Note on religion: 21st-century Deism

I've decided: I'm Jewish, but I'm mostly a Deist. Except not precisely.

For those of you who don't know or can't quite remember, Deism was the faith of choice for a lot of the great Enlightenment thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson. Its basic principle was that G-d created the universe, and then stepped back and let it run, like a huge clock. This was also soon after Newton and Kepler and other awesome people discovered that the universe runs on scientific and mathematical principles, and decided that the whole of the universe could be understood through science--including G-d.

Now it's the 21st century, and we know the universe is not as clear-cut as clockwork--we have relativity, quantum mechanics, and grand particle-smashing attempts to reconcile them. But Deism still works, albeit in a slightly different paradigm. I started with the idea that G-d could still be present, and act when needed--like winding the clock, or adjusting for the krutzed-up process that is Daylight Savings Time. (Maybe I'll rant about Daylight Savings time the next time I have to deal with it.) And this is what I ended up with.

Imagine the universe as a computer, instead of a clock. G-d made it, or at least took it out of the box, put it together, booted it up, and wrote some programs. Now he stands back and lets it run. Occasionally he gives the world input, and gets results back. Sometimes quantum fluctuations affect the data. And once in a while, enough of the little particles of energy that are people in this universe get together that they can send out a little alert to the User, telling him to check on us.

In spite of all these differences, there is one big thing that connects 21st-century Deism to 18th-century Deism: central to both is the belief that the universe has internal logic, a logic that we humans may someday understand, if we keep working at it.