Some lies are necessary for the greater truth ;) — DA671

You seem to be on top of things! How? :brow:

Nah, I am in the valley enjoying the beauty of the mountain peaks surrounding me.

Nah, I am in the valley enjoying the beauty of the mountain peaks surrounding me. — DA671

Some lies are necessary for the greater truth. :wink:

Gos becomes one, merges with, His creation! He no longer exists as separate from His creation aka the universe/multiverse. — Agent Smith

I guess you mean 'God' here.

The problem with that is, that 'God' is then bad restaraunt meals, crooked politicians, terminal diseases, crocodile attacks....you get the drift. It is simply so broad a claim as to be meaningless.

It's another thing to say that everything is a 'manifestation of the divine' or that 'God appears in innumerable forms'. That's also pan-theist but it's not simplistic drivel.

I guess you mean 'God' here.

The problem with that is, that 'God' is then bad restaraunt meals, crooked politicians, terminal diseases, crocodile attacks....you get the drift. It is simply so broad a claim as to be meaningless. — Wayfarer

Why are broad claims meaningless?

I see that you've seen through my "lie" ;)

Because something that attempts to account for everything accounts for nothing.

'Define' means 'limit', as in specify that a word means something particular. Very general words are very hard to define for that reason - they have many meanings (i.e. they're polysemic).

Just saying 'God is everything' really says nothing. You can just shrug and say, 'sure', and carry on. Means nothing, carries no import.

I don't think the OP, which was created three years ago, falls into that. It tries at least to consider the meaning of 'pantheism' from the viewpoint of philosophy of religion. Also the one above your first comment made an effort to distinguish pantheism from panentheism, another significant distinction. But 'God is everything' is just happy-clappy drivel.

Because something that attempts to account for everything accounts for nothing. — Wayfarer

I fear you're conflating an explanatory hypothesis with a concept.

Define' means 'limit', — Wayfarer

:clap:

panentheism — Wayfarer

What's that?

like I said - read the post above your first post in this thread. Provides a definition from SEP.

like I said - read the post above your first post in this thread. Provides a definition from SEP — Wayfarer

:ok: :up:

Because something that attempts to account for everything accounts for nothing. — Wayfarer

Can you explain the above statement, elaborate it for me please?

... an effort to distinguish pantheism from panentheism, another significant distinction. But 'God is everything' is just happy-clappy drivel. — Wayfarer

So is "too good to be true" theism. :eyes:

God loves you, 180, and it's a perfect world. Why can't you see that.... :scream:

God loves you, 180, and it's a perfect world. — Tom Storm

Samwise Gamgee loves me too (& his garden). :blush:

Why can't you see that.... :scream:

Because ... filthy Bagginses took the preciousss! :grimace:

I see pantheism as a fatuation with matter. The famous Jesuit Fr. Teilhard cried as a child when he discovered that metal rusted. Some say he was a modern Spinoza. Aside from his talk of Christian themes, his book The Phenomena of Man was a great read although it is very dated now. As for evil in the context of pantheism, I would point out that it's just a privation. Ugliness is in the sight of the beholder and moral crime is the absence of God. Our consciousness itself might be a nothing in a way, although it is attached to the nervous system. Reincarnation is not a soul going to a new body but a new body experiences the same stream of intensity it use to have in another body. All hope of an afterlife is bound to having a new body because the one you have perishes. Didn't Sartre himself say we a nihilations of the one being?

Sadomasochism: "the derivation of sexual gratification from the infliction of physical pain or humiliation either on another person or on oneself".

Is it possible that an evil person might freely choose to live in hell after death without being forced to by God if the punishment wasn't everlasting? Performing evil actions on others objectifies not only the victims but also the perpetrators to some extent. Evil violates the qualities of humanness. If heaven and hell are believed to exist then its inhabitants will be much older than the oldest people alive on Earth. Therefore their subconscious will be much wiser and stronger than it was during life. The unconscious minds of evil individuals might hold them to task for their own desires. Free of the symbolism of social status and power hierarchies in our mundane world it might be possible that evil spirits will embrace masochism as much as sadism in a dissociated state of consciousness after death. The notions of heaven and hell have been imprinted on our neurological genetics since the creations of the oldest religions thousands of years ago. Thus even an evil individual might not be able to 100% eradicate their unconscious beliefs in spiritual justice. In other words their own unconscious might retain traces of divine punishment for bad behaviour even if they consciously rebel against it during their earthly life.

"(A) debate is happening between those who believe in an afterlife of torment and those who believe the souls of those who do not enter Heaven will be destroyed."
https://the1a.org/segments/2019-01-08-hell-and-how-we-think-of-it/
To what extent is eternal oblivion less vengeful of a punishment than a temporary stay in hell?

Misotheism: "a hatred of God."

It's possible to distort any worldview which includes pantheism but nonetheless pantheism can offer another antidote to misotheism. Hating God under pantheism would be an equivocation since it'd essentially be equivalent to hating every other person along with yourself. In a pantheistic framework a misotheist would therefore be closely related to a misanthropist. Misotheism has always been a risk when people feel betrayed by life circumstances. It applies on a collective level too such as how Germany with such a rich Christian history still managed to instigate two world wars. It shows that introducing a personal God into the equation runs the risk of creating a love/hate relationship for those who are uncertain in their faith. A contradiction for any evil people who distort misotheism into misanthropy is that such an "evil God" wouldn't care about the victims. As such committing crimes is never a logical form of revenge against God.

"A handful of scientists are testing a controversial practice of using virtual reality to diagnose pedophilia in men in hopes of helping them manage their sexual desires before they act on them."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/scientists-test-use-virtual-reality-diagnose-pedophilia

Could a possible God know whether we've done good or committed evil in our lives? Would the souls of murder victims stand in a holy court as witnesses? Perhaps divine judges wouldn't be constrained by our earthly ideals of remaining innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. How do we know there wouldn't be sting operations to catch out malevolent souls in the afterlife? Sexual lie detectors are the last thing we'd be expecting at the gates of heaven! Pinocchio!

"In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person attempting to commit a crime. A typical sting will have an undercover law enforcement officer, detective, or co-operative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect's wrongdoing." Wiki

I am for my part happy to live in a time in human history when science has come to the point of a theory that everything in the observable universe is really connected, basically consisting of the same energy. . . .
This is a great consolation. I could of course be discontent that we do not know more about the ultimate nature of this reality (energy), . . .
To keep on calling it God has become now a mere matter of taste, but I think we are safe if we state that God is neither an interventionist, nor bene-/malevolent, being when it comes to us as the human species. . . .
The physical phenomenon called energy that has generated us and that we consist of is indifferent to us as living beings, as indifferent as it was to the dinosaurs and is to Pluto. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Sounds like we may be kindred spirits. After high school I evolved away from my theistic upbringing, but I found no plausible reason-for-being in Materialistic science. So, I went through phases : Agnosticism, Deism, PanDeism, and finally PanEnDeism. In the latter, everything is indeed connected, even entangled, as vital parts of a single Whole System, the physical universe, which may be a part of a greater Whole, that some cultures refer to as Brahma or God or Tao.

My philosophical "First Cause" is similar to many nature-god-models (e.g. Gaia ; Deism ; PanDeism), except that its primary role was to create the natural system that we are integral parts of. Hence, our world is not separate from the creator, but is in-&-of G*D (PanEnDeism). I spell it with an asterisk to indicate that this is not an intervening Theistic deity -- like a mechanic repairing things that go wrong. If there is Good & Bad in the creation, it's because the designer had the Potential for both, and because an evolving world could not begin in a perfect state, like the Garden of Eden. Instead, our universe seems to be evolving, in complexity & intelligence, toward some ultimate state. Since I don't know anything about that final goal, I simply label it the "Omega Point". What we experience as Good vs Bad, is simply a zig-zagging heuristic search pattern, equivalent to Hegelian Dialectic.

As you suggested, this creative & destructive Causal Force is what we know in Physics as Energy/Entropy. But the current understanding is that Energy & Matter (mass) are interchangeable. And many pioneering physicists have concluded that even Energy is essentially a form of shape-shifting Information. Which boils down to a mathematical ratio between Something (1) and Nothing (0), or Hot (positive) and Cold (negative). The implication of that equvalence is, as some physicists have concluded : that Reality is essentially Mathematical & Logical, hence Mental. Therefore, Matter emerges from Energy, and Energy emerges from what I call EnFormAction : the creative Potential to become Actual (the power to enform). So, the "ultimate nature" of reality is as an Actual instance of a greater Ideality.

My non-religious philosophical worldview is labeled Enformationism (based on Quantum & Information theory, not on revelation). And the logically necessary First Cause has not revealed its name. So, you can call it whatever you like : "G*D", "Nature"; "Deus" ; The Great Mathematician ; or apropos of the Information theme : the Eternal Programmer. I won't expound on this slightly off-topic theme any more in this post. However, if you have questions, I have answers -- but no credentials and no authority. :nerd:

PanEnDeism :
Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties.
https://panendeism.org/faq-and-questions/
1. Note : PED is distinguished from general Deism, by its more specific notion of the G*D/Creation relationship; and from PanDeism by its understanding of G*D as supernatural creator rather than the emergent soul of Nature. Enformationism is a Panendeistic worldview.
BothAnd Blog Glossary


The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019AIPA....9i5206V/abstract

Forget Space-Time: Information May Create the Cosmos :
A new candidate is "information," which some scientists claim is the foundation of reality. The late distinguished physicist John Archibald Wheeler characterized the idea as "It from bit" — "it" referring to all the stuff of the universe and "bit" meaning information.
https://www.space.com/29477-did-information-create-the-cosmos.html

And the logically necessary First Cause has not revealed its name. So, you can call it whatever you like ... — Gnomon

Besides "woo-of-the-gaps", Pandeus also works for me.

If everything, as per pantheism, is god then what's the difference between thing and god? They're synonymous as far as I can tell which ain't much. Is god then simply a placeholder, like the variable x in math, for the unnamed...soldier [The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao] or a generic term that applies to, well, all in the universe and perhaps beyond, even those that have been named?

Plus, what motivates such a standpoint? Why retain the word "god" and do away with everything else that previously defined him/her? Isn't that like taking a bag of toys and emptying it, then filling it with guns? The word "god" then is merely being used for effect. Bad Spinoza! Bad!

We must resurrect Wittgenstein! :snicker:

Besides "woo-of-the-gaps", Pandeus also works for me. — 180 Proof

Poo-Poo of Woo-Woo, also works for you, as a Pan-put-down. One answer for all philosophical conjectures beyond the self-imposed limits of Materialism. The job of philosophy, though, is to fill the gaps in our understanding, with reasoning, where observation is impossible. :joke:

If everything, as per pantheism, is god then what's the difference between thing and god? They're synonymous as far as I can tell which ain't much. Is god then simply a placeholder, like the variable x in math, for the unnamed...soldier [The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao] or a generic term that applies to, well, all in the universe and perhaps beyond, even those that have been named?

Plus, what motivates such a standpoint? Why retain the word "god" and do away with everything else that previously defined him/her? Isn't that like taking a bag of toys and emptying it, then filling it with guns? The word "god" then is merely being used for effect. Bad Spinoza! Bad! — Agent Smith

I won't comment on Pantheism. But in PanEnDeism, the difference between God & Thing is the distinction between Whole & Part, between Creator & Creature. It's the difference that makes all the difference in meaning.

"God", "Brahma", "Tao" are indeed placeholders --- labels (X the unknown) for an enigmatic Cause with obvious Effects. Even pragmatic scientists, especially in Quantum Physics, commonly give metaphorical labels to unidentified causes of effects observed in their experiments. For example, the counter-intuitive wave-like behavior of quantum particles was defined mathematically, and was labeled as a "waveform". But, the implicit fluid field in which the energy was waving was unknown & undefined. Some researchers desperately resurrected the old discredited notion of "Aether". Yet, there is no physical evidence to support the hypothesis of an invisible intangible fluid in empty space. So, the term is, like "Dark Matter", a placeholder for an unknown cause of known effects.

Likewise, some modern philosophers, and cosmologists, have resurrected the ancient term "God" to serve as a proxy for the logically necessary First Cause of our universe, that was once belittled as a "Big Bang" in empty space. Even the term "singularity" merely served as a stand-in for knowledge, since it literally means "the undefined line between space-time and infinity-eternity". The word sounds like it's pointing to something unique, but that something is on the other side of the space-time boundary, where our senses cannot go.

So, what's wrong with using a well-known word for something imaginable, but un-knowable? One thing that's wrong with it, is the harsh prejudice associated with it. Which is why most of us try to avoid trigger-words like "n*gger", although we all know that it literally refers to a dark color, but metaphorically implies a host of aspersions. Consequently, when I use the "G" word in a philosophical sense, I spell it G*D, to mitigate its baggage : the derogatory political preconceptions of the unknowable referent.

Spinoza used the word "God", but equated it with "Nature". Apparently, he did so in view of its emotional effect on his Jewish & Christian readers. Of course, they were enraged. But philosophical PanEnDeists wouldn't have a problem with that equation, because they interpret its meaning in a different context from the "holy scriptures". :smile:

Aether :
In physics, aether theories propose the existence of a medium, a space-filling substance or field as a transmission medium . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories
Note -- what physicists call the "Quantum Field" is the mysterious Aether by another name.

Tao Te Ching :
The Tao that can be known is not [the eternal] Tao.
The substance of the World is only a name for Tao.
Tao is all that exists and may exist;
The World is only a map of what exists and may exist
https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/services/dropoff/china_civ_temp/week03/pdfs/select4.pdf

God and the New Physics :
Science is now on the verge of answering our most profound questions about the nature of existence. Here Paul Davies explains how the far-reaching discoveries of recent physics are revolutionizing our world and, in particular, throwing light on many of the questions formerly posed by religion, such as:
Why is there a universe?
Where did we come from?
What is life?
How is the world organized?
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/134/13406/god-and-the-new-physics/9780140134629.html

:up:

Strawman, non sequitur. Yeah, I know you can't help yourself, G (because conceptual incoherence is your superpower!) :sweat:

Why is there a universe? — Gnomon

This $\uparrow$ is the million dollar question!

HOW (science) is an anagram of WHO (religion).

HOW (science) is an anagram of WHO (religion). — Agent Smith

:smirk:

Why is there a universe?
— Gnomon

This ↑ is the million[half] dollar question!

An oldie but still a goodie, Smith :point:

:smile:

So "why does the universe exist?" is a nonsensical question to you. What if I say that the question only seeks an explanation and that doesn't necessarily involve a creator deity as described by religions?

No problem. That colloquial "why" translates to a more precise, non-intentional, "how" – How did this universe begin? How has this universe developed to its present observable state? etcetera. "Why" requests motives / goals / interpretations (i.e. subjectivity) whereas "How" requests explanations / processes (i.e. objectivity).

No problem. That colloquial "why" translates to a more precise, non-intentional, "how" – How did this universe begin? How has this universe developed to its present observable state? etcetera. "Why" requests motives / goals / interpretations (i.e. subjectivity) "How" requests explanations / processes (i.e. objectivity). — 180 Proof

:fire:

Why :snicker: do we attribute intentionality to things? Is there a known psychological concept that explains our proclivity to at all times include what is essentially a conspirator [god(s), spirits, etc.] in our explanatory hypotheses? I can think of two: paranoia & pronoia. People back then, during the times of proto-religion and religion proper, were scared to bits I suppose. Someone's out to get us/me! :fear:

IMO, 'folk psychology' from early metacognitive development: magical thinking + anthropomorphization as we – babies – develop a 'theory of mind' and, as a refinement of instinctive false-positive pattern detection, gradually learning to differentiate intentional agents from non-agents (e.g. puppies from stuffed teddy bears ... people from 'talking trees').