Rational Deism® is a website focused on personal improvement and personal development. The key to understanding Rational Deism®, and the premise upon which self-improvement and development occurs, is to draw from a concept expressed by someone considered to be the wisest person in all of history: Socrates. Socrates was known for the famous line: “I only know that I do not know.” In this simple line, we derive a concept that wisdom understands its limitation. In this limitation, we are forced to eliminate that one thing that has caused social division in belief-systems throughout time: righteous presumptuousness. If we can rationally admit that our ability to understand is limited, then we admit that in the same space as this lack of understanding, another person may have understanding.
Faith in religious structures and dogmas makes opinion into fact, and fact is true and absolute, which thereby turns the opinion into a deemed truth which means any variation of that truth is false. Rational Deism® invites everyone and is reconciled to everyone and every belief system, because it does not righteously presume the correctness of any one dogma.
The Core Tenets of Rational Deism®
Rational Deism® invites everyone on the principles below.
The only requirement of membership is to love. No person needs to state any other basis of membership, whether a theist or atheist. Stating, “I am a Roman Catholic, but a Rational Deist” is unnecessary for Rational Deism; whether it is necessary or appropriate in other social contexts is for the Rational Deist.
I. Cognitive Incapacity. Self acknowledgement of the rational incapacity to understand or to otherwise comprehend the nature of divinity.
Socrates stated that he only knew that he did not know. He tested everyone known to be wise, and determined that they were worse than he, because neither he nor they knew anything, but he acknowledged that he did not know while they thought they knew. Similarly, the First Tenet of Rational Deism is simply that we rationally acknowledge that we cannot know the nature of the divine. A person may know an effect without either knowing or understanding the causation for the effect. Therefore, it is rational to acknowledge, and to believe, that the divine exists, without professing to understand its nature, particularly in a manner that is claimed to support comparative judgment.
II. Comparative Beliefs. There is no basis to compare any belief, deity, religion or atheism on anything more than on the principle to love and to good deeds.
Without a rational ability to understand the nature of divinity, there is no rational basis to judge any religion, or to compare any religion, on its academic principles of spiritual belief. Rational Deism is consistent with principles of theism, for those who have a belief in divinity, subject to cognitive incapacity to understand divinity; Rational Deism is consistent with principles of atheism, for those who do not have a belief in divinity, because the only requirement for membership is grounded in the secular nature of loving and the natural process of doing good deeds flowing from love.
Rational Deism is theistic in the sense of a belief in a supreme being, agnostic in that the belief is acknowledged to be irrational and therefore not subject to debate, and reconciled to atheism in that the manifestation of belief is wholly integrated into non-dogmatic secular determinations.
The paradox of the debate between a theist and an atheist is that both result to the irrational. (Neither side can rationally account for the first cause of existence such as existence is empirically known.)
III. Rightful Action. All beliefs that intersect with love and doing good works are consistent with Rational Deism.
Love, in its essential perfect nature, must be rendered voluntarily; to the extent it is forced, it is not love. Where there is love, good deeds naturally follow. However, even without love, by some manner of discipline, good works can nevertheless be performed willfully. Every system of belief, in any culture, to the extent that its fundamental centering principle is to love, is consistent with Rational Deism. Any religion centered on love and spirituality without the necessity to do good works (inaction) is still consistent with Rational Deism, provided that there are not essentially bad works. Good and bad works can be determined by essential secular civil determinations, generally of intention, cause and effect. Whether a church or group accepts Rational Deism is not material; Rational Deism invites everyone who loves. If a person has thoughts of judgment to another on any basis of superiority, it is not material unless it manifests in a manner that is a bad action. Atheists are welcomed within Rational Deism, because the divine cannot be understood; therefore, there is no rational basis to challenge atheism. Disputing an atheist presumes the arrogance of the divine knowledge that Rational Deists will not profess. If an atheist loves as may be manifested by good deeds, an atheist is completely welcomed.