In reference to what?
Do you really think you're being clever? It's quite apparent why you're afraid to actually use the words.
Non sequitur. Do you have anything other than fallacy and hatred to offer?
At this time, there isn't much of a substantial argument to address.
You've got Balerion trying to get this discussion shut down by declaring it a hate thread, and you're simply trolling.
Useful.
It's funny in a way. Usually we have a word for people who insist on their own definitions in order to accommodate their own needful theories while ignoring the vast bodies of academic literature available to them.
But since you're an atheist, we have to find a new word, apparently, because atheists are specifically exempted.
Well, you know, as I noted to Balerion, it's my fault for thinking this thread was anything other than hate speech and propaganda.
But if our neighbor is wrong in trying to get this discussion shut down and its starter punished because it's a hate thread, then perhaps you might want to try something other than crackpottery.
This little exchange is kind of ambiguous and can be interpreted in (at least) two different ways.
First, Arauca can be read as having suggested that it's possible to separate 'believing in God' from 'having a religion'. (Q) seems to have been expressing the opinion that it's not possible to believe in God without having any religion, since believing in God is a prototypically religious belief.
Read this way, I side with (Q).
Tiassa may have read (Q)'s remark as an assertion that 'belief in God' is synonymous with 'having a religion'. I would emphatically agree with Tiassa in rejecting that version. It's obviously possible for people to be very religious, without believing in God. Imagine a Buddhist monk.
Again, I'm inclined to largely agree with (Q) on that one.
But... if the issue wasn't whether or not it is possible to believe in God without possessing any religious beliefs, but rather whether or not 'belief in God' is synonymous and coextensive with 'religion', then I'd definitely side with Tiassa.
Speaking of insulting religion, I was watching videos on Anton Levay, the devil worshipper. When the guy admitted that there wasn't any supernatural devil, I have to admit that the guy went from being some dangerous evil occult person, to some idiot in a costume. Basically he was just saying the same thing that atheists have been saying. Except atheists don't put Vaseline on their heads.
Whatever the real reality of our existence is, I still value honor, integrity, trust, goodness, kindness, protecting the weak, alleviating suffering. I am happy to elevate goodness and wholesomeness to a high level of piety and sacredness. I count myself as one who is in the light. I want to see healing go out to the world. That's who I want to be.
Speaking of insulting religion, I was watching videos on Anton Levay, the devil worshipper. When the guy admitted that there wasn't any supernatural devil, I have to admit that the guy went from being some dangerous evil occult person, to some idiot in a costume. Basically he was just saying the same thing that atheists have been saying. Except atheists don't put Vaseline on their heads.
Whatever the real reality of our existence is, I still value honor, integrity, trust, goodness, kindness, protecting the weak, alleviating suffering. I am happy to elevate goodness and wholesomeness to a high level of piety and sacredness. I count myself as one who is in the light. I want to see healing go out to the world. That's who I want to be.
Why argue excessively about the definitions. Do you really care? Does it make any real difference to any significant topic?
Deism is a belief in a God without any significant trappings of religion (as you say) however that's talking about religion in an organized sense. In another sense belief in a God is a religious belief. It's just not an organized religion.
What greater point is there to really make here however other than to acknowledge the obvious and that is that words usually have several meanings.
Because it fits his agenda of giving mysticism a cloak of reason.
A way to help avoid future disagreement over intended descriptions of religion is to qualify them when used.
You cannot have a reasonable, intellectual discussion without well-differentiated terms. There is no overall organization to deism (other than the sort of commonalities which define any group), nor is the belief in god necessarily firm, as deists allow themselves the latitude to freely speculate in its possible nature. But if it makes you feel better to lump it all under the heading of religion, you are welcome to, but that will not offer any utility in discussions with those who do differentiate terms.
If you refuse to differentiate fruits, any disagreement you may have on the subject of apples is moot.
Nope, just your myopic worldview that makes you insist that anything "other" must be voodoo.
The second clause in the post that you quoted (the part that you snipped out) addressed individuals who believe in God, and hence possess at least one religious belief (in God), but otherwise live secular lives with little or no religious adherence or observance. That's certainly possible, in fact people like that are extremely common in our modern Western world.
What I'm saying is that the existence of nominal theists who otherwise live secular lives in which their belief in God plays little or no role, doesn't imply that belief in God isn't a religious belief.
You apparently want me to write something about deism, so I'll do that. The word 'deist' originally was a synonym for 'monotheist'. In the 1600's the word acquired a new meaning, referring to what we might call Christian free-thinkers. The earlier 17'th century 'deists' were all over the map, holding all kinds of different ideas, and historians of religion today still disagree about what sort of doctrines they held in common.
The main thing that held them together seems to have been their skepticism towards revealed theology, while still acknowledging natural theology. In a way, it was kind of an intellectual outgrowth of the Protestant reformation, thrusting it in a direction that the Protestant reformers would have absolutely loathed.
The 16'th century reformers had already ridden the new skeptical currents that had arisen in Europe during the renaissance, employing them to cast doubt on Catholic tradition, with its sacraments, saints and miracles. The reformers dismissed all these as superstition. In place of all that, they chose to follow the tendency of renaissance thought back to the earliest textual sources in antiquity, to the Bible in Christianity's case. The reformation arose as a family of 'back-to-the-Bible' movements (that quickly acquired political overtones).
Once that religious skepticism cat was out of the bag, it couldn't be corralled. A century later, in the 1600's, more and more European intellectuals were directing their skepticism towards all varieties of religious revelation, including the Bible. It was entirely predictable.
But the arguments of natural theology, particularly the design arguments, still seemed to be undeniable. Things like the eyes of animals obviously appeared designed so as to see, and it seemed obvious to the deists along with everyone else that some kind of creator had originally designed them.
Beyond the general observation that the early deists questioned revealed theology but accepted natural theology, they were a diverse bunch. Each of them possessed his own unique ideas and their personal religious observance varied. They were far less of a single unified movement than is later supposed. There was certainly no single set of deistic doctrines. Many deists still continued to attend church. Some of them continued to worship and pray. They didn't even universally reject revelation, though they often interpreted it in unorthodox ways. What they did generally do was to argue that individual faith was a personal matter and not the kind of thing whose truth can be objectively and factually demonstrated. So the deists became big champions of freedom of religion and conscience.
By the early 1700's, deism had spread from the avant-garde intellectuals into the general educated population. Deist stars appeared, first in Britain (Collins and Tindal), then even more popularly in France (Voltaire and Rousseau). While most educated people probably weren't deists themselves and many even opposed it, they certainly had heard of it and many were influenced by it. The American founders obviously weren't all deists, but deist ideas were powerfully expressed in the founding of the United States.
In the 1800's we see deism declining as a cultural force. The single thing that finally put it to rest might have been Darwin's theory of natural selection. The deists had always embraced natural theology because they thought that its conclusions simply couldn't be denied. In particular, there just didn't seem to be any plausible naturalistic alternative to supernatural design. Just as encountering a watch implies the existence of an intelligent and capable watchmaker, encountering a living organism seemed to imply the existence of a super-powered, super-intelligent and super-natural agent that had originally designed their kind as well.
Suddenly, there was a plausible naturalistic alternative.
Define "intellectual discussion" and "reasonable".
You cannot have a reasonable, intellectual discussion without well-differentiated terms.
There is no overall organization to deism (other than the sort of commonalities which define any group)
nor is the belief in god necessarily firm, as deists allow themselves the latitude to freely speculate in its possible nature.
But if it makes you feel better to lump it all under the heading of religion, you are welcome to, but that will not offer any utility in discussions with those who do differentiate terms.
Pandeism explicitly assumes a god that became the universe, without any further input other than naturalistic interactions of its constituent parts. So how do you consider that a religious belief when we have no evidence for any ultimate cause of the universe?
And, atheists don't worship Satan or dress up in costumes or wear magic rings or most everything else Anton Levay has to say and believe.
This idiot does all those things. And he put Vaseline on his head to keep it shiny. When I get a chance, I'll find the other satan worshipper with the (werewolf). This guy looks like a Cthulhu worshiper, and has only one ear. He claims that good and evil do not exist and that what Hitler did was ok (that's how the strong survive at the expense of the weak). Good old Antony Levay satanism (atheism).
Doesn't it make more sense to worship the devil? After all, he seems more evil, he's the one you need to placate, God seems like a reasonable guy, you could work things out with him. And the Devil (praise be unto him), seems to be ruling now.