/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11266135]

Thoughts on Pantheism?

[Anonymous No.11266152]

>>11266135
Easy way to get out of atheism when you have matured.

[Anonymous No.11266165]

>>11266135
Either meaningless or indisputable (with qualifications). Read Schelling's essay on Freedom, otherwise you're just deifying mechanism.

[Anonymous No.11266180]

>>11266165
Wouldn't it give a rational meaning to the scientific world we live in?

[Anonymous No.11266189]

>>11266135
All things are God and the sage sees the Divine Face in each thing — howbeit according to very different relationships — or, more exactly, he sees the Divine Face "through" each thing.

This precision is imperative in order that no one be tempted to see pantheism in a conception that is as from it as possible. The pantheistic error arises from the incapacity to see God in the appearances, whence the confusion — atheistic at the same time as being idolatrous — between the world and God; which is to say that pantheism consists in nothing other than the error of admitting an identity that is material and not essential between the Principle and manifestation.

http://www.sophia-perennis.com/Sage_conscience.htm

[Anonymous No.11266202]

>>11266180
>rational
no
>scientific world
where

[Anonymous No.11266212]

>>11266180
Crude pantheism is just the flat identity of Nature with God, essentially wordplay. Spinoza's God is not a personal being, it produces beings indifferently because it is nothing but this productive principle. Not saying Spinoza is a crude pantheist but crude pantheism is what you get when you just leave it at "dude nature is god lmao". Read Schelling's essay on freedom.

[Anonymous No.11266238]

>>11266202
>>11266212

The scientific breakdown of all reality, and the rejection of spirituality and mysticism as nothing more then the product of evolution. Rationally based on all evidence, this would be the most likely. I'd advise you to read up on Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff and Giulio Tononi to understand that science is pointing in the direction of some form of universal consciousness, similar to panpsychism or pantheism.

[Anonymous No.11266255]

>>11266152
>god is nature
lmao

[Anonymous No.11266279]

>>11266135
Like people are saying in this thread, it can be trite or meaningful. You could just redefine the creative process of the universe, its scientific laws, as an impersonal massive “God”, which is not that meaningful of a definition. I think God is simultaneously within and beyond the world, beyond the limits of time and space. Pantheism is too limiting.

[Anonymous No.11266315]

>>11266279
You're literally just looking for panentheism.

[Anonymous No.11266384]

>>11266212
As I see it a personal God is something only Americans are willing to believe in, in this day and age. Everyone else would prefer to move past that.

[Anonymous No.11266400]

>>11266315
Neat, I thought I was a smarty-pants for coming to this idea from ideas from Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Christian mysticism and didn’t even know this word. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.11266405]

>>11266135
all naturalist atheists are pantheists by definition, just the gayest form of pantheism possible

[Anonymous No.11266410]

>>11266400
No worries friend. I'm personally open to both ideas, but suspect one is true. Pantheism is just more mainstream to convey across with panentheism often rolled up into it.

[Anonymous No.11266539]

How do we deal with the ground floor interpretation let's say "normal" or average people have about religious concepts like this? Let's ignore for a second the obvious "Atheism = satanism" but things like Pantheism seem disingenuous to me as a mere renaming scheme, and even if it wasn't (In which case I apologize) people will certainly take it at face value and assume you're some kind of hippy, just like people assume everyone who believes in God believes in the literal father in the sky.

[Anonymous No.11266630]

>>11266405
>all naturalist atheists are pantheists by definition
I just hope this is bait.

[Anonymous No.11266657]

>>11266384
By Americans do you mean people living in the Americas? Either way you're still wrong

[Anonymous No.11267998]

>>11266539
you can't really, what are you gonna start lecturing people on Spinoza's ontology or something? what're ya gonna do?

[Anonymous No.11268068]

I'd entertain panpsychism as a philosophical starting point that you could get to pantheism from. But even if all matter has a rudimentary impulse of consciousness, an that's a big if, it wouldn't necessitate a unity across nature that would imply a single god-mind of which everything is its ideas.

First you would have to establish panpsychism before you could even begin with pantheism.

[Anonymous No.11268227]

>>11266135
SO GOOODDDDDD YAAAAAAAAAAAAAS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgPVhe56hT8

[Anonymous No.11268253]

>>11266135
Popular option for people who don't wan't to be atheists anymore and desperately want to delude themselves into becoming spiritual, but either dislike organized religion or just don't want to go through the trouble of LARPing as a christian.

Deism is in the same boat.

[Anonymous No.11268260]

>>11266135
It's an easy way to avoid solving the problem of evil

[Anonymous No.11268309]

>>11268260
hint: there's no solution to the problem of evil

[Anonymous No.11269129]

>>11266135
It's a religion for faithless small-souled bugmen.

[Anonymous No.11269180]

Logically inconsistent and fairly pointless. It solves none of the paradoxes of theism but with few of the advantages of theism. It's just as weak and unrigorous as agnosticism and Dawkins was right in calling it "sexed up atheism."

Panentheism is the real answer. It answers the problem of eternal recurrence as well as the problem of evil, maintains complete compatibility with scientific determinism as well as hard theism, works even with Whiteheadian or Deluzian metaphysics, etc.

[Anonymous No.11269342]

i like galen strawson's new book bb

[Anonymous No.11269436]

>>11269180

This sounds like you're just changing "it's turtles all the way down" to "There is a big ass turtle you can't possibly conceive and the Earth is contained within it". It's also not that formally different from Pantheism from what I gather, since you're just saying the domain of divinity encompasses the universe rather than being completely identifiable with it. This sounds like a much harder case stance of "I believe in everything" which is kinda cheating? I don't know how I feel about this.

>>11266135

Trying to make logical sense of the concept of divinity (which I assume is what you mean by thoughts) is not something I find particularly interesting, but if we must talk about it, I lean towards Kierkegaard's opinion when he claims that Christianity itself is a problem to Christians due to the vulgar approximation of God to man (i.e pantheistic beliefs) and its justification through Hegel. He held individual faith above everything else in a paradoxical "The individual is in absolute relation to the absolute". His claims extends further I think, and most people on their day to day beliefs actually carry a quasi-pantheistic thought where they identify either themselves or people/things they like with a general notion of "holiness" or "incorruptibility" that they may or may not be aware is rooted much in the same way as regular religious belief. Kind of like Western folks misinterpreting the Eastern notion of illumination into feeding their egos by claiming they are "illuminated" and thus identifiable with divinity after their sexual tourism in Thailand. This is problematic when it is put into conflict with other people's identification of the holy, specially when neither party attributes religious symbols to their side, e.g the pure ideology of political discourse Zizek loves to talk about.

To sum it up, identifying divinity with yourself/the universe is not a commonplace move by theists and neither is it a very helpful move when it comes to society itself, which makes me thankful that it's not explicitly popular but only occasionally "applied" to interactions among peers.

[Anonymous No.11269502]

>>11269436
Was Hegel a pantheist though? Doesn't he recognize contingency in nature? Just nitpicking, I pretty much agree otherwise.

[Anonymous No.11271041]

>>11268260
>evil has a positive existence

[Anonymous No.11271072]

>>11266135
as seen in the modern west basically hipster we wuz vikangz shit

people who seriously say things like I'm a pantheist who aren't of some ethnic religious background where it makes cultural sense are a special kind of idiot.

[Anonymous No.11271116]

Pans are for cooking, not worship. Rise up.

[Anonymous No.11271359]

Retarded. God is defined as an external creator of the universe, so god can not be limited by the space time continuum

[Anonymous No.11271877]

>>11266279
Nothing but a conception of God.

It is however experiential if one surrenders all assumptions of Objectivity and Causation.

Self-surrender is Knowledge.

[Anonymous No.11271887]

>>11268260
Evil is only a conception.

Doesn't have reality, it is only pragmatic in organizing ones' life in accordance with social life.

[Anonymous No.11271900]

>>11266165
>The universe is deterministic
Dumbdumb

[Anonymous No.11272297]

It inevitably leads to fatalism

[Anonymous No.11272627]

>>11266255
But nature is literally a god. It's a blind idiot god but it fits the definition.