If everything has its cause and creator, then what caused and created God? Perhaps God is the only thing that lacks a cause, which is why He is God in the first place-or at least that is what R. W. Mecklenburg thoughtfully proposes in The Deist, his short but sweet deconstruction of God, reason, happiness, and liberty.

God, Mecklenburg says, is the only thing that has always existed without creation. The only immutable thing without change. Absolute without degree. And universal without exception. But clearly God cannot be everywhere, for if He were everywhere, man as a free being could be nowhere.

What is everywhere? Mecklenburg asks. The laws of nature are everywhere, absolute, and immutable, he answers. And using reason to align with them maximizes man's happiness, which is life's purpose after all.

Deism is not of the watchmaker God for whom man exists as mere entertainment. If God is absolutely happy, why would he create us to entertain him? How could we make a perfectly happy God happier? Because we cannot, His laws exist for us, not us for Him. They are God's gift to man so we might be as happy as He is.

God is perfectly happy and rational, R. W. Mecklenburg claims in his defense of Deism, the philosophy that helped guide man from the despotic, hateful, and sad God of the martyrs and tyrants to the liberal, loving, and happy God of the Enlightenment-a God worth emulating, not another tyrant erected by men.