Deism is the view that there is a God, but he remains “at a distance” and doesn’t intervene at all in the natural workings of the universe. For the Deist, the universe was created by God, but it now operates entirely according to natural principles, such as the laws of physics, and there are no supernatural events such as miracles or divine revelation (e.g., God communicating with us through prophecies or visions). Deists sometimes use this analogy: God is like a watchmaker who designs and constructs a watch, but after winding it up, he lets it run on its own, with no further supervision or intervention.
Self-described Deists often consider themselves religious—they believe in a Creator God, after all—but they tend not to associate closely with any of the major world religions, simply because belief in supernatural intervention and divine revelation is central to those religions. On the other hand, it’s fair to say that many people in the West who identify themselves as Christians or Jews have worldviews closer to Deism. Deists typically believe that there are objective moral laws, but they say that these laws are derived from nature or human experience rather than divine revelation (such as the Bible).
Some Deists have held that God isn’t a personal being. (If you agree with them, go back and review your answer to the Personality Question, here!) However, if the Creator of the universe isn’t personal, that raises some difficult questions (for more on this point, go here). Deists who believe that God is a personal being are in a stronger position, but even so, they face a very perplexing scenario: Why would a personal Supreme Being create intelligent personal beings with the capacity for verbal communication and then never speak to them? Not even a quick “Hello”?
Here’s an analogy to drive the point home. Imagine that a brilliant and benevolent scientist creates an intelligent, humanlike robot that has the capacity for meaningful conversation with him (think Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation or Sonny from the movie I, Robot). This scientist, however, never actually converses with his creation. Wouldn’t that be very odd and surprising? Why would a scientist create a robot with that capacity but never give the robot an opportunity to exercise that capacity? In the same way, it would be very odd and surprising for God to create us with the capacity for verbal communication but never say a single word to us!
This oddity of Deism is compounded by the problem of evil. Clearly we’ve made a mess of the world God created. We’ve dug holes for ourselves that we struggle to escape. There is a great deal of suffering in the world, much of it caused by us and much of it beyond our control. If God is truly all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, as Deists believe, wouldn’t we expect him to step in and sort things out? Wouldn’t we expect God at least to offer a helping hand or a few words of advice?
Deism was very popular among the intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but over time it gave way to full-blown Atheism, and it’s not too difficult to see why. Deism is arguably just a halfway house on the road from Theism to Atheism. For all practical purposes, a deity who is distant and silent might as well not exist at all.
(from James Anderson's "What is Your Worldview?")