Whateverist
Active Member
I sometimes get grief from Christians for saying I do not think God can be a being in its own right or anything like a human. To my mind, doing so seeks to give honor to God but actually exalts ourselves beyond our merit.
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Do all Pan-ists hold "God" as a placeholder name for something beyond our reckoning, as I do?
- Thread starter Whateverist
- Start date
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
I personally don't.
But, I do admit that there are things beyond our reckoning. And, if I have my Spinozist hat on at a given moment, I might agree that those "unreckonable things" are a part of God. But I want to say that even the "reckonable" things are God if I might be allowed to be a saccharine pantheist for a moment. "The moon, the stars, and the sun," for example.
(I feel like I gotta quote Lennon 'cause I don't want to keep bringing up Thoreau and Walt Whitman.)
But, I do admit that there are things beyond our reckoning. And, if I have my Spinozist hat on at a given moment, I might agree that those "unreckonable things" are a part of God. But I want to say that even the "reckonable" things are God if I might be allowed to be a saccharine pantheist for a moment. "The moon, the stars, and the sun," for example.
(I feel like I gotta quote Lennon 'cause I don't want to keep bringing up Thoreau and Walt Whitman.)
ChieftheCef
Well-Known Member
I now say the goddess because I have been able to argue that god is a hermaphrodite
I see God as the totality of all things, including the forces, so I would say God is beyond our reckoning. Everything reckoning and unreckoning on an individual level is only an aspect of God.
Absolutely Frank
Member
I only use God in discussion (especially with my fellow Christians because most of them just aren't there yet) and yeah has a placeholder when I am doing some theology but in practice, contemplation and prayer I use phrases like the All in All because it brings me closer to the All
endlessvoid2018
*Banned*
Depends on the way it is used. I like to more so consider a "higher power."
Absolutely Frank
Member
Cognitively so do I. I don't even like to describe the All in All but internally I see the higher power
endlessvoid2018
*Banned*
I am a believer in the concept if there is anything that does exist that could be called "god," or a "higher power," they are impersonal and do not act outside the laws of nature. Perhaps god isn't anything like a person as suggested by the world's religions.
personally, this is the only plausible way I could see god existing in one way or another.
I'm very interested in all those Pan-isms. I particularly like Panendeism and Pandeism.
personally, this is the only plausible way I could see god existing in one way or another.
I'm very interested in all those Pan-isms. I particularly like Panendeism and Pandeism.
ChieftheCef
Well-Known Member
I think the winner for name of the thing we're talking about is the All in All because that's actually what we're talking about when non-Christians say God usually
endlessvoid2018
*Banned*
"Totality of all possible worlds," as suggested by modal Panentheism is a good one.
Whateverist
Active Member
Agreed.
I do not think our understanding of the laws of nature is conclusive regarding what something we might refer to as a higher power can or cannot do. In saying that I'm not imagining a causal agent anything like us but rather something all inclusive which brings everything else into being. What it can or can't do is not delimited by our powers of explanation or imagination. Trying to pin it down to fit what we can understand is pointless IMO.
Balthazzar
N. Germanic Descent
I don't know, but the universe is pretty big and what we know and understand about it is extremely limited. I've thought that perhaps, the universe could possibly be one of us on a much larger scale, living in a world not unlike our own, only monumentally larger in scope. I typically, simply view it (the universe) as the all-encompassing and supreme authority over life as we know it, whether it is less or more like us than we imagine is irrelevant, imo.
Whateverist
Active Member
I assume the universe encompasses being like us by way of also being us but it is also like everything else by virtue of also being everything else.
Whateverist
Active Member
My sense of God is pretty new and was instigated not by thinking I suddenly had reasons to think such a being exists but from thoughts about how a purely material universe gives rise to us and Shakespeare and Bach's fugues and so much more.
Basically I conceive of God as the fount of all that becomes. All beings and things are the forms of what has already become. I think of God as the unity from which the many come. To me that seems like quite enough. I don't think of God as an engineer or top down manager.
Basically I conceive of God as the fount of all that becomes. All beings and things are the forms of what has already become. I think of God as the unity from which the many come. To me that seems like quite enough. I don't think of God as an engineer or top down manager.
ChieftheCef
Well-Known Member
No, reality is alive, and it's all nothing
But think of it like a cup. A cup is not a cup, nor a conception of cup. It is what it is.
Has to not act outside of Nature's laws. EVerything is nature, even behind the universes, which is nothing.
In a way, I guess. It is everything at once including all people
God, The Supreme God, The ANimating FOrce, whathave you is real, it's the Quatum Field which compose all of everything the universes
Check out my version of panism in a free form peom I wrote (I'm finishing it now, I'll link it here if you reply to this
Whateverist
Active Member
I think you are addressing @endlessvoid2018 here but I have to say I think people underestimate nature, the ‘animating force’ as you suggest. But I don’t know why you emphasize the universe being nothing. Seems both real and substantial to me. But I also think “God” is perhaps best imagined as a quantum field, though I am tempted to add “with agency”.
endlessvoid2018
*Banned*
You are overthinking it.
ChieftheCef
Well-Known Member
No, both of you and anyone else holding the view
Ah hah! It is yet we are made of small points, attachments of these points to the points that all amount to and add up to the quantum foam, nothing. These points are mostly spacious, as are the points making them. Everything is a spectrum of nothingness to not truly somethingness, it is all mostly composed of void. We are a vast interdependent network of relations
Whateverist
Active Member
I'm no physicist but it seems wrong to see quanta and nothing as equivalent. I agree that materiality isn't everything but it is something. More importantly neither atoms nor points are the building blocks of everything. Perhaps it makes no sense to ask of everything "what are the underlying parts" as if everything could be understood as caused from below.
Whateverist
Active Member
I'm far more likely to underthink than over think. I don't try to settle very much on the strength of brute thinking. My preference is reflection and passive recognition occasionally stirred with a measure of imagination.