Deism << DEE ihz uhm >> is a religious and philosophic belief. Deism rejects most conventional forms of religion, accepting reason as the only guide to truth. It embraces the concept of God, however, in the limited sense of a creator, or first cause, of the physical and moral laws of the universe. Deists compare God’s act of creation to that of a watchmaker who builds a watch, sets it in motion, and then refuses to intervene in its actions.
Deism became popular during the 1700’s. Deist ideas appear in the writings of such philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire of France and Immanuel Kant of Germany. In America, deist ideas appear in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. Those ideas reflect the political influence of leading deists of the time: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. The deist concept of God underlies such phrases as “In God We Trust” and “we are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
