Wingin' It 392.1: Charles Tayor - A Secular Age, Session 4

Theism would be the belief in a personal God.

And that's when we talk about like monotheism, it's not just one God, but a God who speaks, right? Like God who is active, which was not the case in most ancient religions, right? Deism, think almost an impersonal God.

So the idea that there's an order to this world and it had to come from somewhere.

And this God, whatever it is, does not have that same sort of personal connection with us.

So it's not really doctrine as much as it is reason.

So we see a reasonable world.

We see order in the world.

One way to describe it is the deistic God-man.

created the universe, spun all the planets in their orbit, and said goodbye.

The ancient way is like a watchmaker.

He winds up the old pocket watch, lays it down, and tick-tock, and I'm done.

What Charles Taylor is going to say is, deism was, was maybe a logical steps and maybe not the right word, but a step in the direction of a full blown way of looking at the world without the need for God, a humanism, maybe even an atheism.

And so deism was like, you know what, miracles, incarnation, that kind of stuff.

It's a little funky for us in the 1700s and 1800s.

We know better.

And we look at the religious superstitious past of the medieval world and all the wars and revolutions.

We like to move beyond that.

And I think we're pretty darn smart.

We can figure this stuff out.

But we're not so smart that we don't need a God, right? And so deism sort of is like this intermediary step.

He's going to say that's not the full story, but it's part of the story.

So providential deism, this idea that you have this impersonal God, but there's still sort of a providence, a care, something that does something for us.

All right.

Now that I think about it, providential deism doesn't seem like an oxymoron in a little way.

Yeah, like if he is providing in some way, then he must be active.