For those of us who believe that it is important to eliminate contradictions between what we believe and how we act
concerning our religion and theology, this website and Religious Deism theology in general should resonate like no other.
If read with an open, searching mind, the message of Religious Deism and its search for “contradictionlessness”
can and should become as self-evident as the importance and truth of parenthood when parents see their child for the first time
in the maternity ward.
Again, while many people make commitments to clarity and against ambiguity in their daily lives, for some reason
they generally allow themselves to live with contradiction and ambiguity in more important and bigger picture areas of
religion and theology. This tolerance for ambiguity and acceptance of contradictions is prevalent in Christian beliefs
and theology. Some of the more basic and obvious examples are found in what Christians believe about the Bible, Jesus,
Mary and their salvation theology.
According to the website Church & Culture, there are five types of Christians: Active (19%), Professing (20%), Liturgical
(16%), Private (24%) and Cultural (21%). This website also establishes that more than 60% of Christians (specifically those
in the last three groups mentioned above) believe that salvation is not or should not be linked to a belief in the divinity
of Jesus, something that goes against the theology of Christianity religions. They also mention that less than 25% of
Christians read the Bible regularly, the book that Christians insist is the actual word of God and the road map to their salvation.
It seems that Catholics are even more prone to these types of contradictions with traditional Christian principles.
According to an October 25, 2011 USA Today article entitled “Survey: Religious identity slips among U.S. Catholics”, only
75% of Catholics believe in the resurrection/divinity of Jesus and less than 2/3 believe that Mary was the virgin
Mother of God. According to this article less than half of Catholics pray regularly and only a little over a third
pray the rosary.
In fact, there are several members of the Religious Deist community who were raised Catholic who have mentioned a
common theological crisis that they were forced to address that led them to Religious Deism. In college
or later as they evolved professionally and parentally, they began to see the contradictions in their revealed Christian
theology. Despite identifying fully as Catholics socially, culturally and in many respects morally, they felt that they
had to address and correct these theological contradictions. And, as their children began to come of age, they felt the
weight of these salvation theology contradictions and it became more and more difficult to emphasize the importance and
viability of their professed religion with its apparent theological contradictions to their children. For their own
peace of mind and to adequately clarify their salvation theology for themselves and for their maturing children, they
felt the need to honestly analyze these issues to determine if they were mistaken about these nagging reason-based doubts
and thus reconfirm and solidify their commitment to Christianity. However, they all confirmed that from this search, they
found what they felt was the truth, or at least something closer to the truth in Religious Deism and its reason-based
theology, something without the biblical theological contradictions they had come to accept as Christians.
How and why have we tolerated religious, theological and spiritual ambiguity and contradiction for so long in our lives? If
Christians and Deists have ambiguity - or worse contradictions - in their salvation theology, it is like trying to get to a town
with not only the wrong map but also with the wrong town name. How can believing these things and passing them on to our children
NOT be something that should be completely unacceptable? Doesn`t pushing towards a state of contradictionlessness in these
critical areas have to be a priority in our lives for our sake and the sake of our children and their children? Otherwise, aren't
we encouraging our descendants to perpetuate this same ignorance and to believe theological half-truths or even falsehoods, thus
leading them away from God? Very simply, Religious Deism, like no other theology today, addresses these ambiguities and contradictions
and corrects or eliminates them by being one of the few if not the only truly reasoned religious theology.
