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I don't think I would conflate things like Deism with spiritualism. You can apathetically believe there is a God of sorts and not be in the least spiritual.
by slothtrop 5y ago
I don't think I would conflate things like Deism with spiritualism. You can apathetically believe there is a God of sorts and not be in the least spiritual.
- tootie 5y agoI don't mean that they're equivalent, I mean that they're ways to avoid labelling yourself as an atheist when you're irreligious. They're like diet atheism. Something you can say to not feel completely alienated from religious culture.
- slothtrop 5y agoI've often said that being "agnostic" isn't a position on whether or not one believes in God. You can be agnostic theist, or agnostic atheist. But I no longer think that's accurate. One reason people opt for it, which I find understandable, is owing to the popular connotations that atheism carries, not unlike theism. You can avoid having to explain "I'm not saying I know that God doesn't exist". But the qualifier is explicit. One needn't necessarily be certain whether they believe in a God or not and I don't think that's well represented by the term "atheist". By the same token I don't think Deism is anywhere near atheism-lite. It is explicit belief in a God with the caveat that it's irreligious. I like the term "apatheism" because it also captures the way I feel about the question of whether God exists.