INSIGHTS ON LIFE

Theism, Atheism, & Deism

The debate on truth is as old as when men began to gaze at the heavens. The further discoveries are made and knowledge increase, the further the depth assumed by the debate of, for instance, whether there exists a God over all that is or not. And the further man’s thinking strengthens, the deeper he questions all he perceives.

Religions of the world and the various schools of thought came into existence in order to offer to the world what their founders perceive as truth. Some present truth as to have come through revelation and others present reason as the basis of truth. Of the former are all the theistic movements, and of the latter are the philosophies and the various schools of thought, of which atheism and deism are part.

Atheism as of today has earned for itself more adherents who with fervency argue and war against theism like their happiness depended on disproving the existence of God. Disproving the existence of God is the major business of atheism because every other religious idea can be disproved once God is taken out of the way. Some atheists even carefully draw the line clear by warring against the “Christian God” and this particular fight is popular in societies where Christianity is part of the social construct as an institution. Generally, atheism argues against the existence of any God at all with a passing remark that the universe wasn’t created by any God, borrowing such theories as the Big Bang as explanation for how life and everything came into being. Atheism rejects religions and all the pantheon of the gods of religions and the revelations and laws that they give. Atheists are materialists, they are only conscious of what they can see and touch and therefore refute the supernatural or anything spiritual, though life itself still holds its mystery over them.

Theism, the enemy of atheism, presents a belief of God and the supernatural. It defends its truth and the body of its doctrine as sacrosanct, and that the God or Gods which atheism wars against are the givers of these truths and the said truths cannot be contested. Theists, like atheists, will fight to defend their beliefs and the revelations contained in their holy books and will not spare flaming words and insults upon atheists who they see as lost, damned and children of the devil. Though some atheists enjoy being called children of the devil, others can literally burn a church because a Christian termed them so.

The areas where atheists and theists wage war are those of the concept of absolute truth and the infallibility of the sacred literature that theistic religions hold as sacrosanct, the bible and koran, for instance. They reject these literatures as being the word of God or that the doctrine contained in them are absolute and cannot be challenged. Atheists are quick and clever to point out errors, contradictions, and discrepancies in holy books as proofs of their rubbish and the fact that these books are nothing but the creations of men. And because the conceptions of God in these holy books are nothing but fallacies and the inventions by men, though claimed to be God’s very own transmission, atheists see reason not only to reject these religions but rebel against the idea of a Supreme Being, the concept of creation, and of truth.

Theistic religions worship “small gods”, gods made in the image of man, men and women turned gods, animals turned gods, nature gods, and abstract gods. These pantheon of gods fill up the clouds of theism across the world. Allah, the Christian god and Jesus are part. Though each religion claims itself more genuine than the other, each is as false as every other. The claim of supernatural revelation of their holy books is the hook they use in fishing men into their boats and when the people are in they are fed degrees of fear to keep them slaves of religion, slaves who through indoctrination will defend their slave masters with all their lives. Extremism and fanaticism, and the violence birthed from these, are examples.

Atheism, on the other hand, frees itself from the bondage to religion and rather than walk into light plunges itself further into darkness and then revels in it. Rejecting the gods of religion, it rejects the idea that there is even a God to life. Destroying, for example, the “Christian God” through constant exposé of the errors and lies of Christianity and the bible, atheists think they are at the same time destroying the Supreme Being. Discrediting religious ideas of creation, they think a Supreme Being couldn’t have been responsible for the coming into being of the universe. Atheists go as far as rejecting simple evidence that there exists a Power in the universe not necessarily ‘directing’ life in its diverse courses but having ’caused’ it into existence in ways too mysterious to understand. The atheists have their own selves as a starting point to seeing the evidence of Intelligent Design. Their biology, the DNA, the cells, the structure and working of the brain; the structure and setting of the bones, the eye, the finger print, the creation of words and feelings, and the creative powers in man, are not realities that form themselves through chaos. Something bigger caused these into being and ‘programmed’ everything that a human body can be into a DNA and let it carry itself automatically through time. Atheists refuse to see that their very existence is not theirs. They can’t control life. They are at the mercy of life. Let the Sun burn hotter, they can be roasted in a jiffy. Take air away and they are dead. Atheists look like a bunch of teenage rebels who want to enjoy the juvenile pleasures of the abandonment of religions rather than seek for clarity having escaped the lie. While they are clever at pointing the lies and errors of religion they are foolish in seeing the light of truth. They err by denying a Supreme Being. And theists share this error with atheists by defending their small false gods as the Supreme Being itself just because it is written so in their books.

Deism knows there exists a God in life and supernatural revelation isn’t necessary to proof such, neither is it necessary for a special day of the week to be set aside to ‘worship’ God as though our worship enlivens him. All of life is evidence that there is something ‘here’ that caused all things whether itself is caused or uncaused. Reason and all the evidence of nature are the proofs of a Supreme Being. Through deistic thought and philosophy, the grandness of the idea of God can be divined, a departure from the littleness and grotesque forms that theism have made of such idea. Deism facilitates the projection of the human mind through the vast universe to discern possibilities that exists beyond this little earth that the religions are killing themselves with words and weapons to own. Deism shows that the laws of life are written in man and in his environment, not in an artificial holy book. Deism is knowing God is inside you and that you worship God with your whole life, consciously and unconsciously. While theism and atheism are ideas needing a purge, deism is what is, it is the world we came into existence in, not of our will, but by the design of something Grand. Deism does not say we’re at the mercy of fate, rather we live in a world where we can be all that we can be and be responsible for all that we become.

Victor Negro is based in Lagos. He writes on matters of life and existence as he thinks, preferring better understanding of common questions.