# Deism vs the Christian God ## Intro Deism says **God made the world and then stepped back**. He wound it up like a clock and lets it run on its own laws. He does not do miracles, does not answer prayer, has not spoken in a book, and has not entered history. The Christian answer is that **God made the world and never let go of it**. He holds it in being every moment, cares for what He made, has spoken, and has acted, above all in raising Jesus from the dead. Deism deserves credit. It is much closer to Christianity than atheism is: - **It believes in a Creator.** The deist has looked at the beginning of the universe and its fine-tuned order and concluded, rightly, that someone made it. - **It trusts reason.** The Bible agrees that God can be known from what He made ([Romans 1:20](/codex/romans-1-20/)). - **It dislikes religious abuse.** Many deists were reacting against corrupt clergy and religious wars, and Christians should share that disgust. But deism stops halfway, and the place it stops does not hold: - **A God who made persons is personal**, and a good person does not abandon what he made. "He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" ([Psalm 94:9](/codex/psalms-94-9/), ASV). - **Nothing keeps existing on its own.** A clock can run without its maker because the clock's materials do not depend on him. The universe depends on God for its very existence at every moment. - **If God could create a universe from nothing, He can act within it.** Miracles are a small thing for the One who did the big thing. - **A Creator who wants to be known would speak**, and Christianity claims He did, in the prophets and finally in a Son. - **The resurrection is evidence that He has acted.** Quick reply for a live conversation: *"You already believe the biggest miracle, that God made everything out of nothing. If He can do that, He can raise a man from the dead. And if He made people who long to know Him, why would He go silent? The empty tomb is the evidence that He didn't."* ## Cheatsheet **The 30-second reply:** > Deism says God made the world and walked away. Christianity says God made the world and still holds it, cares for it and acts in it. If the deist's Creator is real, He is powerful enough to make everything from nothing, wise enough to tune its laws, and personal enough to make persons. A God like that can act in His world, has every reason to speak to the people He made, and, according to the historical evidence for the resurrection, has done exactly that. **The fast facts:** 1. **Shared ground.** Deists and Christians both accept a Creator. The [Kalam Cosmological Argument](/codex/kalam-cosmological-argument/), the [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/) and the [Fine-Tuning Argument](/codex/fine-tuning-argument/) serve both. 2. **The clock picture fails.** A clock keeps going without its maker because its metal exists independently of him. Creatures do not. Aquinas held that God keeps every creature in being at every moment, as the sun keeps the air lit (*Summa Theologiae* I q.104 a.1). See [Divine Providence](/codex/divine-providence/) and [Divine Conservationism](/codex/divine-conservationism/). 3. **Miracles.** Hume defined a miracle as "a violation of the laws of nature" ("Of Miracles," 1748). But laws describe how nature runs when left alone. They do not forbid its Maker from acting. See [Argument from Miracles](/codex/argument-from-miracles/). 4. **Revelation.** Herbert of Cherbury (*De Veritate*, 1624) and Matthew Tindal (*Christianity as Old as the Creation*, 1730) held that reason alone gives all the religion we need. Yet reason alone has never produced agreement on God, morality or the afterlife, including among deists. 5. **Paine's hope.** Thomas Paine wrote: "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life" (*The Age of Reason*, Part I, 1794). A hope like that needs a God who will act again, which is what deism denies. 6. **Jefferson's scissors.** Jefferson cut the miracles out of the Gospels to make *The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth*. His version ends at the tomb. The original accounts do not. 7. **Flew.** The atheist philosopher [Antony Flew](/codex/antony-flew/) became a deist in 2004 on the strength of the design and cosmological arguments (*There Is a God*, 2007). See [Antony Flew (Deism Conversion 2004)](/codex/antony-flew-deism-conversion-2004/). **The 4 strongest counter-moves:** - *"A perfect Creator would make a world that runs on its own. Miracles mean He had to fix mistakes."* Leibniz made a version of this complaint against Newton's God, who he said needed "to wind up his watch from time to time." But miracles in Scripture are not repairs. They are personal acts: signs, rescues, revelation. An author who writes himself into the story has not fixed a defect in the plot. See [Leibniz](/codex/leibniz/). - *"Reason is enough. Revelation is unnecessary and divisive."* Reason can show that God exists ([Romans 1:20](/codex/romans-1-20/)). It cannot tell you whether He forgives, what He has done about evil, or what He plans. Only He can tell you that, and if He does, refusing to listen is not reason; it is a decision not to ask. - *"Revelation is given to a few people in one place. That's unfair."* All history happens to particular people in particular places. Creation is God's universal witness ([Acts 14:17](/codex/acts-14-17/)); the gospel is a particular event announced to everyone ([Acts 17:30-31](/codex/acts-17-30-31/)). - *"Deism avoids the problem of evil. A God who doesn't intervene isn't responsible."* It does the opposite. A Creator who could help and has chosen to watch from a distance is harder to defend than one who entered the suffering Himself. See [Why Doesn't God Intervene Objection Defeater](/codex/why-doesnt-god-intervene-objection-defeater/). **Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):** - *Grant:* nature runs by regular laws. *Now collect:* the Bible says so first ("seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease," [Genesis 8:22](/codex/genesis-8-22/), ASV), and says the regularity is God's faithfulness, not His absence. - *Grant:* reason can know God from creation. *Now collect:* then reason has already shown a God of immense power, wisdom and will. The same reason should be open to evidence that He has acted. - *Grant:* clergy have abused religion. *Now collect:* so did the people Jesus confronted. Abuse of revelation is not evidence against revelation, any more than bad science is evidence against nature. - *Grant:* not every miracle claim is true. *Now collect:* then examine them one at a time. The resurrection is the one Christianity stakes everything on. **The closing line:** > The deist's God made the ear and will not hear, made the eye and will not see. The Christian God made both, and then came to be seen. ## In full Deism is the view that a supreme Creator exists, designed and started the universe, and leaves it to run by natural law, without miracle, special revelation or continuing personal action in history. Religion, for the deist, is what reason can discover from nature: a Creator, a moral law, and for many deists a life after death with rewards and punishments. See [Deism](/codex/deism/) for the history, from Lord Herbert of Cherbury's five common notions (1624) through the English deists, Voltaire, and the American deism of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, to Antony Flew's turn to deism in 2004. The Christian doctrine of God holds that God is one being in three persons, the free Creator of everything out of nothing ([Creatio ex Nihilo](/codex/creatio-ex-nihilo/)), who **conserves** all things in being moment by moment, **governs** them in providence, and **acts** in history in revelation, miracle and redemption, decisively in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. See [Divine Providence](/codex/divine-providence/), [Theism](/codex/theism/) and [Incarnation](/codex/incarnation/). The two views agree on the first question every worldview must answer: there is a Creator. They part on the second: is that Creator involved? This page compares them question by question and argues abductively that the Christian God is the more coherent Creator. The deist's own reasons for believing in God, followed consistently, lead past deism. That is the path taken by the [Cumulative Case for Christian Theism](/codex/cumulative-case-for-christian-theism/), which treats the case for a Creator as the first step and the historical case for the resurrection as the second. ## Side by side | Question | Deism | The Christian God | |---|---|---| | **Why does anything exist?** | A Creator made it | A Creator made it, freely and out of nothing | | **The beginning and fine-tuning** | Evidence of a designing Creator | Evidence of a designing Creator | | **Mind and reason** | Reason is God's gift and our only guide in religion | Reason is God's gift, and it can recognize when He speaks | | **Morality** | A moral law known by reason | A moral law known by reason, revealed in Scripture and lived out in Jesus | | **Meaning** | Live virtuously in a world God set going | Know and love the God who made you, now and forever | | **Evil and justice** | God does not intervene; some deists hope for justice after death | God judges evil, entered it at the cross, and will end it | | **God's involvement** | Created, then stepped back | Holds everything in being, governs it, acts within it | | **Revelation** | None; nature and reason are enough | In creation, in the prophets, and finally in His Son | | **Miracles** | Do not happen | Possible, rare, and purposeful, above all the resurrection | | **Prayer** | God does not answer | God hears and answers | | **The ending** | Uncertain; perhaps an afterlife | Bodily resurrection and life with God in a renewed creation | ## Argument structure | | Premise | Notes | |---|---|---| | **P1** | **There is a Creator.** Deist and Christian agree; the cosmological and design arguments support both. | Shared ground | | **P2** | **A Creator who made persons is personal and good, and a good person cares for what he made.** Deism's distant God is in tension with the Creator its own arguments reveal. | Character | | **P3** | **Creation depends on God at every moment.** There is no "after creation" in which God has stepped away; the clock picture misdescribes the relation. | Conservation | | **P4** | **If God created the universe from nothing, miracles are possible.** Laws describe nature's ordinary course; they do not bind its Maker. | Miracles | | **P5** | **A good Creator of beings who seek Him has reason to reveal Himself, and reason alone is not enough.** Revelation cannot be ruled out in advance. | Revelation | | **P6** | **The resurrection of Jesus is evidence that God has acted in history.** If it happened, deism is false. | Historical | | **C** | The Christian God is the more coherent Creator. Deism rightly sees a Maker behind the world but wrongly pictures Him as absent, silent and unable or unwilling to act. The God its arguments point to is the God who holds, speaks and saves. | | ## Master objections to the whole argument **MO1: "Intervention implies imperfection. A perfect clockmaker doesn't need to adjust the clock."** - This assumes miracles are corrections. In Scripture they are signs that reveal God and acts that rescue people ([John 20:31](/codex/john-20-31/)). Their purpose is personal, not mechanical. - The objection also assumes that the world's highest purpose is to run smoothly. If its purpose is relationship between God and persons, then a God who speaks and acts is not fixing the machine; He is doing what the machine was built for. - Leibniz, who pressed the clock image against Newton's followers, was no deist. He believed in providence and in the Christian revelation. The debate was over how God governs, not whether. **MO2: "Natural religion is universal. Revealed religion is local, late and divisive (Tindal)."** - Christianity affirms a universal witness: God "left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons" ([Acts 14:17](/codex/acts-14-17/), ASV). See [General Revelation](/codex/general-revelation/). - But the universal witness shows that God exists and is powerful ([Romans 1:20](/codex/romans-1-20/)). It does not tell us whether He will forgive. That is news, and news has to be told. - "Natural religion" has never actually been universal. Herbert listed five common notions; deists themselves disagreed about the afterlife, about prayer and about whether God cares. **MO3: "Miracles violate the laws of nature, so they cannot be believed (Hume)."** - Hume's argument, in "Of Miracles" (1748), weighs testimony to a miracle against uniform experience of natural law. But whether experience is uniform is the very question; ruling out all testimony to exceptions begs it. See [David Hume](/codex/david-hume/) and [Argument from Miracles](/codex/argument-from-miracles/). - A deist is badly placed to use Hume. The deist already believes in the greatest exception to nature's ordinary course: its creation from nothing. - Lewis argued that laws of nature tell us what will happen if nothing interferes; they do not tell us that nothing can (*Miracles*, 1947). See [C.S. Lewis](/codex/c-s-lewis/). **MO4: "The Bible is full of errors and contradictions, so it can't be God's word."** - This is a case-by-case claim and must be argued case by case, not assumed. See [Bible Contradictions Objection Defeater](/codex/bible-contradictions-objection-defeater/). - Joseph Butler's point against the deists (*The Analogy of Religion*, 1736) still applies: the deist accepts nature as God's work despite its difficulties. Holding Scripture to a stricter standard than nature is a double standard. **MO5: "Deism is humbler. It doesn't claim to know what God wants."** - It claims a great deal: that God will not act, will not speak, and has not done so. Those are confident claims about God's will made without His testimony. - Christianity's humility is different: "The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever" ([Deuteronomy 29:29](/codex/deuteronomy-29-29/), ASV). It claims to know only what God has said. ## Premise 1, There is a Creator ### Affirmative case 1. The universe began, and whatever begins to exist has a cause. See [Kalam Cosmological Argument](/codex/kalam-cosmological-argument/) and [Big Bang](/codex/big-bang/). 2. Contingent things need an explanation in a necessary being. See [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/). 3. The laws and constants of physics are finely set for life. See [Fine-Tuning Argument](/codex/fine-tuning-argument/). 4. Deists and Christians agree on this much. Flew's journey from atheism to deism ran through these arguments. "The heavens declare the glory of God" ([Psalm 19:1](/codex/psalms-19-1/), ASV). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Then we agree. Why go further?"* ### Rebuttals 1. Because the same arguments say more than deism allows. The cause of a universe from nothing must be powerful enough to create, which means powerful enough to act in what it created. The source of a fine-tuned order must be a mind that chooses, which means a personal agent. The deist's own premises lead to Premises 2 to 4. ## Premise 2, A personal Creator cares for what He made ### Affirmative case 1. The Creator made persons: beings who know, choose, love and seek meaning. 2. The source of persons is best understood as personal. "He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?" ([Psalm 94:9](/codex/psalms-94-9/), ASV). 3. Deists generally held God to be good and worthy of worship. Herbert's second common notion was that God ought to be worshipped. 4. A good person who makes beings capable of seeking him does not make himself unreachable on purpose. Hebrews puts it plainly: "he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him" ([Hebrews 11:6](/codex/hebrews-11-6/), ASV). 5. Jesus taught a God whose care reaches the smallest things: "not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered" ([Luke 12:6-7](/codex/luke-12-6-7/), ASV). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"God is too great to bother with individual lives."* ### Rebuttals 1. Greatness that cannot attend to the small is a limitation, not a perfection. A God of unlimited knowledge and power has no trouble attending to every sparrow. The deist's distant God is a smaller God, not a greater one. ## Premise 3, Creation depends on God at every moment ### Affirmative case 1. A clock outlasts its maker because its brass and steel exist independently of him. The clockmaker arranged them; he did not give them existence. 2. God did not arrange pre-existing material. He gave the universe its existence. What has no power to exist on its own has no power to keep existing on its own. 3. Classical Christian theology therefore teaches that God conserves every creature in being at every moment. Aquinas compared creation's dependence to the way air stays lit only while the sun shines on it (*Summa Theologiae* I q.104 a.1). Theologians differ on how God works with created causes (see [Divine Conservationism](/codex/divine-conservationism/), [Concurrentism](/codex/concurrentism/) and [Occasionalism](/codex/occasionalism/)), but all three classical positions agree that God keeps creatures in existence. 4. Scripture says the same: "thou preservest them all" ([Nehemiah 9:6](/codex/nehemiah-9-6/), ASV); "in him all things consist" ([Colossians 1:17](/codex/colossians-1-17/), ASV); the Son is "upholding all things by the word of his power" ([Hebrews 1:3](/codex/hebrews-1-3/), ASV). 5. So there is no moment after creation when God has stepped away. If He stepped away, the world would not run on its own. It would cease. See [Divine Providence](/codex/divine-providence/). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"The universe runs on its own laws. Physics doesn't need God to keep it going."* ### Rebuttals 1. Physics describes how things behave given that they exist. It does not explain why they keep existing. Conservation is not a physical force competing with the laws; it is the ground of there being anything for the laws to describe. Jesus: "My Father worketh even until now, and I work" ([John 5:17](/codex/john-5-17/), ASV). ## Premise 4, If God created from nothing, miracles are possible ### Affirmative case 1. A miracle is an event that nature's ordinary causes do not produce, brought about by God for a purpose. 2. The deist already believes God brought the whole universe into being. That is the greatest act beyond nature's ordinary course there could be. 3. A God who can do that can raise a man, heal a body or part a sea. "Behold, Jehovah's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save" ([Isaiah 59:1](/codex/isaiah-59-1/), ASV). 4. Laws of nature describe what happens when nothing outside nature acts. They do not forbid the Lawgiver from acting. See [Argument from Miracles](/codex/argument-from-miracles/) and [Miracles](/codex/miracles/). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Possible, but God wouldn't. It would undermine the order He set up."* ### Rebuttals 1. Miracles only stand out because nature is regular. They depend on order; they do not destroy it. And whether God would act is a question about His purposes, which only He can disclose, and about history, which can be investigated (Premise 6). ## Premise 5, A good Creator has reason to reveal Himself ### Affirmative case 1. Reason can know that God exists and is powerful ([Romans 1:20](/codex/romans-1-20/)). That is real knowledge. See [General Revelation](/codex/general-revelation/). 2. It cannot know His intentions: whether He forgives, what He has done about evil, what He plans for the dead. Persons are known by what they say and do, not just by what they make. 3. The deist tradition shows the limits. Deists disagreed with each other about the afterlife, about prayer and about God's goodness. Paine could only "hope for happiness beyond this life." 4. Christianity claims God answered those questions: "God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son" ([Hebrews 1:1-2](/codex/hebrews-1-1-2/), ASV). "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" ([John 1:18](/codex/john-1-18/), ASV). 5. Ruling out revelation in advance is not a conclusion of reason. It is an assumption about what God would do, and it is the one question reason cannot answer alone. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Every religion claims a revelation. They can't all be right, so none should be trusted."* ### Rebuttals 1. They cannot all be right, but that does not mean none is. Competing claims call for testing, not dismissal. Christianity offers a public, historical test (Premise 6). See [Christian God is the Only True God](/codex/christian-god-is-the-only-true-god/). ## Premise 6, The resurrection is evidence that God has acted ### Affirmative case 1. Deism's defining claim is that God does not act in history. One well-evidenced act of God refutes it. 2. A set of facts is granted by a wide range of critical historians: Jesus died by crucifixion; His followers sincerely believed they saw Him alive afterward; the persecutor Paul and the skeptic James were changed by similar experiences. See [Minimal Facts Argument](/codex/minimal-facts-argument/). 3. The best explanation of those facts is that God raised Jesus, "declared to be the Son of God with power... by the resurrection from the dead" ([Romans 1:4](/codex/romans-1-4/), ASV). See [Argument from the Resurrection](/codex/argument-from-the-resurrection/) and [Resurrection of Jesus](/codex/resurrection-of-jesus/). 4. The early witnesses insisted they were reporting, not inventing: "we did not follow cunningly devised fables... but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty" ([2 Peter 1:16](/codex/2-peter-1-16/), ASV). 5. Flew, who reached deism through the design arguments, engaged the resurrection evidence seriously in his later dialogues with his friend [Gary Habermas](/codex/gary-habermas/), though he did not accept it. His book *There Is a God* (2007) included an exchange with [N.T. Wright](/codex/n-t-wright/) on God's self-revelation in Jesus. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Jefferson kept Jesus' moral teaching and cut the miracles. Isn't that the reasonable Jesus?"* ### Rebuttals 1. Jefferson's cut was made by prior conviction, not by historical method. The earliest sources do not contain a non-miraculous Jesus beneath the miracles; the resurrection is in the earliest layer of the tradition ([1 Corinthians 15:3-8](/codex/1-corinthians-15-3-8/)). And the moral teacher Jefferson admired claimed to be "the resurrection, and the life" ([John 11:25](/codex/john-11-25/), ASV). A Jesus who said that and stayed dead is not a sound moral guide. ## Scripture on the God who stays The Bible's God is the Creator deists believe in, and also the God they deny: - **He made all things.** "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" ([Genesis 1:1](/codex/genesis-1-1/), ASV). - **He keeps all things.** "Thou art Jehovah, even thou alone; thou hast made heaven... and thou preservest them all" ([Nehemiah 9:6](/codex/nehemiah-9-6/), ASV). - **He does not sleep.** "Behold, he that keepeth Israel Will neither slumber nor sleep" ([Psalm 121:4](/codex/psalms-121-4/), ASV). - **He gives life moment by moment.** "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; And thou renewest the face of the ground" ([Psalm 104:30](/codex/psalms-104-30/), ASV). - **He is near.** God made the nations "that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" ([Acts 17:27](/codex/acts-17-27/), ASV). - **He has spoken and acted.** God "hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" ([Acts 17:31](/codex/acts-17-31/), ASV). ## Live-cite kit **Scripture:** - [Psalm 94:9](/codex/psalms-94-9/), "He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" (ASV). - [Colossians 1:17](/codex/colossians-1-17/), "in him all things consist" (ASV). - [Hebrews 1:1-3](/codex/hebrews-1-1-3/), God "hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son," who is "upholding all things by the word of his power" (ASV). - [John 5:17](/codex/john-5-17/), "My Father worketh even until now, and I work" (ASV). - [Hebrews 11:6](/codex/hebrews-11-6/), God is "a rewarder of them that seek after him" (ASV). - [Romans 1:4](/codex/romans-1-4/), "declared to be the Son of God with power... by the resurrection from the dead" (ASV). **Scholarly:** - **Lord Herbert of Cherbury**, *De Veritate* (1624): the five common notions of natural religion. - **Matthew Tindal**, *Christianity as Old as the Creation* (1730): natural religion is complete. - **Thomas Paine**, *The Age of Reason* (1794): "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life." - **David Hume**, "Of Miracles" (1748): a miracle as "a violation of the laws of nature." - **Joseph Butler**, *The Analogy of Religion* (1736): nature has the same difficulties the deist objects to in Scripture. - **Thomas Aquinas**, *Summa Theologiae* I q.104 a.1: God conserves creatures in being. - **C. S. Lewis**, *Miracles* (1947): laws of nature do not forbid their Maker to act. - **Antony Flew**, *There Is a God* (2007): an atheist follows the evidence to a Creator. **Aphorisms:** - *"You already believe the biggest miracle."* - *"A clock can run without its maker. A universe cannot exist without its Maker."* - *"He made the ear. Of course He hears."* - *"Reason can tell you there is a God. Only God can tell you what He has done about your sins."* - *"Jefferson's Jesus ends at the tomb. The real one doesn't."* ## Tactical notes - **Celebrate the common ground.** A deist has already rejected naturalism. Say so warmly. The conversation is about the next step, not the first. - **Ask about the deist's God.** "Is your Creator good? Is He personal? Does He know you exist?" Each yes pulls toward Christianity. - **Use the deist's own miracle.** "You believe God made everything from nothing. Why couldn't He raise one man?" - **Ask what reason has actually delivered.** Deists themselves disagreed about the afterlife and about prayer. Reason found God; it did not find His intentions. - **Go to the resurrection.** It is the one claim that, if true, settles the question. See [Minimal Facts Argument](/codex/minimal-facts-argument/). - **Watch for spiritual-but-not-religious deism.** Many people today hold a vague Creator-belief without the label. The same questions apply. ## See also - [Deism](/codex/deism/), the view in full, with its history and thinkers - [Divine Providence](/codex/divine-providence/), God's continuing care and government of creation - [Divine Conservationism](/codex/divine-conservationism/), how God keeps creatures in being - [Argument from Miracles](/codex/argument-from-miracles/), why miracles are possible and how to weigh them - [Why Doesn't God Intervene Objection Defeater](/codex/why-doesnt-god-intervene-objection-defeater/), answering the question deism answers with silence - [Antony Flew (Deism Conversion 2004)](/codex/antony-flew-deism-conversion-2004/), the atheist who became a deist - [Argument from the Resurrection](/codex/argument-from-the-resurrection/), the evidence that God has acted - [General Revelation](/codex/general-revelation/), what reason and creation can show - [Argument from Religious Experience](/codex/argument-from-religious-experience/), evidence of a God who engages persons - [Theism](/codex/theism/), the God who creates and acts - [Atheism vs the Christian God](/codex/atheism-vs-the-christian-god/), the step before: is there a Creator at all? - [Pantheism vs the Christian God](/codex/pantheism-vs-the-christian-god/), the other alternative to a personal Creator - [World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending](/codex/world-religions-compared-by-their-ultimate-ending/), every worldview's ending side by side ## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is the difference between deism and Christianity?** Both believe in a Creator. Deism says God made the world and then stepped back: no miracles, no answered prayer, no revelation. Christianity says God made the world and still holds it in being, cares for it, has spoken through the prophets and His Son, and acted in history, above all in raising Jesus from the dead. **Q: Is the clockmaker or watchmaker God biblical?** No. The Bible affirms that nature runs by regular laws ([Genesis 8:22](/codex/genesis-8-22/)), but it says those laws are God's faithfulness, not His absence. Nehemiah prays to God, "thou preservest them all" ([Nehemiah 9:6](/codex/nehemiah-9-6/)), and the Son is "upholding all things by the word of his power" ([Hebrews 1:3](/codex/hebrews-1-3/)). A clock can run without its maker; a universe cannot exist without its Maker. **Q: If God created the universe, why would He do miracles?** Not to fix mistakes, but to reveal Himself and rescue people. Miracles in Scripture are signs with a purpose ([John 20:31](/codex/john-20-31/)). And a deist already accepts the greatest miracle, creation from nothing, so smaller acts of God within creation are no harder to believe. **Q: Why isn't reason enough to know God?** Reason can show that God exists and is powerful ([Romans 1:20](/codex/romans-1-20/)). It cannot tell you His intentions: whether He forgives, what He has done about evil, or what happens after death. Persons are known by what they say. Deists themselves disagreed about these questions, which is why Christianity says God has spoken. **Q: Were Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson deists?** Paine clearly was. *The Age of Reason* (1794-1807) argues for one God known by reason and against revealed religion. Jefferson held views close to deism and made his own edition of the Gospels with the miracles removed, *The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth*. Other founders held a range of views, from orthodox Christian to Unitarian. **Q: What would convince a deist that God has acted?** The resurrection of Jesus. Deism's defining claim is that God does not act in history, so one well-evidenced act of God refutes it. The death of Jesus, the disciples' experiences of Him alive and the conversions of Paul and James are open to historical investigation. See [Argument from the Resurrection](/codex/argument-from-the-resurrection/). **Q: Why did Antony Flew become a deist and not a Christian?** Flew followed the design and cosmological arguments to a Creator in 2004, as he explained in *There Is a God* (2007). He remained unconvinced by revealed religion and the resurrection, though he took the evidence seriously in his dialogues with Gary Habermas. His story shows the first step from atheism toward God; the resurrection is the second.