[exmarine]

Excellent point (and over my head some, in its specificity). From what I understand, the Deists took concepts such as natural law and the God of nature and redacted them into their truncated view that the natural world was all one has to be concerned with, one way or some another (even though... doh! ...nature had to come from God).

I believe you are correct. This can become a deep philosphical topic and I am no expert either. However, Francis Schaeffer explains in his writings that a line of thought beginning with Rousseau ("the noble savage") sprang up which held that morals can be discerned by observing nature. Shaeffer contended that this is a flawed way of looking at the world because nature is both cruel and non-cruel (i.e. morally neutral), but people are made in God's image and one cannot use nature to establish one's ethics.

[unspun]

...Rousseau ("the noble savage") sprang up which held that morals can be discerned by observing nature. Shaeffer contended that this is a flawed way of looking at the world because nature is both cruel and non-cruel (i.e. morally neutral), but people are made in God's image and one cannot use nature to establish one's ethics.

Yes and Rousseau even revised his political philosophy, painting over his search for the Noble Savage with his view of bumping and grinding out a Social Contract, somewhat acquiescent to the understanding that many others already related by his time.