I would have to disagree with you on whether Einstein would agree. Einstein was an agnostic bordering on atheist. When he said something about a great intelligence seen in the universe, he was not referring to an entity but to the inherent logic of math and physics. The Watchtower loves to use that quote as a basis for showing that "even Einstein" believed in God, when in fact he didn't. Still I can sympathize and am even a bit envious about your choice to be a deist. It's such a comforting thing to have and to expect that in the end we will go one. It's a wonderful delusion.
I came late to this discussion. But throughout, I've seen a lot of interesting suggestions about what we are and how we become one thing or another. That only reaffirmed my long standing idea that when born we are a blank slate. We learn to be deists or a kind person or a genius or a psychopathic killer. That does not exclude the fact that we have genetic predispositions that make us more suitable for one thing or another. But, our environment is at least 50% of the equation.
After decades of being very close to classical music (the piano) and seeing other children exposed to it, I came to the conclusion that Mozart or Schubert or Chopin were not genetically prescribed to be what they became. They weren't born being who they became. They were made and chiseled by their environment. Of course their environment would have amounted to nothing if they didn't have some ability to begin with. But I think that most humans have that potential at the start. If Michelangelo had been born in the jungles of the Amazon there would have been no Michelangelo. He needed a medium and the environment to become what he was.
Therefore, I think about the differences between not being taught deism and not being taught evolution. They put out quite different results. But in both cases, the individual may exhibit a desire for either one. It is in the nature of being human to think about such things. Indeed, besides the intellect to ask, we have a innate sense of the spiritual in our brains. That's why you won't find a society now or ever that hasn't had some sort of deistic ritual or belief.
Ultimately, I think it is those individual differences, both genetic and environmental, that makes someone like me to prefer being resigned to the idea that we are finite and will disappear forever, rather than have some unfounded hope that somehow we will have the chance to live on pending on what a being we never associate with does. Besides, I think there's still hope that somewhere in the distant future, science may find a way of "retrieving" people out of some universal time-line and have them come back to continue with their lives, hopefully in a better situation. Hey, that's like -- Resurrection!