A sociological approach to youth's perception of deism according to the observations of Religious Culture and Ethics Course and iImam Hatip high school vocational course teachers (Fatsa case)

The materialist philosophy that the West turned to after the Enlightenment changed humanity's lifestyle along with technical advances. Secularism, which is based on the view that mind is the absolute source of truth and matter is the only truth, soon influenced non-Western societies with the increase in the use of mass media. One of these effects is the spread of deism or deist thought, especially among young people. This research aimed to determine high school students' interest and perception of deism, their level of orientation towards non-Islamic philosophical movements, and the socio-cultural factors related to the development of this orientation. Students' interests and orientations in terms of faith were determined by utilizing the experiences and opinions of religious culture and ethics teachers and imam-hatip high school vocational course teachers. One aspect of our study is the compilation of data obtained through literature review that will cover the conceptual framework of deism and the psycho-social development characteristics of high school students during adolescence. In the other dimension where we conducted fieldwork, interviews were conducted with twenty religious culture and ethics teachers and vocational course teachers working in Fatsa, using a semi-structured interview form, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The collected data were interpreted and evaluated with descriptive analysis. Our interviews with participating teachers reveal that there are very few high school students in Fatsa who are deists or interested in deism. The nature and frequency of questions asked by students about the Islamic belief system vary depending on the type of school they attend. However, the fact that students ask questions about faith is a result of the developmental stage they are in and the content they encounter in the media networks in which they are active, rather than revealing that they are prone to non-Islamic movements.