God was no longer a personal, caring creator—he was now the supreme mathematician who had aeons ago designed the universe in terms of the beautiful equations that Johannes Kepler and Newton had discovered. The deists’ God operated according to logic and mathematics—not will and whim. The deists’ God also seemed to have done his work a long time ago, and to have done it well—meaning he was no longer needed on the scene to operate the machinery of the universe.
