Pan was always Pan, that was the point of him. The Hellenic gods looked down on Pan as a satyr, but in other places he was considered more important than the Hellenic Gods. But nowhere ever worshipped Pan. For reason first stated. — ernestm
Do you actually believe that "pantheism" describes the worship of Pan? Is that why you keep saying "Pan wasn't worshipped"? :gasp: — Pattern-chaser
the Greeks did not think a God of everything was particularly important — ernestm
- Link to original articlePan - In the classical age the Greeks associated his name with the word pan meaning "all". However its true origin lay in an old Arcadian word for rustic.
Link to original articlePan - The great god of flocks and shepherds among the Greeks; his name is probably connected with the verb πάω (paō), Latin pasco (graze, forage), so that his name and character are perfectly in accordance with each other. Later speculations, according to which Pan is the same as τὸ πᾶν (to pan), or the universe, and the god the symbol of the universe, cannot be taken into consideration here.
Link to original articlePan is considered to be one of the oldest of Greek gods. He is associated with nature, wooded areas and pasturelands, from which his name is derived. The worship of Pan began in rustic areas far from the populated city centers, and therefore, he did not have large temples built to worship him. Rather, worship of Pan centered in nature, often in caves or grottos. Pan ruled over shepherds, hunters and rustic music. He was the patron god of Arcadia.
Link to original articlePantheism is the view that God is equivalent to Nature or the physical universe - that they are essentially the same thing - or that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract God. Thus, each individual human, being part of the universe or nature, is part of God. The term "pantheism" was coined by the Irish writer John Toland in 1705.
Link to original articleThe term ‘pantheism’ is a modern one, possibly first appearing in the writing of the Irish freethinker John Toland (1705) and constructed from the Greek roots pan (all) and theos (God). But if not the name, the ideas themselves are very ancient, and any survey of the history of philosophy will uncover numerous pantheist or pantheistically inclined thinkers; although it should also be noted that in many cases all that history has preserved for us are second-hand reportings of attributed doctrines, any reconstruction of which is too conjectural to provide much by way of philosophical illumination.
At its most general, pantheism may be understood positively as the view that God is identical with the cosmos, the view that there exists nothing which is outside of God, or else negatively as the rejection of any view that considers God as distinct from the universe.
There is only one known temple to Pan, as I said, it was called Paneas, and you can find out all the different things people have written on Paneas too, but I will stick to the version taught to Winston Churchill. Thank you. — ernestm
the trendy 'modern' version of pantheism, to which you ascribe, was a confusion with a similar concept called 'animism' by a couple of aging hippies in the 1970s — ernestm
"The term "pantheism" was coined by the Irish writer John Toland in 1705."
[...]
"The term ‘pantheism’ is a modern one, possibly first appearing in the writing of the Irish freethinker John Toland (1705) and constructed from the Greek roots pan (all) and theos (God). But if not the name, the ideas themselves are very ancient, and any survey of the history of philosophy will uncover numerous pantheist or pantheistically inclined thinkers" — Pattern-chaser
here was a temple dedicated to Pan in what became Caesarea, and later Philippi. It held a small Greek cult for about a hundred years after Alexander the Great found it. Prior to Greek occupation, there was a lush oasis around some rock springs, which satisfied all the first settler's needs. So the Greeks renamed a small Ba'al temple there Pan, saying that Pan had given Alexander the strength to terrify the enemy, and naming the place Paneas.
But the Greeks turned it into desert, so then Pan became more of an early nomadic deity for desolate places, music, and goat herds who didn't terrify anybody. To the nomads, Pan was still a major deity, but the Hellenic Gods said it wasn't that important.
Then the Romans conquered it, and Pan's temple was abandoned, making Pan more of a curio in 200BC, after which the Romans lost it back to the Persians who replaced Pan with Ba'al again. Then the Romans conquered it again and renamed it Caesarea, by which time Pan didn't have a city named after him either, then it became a holy Christian city.
I'm not sure why we are bringing up Pan, that's not what the pan in patheism is about.here was a temple dedicated to Pan in what became Caesarea.....,
I'm not sure why we are bringing up Pan, that's not what the pan in patheism is about. — Coben
I agree. I’ve chosen to ignore the side argument - feel free to continue with the main discussion, if you can find it back there... — Possibility
1. What is God?
"God is the Supreme Intelligence - First Cause of all things."
The Pantheistic theory makes of God a material being, who, though endowed with a supreme intelligence, would only be on a larger scale what we are on a smaller one. But, as matter is incessantly undergoing transformation, God, if this theory were true, would have no stability. He would be subject to all the vicissitudes, and even to all the needs, of humanity. He would lack one of the essential attributes of the Divinity -viz., unchangeableness. The properties of matter cannot be attributed to God without degrading our idea of the Divinity and all the subtleties of sophistry fail to solve the problem of His essential nature.
We do not know what God is but we know that it is impossible that He should not be and the theory just stated is in contradiction with His most essential attributes. It confounds the Creator with the creation, precisely as though we should consider an ingenious 'machine' to be an integral portion of the mechanican who invented it.
The intelligence of God is revealed in His works, as is that of a painter in his picture but the works of God are no more God Himself than the picture is the artist who conceived and painted it. — ALLAN KARDEC (THE SPIRITS' BOOK - 1857)
My philosophical worldview PanEnDeism, is historically related to PanTheism. However, due to its secular mindset, mine is not a traditional religious perspective, in that it does not require sycophantic worship or arbitrary rituals & practices. Instead, it is intended to be more like an empirical scientific worldview, in that it takes a Pragmatic approach to understanding the real world, and our relationship to it. There is no authoritative or formal definition of PED, but my general concept is similar to Spinoza's notion that the "universal substance" of our world is not physical Matter, but meta-physical Mind *1. Meaning that our reality is essentially an idea in the Mind of G*D. That may not sound scientific, but for me, that general concept of Reality was derived from the counter-intuitive weirdness of Quantum Theory, and the all-encompassing reach of Information Theory. It's not a mystical or magical belief system, but a practical mundane worldview, based on the the scientific conclusion that Information = Energy = Matter *2.Pantheism is "a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God". But what exactly does this mean when taken literally? — Michael McMahon
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