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Deism, the religious attitude typical of the Enlightenment, especially in France and England, holds that the existence of God can be only proved based on the application of reason and the world can be discovered through observation, experience and reasoning.〔Corfe, Robert, Deism and social ethics: the role of religion in the third millennium (Arena Books. 2007)〕 A Deist is defined as "One who believes in the existence of a God or Supreme Being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason."〔Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1941〕 Deism was often synonymous with so-called natural religion because its principles are drawn from nature and human reasoning. In contrast to Deism there are many cultural religions or revealed religions, such as Judaism, Trinitarian Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and others, which believe in supernatural intervention of God in the world; while Deism denies any supernatural intervention and emphasizes that the world is operated by natural laws of the Supreme Being. C. J. Betts argues that Deism was never a religion in the usual sense. It was a religion for individuals, especially the educated laity, and was most often presented as the result of the individual's unaided reflections on God and man. Deism is a religious attitude based on the belief in God and rejecting Christian belief, either implicitly or explicitly. ==Definitions and distinctions== The advantage of giving a standard definition of 'Deism' is to distinguish it from Christianity on the one hand and atheism on the other hand. Robert Corfe argues since deism is not organized as a church, and because it teaches self-reliance and to question authority through its intrinsic characteristics, it has little inclination to move toward the status of a highly organized body. So, it is not surprising that deism is often misunderstood and misinterpreted, even by those in academia.〔 The most common false perception concerning the reality of Deism is the assumption that Deism equals atheism. This misunderstanding of Deism is not a contemporary issue but it goes back to the seventeenth century as J. M. Robertson explains: "Before deism came into English vogue, the names for unbelief were simply 'infidelity' and 'atheism'- e.g. Baxter's Unreasonableness of Infidelity (1655) ... Bishop Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae deals chiefly with deistic views, but calls unbelievers in general 'atheists'... ".〔Robertson, John M. ''A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern''. 1915; p. 4〕 So, the term 'atheism' was used as a basis for rational critique before the term 'Deism' being used. But by the first half of the 18th century, when English Deism had explicitly become an intellectual movement, the term 'atheism' was only flung at Deism as a term of abuse. Anything breaking the bounds of heterodoxy was atheism in actuality.〔 At the beginning of the eighteenth century large numbers of individuals were in the process of detaching themselves from Christian belief and replacing it by a religious attitude in which the belief in God was independent of Church or Bible. Such a movement required an independent name which implies its own real nature, not just a name. However the invention of the words 'Deism' and 'Deist' goes back to the sixteenth century. The first known use of the term deist was by Pierre Viret, a disciple of Calvin, in his ''Instruction chrétienne en la doctrine de la Loi et de l'Évangile'', in Genoa (1564). Viret regarded it as an entirely new word which he claimed the Deists wished to put in opposition to atheism in avoiding the accusation of the latter.〔 The emergence of the word in the mid-sixteenth century was mostly associated with ongoing recovery of works from antiquity. So, it is beliepot hayop kayo em from Christian belief and who had invented a word to denote simply the belief in God. However, Betts argues that the accounts of Deists at Lyon suggest quite a different interpretation, namely that the origin of the term Deism lies in the anti-Trinitarian movement which was then an important phenomenon in the religious life of Europe.〔 Using the word 'Deist' Verit was likely referring to a group of Lyonnaise anti-Trinitarians. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Deism in England and France in the 18th century」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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