Neil Armstrong: Deist

In recent weeks, much ink has been spilled over the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Among the more interesting tidbits: astronaut and moon walker Neil Armstrong once listed his religious affiliation as “deist.” Could I do the same?

Deists believe in a Creator, who was the first cause of everything. But the Deists' Creator is not involved with or concerned about mankind, and may not even be aware that mankind exists.  Deists do not believe in divine miracles, one true faith, or a true and authentic holy scripture.

I’m willing to accept the possibility of a Creator. Everything I can think of was created in one way or another.  Plato's Timaeus dialogue holds that "Everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created." In this view, since the universe exists, it must have been created, and something must have caused that to happen. 

But does the same argument apply to the Creator itself? What created the Creator?


Some religions believe that the Creator has always existed. It was the first cause, and was caused by nothing. That would make it a totally unique being. Likewise, some say the universe itself was not created, but has always existed. This concept of an entity with no beginning puzzled me as a child, and still does.

Some say that you can't use the existence of the universe as an argument for a Creator unless you accept the possibility that the Creator was itself created by something else, just like the universe.  This leads to a dizzying scenario "wherein each newly presumed creator of a creator is itself presumed to have its own creator" (Wikipedia, Problem of the Creator of God).  Sometimes known as "infinite regress," this seems almost a paradox. It's like "turtles all the way down," the myth that the world stands atop a World Turtle, which stands on another turtle, which in turn stands on yet another turtle, and another and another, all the way down to....what? Infinity, I suppose. If this is true, reality is a hall of mirrors and infinite reflections.  

Some Gnostics believed in an artisan god, the demiurge, which fashioned what we perceive as the universe but was itself created by a higher being. That higher being created the raw material with which the demiurge worked. This, Gnostics reasoned, explains why the world we perceive is not perfect. But who created the higher being? Where did the process begin? We are searching for the first cause, not something that was acted upon by something else. 

All of these possibilities are difficult to grapple with.  I keep coming back to the question of what came before. (This reminds me of the cleverly titled Who Came First, Pete Townshend's first solo album. But that is another story.)

Timaeus handily disposes of this problem by stating that "the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out."  This is a good point. There’s an inherent mystery here that cannot be solved by logic and reasoning.  I suppose it is ultimately a matter of faith, something which I do not have. Creator? No Creator? Supreme Being? First cause? Turtles all the way down? To me, the answers are unknowable.