By Lewis Loflin
Deism, at its core, is reason’s answer to superstition—a belief in a rational Creator revealed through nature’s laws, not dogma or revelation. It’s what I’ve championed in my writings: a faith grounded in observation, not priestly control. But the French Encyclopedists, led by Denis Diderot (d. 1784), twisted this vision. Their Encyclopédie stripped Deism of its natural religion, leaving only a skeptical tool to dissect faith’s history.
Diderot faced state censorship, forcing a compromise. He roped in conservative contributors to balance reason and revelation, but his real aim shone through. Using cross-references and a nod to Pierre Bayle’s skepticism, he subtly pushed a critique of religion’s foundations. This wasn’t Deism’s defense—it was its dilution, turning a rational faith into a weapon against all belief.
Paul-Henri Thiry Holbach (d. 1789) took it further. His circle, including Helvétius with De l’esprit (1758), embraced raw materialism—psychology and ethics reduced to physical urges, echoing Hobbes and Hume. Holbach’s Système de la nature (1770), published under Mirabaud’s name, blamed religion on fear, ignorance, and power grabs. It cast creeds as manipulative myths, severing Deism’s link to a purposeful universe. For them, reason didn’t point to a Creator—it dismantled all faith.
This wasn’t Deism’s rational God—it was atheism in disguise, rejecting the natural order I see as proof of design.
Holbach’s crew birthed the ideological school—thinkers like Condorcet and Laplace who saw philosophy as mere analysis of sensations, not a quest for a guiding intelligence. This morphed into Comte’s positivism, a sterile focus on facts over meaning. Deism, once a bridge between reason and purpose, was gutted, leaving us with materialism’s cold shell. Ref. IEP
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Grok, an AI by xAI, for formatting assistance. The perspective and edits are mine. —Lewis Loflin
Section updated, added 4/05/2025