I'm not sure yet.
I can't just decide to be one, obviously.
But I can - and maybe one day will - decide to declare that I am one if I realize that it is what I am.
It's a process not a decision.
What will theists make of this if it happens?
And what will atheists make of it?
Thoughts and pertinent YouTube clips welcome.
-Removed-Looking back, I think I was more or less a deist for a few years right at the end of, and then after, my long stint as a Christian - in fact some here will remember only 3-4 years ago I was still recoiling from the label "atheist".
That might have been a bit of a 'stance' though which was sorted out by coming to realize more clearly the breadth and variety under the umbrella of atheism.
"Agnostic atheist" works for me.
But what if I realize I am a deist after all?
-Removed-While the universe and human nature might be evidence of creation, I see no convincing "revelation" yet to the human race i.e. communication of any instructions from a creator being.
I doubt I will ever believe in an afterlife again [though one should never say never]. I really don't see why it should follow on as if automatically from the idea of being created as it does in so many religions.
Deism would not 'require' that of me.
So, anyhow, it remains to be seen.
-Removed-I wouldn't decide to proclaim it until at least a year or two after realizing it, I think.
As for there being an afterlife, why would I think there was one? It seems like a heady mix of [1] conjecture about an unprovable thing and [2] really wanting one.
The fact that the aspiration for everlasting life is virtually ubiquitous in world religions says more, I think, about the human condition than it does about the actual implications of our having been created.
-Removed-You make it sound as if such a creator entity or being would necessarily be like a 'person' in the same way we humans perceive each other.
One of the far fetched [for me] things for me about a lot of mainstream Christianity is the profoundly manmade-sounding notion that the world was created as a kind of audition space to give people the chance to get to "Heaven" [the eternal residence for those who pass] with the rest getting tortured for not passing the audition!
Maybe the creator entity is nothing like the sort of "being" that would dream up anything remotely like that.