(quote) "Is a diest someone who is in favour of dying?" Ahhh, the winding roads taken from as a result of a misplaced "i" starting with libby's "diest" and continuing with my one "i" too many in "dieist". The proper derivation ,which an aetheist-libber may be forgiven for not knowing ( a "Know nothing " party affiliation , p'raps ;-) yet should then refrain from attempts at scholastic pretensions , is the clasical word "deity" from the latin "Deus" chosen to mean God when used in this reference. Latin being the chosen language of learning in post-Roman Empire collasped Europe survived as the chosen language of the humanities and then science in no small part thanks to those Irish monks that preserved the manuscripts of antiquity while the rest of Europe was slaughtering each other in the vain dream of one warlord unifying a 2nd pan-European empire under one regime again. Scientific inquiry into the behavioral laws of Nature merged with the mathematics of serfaring navigation and "predictive" engineering principles. The Renaissance became the open door to the race for the global corporation ( the Dutch East Indian Company won ) and, thus ,the race for arms to protect harvested wealth and then the better to wrest wealth from others. Throw in the Reformation and it wasn't long before the arrogance of revolutionary Science gave rise to this intellectual cult of power to rule without answering to God which then bred the fashion of science not needing any knowledge of a god to there being no god at all but "science". Without the source for a moral compass , the quaint 'ethic" of live and let live proved it could not stand against the "survival of the fittest" justification for the "will to power". Without the acknowledgement of a higher power then the "will to power" becomes the free-for-all " win ay any cost maelstrom that the shameful 20th century worold wars and the rise of godless cults of Neopolianism, Fascism,Stalinism ,& Maoism that swept away 10's of millions of lives each by their own fiat. So ,yes ,the "Age of Enlightenment" context of the term "deist" doth resonnate still as we enter a new century where wingnuttery like a cult of Raelians demanding that it is their religious right to follow their "higher alien's'" mandate to speed up the advance human cloning without ny restraints of others' ethics save their own as directed by Rael , whom is the self-embued messenger of his "aliens" , and his folllowers. Beam me up .Scotty ;-)
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