Editing List of deists (section)

==Born 1800–1900==

* [[Victor Hugo]] (1802–1885), French writer, artist, activist and statesman<ref name="adherents1">{{cite web|url=http://www.adherents.com/largecom/fam_deist.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051222165406/http://www.adherents.com/largecom/fam_deist.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=22 December 2005 |title=Famous Deists |publisher=Adherents.com |access-date=4 July 2010}}</ref>
* [[William Lloyd Garrison]] (1805–1879), American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper ''The Liberator'', and was one of the founders of the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]], he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United States.<ref>{{cite book|title=Academic Dictionary of Philosophy |year=2005 |publisher= Gyan Books |isbn=9788182052246|first=Ramesh |last=Chopra |page=143 |quote=What Garrison did in the anti-slavery campaign is well known. The clergy to it that Americans do not know equally well that he rejected Christianity and was at the most a deist.}}</ref>
* [[Lysander Spooner]] (1808–1887), American anarchist, philosopher and abolitionist<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lysanderspooner.org/deists/deistsreplymain.html |title=Deistsreplymain |publisher=Lysanderspooner.org |access-date=4 July 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090815030635/http://www.lysanderspooner.org/deists/deistsreplymain.html |archive-date=15 August 2009 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* [[Henrik Wergeland]] (1808–1845), [[Norway|Norwegian]] poet and theologist (by self-definition).
* [[Religious views of Abraham Lincoln|Abraham Lincoln]] (1809–1865), sixteenth president of the United States. He never joined any church and has been described as a "Christian deist". As a young man, he was religiously skeptical and sometimes ridiculed revivalists. During his early years, Lincoln enjoyed reading the works of deists such as [[Thomas Paine]] and [[Voltaire]]. He drafted a pamphlet incorporating such ideas but did not publish it. After charges of hostility to Christianity almost cost him a congressional bid, he kept his unorthodox beliefs private. [[James Adams (Mormon)|James Adams]] labelled Lincoln as a deist. In 1834, Lincoln reportedly wrote a manuscript essay challenging Christianity modelled on Paine's book ''[[The Age of Reason]]'', which a friend supposedly burned to protect him from ridicule. He seemed to believe in an all-powerful God, who shaped events and, by 1865, was expressing those beliefs in major speeches.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}
* [[Jules Verne]] (1828–1905), French author who pioneered the science fiction genre in Europe. He is best known for his novels ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas]]'', ''[[Journey to the Center of the Earth]]'', and ''[[Around the World in Eighty Days]]''.<ref>{{cite book|title=Jules Verne, Inventor of Science Fiction|url=https://archive.org/details/julesverneinvent00cost|url-access=registration|year=1978|publisher=Scribner|isbn=9780684158242|page=[https://archive.org/details/julesverneinvent00cost/page/34 34]|first=Peter|last=Costello|quote=Verne was to spend his life trying to escape from both, moving as he grew older towards anarchy and a more generalised deism.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Sphinx of the Ice Realm: The First Complete English Translation; with the Full Text of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe|year=2012|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=9781438442112|first1=Jules |last1=Verne |author2=Edgar Allan Poe |author3=Frederick Paul Walter |author4=Paul Walter Frederick |editor=Frederick Paul Walter|page=406|chapter=Jules Verne, Ghostbuster|quote=And despite what some have said, Verne isn't much different. His early biographers laid stress on his Roman Catholicism—his grandson (Jules-Verne, 63) called him "deistic to the core, thanks to his upbringing"—yet his novels rarely have any spiritual content other than a few token appeals to the almighty.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Kip Brothers|year=2007|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|isbn=9780819567048|page=412|editor=Arthur B. Evans|quote=But Verne's oeuvre cannot be characterized as Christian – there is never a mention of Christ, and most of his Voyages extraordinaires seem to be built around a rather deist philosophy of "Aide-toi et le Ciel t'aidera" (God helps those who help themselves). As Jean Chesneaux once remarked: "Despite fairly frequent references to Providence, to the Supreme Being, he [Verne] is fundamentally a rationalist... (The Political and Social Ideas of Jules Verne [London: Thames and Hudson, 1972],82).}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957–1975|year=2012|publisher=JHU Press|isbn=9781421408347|first=Kendrick|last=Oliver|quote=Verne himself is best characterized as a kind of Catholic deist, deeply intrigued by the idea of God but unconvinced that he was at work in the world; and Verne was largely uninterested in the figure of Christ.}}</ref>
* [[Dmitri Mendeleev]] (1834–1907), Russian chemist and inventor. He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the [[periodic table]] of elements.<ref>{{cite book|title=A Well-ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table|year=2004|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=9780465027750|first=Michael D.|last=Gordin|page=[https://archive.org/details/wellorderedthing00gord/page/230 230]|quote=Mendeleev's son Ivan later vehemently denied claims that his father was devoutly Orthodox: "I have also heard the view of my father's 'church religiosity' — and I must reject this categorically. From his earliest years Father practically split from the church – and if he tolerated certain simple everyday rites, then only as an innocent national tradition, similar to Easter cakes, which he didn't consider worth fighting against." ...Mendeleev's opposition to traditional Orthodoxy was not due to either atheism or a scientific materialism. Rather, he held to a form of romanticized deism.|url=https://archive.org/details/wellorderedthing00gord/page/230}}</ref>
* [[Simon Newcomb]] (1835–1909), Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician.<ref>{{cite web|title=Economics, Christianity, and Creative Evolution: Peirce, Newcomb, and Ely and the Issues Surrounding the Creation of the American Economic Association in the 1880s |url= http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/wible/createvol.pdf |access-date=5 June 2012 |first=James R.|last=Wible|page=43|date=April 2009|quote=While rejecting all of the organized religions of human history, Newcomb does recognize that religious ideas are basic to the human mind.  He articulates his point: "But there is a second truth admitted with nearly equal unanimity .... It is that man has religious instincts – is, in short, a religious animal, and must have some kind of worship." 51 What Newcomb wants is a new religion compatible with the best science and philosophy of his time.  He begins to outline this new religion with doctrines that it must not have: 1.  It cannot have a God living and personal.... 2.  It cannot insist on a personal immortality of the soul.... 3.  There must be no terrors drawn from a day of judgment.... 4.  There can be no ghostly sanctions or motives derived from a supernatural power, or a world to come.... 5.  Everything beyond what can be seen must be represented as unknown and unknowable.... (Newcomb 1878, p. 51).}}</ref>
* [[Mark Twain]] (1835–1910), American author and humorist<ref name="adherents1"/>
* [[Alfred M. Mayer]] (1836–1897), American physicist.<ref>{{cite book|title=American Physics in Transition: A History of Conceptual Change in the Late Nineteenth Century|year=1983|publisher=Springer|isbn=9780938228066|first=Albert E.|last=Moyer|page=[https://archive.org/details/americanphysicsi00moye/page/40 40]|quote=This deistic leaning persisted in Mayer's thought.|url=https://archive.org/details/americanphysicsi00moye/page/40}}</ref>
* [[Charles Sanders Peirce]] (1839–1914), American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist, sometimes known as "the father of [[pragmatism]]". He was educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years. Today he is appreciated largely for his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, scientific methodology, and [[semiotics]], and for his founding of pragmatism.<ref>{{cite book|title=Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life|year=1998|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=9780253211613|first=Joseph|last=Brent|edition=2|page=18|quote=Peirce had strong, though unorthodox, religious convictions. Although he was a communicant in the Episcopal church for most of his life, he expressed contempt for the theologies, metaphysics, and practices of established religions.}}</ref>
* [[Ludwig Boltzmann]] (1844–1906), Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of [[statistical mechanics]] and [[statistical thermodynamics]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Ludwig Boltzmann: His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906. The philosopher|url=https://archive.org/details/ludwigboltzmannh00blac|url-access=limited|year=1995|publisher=Springer|isbn=9780792334644|first1=Ludwig |last1=Boltzmann |first2=John T. |last2=Blackmore |page=[https://archive.org/details/ludwigboltzmannh00blac/page/n16 3]|quote=Boltzmann's tendency to think that the methods of theoretical physics could be applied to all fields with profit both within and outside of science apparently made it difficult for him to sympathize with most religion. His own religious position as given above seems to emphasize hope rather than belief, as if he hoped that good luck would come to him without specifying whether this would be caused by Divine Intervention, Divine Providence, or by natural or historical forces not yet understood by science or whose occurrence or timing one could not yet predict. But in the same letter to Brentano he maintains: "I pray to my God just as ardently as a priest does to his."}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Ludwig Boltzmann: His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906. The philosopher|url=https://archive.org/details/ludwigboltzmannh00blac|url-access=limited|year=1995|publisher=Springer|isbn=9780792334644|first1=Ludwig |last1=Boltzmann |first2=John T. |last2=Blackmore |page=[https://archive.org/details/ludwigboltzmannh00blac/page/n17 4]|quote=Boltzmann in optimistic moods liked to think of himself as an idealist in the sense of having high ideals and a materialist in all three major senses enjoying the material world, opposing spiritualist philosophy, and reducing reality to matter... Boltzmann may not have been an ontological materialist, at least not in a classical sense and not in his methodology of science but rather closer to the phenomenalistic positions normally associated with David Hume and Ernst Mach.}}</ref>
* [[Thomas Alva Edison]] (1847–1931), American inventor and businessman.<ref>In a correspondence on the matter Edison said: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made." New York Times. 2 October 1910, Sunday.</ref>
* [[Max Planck]] (1858–1947), German physicist, regarded as the founder of quantum theory.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science|year=1986|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=9780674004399|first=J. L. |last=Heilbron |page=198|quote=On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism. It seemed useful therefore to paint the lily, to improve the lesson of Planck's life for the use of proselytizers and to associate the deanthropomorphizer of science with a belief in a traditional Godhead.}}</ref>
* [[José Rizal]] (1861–1896), a [[Filipino people|Filipino]] patriot, philosopher, medical doctor, poet, journalist, novelist, political scientist, painter and [[polyglot]]. Considered to be one of the Philippines' most important heroes and martyrs whose writings and execution contributed to the igniting of the [[Philippine Revolution]]. He is also considered as Asia's first modern non-violent proponent of freedom.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://relijournal.com/religion/dr-jose-rizal-the-foremost-filipino-deist/|title=Dr. Jose Rizal: The Foremost Filipino Deist |publisher=relijournal.com |date=23 September 2006 |access-date=9 November 2012}}</ref>
* [[Ernest Rutherford]] (1871–1937), New Zealand [[chemist]] and "father" of [[nuclear physics]], who was awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Chemistry]] in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".<ref>{{cite book |title= Letter to an Atheist|year=2007|publisher=Harpeth River Press |isbn=9780979497407 |first= Michael Patrick |last=Leahy|page=55}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Ernest Rutherford|url=https://archive.org/details/ernestrutherford00heil_725|url-access=limited|year=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195123784|page=[https://archive.org/details/ernestrutherford00heil_725/page/n13 13]|first=J. L. |last=Heilbron|chapter=1: Cambridge and Ray Physics|quote=He emerged a clever teenager, cheerful and strong, with a good earthy sense of humor, no airs, a wide set of manual skills, no obvious genius, an indifference to religion, and, despite having many sisters, a remarkable shyness with girls.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain|year=2012|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=9780226068596|first=Peter J.|last=Bowler|page=61|quote=Ernest Rutherford seems to have abandoned his Presbyterian up-bringing completely, apart from its moral code. A colleague wrote of him: "I knew Rutherford rather well and under varied conditions from 1903 onwards, but never heard religion discussed; nor have I found in his papers one line of writing connected with it." ...Given the reports quoted above, it is difficult to believe that either Rutherford or Ford was deeply religious in private.}}</ref>
* [[Max Born]] (1882–1970), German-British physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of [[quantum mechanics]]. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s. Born won the 1954 [[Nobel Prize in Physics]] (shared with [[Walther Bothe]]).<ref>{{cite book |title= [[The End of the Certain World|The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born : the Nobel Physicist who Ignited the Quantum Revolution]]|year=2005|publisher=Basic Books |isbn=9780738206936 |pages=58–62 |first=Nancy Thorndike |last=Greenspan|quote=Max later traced his reluctance to his father, who had taught him not to believe in a God who punished, rewarded, or performed miracles. Like his father, he based his morality on his "own conscience and on an understanding of human life within a framework of natural law." Born, in fact, was no longer Jewish. His mother-in-law had worn him down. In March 1914, after a few religion lessons in Berlin, he was baptized a Lutheran by the pastor who had married him to Hedi. As he later explained, "there were...forces pulling in the opposite direction [to my own feelings]. The strongest of these was the necessity of defending my position again and again, and the feeling of futility produced by these discussions [with Hedi and her mother]. In the end I made up my mind that a rational being as I wished to be, ought to regard religious professions and churches as a matter of no importance.... It has not changed me, yet I never regretted it. I did not want to live in a Jewish world, and one cannot live in a Christian world as an outsider. However, I made up my mind never to conceal my Jewish origin."}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Max Born|url=http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b2born-max.htm#end7|publisher=HyperHistory.net|access-date=19 June 2012|first=Rit|last=Nosotro|year=2003|quote=In 1912 Max married a descendent of Martin Luther named Hedi. They were married by a Lutheran pastor who two years later would baptize Max into the Christian faith. Far from being a messianic Jew who fell in love with Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus), Max was merely one of the millions of Jews who no considered assimilation of more importance than their Jewish faith. As Max explained,  "there were...forces pulling in the opposite direction [to my own feelings]. The strongest of these was the necessity of defending my position again and again, and the feeling of futility produced by these discussions [with Hedi and her mother]. In the end I made up my mind that a rational being as I wished to be, ought to regard religious professions and churches as a matter of no importance.... It has not changed me, yet I never regretted it. I did not want to live in a Jewish world, and one cannot live in a Christian world as an outsider. However, I made up my mind never to conceal my Jewish origin."|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130426142636/http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b2born-max.htm#end7|archive-date=26 April 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* [[Hermann Weyl]] (1885–1955), German mathematician and theoretical physicist.<ref>{{cite book|title=Mind and Nature: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics|url=https://archive.org/details/mindnatureselect00weyl_646|url-access=limited|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691135458|first1=Hermann |last1=Weyl |first2=Peter |last2=Pesic |editor=Peter Pesic|page=[https://archive.org/details/mindnatureselect00weyl_646/page/n20 12]|quote=To use the apt phrase of his son Michael, 'The Open World' (1932) contains "Hermann's dialogues with God" because here the mathematician confronts his ultimate concerns. These do not fall into the traditional religious traditions but are much closer in spirit to Spinoza's rational analysis of what he called "God or nature," so important for Einstein as well. ...In the end, Weyl concludes that this God "cannot and will not be comprehended" by the human mind, even though "mind is freedom within the limitations of existence; it is open toward the infinite." Nevertheless, "neither can God penetrate into man by revelation, nor man penetrate to him by mystical perception."|date=20 April 2009}}</ref>