Definition
Deism is the belief in a creator who designed and started the universe but does not subsequently intervene in it. The deist God establishes the laws of nature and then, in effect, lets them run. There are no miracles, no revealed scriptures, and no answered prayers — only a cosmos that proceeds by its own regular order.
Deism flourished during the Enlightenment, when many thinkers wanted to retain a rational ground for the universe's existence while rejecting the supernatural machinery of organized religion. It occupies a middle position between theism, which affirms an active God, and atheism, which affirms none.
Why it matters
How it works
The deist typically reasons from the existence and orderliness of the universe to a designing intelligence behind it — a version of the argument from design applied to cosmic origins rather than to living things. Having posited that creator, the deist then declines to attribute to it any further activity, scripture, or moral demand.
Dawkins notes that deism asserts much less than theism: it does not require belief in miracles or holy books. He still considers the central claim unsupported, while granting that a non-intervening creator is at least a tidier hypothesis than an interventionist one.