Deism

Time is infinite, substantival, and continuous — the Newtonian absolute time that flows equably from an infinite past toward an infinite future, independent of events and observers. Many Deists followed Newton in treating time as the sensorium of God — the medium in which the created order unfolds according to its divinely established laws. Time is linear and uni-directional: there is no cyclical return, no eschatological interruption, no providential steering of history toward a climax. The future is determined by natural law operating on present conditions; God does not intervene to alter the course of events. Freedom is deterministic in the cosmic sense: the laws of nature necessitate outcomes without exception, though many Deists held that human beings possess a rational freedom within this framework — the ability to choose wisely or foolishly within the constraints of natural law.

Space is infinite, substantival, and flat — the Newtonian absolute space that extends uniformly in all directions, providing the fixed, immovable stage on which matter moves according to natural law. Deism adopted the Newtonian cosmos enthusiastically: infinite Euclidean space, governed by universal gravitation, was the perfect expression of a rational Creator’s design. Space is local: all interactions occur through natural forces operating across spatial distances according to precise mathematical laws; there is no action at a distance of a supernatural kind (no omnipresence that intervenes, no miraculous teleportation). The vastness of space was, for Deists like Paine, itself evidence of the Creator’s grandeur — and evidence against the parochialism of revealed religions that imagined the entire cosmos revolving around one small planet’s salvation history.

Matter is finite, substantival, and conserved — created by God at the origin of the universe, endowed with definite properties, and left to operate according to natural law without further divine intervention. Matter is real, self-subsisting, and governed by inviolable physical principles: atoms or corpuscles move through absolute space according to deterministic laws. Conservation is strict: matter is neither created nor destroyed after the initial act of creation; the total material content of the universe is fixed. Matter is local: material objects occupy definite positions in absolute space and interact through natural forces — gravity, contact, chemical affinity — never through supernatural agency. The material world is the primary evidence for the Creator’s existence: its order, regularity, and mathematical intelligibility point to a designing intelligence, just as a watch implies a watchmaker (Paley’s analogy, though Paley himself was not strictly a Deist, crystallized the argument that Deists had been making for a century).

The human observer is a rational, embodied creature endowed by the Creator with the faculty of reason — the only reliable instrument for discovering truth about God, nature, and morality. Each person occupies a single moment and a single place in the natural order and must investigate the world through direct observation and rational reflection, not through scripture, clergy, or mystical experience. Knowledge is immediate: the observer has no access to divine revelation and must rely on the evidence of the senses and the demonstrations of reason. Knowledge retainment is total: many Deists (Paine, Herbert, Voltaire) affirmed the immortality of the soul and a future state of moral accountability; knowledge and moral character persist beyond death. The observer is strictly embodied: Deism has no place for mystical union, divine possession, prophetic vision, or disembodied cognition; the mind works through the body and the senses. Agency is active: the observer must exercise reason vigorously and independently — "my own mind is my own church" — rather than passively receiving tradition, dogma, or purported revelation. Multiple observers share a common rational nature and a common natural world; what reason reveals to one, it reveals to all, making religious truth universal rather than parochial.

Energy is finite and substantival — part of the created order, as real and self-governing as matter and space. God created the total energy of the cosmos at the moment of creation and established the laws by which it operates; thereafter, no new energy enters the system and none is removed. Conservation is strict and inviolable: the laws of nature admit no exceptions, no miracles, no supernatural infusions of power. This is perhaps the single most distinctive Deist commitment — the denial of miracles is equivalent to the affirmation that the energy budget of the universe is permanently closed. Dispersibility is irreversible: energy dissipates according to natural law; there is no divine power that reverses entropy or restores expended energy. The Deist God is not a repairman who tinkers with the machine but an architect whose design needs no correction.

Information is substantival, conserved, and continuous — the laws of nature are eternal, objective truths inscribed in the structure of the universe by its Creator. These laws are the fundamental informational content of reality: they are substantival because they exist independently of any observer’s knowledge of them; they are conserved because they are permanent and inviolable — God does not change the rules after setting the machine in motion. Information is continuous because Deism inherited the Newtonian framework of continuous mathematics: the laws of nature are expressed in differential equations governing continuous quantities. Reason is the faculty by which human beings decode this divine information; revelation is rejected precisely because it claims a private, discontinuous channel of information that bypasses the universal, continuous availability of natural law.