>>24
hooray, reason wins again! And you are absolutely right, by the end of the 18th century protestants launched an attack against Deism and pretty much made everyone believe that it was the same thing as OMG Atheism. So then it kind of died out, a shame since many of the founding fathers were Deist. Paine, Madison, and Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson at the very least shared some of its beliefs. If Deism would have stayed strong it is very possible that the world would be a little less insane than it is today, particularly in America.
Deism was ahead of its time, but I think it is gonna make a comeback. The combination of modern agnosticism and the free flow of information on the net really helps its chances. I had never heard of it either until I stumbled upon it on the internet, and it was basically just a name for what I believed. So I stopped using "a very loose lutheran" and started calling myself a Deist. And I think any sane person has to be agnostic to some degree. You can believe whatever but if you think there is no chance in hell that you are even a little bit wrong, that's willful ignorance.