Talk:Philosophical theism

Lipstick on a pig
Philosophical theism sounds a lot like Deism, it would be useful if somebody could point out the differences between these two viewpoints.Alanleonard (talk) 09:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Besides the obvious (class, education, etc.) I doubt seriously there is one. That and how those factors make one less susceptible to religous doctrine. (I titled this thread, it had none before) Lycurgus (talk) 13:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a very significant difference between philosophical theism and deism, according to a brief essay on "Theism" in a standard reference work, "The MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy," (1967),ed. by Paul Edwards, Volume 8, pages 97-98. The article, brief as it is, is too complex to summarize on this talk page. It was written by H.P.Owen, identified as a reader in the philosophy of religion at the Univerity of London.

However here are some relevant quotations: "Theism signifies belief in one God (theos) who is (a)personal; (b) worthy of adoration and (c) separate from the world, but (d) continuously active in it....Theism always involves the belief that God is continuously active in the world. In this it differs from deism. According to deism - a word first applied to a group of eighteenth-century English thinkers - God, having made the world at the beginning of time, left it to continue on its own...." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.109.238.172 (talk) 03:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Right, I didn't mean the difference between "Philosophical Theism" and "Deism" but between the class of those things and "belief in God", the underlying thing. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 18:49, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

In so far as deists and philosophical theists usually contend that a line of reasoning can be cited to support their respective positions, one might distinguish both philosophical theism and deism from fideism, "the epistemological position that faith is independent of reason or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths" (the quote is from the wikipedia item "Fideism).

Obviously fideism has little or no meaning to an atheist or an agnostic. An atheist or agnostic might on the other hand reject the deist's or theist's position as intellectually flawed, but not as meaningless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.11.12 (talk) 18:32, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Both Deism & philosophical theism (PT) hold that God exists (or must exist) independent of the teaching or revelation of any particular religion. Both positions represent belief in God entirely without doctrine. Thus, both reject the need for organized religion on an intellectual level. Both are "freethinkers".
 * The essential element of Deism is its rejection of the need for revelation (i.e., knowledge gained supernaturally) or of faith for belief in God. Reason, and observation of Nature, suffice. This generally translates into the belief that, although God created the world supernaturally, he has not intervened in it supernaturally (i.e., miraculously) since then.
 * The essential element of PT is its rejection of authority, doctrine or revelation as necessary for belief in God. It is freethought tout court. However, it does not necessarily reject belief in God based entirely on faith without resort to pretentions that rational arguments support it (i.e., fideism).
 * Of the two positions, Deism is the narrower category. All Deists — & some PTs — are persuaded of God's existence by philosophical arguments, but no Deist considers himself/herself to have a religious faith that need not be, or could not be, supported by rational argument. Some PTs do hold this belief in fideism. To restate, no Deist is a fideist, but some PTs are fideists. Logically, then, any Deist is also a PT, since all of them reject authority, doctrine and revelation as necessary elements for belief. The reverse is not true: A PT may be a Deist (if he rejects faith, as well as revelation and authority) or not (if he believes in God by faith alone). A Deist is by definition an anti-fideist. Not so the PT.
 * Another key difference between the two: "Deism" & "Deist" generally refer to thinkers of the 17th & 18th centuries. People don't generally run around claiming to be Deists today. Valerius Tygart (talk) 18:49, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Picture captions and peacock terms
A tiny quibble, but "Plato is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy", the current caption to the article's picture of Plato, seems to have a lot of peacock terms. Not really sure what to do about it, though; I happen to agree with the caption and can only think to replace it with "Plato, the famous Classical Greek philosopher", or something similar. 86.160.61.164 (talk) 20:27, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Sources for Kant and Beethoven
I removed Kant and Beethoven because there's plenty of evidence that they were not philosophical theists. Beethoven is considered by many a pantheist, though his religiosity is still debated:


 * Jane Stuart Smith, Betty Carlson (1995). The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence (3 ed.). Crossway. p. 62. ISBN 9780891078692. "Beethoven loved the natural world, but as a pantheist who worships nature rather than the Creator. "Beethoven was not the man to bow to anyone — even God!" said David Ewen."
 * Oscar Thompson (2005). How to Understand Music. Kessinger Publishing. p. 136. ISBN 9781417992027. "To begin with, Beethoven was strongly individualistic and, in a sense, harshly antisocial. He realized the stature of his own genius. In Nature only did he recognize his equal and for that reason he was a pantheist of the most ardent order."
 * T. C. W. Blanning (2008). The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art. Harvard University Press. p. 99. ISBN 9780674031043. "... he did believe in a personal and beneficent god manifested primarily in a pantheist way through nature."

The very citation of his that was available here corroborates his pantheism: "If order and beauty are reflected in the constitution of the universe, then there is a God." - It's typical of pantheists to cite the beauty, order and/or harmony of the universe.

As for Kant, his agnosticism is thoroughly registered in his writings and acknowledged by scholars:


 * Andrew Fiala, J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Critique of Pure Reason – Introduction, page xi. "While this sounds skeptical, Kant is only agnostic about our knowledge of metaphysical objects such as God. And, as noted above, Kant's agnosticism leads to the conclusion that we can neither affirm nor deny claims made by traditional metaphysics."
 * Edward J. Verstraete (2008). Ed Hindson; Ergun Caner, eds. The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity. Harvest House Publishers. p. 82. ISBN 9780736920841. "It is in this sense that modern atheism rests heavily upon the skepticism of David Hume and the agnosticism of Immanuel Kant."
 * Norman L. Geisler; Frank Turek (2004). "Kant's Agnosticism: Should We Be Agnostic About It?". I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Crossway. pp. 59–60. ISBN 9781581345612. "Immanuel Kant's impact has been even more devastating to the Christian worldview than David Hume's. For if Kant's philosophy is right, then there is no way to know anything about the real world, even empirically verifiable things!"
 * Norman L. Geisler, Paul K. Hoffman, ed. (2006). "The Agnosticism of Immanuel Kant". Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe. Baker Books. p. 45. ISBN 9780801067129.
 * Gary D. Badcock (1997). Light of Truth and Fire of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 113. ISBN 9780802842886. "Kant has no interest in prayer or worship, and is in fact agnostic when it comes to such classical theological questions as the doctrine of God or of the Holy Spirit."
 * Frank K. Flinn (2007). Encyclopedia of Catholicism. Infobase Publishing. p. 10. ISBN 9780816075652. "Following Locke, the classic agnostic claims not to accept more propositions than are warranted by empirical evidence. In this sense an agnostic appeals to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who claims in his Critique of Pure Reason that since God, freedom, immortality, and the soul can be both proved and disproved by theoretical reason, we ought to suspend judgement about them."

Clausgroi (talk) 02:20, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Corrections and general improvement
As a curious atheist, I've checked all people listed in the article and I've got to tell you: this is really weak. The article needs urgent treatment to conform to Wikipedian style. For instance: all sources should be properly cited. You can't just copy and paste the URL of the source page. Another suggestion is that you divide people into categories and organise them by alphabetical order. I recommend you check our List of atheists to use it as a model.

Just so we're clear, the removals I made were all according to Wikipedias's rules. The unsourced people because, in Wikipedia, no sources = can't be in the article. The others because they were wrongly listed:
 * Galileo was NOT a philosophical theist because he was a Christian who followed the doctrines of the Church and read the Bible. Even ChristianityToday quotes him as saying "God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word."
 * Pascal also had a religious view of the world in accordance with the Christian Bible, as the source cited says: "As we can see from the passages in italic, which are all direct quotations from the Bible, Pascal's familiarity with Holy Scripture was such that it became both the source and the medium of his personal experience."
 * Newton was famously Christian. He declared "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily". The sources cited in the article refered to him as "close to deism", which is not the subject of this article.
 * Leibniz was a Christian and did everything he could to defend this religion's tenets. Check his article here in Wikipedia.
 * Kepler, Euler, Maxwell and Sandage: also Christians, not philosophical theists.

All that makes me wonder if people who contribute to this article actually know what it is about. This is not a mere list of Christian people or theists in general. In order to be in the article, the person must fulfill the criteria for Philosophical Theism, that is, believe in at least one god, but reject doctrines and dogmas ("independent of the teaching or revelation of any particular religion"). A good example of that is Da Vinci, a sceptic and rationalist who rejected religion and religious ideas, but still believed in a higher force (if we are to consider his poems as evidence for that, not just "poetic licence").

I hope my comments urge you to improve the article and make it worthy of being on Wikipedia. Cheers.Clausgroi (talk) 21:03, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

New comment
ought not Spinoza to be in this list? I would have thought him a natural inclusion. If the consensus is yes, I will adapt some material from the page on him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeeprs (talk • contribs) 06:36, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No, Spinoza was not a theist. He was considered by some an atheist and by some a pantheist, a word he practically invented himself. Read these articles: and . Here on Wikipedia itself you can find a discussion on his religious beliefs: . Hope these help and don't forget to sign your comments. Clausgroi (talk) 20:52, 4 April 2017 (UTC)