Philosophically speaking, it could be argued that there are three basic positions concerning belief (or non-belief) in the existence of a creator God who exists outside space and time: atheism, deism and theism. As the categorical denial of the objective existence of God, atheism is fairly straightforward. However, while deism and theism are related, a careful distinction must be drawn between them. Deism affirms the existence of a creator, but holds that such a being does not concern itself with the affairs of its creatures; ‘God’, according to this view, does not intervene in the world but merely constitutes a distant ‘first cause’ of the universe.