A little while ago I was watching a video on religion on youtube, and I commented that I don't believe in the supernatural historical claims of any mainstream religion, but I am a deist because I find cosmological arguments convincing. Someone replied that deism was a completely useless belief. I was rather annoyed, because I thought he doesn't know anything about my beliefs, but I didn't know how to answer. Sometime later, I was listening to an audio book by Aenga Besceawung (which I would recommend if you're interested in that kind of thing), and I realized that the commenter probably thought deism was not functional because it makes no claims about the divine dictates. But I think that if you really believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient, then that must mean that he made creation exactly the way he wanted it from the very beginning. Therefore, it makes sense to try to understand the world and accept it the way it is.

I've written essays about God before, and it seems hard for most people to understand it. Maybe part of the reason is that I don't have friends and I think about this by myself, so that when I share it with other people, my thoughts are utterly outside their frame of reference. But maybe if I write a more focused essay in response to someone's criticism, it will be better understood.

I suppose the only difference between a materialistic worldview and my deistic worldview is the moral implication. If everything simply exists without known cause, then there is no moral implication. But if everything was made as it was for its own sake (like a giant artwork), then that morally implies that it is good, and that we ought to pay attention to it and appreciate it. So, my "religious" belief does not really accomplish anything other than a moral orientation. It makes no material claims that could not also be discovered in a purely materialistic worldview.

About cosmology: If you define logic as, "Rules of correct inference from assumed premises", and you think about ultimate causes, then you run into the problem of needing new premises in order to prove existing premises. Therefore, there are only 3 choices:

1. There exists a cause without a cause
2. There is an infinite regression of causes with no beginning
3. Causality is circular (maybe like someone going back in a time machine to start the big bang)

Whatever option you choose is outside the scope of ordinary logic. A thing without a premise cannot be acted upon by logic, you never get to the end of an infinite regression, and circular logic is ordinarily not considered valid. Therefore, SOMETHING definitely exists which is outside the scope of human reason.

I choose option 1, although I know I have no way of proving it. It serves the purpose of morally orienting myself towards existence. This is perhaps a hack on my brain. Humans are hardwired to be social, so it's easy for us to attribute personhood to things that aren't really people. It could be perhaps that the first cause isn't even a person as we understand it (I suppose an unconscious creator god is indistinguishable from the universe simply existing according to indifferent laws of nature), but thinking of it as a person immediately makes existence seem purposeful and therefore meaningful. There is no way to introduce meaning into a worldview without some kind of arbitrary moral assertion, because morals cannot be observed in the sensory (this is called the is-ought dilemma).

In physics, you use mathematical models to describe material objects (like F = ma). This gives the impression that matter is somehow subordinate to abstract logic, in that the logic can exist in the abstract without matter, but matter behaves only according to abstract principles. This can lead to the idea that math is somehow closely related go God. God is then, perhaps, an infinity of abstract potential, and he created the material universe in order to instantiate himself in particulars. From this train of thought, you'd predict a very big and very old universe, or possibly multiverses (you can't instantiate infinity with a small quantity of matter).

In this view, everything exists for its own sake, and is good in and of itself.

According to my understanding of science, I exist through an evolutionary process. If things exist for their own sake, then that means it's at least partially my purpose to play a part in the evolutionary game. It is good, therefore, that I am inclined to try to achieve success in life and try to spread my genes. But evolution works by weeding out the unfit, so God doesn't really care whether I succeed or not. Evolution can be thought of as a repeatedly instantiated proof by contradiction (where the unfit die because they are not good instantiations of whatever their species is in that particular environment). If I were lucky enough to become rich and famous and sire many children, that would be pleasing to God. If my life were cut short by cancer, or I were killed by a natural disaster, or by violence, or by my own folly, then apparently, those other phenomena would also be interesting and meaningful to God. This train of thought leads to the idea that it is noble and good for me to struggle in life, but that the outcome of my struggle ultimately doesn't matter. Everything is just a part of the great artwork.

There are many other phenomena than just evolutionary phenomena. When a scientist studies the storms on Neptune, or the gravity in a black hole, or the fission in a star, those things exist, and so must seem good and beautiful to God. When we study math and science and see beauty in it, perhaps we are beginning to see existence in some small way similar to how God sees it. But since I don't believe there was ever a covenant made with God, and we have no ability to affect these things, perhaps it is somewhat vain for humans to spend too much time thinking on obscure abstractions and distant planets.

This philosophy is perhaps bleak because there is no covenant with the divine, and therefore there is no promise of personal fulfilment. But this religious belief also necessarily implies that there is a whole universe (or possibly multiverses) of beauty and goodness completely outside the scope of my own personal desires.