All of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahai and Mormon) are claimed to be divinely revealed. They are claimed to have been revealed by God to certain prophets and founders of the various "revealed" religions.
Belief in a "revealed" religion opens people up to harm. A case in point, which shows the very real danger of believing in alleged divine revelations, is seen in the Christian sect and megachurch based in Mexico, La Luz del Mundo. Its leader, Naasà ³n Joaquà n Garcà a, had followers believing he receives divine revelations. This gave him great power over the faithful, for they believed if they did not believe him, they were disbelieving God. And they believed if they did not obey Garcia, they were disobeying God.
Garcia used this "revelation"-based control over the people of faith who belonged to La Luz del Mundo to not only financially profit, but to sexually rape children. Garcia has been criminally sentenced to 17 years in prison by a California court for committing sex crimes against children. Five of his rape victims have filed a civil case against him. They explained they believed Garcà a's "wishes and desires were direct orders from God, that he was without sin and incapable of committing any wrongs." People can only believe irrational claims like this if they replace their gift of innate reason from The Supreme Intelligence/God, with what the clergy call faith, but what the Deist Thomas Jefferson called gullibility.
This irrational and dangerous mindset, that clergy are somehow in direct communication with God, played/plays a key role in the thousands of cases of Roman Catholic priests who raped/rape children. One of their victims, Phil Saviano, pointed out how he and his family viewed Catholic priests as having special knowledge about God and a special relationship with God. When a priest first started to sexually molest him when he was 11 years old, he said he was thinking, "How do you say 'no' to God?" This was brought out in the important and informative 2015 film, Spotlight.
Deism, belief in The Supreme Intelligence/God based on reason and Nature, is an antidote to all of the various "revealed" religions.
A key quality of Deism is that it is not a "revealed" religion. Unlike the various "revealed" religions, Deism makes no claim to being based on a revelation from The Supreme Intelligence/God to any Deist at any time. Some people see Deism as a natural religion, and some people see Deism as a spiritual philosophy, but no one can rationally claim Deism is a "revealed" religion; that is, revealed in that God communicated something verbally to any Deist. This is why Deism is free of "holy" books, dogmas, rituals and clergy.
The only divine revelation in Deism is the intelligence-based universe we are all living parts of. Deism embraces this statement made by Albert Einstein, "... the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
In The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine did a wonderful job of explaining why the claims made by the "revealed" religions to having received divine revelations are meaningless. Paine wrote,
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if He pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.
By openly and unapologetically rejecting false claims made by the "revealed" religions, that they are based upon divine revelations, Deism is protecting people from very real, and often irreversible, harm.
Deism empowers people to break free, and to remain free, of the ungodly and harmful influence of the "revealed" religions by, not only its strong rejection of false claims to divine revelation, but by recognizing the wonderful and amazing fact that "faith" is not at all required for realization that The Supreme Intelligence/God exists. The Enlightenment Deist, Voltaire, pointed this out when he wrote,
What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.
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