Deism sets up a Creator God who established the primordial matter and energy in the Universe and the laws which they are to obey, and then retired and watched, like someone feeding starting data and a program into a computer and letting it run in a grand simulation. (See essay “Simulation” in Section I.)

We do not yet know all the laws; they are certainly not the simple ones that made Laplace say that, if he knew the positions and velocities of all the particles in the Universe, he could predict the future with absolute certainty. The Principle of Uncertainty would not allow this, since we cannot determine the exact position and velocity of even one particle, let alone the zillions in the Universe. Also, the laws now include those describing chaos, not only order. But presumably the Divine Mind knows all the laws and so the future IS set.

We also do not know the total amount of matter and energy that exists in the Universe, as cosmologists still talk about the “dark matter” which they have not yet found. But again, human ignorance about these things is no indication of what God knows, in the Deistic scheme.

The Deistic God is a cold God, not a loving Father or Mother; the God of the philosophers, not the God of Abraham and Jacob. One could even imagine Him experimenting sadistically on His creatures in the grand simulation. God as a mad scientist! A real nightmare.

One quality He surely has, though: He is transcendent, outside and above nature. He is also allpowerful. “The power and the glory, forever and ever.” A picture on my study wall depicts a giant holding in the palm of one hand an embracing human pair, with his other hand held above them, an ambivalent smile or sneer on his huge face. The question is: has he just created the pair and is smiling with pleasure, or is that upper hand coming down to crush them and that is a sneer on his face? Visitors to my study split about 50-50 on the interpretation.

Taoism does not have a personal God, but teaches a profound reverence for Nature’s Way, which flows like water and is beyond our understanding. It is not “classical” but quantum mechanical (see Fritjoff Capra’s “The Tao of Physics”); it is full of paradoxes that our reasoning faculties cannot grasp; it is sometimes smooth like laminar flow and sometimes turbulent like chaos; it is somewhat predictable but not really in the long range; it is mysterious and alive.

Tao (do we, should we, call it God?) did not create the world and is not created in the usual sense, but it is emergent and self-organized in the entire process of Nature. We are still co-creating it, though we are part of it. This God is totally immanent in Nature, not at all above it. Its power is great, but not unlimited. Love and Hate, gentleness and violence, Good and Evil coexist within its nature, for It is greater than both, is all-enfolding. Yet It is an It, not a Thou; not a loving Mother or Father either.

Deism and Taoism (they sound almost alike when pronounced quickly) are not deeply satisfying religions, in my mind. I want something in-between, a Golden Mean, with some emergent qualities added. I want a God who is both transcendent and immanent, both creator and emergent, both Alpha and Omega. Moreover, I crave a Loving Parent, neither a mad scientist nor an impersonal stream of water.

I want…! want…what does it matter what I want or what would satisfy my longings? What is, is, whatever it is, and it conforms to no wishes of such as I.