A Most Enlightening Look at Deism

[DRMIZER]

For the serious person having questions or doubts about their faith.

The Triumph of Nature's God in my Life
by former Catholic Priest and current Deist, Ray Fontaine, Ph.D.

My home page comprises four sections:

My transformation from priest to deist.

My autobiography - (published in print in the year 2000)
a. for a brief account of my life, click here.
b. for nine excerpts from my book, click here

My dialogues, essays and e-mails - (all published on the Internet starting in 2002)
a. for a general introduction to these articles, click here.
b. for the dialogues, click here.
c. for the essays, click here.
d. for fictional e-mails from and to Pope Benedict 16 (starting in June 2005), click here.

My website - my memorial, click here.


http://www.to-natures-god.net/

[heel31ok]

Boy you guys would be all over sub_zero for such blatant proselytation. Nothing here but us deist crickets.

[Sauniere]

For the serious person having questions or doubts about their faith.

http://www.to-natures-god.net/

It's interesting you bring this up because just today this Op-Ed piece appeared in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/opinion/18liell.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

-snip-

November 18, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Shaking the Foundation of Faith
By SCOTT M. LIELL
Madison, Conn.

AN event that occurred 250 years ago today stands as a singular reminder that the war between faith and science in America did not start in Dover, Pa., where several school board members who promoted the teaching of intelligent design were voted out of office last week, or even in that Tennessee courthouse in 1925 where John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution. It has been a recurring theme in our history since the very seedtime of the republic.

In the early hours of Nov. 18, 1755, the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in the eastern United States struck at Cape Ann, about 30 miles north of Boston. "It continued near four minutes," wrote John Adams, then a recent Harvard graduate staying at his family home in Braintree, Mass. "The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us."

The shock was felt as far away as Montreal and Chesapeake Bay. Throughout the New England countryside familiar springs stopped flowing and new ones appeared; stone walls were thrown down and cracks opened in the earth. Two hundred miles out to sea one ship was knocked about so violently that its crew believed it had run aground. In Boston, 100 chimneys toppled into the streets and more than 1,000 houses were damaged. A distiller's new cistern collapsed with such force that it brought down the entire building in which it was housed.

For Bostonians, the experience was unlike anything they had been through and their reactions varied widely. On the one side were a few who absorbed the experience with keen interest; as a natural phenomenon with natural causes. In this group were people like Adams and his favorite Harvard professor, John Winthrop, who gave a lecture on the science of earthquakes the following week.

To such people, the Cape Ann quake was an opportunity to learn something about a kind of event that was quite rare in their part of the world. While they knew nothing of plate tectonics and fault lines, the written accounts of these observers are replete with the sort of details that a modern seismologist would value. This was the reaction of men inspired by the still-new principles of natural philosophy, as science was called then, to believe that there were laws governing the operations of the world and that man could come to understand these laws through careful observation and reason.

The more typical mid-18th-century response to these kinds of events, however, was a desire to find supernatural explanations that while short on empirical detail, were usually long on ominous foreboding. To these folks earthquakes and hurricanes were simply just deserts for sins ranging from loose morals to having strayed from the true religion of their pilgrim forefathers.

The weeks after Nov. 18 saw an outpouring of sermons preached and articles published on the subject of the quake's divine origin. One strain of faith-based explanation, however, stands apart from the rest, not only for its popularity but also for its downright strangeness. According to a prominent Boston minister, the Rev. Thomas Prince of South Church, and his adherents, one novel practice in particular, together with its originator, was to blame for provoking this act of divine wrath; no, not that unlucky Boston distiller, but the lightning rod and its famous inventor, Benjamin Franklin.

It was a widespread belief in the 18th century that lightning was God's instrument of choice when manifesting his displeasure. In fact, it was a common practice to ring a town's church bells upon a storm's approach in an 11th-hour plea for mercy. To the grief of many a poor bell-ringer's widow, it was not a tactic that met with much success. But Franklin's idea of mounting pointed iron rods to the tops of tall buildings was so effective that their use quickly spread around the globe, making Franklin internationally famous two decades before he fixed his name to the Declaration of Independence...

...At the end of the day, it was never faith per se that stood in opposition to science; Franklin was ultimately as much a believer as Thomas Prince. Many people of faith - Unitarians, Quakers and those who, like most of the founding fathers, were deists - were prominent members of the scientific community. Rather, it was (and is) a specific type of belief that consistently finds itself at odds with science, one that is not found merely in America and is not limited to Christianity. It is the specific brand of faith that devalues reason and confers the mantle of infallible, absolute authority upon a leader or a book. It is only the priests of these sects, as Jefferson said, who "dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight."

IF people are dismayed to find fresh examples of the type of faith that blames victims of natural disasters - like Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake - for causing their own misery, it is comforting to see that the other kind of faith is also alive and well. For that, we need look no further than Franklin's adopted home state, Pennsylvania. No doubt many of those who voted for science on Election Day in Dover went to church the following Sunday.

For Franklin and his like-minded contemporaries, scientific pursuit was the ultimate act of faith; faith that there was an order to be discovered and faith in our ability to discover it.

Scott M. Liell is the author of the forthcoming "Founding Faith," about the religious beliefs of the founders.

[DRMIZER]

It's interesting you bring this up because just today this Op-Ed piece appeared in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/opinion/18liell.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

-snip-Interesting. . . . . . or, should we say prophetic!

[Sauniere]

Interesting. . . . . . or, should we say prophetic!

Enlightening would be my word of choice...

[sub_zer0]

For the serious person having questions or doubts about their faith.

The Triumph of Nature's God in my Life
by former Catholic Priest and current Deist, Ray Fontaine, Ph.D.

My home page comprises four sections:

My transformation from priest to deist.

My autobiography - (published in print in the year 2000)
a. for a brief account of my life, click here.
b. for nine excerpts from my book, click here

My dialogues, essays and e-mails - (all published on the Internet starting in 2002)
a. for a general introduction to these articles, click here.
b. for the dialogues, click here.
c. for the essays, click here.
d. for fictional e-mails from and to Pope Benedict 16 (starting in June 2005), click here.

My website - my memorial, click here.


http://www.to-natures-god.net/

God has always been a part of our lives. He has not abandoned us.

[Duo_Maxwell]

God has always been a part of our lives. He has not abandoned us.

Tell that to the Jews.

[sub_zer0]

Tell that to the Jews.

Umm I believe Jesus was sent, yet they rejected Him. So yes we were never abandoned, mankind abandoned God if anything.

[Duo_Maxwell]

Umm I believe Jesus was sent, yet they rejected Him. So yes we were never abandoned, mankind abandoned God if anything.

How did God not abandon them by letting 6 million of them die in gas chambers?

God abandoned the Jews, just like it abandoned millions of Congonese, just it abanonded millions in the Ukraine, just like it abandoned the 10,000 executed Calvanists. But then again, God may never have been with them in the first place, therefore forsakening someone you never were with could not occur.

[sub_zer0]

How did God not abandon them by letting 6 million of them die in gas chambers?

God abandoned the Jews, just like it abandoned millions of Congonese, just it abanonded millions in the Ukraine, just like it abandoned the 10,000 executed Calvanists. But then again, God may never have been with them in the first place, therefore forsakening someone you never were with could not occur.

Like I said man abandoned God from the start which caused all this. His word is the Bible so you can always be close to Him if you want to be.

[Duo_Maxwell]

Like I said man abandoned God from the start which caused all this. His word is the Bible so you can always be close to Him if you want to be.

lol. Thank you for adding to my theory that the American Public School System is a appalling failure. Man abanonding God is irrevelant. If God was with the Jews, he would not have let them be murdered in cold blood.

[sub_zer0]

lol. Thank you for adding to my theory that the American Public School System is a appalling failure. Man abanonding God is irrevelant. If God was with the Jews, he would not have let them be murdered in cold blood.

God doesn't change, He has always been with us since the beginning. It man that has changed, it is man with their free will that has been led away from God. The Jews have always had a hard time staying faithful to God. But you are not looking at the big picture Duo. 6 million Jews might have died, but they are still here, and Israel is still the dominant force in the middle east. So they are still blessed and God is still with them.

It just a sign of the times Duo to tell you the truth. God speaks about people persecuting the ones who believe.

[sub_zer0]

lol. Thank you for adding to my theory that the American Public School System is a appalling failure. Man abanonding God is irrevelant. If God was with the Jews, he would not have let them be murdered in cold blood.

God doesn't change, He has always been with us since the beginning. It is man that has changed. It is mankind with their free will that has led them away from God. The Jews have always had a hard time staying faithful to God. But you are not looking at the big picture. 6 million Jews might have died during that time. But did it work? No, they are still here, are still a force in this world. Israel is still the dominant force in the middle east and they are a very strong country. So they are still blessed and God is still with them.

It just a sign of the times Duo to tell you the truth. God speaks about people persecuting the ones who believe.

[Cedars]

... If God was with the Jews, he would not have let them be murdered in cold blood.
God has not abandoned the Jews -- all of us (no matter what our religion) are His creation. God became man to FULFILL the Covenant (made with the Jews) through Jesus, the Messiah. The Jews, after all, were the first to believe in Christ and become Christians. Jesus came to fulfill the Covenant first with the Jews and then the Gentiles. Had ALL the Jews (including the Jewish leaders) come to believe in Christ, we Christians might all be calling ourselves Jews today. God created man (all man) so that man may choose to sacrifice self, live for others, and love like God -- so that we may be in communion with God. Our ways are not God's ways. Life on earth is not the ultimate happiness that God has in store for us -- life with God in heaven IS.

[Duo_Maxwell]

for some reason, religious garbage and rhetoric doesn't seem to convince me that a all loving God did not abandon 6 million faithful to the gas chambers.

But then again, I use logic and reason so what do I know?

[Cedars]

For the serious person having questions or doubts about their faith.

The Triumph of Nature's God in my Life
by former Catholic Priest and current Deist, Ray Fontaine, Ph.D.

My home page comprises four sections:

My transformation from priest to deist.

My autobiography - (published in print in the year 2000)
a. for a brief account of my life, click here.
b. for nine excerpts from my book, click here

My dialogues, essays and e-mails - (all published on the Internet starting in 2002)
a. for a general introduction to these articles, click here.
b. for the dialogues, click here.
c. for the essays, click here.
d. for fictional e-mails from and to Pope Benedict 16 (starting in June 2005), click here.

My website - my memorial, click here.


http://www.to-natures-god.net/
Reading the first portion of the site which is typical anti-Catholic rhetoric, I begin to wonder if the person, Ray Fontaine, was ever actually a priest. It wouldn't be the first time someone falsely claimed to being a "former" priest or nun to give seeming credibility to self against the Church. If anybody actually reads the whole site and discovers where this "former priest" allegedly was ordained or what diocese he hailed from, I'd be interested to know so I can check him out. I'd be surprised if you find it, though, because it is usually, conveniently, left out.

[Cedars]

for some reason, religious garbage and rhetoric doesn't seem to convince me that a all loving God did not abandon 6 million faithful to the gas chambers.

But then again, I use logic and reason so what do I know?
If one can conceive of an Omnisicient Being, then logically, that Omnisicient Being's wisdom is greater than man's (as man is not omnisicient). If an Omnisicient Being's wisdom is greater than ours and that Being's ways are not our ways, then it is logical to believe that we are not possessed of the full reasoning behind what or how the Omnisicient Being reasons.

Life on earth is not the ultimate happiness that God has in store for us -- life with God in heaven IS.

[Sauniere]

Like I said man abandoned God from the start which caused all this. His word is the Bible so you can always be close to Him if you want to be.

lalalalalalalalalalala, not hearing this, get a life springs to mind, but I already see the response... lalalalalalala...

[DRMIZER]

Reading the first portion of the site which is typical anti-Catholic rhetoric, I begin to wonder if the person, Ray Fontaine, was ever actually a priest. It wouldn't be the first time someone falsely claimed to being a "former" priest or nun to give seeming credibility to self against the Church. If anybody actually reads the whole site and discovers where this "former priest" allegedly was ordained or what diocese he hailed from, I'd be interested to know so I can check him out. I'd be surprised if you find it, though, because it is usually, conveniently, left out.Good point. He has an email address. Why don't you ask him?