Deitism

Deitism was the name given to a body of philosophical schools of thought that arose in the formative centuries of the. Deitists aimed to investigate and explore the implications of having a will of its own. Dozens of branches of the movement developed, presenting a wide variety of viewpoints on how sentient the Force was and where the people of the galaxy stood in relation to it. Some Deitist movements argued that its interest in mundane affairs was minimal and that it had no conception of ethics as mortal beings understood it. Others claimed that it was interested in the affairs of lesser beings and that were one way that it revealed its will to them. Some went so far as to conclude that if the Force had a will, then as the most powerful and pervasive thing in the universe it was therefore a god, ought to be worshiped, and/or was responsible for the creation of the universe.

As the Jedi Order refined itself doctrinally and organizationally, the beliefs of its members became more uniform. While Deitist lines of thought persisted in many forms for centuries, it endured constant criticism from the majority of Jedi scholars, who maintained that the Force was an energy field sustained by the existence of life, rather than a supreme being or life form that was above all others. Many of them also argued that Force visions reflected not the agency of a separate cosmic consciousness, but of the metaphysical interconnection of all consciousnesses, which was accessed by Force-sensitives.

Deitism as a sizable group of related belief systems disappeared well before the, but its major adherents and their philosophies remained subjects of interest to scholars and historians. By the time of the, Jedi thought that the  movement had descended from Deitist schools of thought after being modified by orthodox Jedi influence.