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Originally Posted by pseudonous 
I think your missing my point. I agree a deist believes there is a priori proof that a god exists and that god is rational. What I was trying to say is after having reached these conclusions the deist views the study of the world around them differently than an agnostic. For instance, if a deist believed the universe was god then to a deist the study of the universe is the study of god. This is not the case for an agnostic. It is in this sense I called it a religious pursuit for a deist. I understand you don't want to use words that will confuse you with a more popular version of theist but I don't know what other words to use in order to point out this distinction other than secular and religious. My main point is that after reaching an a priori conclusion of a rational god, deists are free to make a posteriori arguments about the nature of god. This is a big difference between an agnostic and a deist.
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I think language is a barrier and I did miss your point. Let’s see if I understand. A deist begins with a religious/spiritual perspective of the cosmos and then can pursue “truth” in a secular manner with the aim of their original perspective.
An agnostic begins their view of the cosmos as secular and continues on that path
A deist pursuit can be shown as: religious/spiritual/a priori knowledge ==> secular and rational reasoning ==> religious/spiritual/rational conclusions
An agnostic pursuit can be shown as: no a priori knowledge ==> secular and rational reasoning ==> unknown/rational conclusions
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I only meant in a broad sense. I just want to point out that you say a deist concerns itself with the understanding of spirituality. Perhaps you could just use the word spiritual instead of religious in the point I made above.
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Perhaps this is where I abandon my deism or need a better understanding of spirituality. I do not have spirituality in deities or supernaturalism. Here is a link to a recent thread on spirituality:
http://www.agnosticforums.com/genera...periences.html Quote:
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Again out of my ignorance and generalization, agnostics seem to "wait" for answers while other's purse them. Please correct me if I am wrong.
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I am wrong. I think agnosticism is difficult to grasp and I do not yet fully grasp it's philosophical/belief structure.
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The way I view it, if god is the universe then I can eliminate the word god from my vocabulary as redundant.
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Then I could argue that you are not an agnostic, but rather a pantheist. If you think that god is the universe and also transcends it, then you would be a panentheist.
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This is not something I think a deist would want to do. For a deist the existence of god is tightly wrapped up with their need for an objective meaning to life (their ontology).
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If this is true, then I have to rethink my deism, but I think you are wrong. I still have to study the evolution of deism in the past 250 years, but originally our founding fathers were deist and believe that god made the universe and then abandoned it. By abandoning the universe gives power to the individual; a power to create their own objective meaning of life that is not tightly woven around ‘god’.
Perhaps this is another language barrier.
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There are many very interesting questions in life, questions which by some may be called spiritual. To an agnostic they are simply very interesting questions. This is, again, why I would say that the study of the universe or world is a religious or spiritual pursuit to the deist but a secular pursuit to an agnostic.
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Again disagree. I think the study of the world/cosmos is secular pursuit to both deist and agnostics. Perhaps, I am making a generalization, but deists demarcate ‘god’ and religion. That is why I believe that both deist and agnostic have a secular pursuit in the understanding of the nature of the cosmos. Perhaps, the beginning and ending of the journey is different for both.
As I tried to state before:
A deist pursuit can be shown as: religious/spiritual/a priori knowledge ==> secular and rational reasoning ==> religious/spiritual/rational conclusions
An agnostic pursuit can be shown as: no a priori knowledge ==> secular and rational reasoning ==> unknown/rational conclusions