Deism Down Under

Here is an article that I wrote for the Deist Alliance newsletter. I hope you like it and here is the link if you are interested in the newsletter! http://www.deistalliance.org/newsletters/Deism_Today_v3_s2.pdf

NEW TO DEISM!

I have been actively involved with Deism for the

last couple of months, and although I have a huge amount

to learn and discover, I can say that I have found my

religion. I feel free from all religious dogma and pressure,

and I live by the golden rule. I feel like I have been spiritually

released from the prison I was in, and my mind is

now free to search and think on my own behalf.

The problem for newcomers to Deism is the varying

types of Deism on the Internet. I must admit that I

looked at Deism over a year ago, and I stumbled across

a website that in my opinion "bashed revealed religions".

Now, the people who were "bashing the revealed religions"

are entitled to their opinions and beliefs, and I completely

respect that, but Deism needs to be promoted in a

positive way. In the end I was put off Deism due to the

negativity.

Over a year later I had come to another cross-

road in my journey, and I went back to the Internet, and

this time looked at some different Deism websites. I then

realised that Deism could be and is so much more than

what I first experienced and understood. There are many

new developments and initiatives that are taking place in

the name of growing and bringing Deism to the world.

There is now a Deist Academy where I can study and

learn, and there are forums where I can chat. I am even

an active member of the Fellowship of Natures God which

is building a global community for Deists.

Being new to Deism is awesome, because I am

just like a sponge absorbing information, but I am still

using reason as my basis for deciding which information is

meaningful to me and what information isn't. Deism allows

me to do that! I believe in an afterlife, and Deism

allows me that as well, because that is what makes sense

to me! Deism allows me to be myself and think for myself

without the fear of eternal retribution!

I acknowledge that I could be wrong with my

belief in an afterlife since I don't have any proof, but I am

happy to live with what makes reasonable sense to me in

the here and now, and I will deal with whatever comes

after death when it happens!

The beauty of Deism is that it can be as complex

as you want it to be, or it can be as simple as you want it

to be. You do not have to have a degree or be an intellectual

to understand Deism. Deism is about just being yourself

and being true to yourself with our God given gift of

reason. Deism is now part of my daily life and is constantly

in my thoughts. I look at life with renewed vigour

and I feel on top of the world! Deism has improved me

spiritually, physically and emotionally, and if you can just

be patient and find what works for you, I have no doubt

that Deism can do this for you as well!

This is what it feels like to be new to Deism!

This Network Needs You!

We need active, motivated and well informed members in this network to help get the message about Deism out there...

We need personal testimonys from people of all walks of life who through their own personal reasoning have turned to Deism for real and logical answers.

 This network was started as a meeting place for Deist minded people living in Australia to catch up, share information and support each other in our search for real answers.

First off- I DID NOT WRITE THIS (and I'am not sure who did)- I spotted this while looking for information on Murphy's Law. I found it funny and thought I should share it. God gave us a sense humour too!
Hope you enjoy reading this,
From Amy26

"SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE

      Anyone who has been on the net for more than a few days has had the
chance to run into a few of the people who populate nearly every newsgroup,
devoting their lives to the propagation of their particular theories on the
nature of the cosmos, theories such as "the space program is a hoax,"
"gravity doesn't really exist and the reason that people and their pets
don't fly off into space is because of a powerful electromagnetic reaction
that only I understand," "the earth used to orbit Saturn, resulting in
completely different physical laws that explain all the miracles described
in the Bible," "our DNA is really seven-dimensional and only by engaging in
special breathing exercises in my specially treated hot tub with a
pyramid-shaped cover can we learn to understand out higher
multi-dimensional spiritual nature," and so forth.  [Note: I am not making
any of these up.]

      These sorts of theories generally have three things in common: 1)
their truth is being actively suppressed by a conspiracy of mainstream
scientists, 2) future generations will know the truth and will be amazed at
how we could have been so stupid as to have questioned these obvious
truths, and 3) the authors of these theories have gained considerable
mastery of the use of the CAPS-LOCK key.

      Of course, knowing that in the future we will regard the authors of
these various theories with the same sort of reverent appreciation that we
now reserve only for those who have contributed the most to our science and
culture--Madonna, for example--has made me wonder, "just what will future
universities be saying about physics in years to come?"

      With this in mind, and with the benefit of reading several recent
articles that show a quantum mechanical basis for precognition, I decided
to attempt to channel just such a university physics course of the future.

      "Ohm...ohm...ohm...ohm...."  (Well, what else would you chant?)

#trance(ON) #trancemode(FUTURE | PHYSICS | CAPITAL_LETTERS)

      "Good morning, class, and welcome to the 2826 school year's first
session of 'Alternative Physics 201.'

      "Science, above all else, is based on evidence; it cares nothing for
what you personally like and don't like and, no matter what your personal
preferences are for how the universe ought to work, in the end, the theory
that best explains the evidence wins.  We can do experiments in the
present, but this is necessarilly a limited exercise, since experiments
performed today can only tell us what the laws of physics are like today.
Mainstream scientists tend to ignore this fundamental fact and, thus, are
hopelessly hamstrung by uniformitarian assumptions when trying to explain
events in the past, many of which simply don't fit with our current
physical theories.  Much better, then, would be if we could somehow find
out what the laws of physics really were in the past, and then use those to
explain past events.

      "Of course we can't just travel back in time and perform our
experiments back then--and, unfortunately, records from even a few
centuries ago are sparse and incomplete.  Back in the early twenty-first
century, all existing records were digitized and stored within the
capacious memory banks of the most powerful computer of all time, the
MegaloMainframe.  High-speed data links fed every remote computer in the
world, eliminating the need for local storage devices which soon vanished
from use.  Libraries became unnecessary with everything being instantly
available through the world-wide computer network that the MegaloMainframe
serviced; books became useful only as collectors' items.

      "Unfortunately, one day a careless user accidentally reformatted the
MegaloMainframe's main storage--and the Sysadmin mounted the backups and
entered the wrong command-line option to the backup program, erasing all of
the world's knowlege with a mistaken keystroke.  Few records survived the
ensuing chaos, and most of what we know of civilization before 2050 comes
from facts that the users of the MegaloMainframe thought were so important
that they printed them out and attached them to the walls of their places
of work--so great was the rioting and destruction that only a few sturdy,
fire-resistant office buildings remained and even these were ransacked by
looters who left little but those few bits of information that the people
of that era valued enough that they attached them reverently to the walls
of their work areas.

      "What can we learn from these past records?  Perhaps most exciting is
the knowlege that even the basic forces of nature were completely different
back then.  Gravity, for example, was far weaker than it is now, and on
smaller celestial bodies like the moon, it was so weak that pencils would
simply float away if released.  Yet, at the time, there was another force,
probably electromagnetic in nature, that held the planets together and kept
their inhabitants from flying off; lunar explorers used devices known as
"heavy boots" to hold themselves to the moon without need for gravity.

      "It appears that nuclear forces were also quite different in those
days, allowing the formation of many stable elements that are no longer
possible under our current physical laws.  While we may never know much
about many of these now-impossible elements and their properties, we know
from the surviving documents that one of the most important and widely used
of these was an element they called Administratium; another was a substance
called Thiotimoline, of which we know nothing at all save that, when
resublimated, it developed endochronic properties.

      "There remain many other mysteries that the ancients have left for us
to explain--what was the popular and powerful technique of chemical
analysis that nothing remains of but the name--the Roble Hall Purity Test?
What physical laws were there that allowed them to measure physical beauty
(in units called millihelens) by the action of boats?  Did the interaction
of gravity and the strange electromagnetic forces of their time permit
animals to communicate telepathically, as they are shown doing in the few
fragments we have found of their most prestigious scientific journal, the
"Far Side"?

      "Perhaps the one tidbit that most tantalizes us today is the knowlege
that the ancients understood the seemingly bizarre laws of physics they
lived under so well that the most famous scientist of their age, a man we
know only as "Murphy" was able to codify them all in a single grand unified
theory that bears his name.  Alas, no records of what "Murphy's Law" was
have yet been discovered, so we can only speculate upon whether this
pinnacle of twenty-first century knowlege would still apply to our world
today...."


      Unfortunately, my trance ended abruptly with an eerie, authoritarian
voice demanding that I insert two Trigannic Pu's for another three minutes;
then there was a click, and I was back in my ordinary, twentieth-century
bedroom.

      There you have it; it would seem that what we now think of as
crackpot ideas will be at least as enduring and well-accepted in the future
as our more conventional scientific theories, so the next time someone on
the net tells you that nuclear power is a hoax and the energy is actually
being produced by channelling the vibrational modes of the third of twelve
higher planes of existence, a fact being suppressed by greedy oil companies
who don't want you to discover that you can power your car safely and
without pollution merely by meditating on your five non-material chakras
which are contained in the higher-dimensional component of your DNA, the
existence of which is being suppressed by scientists who want to keep you
from learning your spiritual power, don't be quite so quick to dismiss it
without giving it the serious consideration it deserves."

Just thought I would share  a link to a Deism Archive that lists and links a broad range of information and forums in the one place.
I have found this a great place to start for those new to Deism...
http://deist.info/deist-archives.html

and also another forum that Discusses Deism
http://deismtoday.net/forum/index.php