What Is Pantheism?
Pantheism is a nonsense. It worships the creation,
but denies a creator. It says we can see a divine nature in creation,
but we aren't allowed to see the maker. God said that nature, the
earth and the cosmos are indeed proof that He exists because he made
them and that no-one can
therefore have any excuse for saying He doesn't exist, but of course,
pantheists reckon that doesn't apply to them. They even quote bible
verses (out of context) to support their beliefs. How hypocritical is that? The most glaring problem with pantheism is that it fails to adequately account for the reality of evil and suffering. If "all is god and god is all" as pantheists teach, then there are no distinctions between good and evil. Pantheism also leads to moral relativism — a denial of ethical absolutes. Moral solutions in pantheism amount to what feels good subjectively, not what is right before a holy and transcendent God. Moreover, since God is at best an impersonal force like in the Star Wars movies, pantheism leaves no room for a personal relationship. Pantheism also concludes that human beings are divine. If all is god and god is all, then human beings are god too, right? I don't think so. Pantheism also fails to account for the evidence of a theistic God and for the evidence of Christ and His claims. In short, if Christian theism is true, then pantheism is false. Below is a description of pantheism written by a pantheist for your information. It is a totally flawed and anti-Christian belief system. It's like having a wife serve her husband a delicious mouth watering meal after spending hours preparing it, and then seeing him get on his knees in front of the plate and worshiping the food while ignoring her. I'd prefer to give credit to my wife for a great meal, and I prefer to give credit to God for the wonders of nature. My two cents worth .... Keygar! |
Pantheism has two central tenets:
The cosmos is divine.
The earth is sacred.
When we say the cosmos is divine, we mean it with just as much conviction,
emotion and commitment as believers when they say that their god is God.
But we are not making a vague statement about an invisible being who is beyond
proof or disproof. We are talking about our own emotional responses to the real
universe and the natural earth.
When we say "That tree is beautiful," we are not saying anything about the tree
in itself, but about the way we feel we must respond to the tree. We are talking
about the relationship between us and the tree.
In the same way, if we say THE UNIVERSE IS DIVINE we are making a statement
about the way our senses and our emotions force us to respond to the
overwhelming mystery and power that surrounds us. We are saying this:
We are part of the universe. Our earth was created from the universe and will
one day be reabsorbed into the universe.
We are made of the same matter as the universe. We are not in exile here: we are
at home. It is here and nowhere else that we can see the divine face to face. If
we erect barriers in our imagination - if we believe our real home is not here
but in a land that lies beyond death - if we believe that the divine is found
only in old books, or old buildings, or inside our head - then we will see this
real, vibrant, luminous world as if through a glass darkly.
The universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. It is deep and old beyond
our ability to reach with our senses. It is beautiful beyond our ability to
describe in words. It is complex beyond our ability to fully grasp in science.
We must relate to the universe with humility, awe, reverence, celebration and
the search for deeper understanding - in other words, in many of the ways that
believers relate to their God.
When we say THE EARTH IS SACRED, we mean it with just as much commitment and
reverence as believers speaking about their church or mosque, or the relics of
their saints. But we are not making a statement about the supernatural. We are
saying this:
We are part of nature. Nature made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed
into nature. We are at home in nature and in our bodies. This is where we
belong; this is where we must find and make our paradise, not in some spirit
world on the other side of the grave. If nature is the only paradise, then
separation from nature is the only hell. When we destroy nature, we create hell
on earth for other species and for ourselves.
Nature is our mother, our home, our security, our peace, our past and our
future. We should treat natural things and habitats as believers treat their
temples and shrines, as sacred - to be revered and preserved in all their
intricate and fragile beauty.
The dominant religions describe their gods in many ways: mysterious, awesome,
all-powerful, omnipresent, transcendent, infinite, eternal. These descriptions
are not simply projections of human characteristics. The traditional attributes
of God are based on the real properties of the universe (see The real divine
attributes.)
When theists worship gods, they unknowingly worship the cosmos. If they believe
that God is also present in nature and the universe, they will perceive a part
of the glory of Being, yet still they will attribute this glory to something
beyond Being. Still they will fail to connect with nature and the universe in
the deep intense way that pantheism makes possible.
But theists who believe that God is separate from the universe separate
themselves from Reality. They turn their deepest attention away from the real
divinity before their eyes, towards an imaginary divinity inside their head. It
veils Reality like a thick mist. It turns believers into sleepwalkers.
Ritual, meditation and mysticism
Pantheist religious practice serves many purposes:
It establishes connection with the divine reality.
It expresses our reverence for nature and the universe.
It strengthens our understanding of the tight links between self, nature and
cosmos.
It helps us to see human life as part of the natural cycle.
It celebrates the beauty of nature and the universe.
It strengthens our beliefs.
It provide mental support at times of stress.
It provides mutual social support in our beliefs.
It offers a daily therapy.
Pantheistic ceremonies are similar to pagan ones. We
celebrate special moments of powerful connection between ourselves and nature,
between ourselves and the dynamic solar system. We celebrate the daily rising
and setting of the sun, the monthly phases of the moon and tides, the annual
solar cycle of the solstices and equinoxes. When skies are clear, we also
celebrate the annual showers of shooting stars, the Perseids and the Geminids.
We can also establish connection with Being independently of ritual, through
pantheistic meditation. The mystical experience has common features across all
religions. At its core is the experience of passing beyond the self and of
uniting with the divine. But the experience is often said to be difficult to
achieve and to maintain.
Mystical union is more accessible through pantheism. The process does not depend
on imagination or mood. It is simple to understand, open to all, and repeatable.
Mystical union with Reality consists in total abandonment of consciousness to
the sensory experience of nature or material reality. The self becomes simply
the vehicle for the self-awareness of reality. The self is transcended, and
re-united with the whole of which it is part.
It is a charged and direct experience of the matter of which we are made, an
experience of grounding and connection with the whole.
It can be achieved under a clear sky full of stars and galaxies, or by a forest
stream. It can be experienced beside a pond ruffled by wind, or in front of a
lit candle. It can be felt while holding a granite pebble or a piece of birch
bark.
It can be achieved at any time, by any person. It requires no arduous training,
and it never leaves behind that feeling of misery and dejection which so many
mystics felt when they lose `connection' with the imaginary God inside their
head.
Ethical foundations.
All religions act as backing to ethical systems, often through the threat of
hell, or the promise of heaven. They foster the good, not for its own sake, but
in the hope of gaining rewards or avoiding punishment.
Pantheism begins as a statement about our relationship with Reality. However, it
leads on to an ethic and a politic. The ethic is based on the premise that the
principal good in human life is to connect with the cosmos, with nature, and
with other humans, through knowledge, love and loving action. Everything that
furthers that connection, in oneself and in others, is good. Everything that
hinders it, is bad.
Certain strong emotions are obstacles to connection. Among these the foremost is
anxiety. Anxiety has many sources: emotional insecurity, from the absence or
withdrawal of love; economic insecurity, from poverty and from loss of
livelihood; physical insecurity, from disease, disaster, environmental
catastrophe or violence. In different ways, obsessive anger and envy can also
make connection with the cosmos impossible.
We must find ways of controlling these emotions in ourselves. This can be done
through pantheistic meditation and through contact with nature. These help us
keep our own problems in perspective. They remind us that whatever we suffer,
whatever we lose, one thing can never be taken from us: we are always and
inseparably part of an immense whole.
And we must help work towards social and political conditions which reduce them
in others. This means the encouragement of stable, loving families and caring
Communities; an end to poverty; equitable distribution of income and work; and
the peaceful resolution of disputes through true democracy and real
participation.
Pantheism and environmental ethics.
Pantheism provides the strongest possible support for environmental ethics.
Most Eastern and native religions are very concerned with kindness to animals
and conservation of nature.
But the three leading Western religions, all deriving from ancient Palestine,
are much less favourable to environmental action. In the Old Testament God
handed the earth to Adam and Eve for them to use everything in it. That
obviously doesn't mean we should abuse it to the point of self-destruction, but
it does mean that Nature is put there only for humans and has no rights of her
own. Judaism and Islam both contain some environmental guidance and wisdom, but
not as central tenets of the faith, not as commandments or conditions for
entering heaven.
Christianity says even less about our duty to care for the environment. Jesus,
St Paul and other writers and speakers quoted in The New Testament say
absolutely nothing. Instead the New Testament paints a lurid picture of God
himself burning up the earth in order to create a new one.
In pantheism concern about the natural world is central. Pantheists regard the
natural world as sacred, like a temple. Just as believers do everything they can
to keep a temple pristine and beautiful, pantheists are obliged to do everything
they can to preserve the diversity of life, and to help other people to connect
with nature.
We must preserve as much as we can of the richness of species. That means not
just preserving species against total extinction - it is small consolation to
know that skylarks still exist somewhere, if I can never hear them in the fields
near my home. We must make sure that as many species as possible survive in as
many places as possible. We must preserve as many natural habitats as possible,
and restore habitats that have been destroyed. And of course we must stop
polluting the air and the oceans, threatening wider ecosystems and the whole
planet. That will mean many changes in Western lifestyles, production methods,
energy, transport, waste disposal, taxation and so on.
Everyone has a need to see nature on a daily basis, and everyone has the right
to access to some natural area, even if it is only a small natural park. We must
create natural areas in cities or neighbourhoods that have none.
Connection demands easy access to the universe, too. Yet as the world urbanizes,
the radiance of the night sky is misted over with light streaming upwards from
unshaded street lamps. We need campaigns to end light pollution of our night
skies, so we can see them in their full splendor again. We need a massive
increase in the number of large telescopes, with free public access.
Natural death.
Belief in some kind of life after death is almost universal in human societies.
In the ancient mediterranean, the afterlife was thought to be a grim and ghostly
half-life under the ground. Belief in a heaven far better than the present world
emerged later, usually in the wake of famine, plague, or war.
Belief in heaven is not helpful in our attempts to preserve this world. If
heaven exists, then there is always another, better world awaiting us, even if
we completely destroy the earth. Even if there is a heaven, it would be better
for earth if we did not believe in it.
Belief in an apocalyptic end to the world, common to Christianity and Islam, is
more dangerous. If God himself will one day roll up the heavens like a scroll
and rain fire down on the earth, as Jesus, Mohammed and the Old Testament
prophets all predicted, then why should we struggle to preserve it? Some
fundamentalists believe that the environmental destruction we are creating is
actually God's way of bringing about his plan for the end of the world.
We should not hate death. Death is indispensable to nature. If there were no
death there could no birth either, and new individuals with different
combinations of genes must be born if species are to keep adapting to their
changing environment.
Death is the price we pay for the miracles of love and birth and childhood. If
there were no death, the risk of over-population would mean that none of us
could ever have children.
Death is not something we should fear. When we are alive, we are not dead. When
we are dead, we are aware of nothing. So it's only the brief transition between
life and death that poses a problem. We cannot live our whole lives in the
shadow of such a short moment. To live in fear of death is to die a living
death.
Pantheism can free us from fear. Our bodies are part of nature and part of
matter. For the brief span of our lives we have been separated from the whole.
At our death we are re-united with nature and the cosmos, and the matter of our
bodies is recycled into new life. During the process of dying we should relax
into this realization. It is far more calming than to worry whether we are
headed for heaven or eternal torment - or whether we'll be reborn as a cockroach
or a king.
Natural forms of burial are of great importance to pantheists. We prefer to be
buried in special natural places such as woods, where our bodies can be recycled
into plants and trees. Such a prospect bears no terrors - indeed for those who
love nature it is even comforting. Pantheists should group together to create
natural burial grounds, taking care not to destroy any natural habitats while
doing so.
Other natural deaths include burial at sea, or cremation in a simple casket and
dispersal of the ashes in nature.
Mortal immortality.
Many people hanker after some kind of personal survival after death. But we must
find a realistic approach, one that is compatible with the evidence. And the
evidence is that our minds are not separate from our bodies and do not survive
after death. The testimony of people who have returned from spells of apparent
death are not evidence, since none of them actually died.
Yet we can hope for a kind of personal survival - survival through the creations
and memories we leave behind ourselves in the real world.
First, descendance. Most people leave children and grandchildren, who carry
forward their genes and characteristics. Lineage links the present with past and
future, so that time becomes not just a succession of isolated moments, but a
continuum. Lineage ultimately links all human beings back to a common ancestor
group, and may link all living beings on earth back to a common species of
origin.
Second, remembrance. Most people are remembered after their death. The frequency
and degree of affection with which they are remembered depends on their kindness
to others. This remembrance should be enshrined in tradition, as in East and
South East Asia. Once a year on the date of a person's death or birth, their
descendants should take out an image of them and celebrate their memory.
Third inheritance - the passing down of treasured possessions linked to a
person's memory: a favourite walking stick, a school sports prize, a fossil
collected.
Fourth, achievement. A person's good deeds and accomplishments live after them,
in some cases for a very long time. The greater the achievement, the longer the
survival.
These forms of `real-life afterlife' add up to a kind of survival which would
satisfy most people. They would almost certainly stimulate greater kindness and
consideration, better efforts to improve the world and to preserve nature, than
the selfish hope of heaven. The God of Christianity can forgive a lifetime of
destructive egotism even on the deathbed. The tribunal of descendants, and of
the natural world, will not.
The unity of religion and science.
In scientific pantheism science and religion are one.
Science is inherently materialist. It always seek material explanations. It
never accepts as an explanation that some spiritual force was at work - if it
did, then science and technology would come to an end. Disease was once thought
to be caused by witchcraft. Science gave it a material explanation which allowed
us to control it. Magnetism at one time seemed like a spiritual force - Thales
of Miletus thought that magnets were full of spirits. But then science provided
a material explanation.
In the same way scientific pantheism believes that everything that exists is
matter or energy in one form or another. Nothing can exist, be perceived, or act
on other things if it is not matter or energy. That does not mean that spiritual
phenomena or forces cannot exist. It means that, if they do, they must in fact
be material.
In scientific pantheism, science becomes a part of the religious quest: the
pursuit of deeper understanding of the Reality of which we are all part, deeper
knowledge about the awe-inspiring cosmos in which we live, deeper knowledge of
nature and the environment, so that we can better preserve the earth's wealth of
natural diversity.
In scientific pantheism, cognitive openness - listening to reality, to new
evidence, to all the evidence, to other people's needs and feelings - becomes a
sacred duty in all aspects of life from science to politics to domestic life
(see What's scientific about scientific pantheism?)
Of course, we cannot say that science endorses pantheism. Many religions today
state their beliefs in ways that no-one can disprove, so they can and do
co-exist with science.
But scientific pantheism positively thrives on science. scientific discoveries
continually underline the wonder and the mystery of Being, the immensity of the
universe, and the complexity of nature. They can never undermine these, because
the ultimate mystery of existence, the overwhelming awe of its presence, remains
impenetrable, and will always remain so.
Unity of religion and aesthetics.
Scientific pantheism opens the door to another union, between religion,
aesthetics - the appreciation of form - and art.
There is a resonance between the form of the physical universe, or of nature,
and our aesthetic faculties. That resonance is based the unity of self and
world. We are made of the same stuff as the cosmos, on the same patterns as the
rest of nature.
Musical harmonies are relationships of simple numbers. We enjoy them because the
atoms, nuclei and electrons we are made of are related by simple numbers.
We respond to natural forms because we are part of nature. We respond to
physical and cosmic forms like those on these pages because we are part of the
material universe.
Aesthetics is the sensory and intellectual response to the divinity of Being.
Religion is the emotional and ethical response. Science is the cognitive and
manipulative response.
Human art can never rival the fantastic images we find in nature, or those we
see on the cosmic or the microcosmic scale through telescopes or microscopes.
This realization should give a new stimulus and a new raison-d'�tre to art.
Art should celebrate the divine cosmos and the sacred earth.
Why traditional religion is not suited to the Third Millennium.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a
child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. [Paul, I
Corinthians, 13.11]
We live in a world aware as never before of the vast reaches of the cosmos, of
the immense variety of species on earth, and of the links between things at all
levels. We live in an urban and industrial world based on science, technology
and the rapid exchange of information.
Yet the major religions that dominate the world today developed among agrarian
and pastoral peoples, in times when superstition was rife. Times when the sun
was thought to revolve around the earth, and the stars were just holes in a
roof.
Following ancient agrarian religions in a post-industrial age has severe
drawbacks.
First, their ethical schemes are not adapted to the challenges of the modern
world. As we have seen, no major Western religion gives powerful backing to
environmental action. The scriptures of all Western religions give support, in
varying degrees, to those who wish to resist women's equality.
Second, they often require beliefs in events which common experience and science
tell us are impossible, and sometimes in dogmas that defy logic. They force us
to divide our minds in two. In our everyday practical lives we are as wily as
foxes, continually investigating, experimenting, finding solutions, checking out
the evidence.
But in the religious area of our lives we are as gullible as infants. We believe
things which defy experience and science - miracles, resurrections, divine or
angelic voices, saviours from the sky. Indeed some people seem ready to believe
almost anything.
This religious area is of central importance to most people. It governs the most
important passages of our lives, from birth, through adolescence, to marriage,
parenthood and death. It governs our expectations about death and life after
death.
But the schism between reason and religion is dangerous. The religious area
helps to shelter or incubate other, political or racial kinds of unreason and
other refusals to confront reality and evidence. We need to end the divide. We
need a fully rational religion that is open to reality and evidence. That
religion is pantheism.
Why do we need religion at all?
Why not simply abandon religion in favour of science?
Because science alone cannot satisfy our deeper needs.
In an urban world, where isolation is so common, we need to believe in something
greater than ourselves. Something less divisive than our ethnic or national
identity. Something more encompassing than our fragmented neighbourhoods.
Something more enduring than our frantic global marketplace.
We need a source of value and meaning in life. Science explains things - but it
cannot endow things with value or meaning. Indeed some scientists couch their
explanations - especially of life or mind - in a way that diminishes value or
meaning. Yet people are not happy to be reduced to mere mechanisms, or the
servants of blindly selfish genes. Nor are these descriptions scientifically
accurate.
We need a deeper grounding for our moral systems. Science deals with facts, not
with ethics. Many philosophers have tried to devise ethical systems based on
enlightened self-interest. But if self-interest is to rule the day, the
temptation of unenlightened self-interest will always be powerful.
Although some animals like elephants seem to be aware of the death of others in
their family, we humans are probably the only animals aware of our own impending
death. We need a way of coping with death, and a hope that at least part of us
may live on beyond our death.
We must seek some way of satisfying these deeper needs which traditional
religions try to satisfy.
Yet at the same time we must retain all the rigor of the scientific approach. We
must never depart from reason and evidence. We must never lose sight of the real
world of experience. When our era was young, we believed as children believe and
thought as children thought. Now we are adults, it is time to put away childish
things. It is time to adopt a religion that satisfies our religious needs, that
embraces the space age, that fully supports our love of nature and our efforts
to preserve the earth. That religion is pantheism. If you love nature, if you
love the night sky, if you see divinity in all natural things, then you are a
pantheist.
I think the Bible verse which best describes pantheism and where it leads is: "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Proverbs chapter 14 verse 12 ... Keygar |
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