The greatest source of disagreement is rarely a conclusion. It begins much earlier, at the level of first principles. Disagreements between worldviews are often framed as disagreements over particular claims, yet such a characterization is incomplete. Most claims cannot simply be accepted as axiomatic and therefore require some degree of justification before they may be rationally affirmed. This is especially true within Deism and the broader subjects of philosophy and theology, where one encounters an immense variety of propositions concerning God, morality, knowledge, and reality. As a result, it is often more accurate to understand conflicts between worldviews as disagreements over underlying frameworks rather than over isolated claims themselves. While disputes regarding specific propositions certainly exist, they are rarely sufficient to explain the profound differences that emerge between religions and competing systems of thought. More often, those differences originate at a deeper level, in the assumptions, standards of justification, and first principles from which individual claims are derived.
Any argument starts with a premise and ends with a conclusion. The conclusion is true and justified if the deduction is correct and the premises are sound. We can often evaluate whether an argument is internally consistent or deductively valid by checking for possible contradictions that may arise. A good chunk of philosophical arguments stop here, as they are not internally consistent and obviously cannot be true. However, internal consistency itself is not truth. The far greater source of disagreement is when two or more parties cannot agree on the premises to be used to construct an argument. Consider the following argument:
P1) A Holy Book is the Word of God
P2) The Holy Book says violence is justified on certain occasions
C) God says violence is justified on certain occasions.
Let’s assume everyone accepts premise 2 as factual, but that premise 1 is disputed. For those who accept premise 1, the conclusion will be considered correct. For those who do not accept premise 1, the conclusion will be considered unproven (or unjustified). The argument is internally consistent, in that the premises do not conflict and the conclusion is correctly deduced from the premises. However, the disagreement persists because the parties cannot agree upon the foundation from which the conclusion is derived.
Obviously, every religion treats certain fundamental assumptions as axiomatic. Holy books, or methods of divine revelation, are considered to be axiomatically valid. Religions fundamentally disagree on the very presuppositions that anchor their worldviews. For example, a Muslim wouldn’t consider the Bible or Christian Revelation axiomatic and the reverse is equally true. Discourse in this aspect is impossible because there is no utility in trying to “prove” an axiom. It is supposed to be self-evident.
I suspect once faith comes into play, one only requires the argument to be internally consistent. Any required presuppositions are simply taken on faith. A vast majority of believers operate on this basis, and it is no doubt the reason for a lot of conflict. Any worldview, or philosophical framework is plagued by this issue. However, this limitation does not mean that all philosophical frameworks are entirely arbitrary. It remains possible to operate solely from strictly necessary first principles.
From a Deist perspective, traditional religious axioms fail because they are historically and contextually contingent. The Bible or Quran, for instance, cannot be axiomatic, because they are time-variant and context-variant. There existed a time before them, and it is entirely possible for people to go a lifetime without ever learning about them. The propositions “The Bible doesn’t exist” or “The Quran isn’t the word of God” do not have any immediate contradictions, nor is there any absolute reason to take them as axioms. One can conceive of possible worlds where neither exists.
The only first principles that can be legitimately accepted without proof are transcendentals—defined here as the necessary conditions for cognition, apperception, and intelligible thought. Transcendentals are the prerequisite for intelligible thought at all. If intelligible thought is possible, transcendentals must exist. I find logic and truth to be two such transcendentals. The claim “truth doesn’t exist” creates an instant issue in that the statement can either be true or not, and even if it is true, it invalidates itself. Similarly, the claim “logic doesn’t exist”, requires one to employ logic to make the claim. Therefore, making the claim invalidates the claim itself. Any argument rests upon being derived from these transcendentals inevitably, and more importantly, the case for God does as well. Deistic arguments for God based upon non-transcendental axioms risk being as arbitrary as religious arguments.
Many thanks to Knight5593 for proofreading and editing this article.