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''deism'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔

deism - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

deism (usually uncountable, plural deisms)

  • (philosophy) A philosophical belief in the existence of a god (or goddess) knowable through human reason; especially, a belief in a creator god unaccompanied by any belief in supernatural phenomena or specific religious doctrines.
    • ✤ Hypernym: theism
    • ✤ If my supposition be true, then the consequence which I have assumed in my Poem may be also true; namely, that Deism, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of reveal’d religion in the posterity of Noah.1
    • ✤ As the Epicureans had a Deism without a God, so the Unitarians have a Christianity without a Christ, and a Jesus but no Saviour.2
    • ✤ In place of the idea which runs through the Tanakh and New Testament of a God intimately involved with his creation and providentially repeatedly intervening in it, there was the concept of a God who had certainly created the world and set up its laws in structures understandable by human reason, but who after that allowed it to go its own way, precisely because reason was one of his chief gifts to humanity, and order a gift to his creation. This was the approach to divinity known as deism.3
  • Belief in a god who ceased to intervene with existence after acting as the cause of the cosmos.

Etymology

From French déisme, from Latin deus (“god, deity”) +‎ -ism.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA: /ˈdiːɪz(ə)m/, /ˈdeɪ-/
  • Audio (Received Pronunciation): 🔊
  • Hyphenation: de‧i‧sm

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

  1. 1682, John Dryden, Religio Laici, Or A Layman’s Faith: ↩

  2. 1847, Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth, page 39: ↩

  3. 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 786: ↩

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