I often see allusions to deism in relation to the Epicurean perspective on the gods. The connection is superficially obvious, which I suppose is why it's often made--Deists believe in God, but one that is removed from human affairs. Epicureans accepted the existence of a higher order of conscious intelligence, but considered them/it to be removed from human affairs.
But there's really a critical mistake here; the chief feature of the deistic god is that it is always, always the first cause in their cosmology. The Aristotelian Prime Mover. Deism specifically developed in order to hand-wave two problems in the observable universe; first, that there is something when there might have been nothing. Second, that the order of nature is never anything other than ordered and natural. So deism invokes the providential watchmaker; a supreme and generative intelligence that designed a stable cosmos, and then left it ticking on the bench while he stepped out for a smoke.
Deism simply isn't deism without an act of creation. And that's why Epicureans were not and cannot be Deists. See, Epicurus solved the two problems of existence and order more elegantly; he proposed that the cosmos was made of atoms and void, and that atoms and void are uncreated and co-eternal--from everlasting to everlasting.
The Epicurean conception of the gods is thus unique in all human thought. Most of the gods dreamt by the human mind were non-creating but constantly meddling. Some few of the gods which men have proposed were creating and meddling (an exceptionally bothersome lot). The prime mover of the Deists creates but does not meddle.
Only the Epicurean gods were non-creating and non-meddling.
-Joshua
