You obviously know a lot about this subject, and I know next to nothing, so you'll have to excuse my ignorance, but there's a couple of things that I don't understand about deism.
It's ok. There's no prerequisite course to understand deism anyway.
A Christian or Muslim has the bible and koran as "proof" of their belief. If you, as a deist disregard those pieces of evidence, then what evidence do you base your belief on? Is it based purely on intuition, or is there more to it?
My evidence (although very weak) is intuition and that it's a better explanation to me thus far for the existence of the universe than "it just happened".
Also, if you find it hard to believe that the universe was created out of almost nothing, then how is it easier to believe that God was created from nothing?
Because it makes better sense to me for sentience to bring forth what's not sentient than to say that the universe just came into existence from basically nothing.
And I don't believe God was created.
I have to admit, I've always at the back of my mind, had a funny thought that we are all in a giant super advanced computer, and "God" is some fat spotty dude playing a super advanced game of "The Sims" 
Ever reached the ending of The Simpsons Game? You get to play Dance Dance Revolution with God.
And, before anyone dogpiles me. It's not a genuine belief 
Although I have never been able to totally disprove it to myself.
Well, I'm going to go the other side for a jiffy and tell you that you can't disprove the existence of an invisible ghost living in your toilet. Doesn't mean it's reasonable.
I don't believe God is limited in form and, thus, is some fat spotty dude with a longass beard or something. He'd have to be this supercosmic form of infinite power that brought forth the cosmic reality we happen to be in.
And while the evidence is pretty much weak for such an entity, it is still better (in my perception) than the evidence for the magical teapot orbiting Saturn or some other planet and for the limited-in-form spaghetti monster and for some limited being playing a cosmic video game with us as characters for him to play.
