosophy. Its simplicity inspires and protects its adherents.

Deism inspires Deists by letting them know the intelligence based laws and rules found
throughout the known Universe, the study of which is science, proclaim the necessary existence
of The Supreme Intelligence/God.

Deism protects Deists by letting them know that the only possible Word of God is the Universe
and Creation itself. This makes it impossible for Deists to be conned and used by any of the
various “revealed” religions/cults.

There are profound principles in Deism that can serve as guides for Deists in living meaningful
and happy lives. These principles are not at all dogma. They are not at all presented with the
pretension of being Divine revelations. However, they are Divine in that they are realities of life
and discovered only by the application of our gift from The Supreme Intelligence/God of innate
reason. Life and reason are the two most valuable gifts ever given to us, and they are the very
best that we can ever possess and make good use of.

This Deism eBooklet series will cover principles put forward by Deist writers from the days of
Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen and Elihu Palmer, through to Deist writers of today. It will also
include Deistic principles expressed by the Stoics and other philosophers from ancient Greece
and Rome, as well as from Asia and other parts of the world.

The meaning of the word “principle” in this Deism eBooklet series, and for Deism in general, is:

a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or
behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

I hope you enjoy this Deism eBooklet series and find its contents thought provoking, inspiring,
meaningful and useful. And thank you for subscribing as it allows us the ability to reach more
people with life improving Deism!

Progress! Bob Johnson

www.deism.com
 Deism Values People
People matter. This is both a reasonable and important realization. This realization allows us to
establish the principle of valuing people. Objectively comparing Deism with other spiritual
philosophies/religions, we see that this realization and this principle, that people matter and that
people should be valued, is unique to Deism.

A key reason the importance of people and truly valuing people are unique to Deism and not to
other spiritual/religious belief systems is because of reason itself. Deism holds reason as a
treasured gift from The Supreme Intelligence/God. A Divine gift that is second in importance
only to life itself. None of the other spiritual philosophies/religions value our innate God-given
reason as Deism does. All of them not only do not value reason, they actually attack our God-
given reason with man-made and fear-based superstitions and faith.

Most of the other religious/spiritual philosophies do make efforts to help people in need. (Deism
and the World Union of Deists, once we grow enough and have enough necessary resources, will
do the same, along with teaching people about the importance of their innate God-given reason
and the existence of The Supreme Intelligence/God through science, in Deist Reason Centers.
See page 101 of Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You.) However, this is usually
done to win converts from the ranks of people in need, as well as from a desire for rewards
promised to them in their “holy” books for helping people in need. In Deism, helping people in
need is done simply because it’s the right thing to do and because it helps to make a much better
society and world.

The primary reason that people matter in Deism and that they don’t really matter in the other
spiritual philosophies/religions is due in large part to Deism’s complete lack of superstition.
Deism’s grounding in reason not only makes it impossible for Deism to promote irrational and
nonsensical superstitions of any type, but Deism actually attacks superstitions with the one thing
none of them can successfully combat: our gift from The Supreme Intelligence/God of innate
reason. Superstition does not stand a chance against reason. This is why the clergy promote what
they call faith over our gift from God of reason. As the Deist Thomas Jefferson pointed out
regarding reason versus faith:

... man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most
monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such person,
gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind
becomes a wreck.

We see the very real, and in many cases, the irreversible, harm that is caused by people who put
faith above reason, which is the only way believing in man-made superstitions/religions is
possible. We see it in people who believe the irrational superstition of the Bible’s promise of
faith healing. Believing in this Christian superstition causes very real and very innocent and very
helpless children to die. We see it in people who believe the fear-based superstitions from all of
the spiritual religions/philosophies, other than Deism, that promote belief in fictional beings such
as Satan, devils, demons, jinns and witches. Belief in these man-made religious superstitions
cause people to do such things as perform exorcisms on people who are believed to be possessed
by these manufactured beings. Performing exorcisms too often results in physical, not to mention
mental, harm to the person or people the exorcisms are performed on. The harm caused by the
religious superstition of belief in Satan and other devils and demons also results frequently in the
death of the person the exorcism is performed on.

In January of 2019, belief in witches by Hindus, allowed a “witch doctor” to convince people in
India that a mother of four children was a witch who was putting hexes on fellow villagers. This
resulted in superstitious and faithful religious people attacking the woman they believed was a
witch. They attacked Mangri Munda and her four children, aged one, four, seven and 12, with
wooden clubs and an axe. After murdering them all, they threw their dead bodies down a well.

By promoting such man-made and fear-based superstitions and nonsense as belief in Satan and
other evil spirits, and belief in witches as not only Hinduism and Buddhism do, but also as all of
the man-made Abrahamic “revealed” religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism
all do, these religions are putting superstition over people. This is very evident by the very real
and irreversible harm these religious beliefs and superstitions cause the faithful to inflict on their
fellow human beings. If these religions truly valued people, they would never promote these
superstitions.

The belief in witches, which in the Abrahamic man-made “revealed” religions finds it origin in
the Hebrew Bible at Exodus 22:18, has caused the horrific suffering of thousands of people. This
verse, which the faithful believe is part of the Word of God, commands the faithful to kill
witches. It claims God said, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Since Christianity, Islam and
Mormonism all sprang out of Judaism, these Gentile Abrahamic “revealed” religions all embrace
the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament as being part of the Word of God. This requires them all to
believe in witches and to defend this irrational and foolish man-made superstition. The famous
British Christian apologist C.S. Lewis did exactly that in his bestselling book Mere Christianity.
In my book An Answer to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, in which I address every point raised
and every argument made by Lewis in his promotion of Christianity, I address his defense of
Exodus 22:18:

In the next paragraph Lewis tackles witches. He writes, “I have met people who
exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of
morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 'Three
hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you
call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not
execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did-if we really
thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and
received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their
neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if
 anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference
of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great
advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not
executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane
for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the
house.”

It's embarrassing as a former Christian to admit that I used to believe in such Biblical
creatures as witches. However, once I was made aware through Thomas Paine and his
critically important but much overlooked book, The Age of Reason, that the Bible was so
full of nonsense like witches, unicorns, talking donkeys, etc., that it could not possibly be
“the Word of God”, I evolved into a Deist as thousands of other people have done, and,
hopefully, billions more will do as Deism becomes much more widely known. What is
wrong to do is to say, as C.S. Lewis does, that the Bible is wrong about witches but you
should still believe in it as if it were the Word of God. The more we poison our minds
with Biblical unreasonableness, the further we get from God because in order to believe
the unreasonable claims in the Bible we must turn our backs on our God-given reason.
And the more we reject our reason, the more likely our actions will be poisoned, as well.
For example, when the Christians who believed the Bible to be the Word of God had the
power to do so, they took Exodus 22:18 seriously, which commands “Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live”, and mistakenly thinking they were following God's commands as
revealed in the Bible, God's Word, they burned alive, hanged and tortured at least tens of
thousands of innocent people. When Lewis writes that we don't kill witches anymore
because we don't believe in them anymore, he is destroying all of his arguments to
believe in the Bible and in mere Christianity. The reason we no longer believe in witches
is because we've developed our reason enough to know that they do not exist. This
reasonable belief is in direct conflict with what Lewis promotes as the Word of God, the
Bible. The Bible says witches exist, our God-given reason says they do not. And the fact
that Lewis admits, that witches do not really exist, goes directly against 2 Timothy 3:16
which says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”. Based on this Bible quote, it
appears the Bible god did not know that witches are fictional characters. This ignorance
caused unbearable pain and misery for countless victims even making its way into the
New World with the trials and executions of “witches” in Salem, Massachusetts among
other places prior to the American Revolution.

Deism’s principle of categorically rejecting irrational ideas and beliefs due to being solidly
grounded in God-given reason allows Deism to operate on the principle that people really do
matter.

Another reason Deism is able to have the principle of valuing people is because Deism rejects
cruelty. If you are cruel to people, you can’t truly value people. And if you believe in, and
promote the idea of, a cruel God, cruelty is embedded in your mind and beliefs. Since our actions
are dependent on our beliefs, it’s not surprising to see religious violence and atrocities carried out
by religious people, since all of the man-made “revealed” religions believe in a cruel God. As
Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition, “Belief in a cruel god makes a
cruel man.”

All of the Abrahamic man-made “revealed” religions have a strong belief that God is very, very
cruel. This religious belief of divine cruelty comes out in their actions. The cruelty of the Jewish
state of Israel’s brutal and expanding occupation of Palestinian lands against the Palestinian
people, the cruelty of Christians against gay people that goes as far as the law allows them and
the cruelty of Muslims against people captured by such groups as Islamic State of burning people
alive (similar to what the Roman Catholic Church did to Giordano Bruno and thousands of other
people) are all strong evidence that none of these man-made “revealed” religions value people.

One practice that cannot exist without total disregard for the value and importance of people is
slavery. Slavery, the actual owning of a person by another person, totally dehumanizes the
person being held as a slave. None of the religions speak out against slavery or claim that God
does not want the faithful to be slaves themselves or to be slave owners.

This eye-opening article from a Jewish publication about slavery in the Hebrew Bible, the root
source of “revelation” for all of the Abrahamic “revealed” religions, attempts to justify and
rationalize why the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament does not claim God opposes slavery. One of
the excuses states that slavery in the ancient world was “ubiquitous” - in other words the juvenile
excuse, “Everyone else was doing it!” You would think that The Supreme Intelligence/God, the
Creator of the Universe, would be far above this mentality!

The above linked to article on Judaism and slavery claims the commands that are allegedly from
God in Exodus 21-24 demonstrate a kinder and gentler form of slavery - regarding
Jews/Hebrews owning Jewish/Hebrew slaves. The Jewish slaves with Jewish owners are to be
freed in the seventh year, after being a slave for six years. If the male Jewish slave was given a
wife by his master and the slave had children with his wife, when he is given his freedom and he
leaves his master, he must leave his wife and children behind with his master (Exodus 21:4).

The remainder of chapter 21 of Exodus is filled with more ungodly, cruel anti-people commands
allegedly from God which call for the killing of children who curse their parents (this was one of
Jesus’ favorites according to Mark 7:1-13) and rules and laws regarding fathers selling their
daughters into slavery. It’s also important to remember that this kinder gentler form of slavery
which freed the slaves after they were slaves for six years only applied to Hebrews/Jews who
were slaves. Leviticus 25:44-46 has God commanding that the Jews only have Gentile people
and their children for slaves. According to these verses/teachings/commands, Jewish people can
own Gentile people and their children as slaves “for ever”.

One major group of people all of the world’s religions debase and belittle is women, who
comprise nearly half of the world’s human population. Man-made religions promote the belief
that women are inferior to men and put little to zero worth on them. This is seen by religious
teachings as are found in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 which teaches:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak;
but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will
learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak
in the church.

The Bible has many misogynistic teachings (for a more in-depth look at religions promoting
misogyny read our Deism eBooklet Religion Versus Women) as does the Quran. The Quran
actually combines religious violence with misogyny, commanding that Islamic men beat/scourge
women who they fear may become rebellious towards the superior man, at 4:34 which states:

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other,
and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are
the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom
ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then
if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.

In India a Hindu ban against women entering the Sabarimala temple has been in place for
centuries. Recently two women went against the ban and entered the temple after the Indian
Supreme Court ruled against the ban. The women were beaten and ostracized for their heroic
actions.

Contrast calls to religious violence, acts of religious violence, slavery and misogyny that fill the
pages of the man-made “holy” books as well as the pages of history with this statement by the
most important Deist in history, Thomas Paine. On the first page of The Age of Reason, Paine
wrote:

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing
justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

How profoundly and beautifully simple. With beliefs like this expressed by Thomas Paine, there
is no need for convoluted religious dogma and comically stupid rituals nor for clergy to explain
them.

Thomas Paines’ good friend and fellow Deist Elihu Palmer also had beautiful insight into Deism
and of Deism’s potential for the benefit of humanity. In his outstanding book on God, Deism and
religion, Principles of Nature, Palmer wrote:

Deism declares to intelligent man the existence of one perfect God, Creator and Preserver
of the Universe; that the laws by which he governs the world are like himself immutable,
and, of course, that violations of these laws, or miraculous interference in the movements
of nature, must be necessarily excluded from the grand system of universal existence; that
 the Creator is justly entitled to the adoration of every intellectual agent throughout the
regions of infinite space; and that he alone is entitled to it, having no co- partners who
have a right to share with him the homage of the intelligent world. Deism also declares,
that the practice of a pure, natural, and uncorrupted virtue, is the essential duty, and
constitutes the highest dignity of man; that the powers of man are competent to all the
great purposes of human existence; that science, virtue, and happiness, are the great
objects which ought to awake the mental energies, and draw forth the moral affections of
the human race.

Elihu Palmer’s belief that Deism teaches that doing our best to live a life of virtue is a duty all
people have, and that doing so “constitutes the highest dignity of man”, demonstrates the very
real value and importance of people that is a key part of Deism. People have human dignity, and
by doing our best to live our lives in a virtuous way, we are augmenting our own human dignity.
Imagine if the billions of people currently under the influence of a “revealed” religion switched
out the teachings of those religions, religious teachings that denigrate people, that call for
violence to ensure the spread of those religions, that debase children and all people with the
Christian belief of people being born evil due to original sin, if they switched them with the
Deistic beliefs that God gave us reason to USE in every aspect of our lives, that we are created
with all the necessary powers and abilities necessary to live happy and meaningful lives and that
these are true reasons why people need to be valued. Innate gifts to people from The Supreme
Intelligence/God means people really do matter.
______________________________________________________________________________

Other eBooks and eBooklets Offered by the World

Union of Deists

The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition, by Thomas Paine

God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion, by Bob Johnson

Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You, by Bob Johnson

Reason: The Only Oracle of Man, by Ethan Allen

Principles of Nature, by Elihu Palmer

An Answer to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, by Bob Johnson

What Is The Best Theology, by Jayson X

Bible Problems: Some Contradictions, Factual Errors, and Evil Moral Teachings
In the Bible, by Jayson X

Radicals in Early American History, by Pauline Rocco

Psychological Evolution and the Invention of Evil: A Scientific Exposition, by

Henry Jones, M.D.

The Best of THINK! And THINKonline!, Volume 1

The Best of THINKonline!, Volume 2

Thomas Jefferson and Deism

You can order all of the above eBooks here. (If you don’t see all of
the above books in our store, please check back periodically, as we
are frequently adding more to our store. Thank you!)