{"id":3074,"date":"2009-09-22T09:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-22T09:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/09\/deism-alive-and-well\/"},"modified":"2009-09-22T09:36:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-22T09:36:00","slug":"deism-alive-and-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/09\/deism-alive-and-well.html","title":{"rendered":"Deism: Alive and Well?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>There\u2019s an interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/religion\/2009-09-22-no-religion_N.htm?csp=34\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">article in USA Today<\/a> about those who usually put down \u201cnone\u201d when asked about their religion. Apparently most aren\u2019t atheists, nor are they New Agers. According to the article, the majority are more akin to Deistic rationalists in the heritage of Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine. They are mostly people who would affirm the existence of God but not adhere to a single denomination, creed or dogma.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, if the article is right about this, I take encouragement from this tradition of American religiosity having survived down to the present day. In an era in which there has been a resurgance of superstition and a good deal of anti-rationalism, it is reassuring to know that the category of those whose religious beliefs give an important place to <em>reason<\/em> seems to be growing rather than shrinking.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-3319632835138221644?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s an interesting article in USA Today about those who usually put down \u201cnone\u201d when asked about their religion. Apparently most aren\u2019t atheists, nor are they New Agers. According to the article, the majority are more akin to Deistic rationalists in the heritage of Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine. They are mostly people who would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Deism: Alive and Well?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There&#039;s an interesting article in USA Today about those who usually put down &quot;none&quot; when asked about their religion. Apparently most aren&#039;t atheists, nor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/09\/deism-alive-and-well.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Deism: Alive and Well?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There&#039;s an interesting article in USA Today about those who usually put down &quot;none&quot; when asked about their religion. Apparently most aren&#039;t atheists, nor\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/09\/deism-alive-and-well.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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