The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (626 page)

Deism
.

The name of a heterogeneous ‘movement’ (it was not organized, and so-called Deist writers do not follow a single programme) of the late 17th and 18th cents., concerned to defend the rationality of religion and belief in God in the face of scepticism, or the perceived implications of Newton's laws. There is much emphasis on natural religion. Important works of Deist writers are: J.
Locke
,
Reasonableness of Christianity
(1695); J. Toland,
Christianity not Mysterious
(1696); M. Tindal,
Christianity as Old as the Creation
(1730), the so-called ‘Deist Bible’.

 
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Delusion
.

A fault as fundamental in E. religions (e.g.
moha
in Buddhism) as sin is in W. religions. Delusion is to see and interpret manifest appearance, including one's own nature and being, in the wrong way, mainly by superimposing wrong perceptions or ideas upon it. It is thus ignorance (in Hinduism
avidy
, in Buddhism avijja, in Jap. Zen
mayoi
).

 
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(Gk.,
d
miourgos
, ‘craftsman’). The divine being in
Plato's
account (in
Timaeus
) of the formation of the visible world. In
gnostic
thought, it was used disparagingly of the inferior deity who created the material universe, distinguished from the supreme God.

 
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(Gk.,
daim
n
, ‘a spirit’). Originally an unseen reality influencing a person's life, speech, or actions (e.g. the
daim
n
of Socrates), it became associated with malevolence or evil. Sometimes identical with the
devil
, demons (in the plural) become more often servants or agents of the devil.

 
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Demythologization
.

A programme associated particularly with Rudolf
Bultmann
which endeavoured to penetrate and re-express the meanings of biblical myths. For Bultmann demythologization was the attempt to express the content of myth in the non-imaginative form of the analysis of existence. In his view, the account of existentialists, especially M. Heidegger, is ‘no more than a secularised, philosophical version of the New Testament view of human life’. See also
HERMENEUTICS
.