I've been threatening to start a thread on pantheism (a subject that fascinates me intensely and has for a long time) for a while now. One thing that held me back slightly was where to put it - the Christian topic is obviously out; Ethics and Freethought perhaps not
quite right ... Since for some there can be a certain amount of overlap between pantheism and paganism (and because posts on the Pagan topic are always welcome, IMHO), the Pagan topic it is, although I'm more than happy for it to be moved if Ver Management think it would be more appropriate elsewhere.
*
The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a long entry on pantheism which typically covers a great deal of ground in great depth. As far as a working definition is concerned, it states:
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.
However, given the complex and contested nature of the concepts involved, there is insufficient consensus among philosophers to permit the construction of any more detailed definition not open to serious objection from some quarter or other. Moreover, the label is a controversial one, where strong desires either to appropriate or to reject it often serve only to obscure the actual issues, and it would be a sad irony if pantheism revealed itself to be most like a traditional religion in its sectarian disputes over just what counts as ‘true pantheism.’ Therefore pantheism should not be thought of as a single codifiable position. Rather it should be understood as a diverse family of distinct doctrines; many of whom would be surprised — and, indeed, disconcerted—to find themselves regarded as members of a single household. Further, since the concept has porous and disputed boundaries there is no clear consensus on just who qualifies, no definitive roll-call of past pantheists. Given this situation the range of things that may be usefully said about all pantheisms is perhaps limited, but nonetheless a variety of concepts may be clarified, the nature of contentious issues explored, and the range of possible options more precisely mapped out.
(1)
A simpler, less ponderous definition comes from
www.naturepantheist.org:
The word Pantheism comes from two Greek words "pan" = all + "theos" = god. In Pantheism, "all is god."
Many Pantheists define "god" as Nature and its creative forces. God and Nature are one and the same.
In contrast, many Monotheists (from "mono" = one+ "theos" = god) define "god" as a supernatural individual. God and Nature are separated.
(2)
And then of course there is a very long Wikipedia article on the subject, of which this is the capsule definition:
Pantheism is the belief that the Universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god
(3)
Pantheism shouldn't be confused with panentheism, which is a wholly distinct concept:
Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Ancient Greek πᾶν pân, "all", ἐν en, "in" and Θεός Theós, "God"), also known as Monistic Monotheism, is a belief system which posits that the divine – whether as a single God, number of gods, or other form of "cosmic animating force" – interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly (and, presumably, spacelessly) beyond it. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains a distinction between the divine and non-divine and the significance of both.
(4)
And again:
A second important difference between pantheism and traditional theistic religions is that pantheists also reject the idea of God’s personhood. The pantheist God is not a personal God, the kind of entity that could have beliefs, desires, intentions, or agency. Unlike the traditional God of theism, the pantheistic God does not have a will and cannot act in or upon the universe. These are the kind of things that only a person, or a person-like entity, could do. For the pantheist, God is the non-personal divinity that pervades all existence. It is the divine Unity of the world.
(5)
Therefore in pantheism there is no personal, personalistic deity; God is entirely and wholly immanent - God
is Nature and vice versa; God simply
is the universe and vice versa. God is viewed not as a person, as in monotheism; there is no thing to which anyone can pray any more than one can pray to a table or a mug of coffee. God is the term that pantheists use to refer to the entirety of nature or the cosmos.
Pantheism has been a feature of a number of religions and philosophies (and those uncategorisable worldviews that seem to straddle the two) for thousands of years. Taoism is essentially pantheistic. A great many forms of native American spirituality likewise. It can be found in strands of Hinduism, and as noted at the outset, most certainly in various varieties of paganism. Of the sundry varieties of pantheism, the one that engages my interest the most is that kind most often known as naturalistic or scientific pantheism:
Naturalistic pantheism is a phrase referring to a kind of pantheism, and has been used in various ways ... The term "naturalistic" derives from the word "naturalism", which has several meanings in philosophy and aesthetics. In philosophy the term frequently denotes the view that everything belongs to the world of nature and can be studied with the methods appropriate for studying that world, i.e. the sciences. It generally implies an absence of belief in supernatural beings.
(6)
Naturalistic pantheism is the underpinning of the World Pantheist Movement, arguably the largest pantheist organisation in existence, which lists its stances in a short version:
The WPM Statement of Principles of Naturalistic Pantheism is not like most religious creeds. It is not intended to be recited by rote or read out in meetings nor is subscription to every word of the statement a requirement of joining the World Pantheist Movement or its forums.
We know that people are not zombies. Everyone has a slightly different slant on the world: if they didn't, there'd be nothing to talk about, nor would ideas advance. But people associate into social and spiritual groups because they share certain beliefs, so it is best to have a good idea of what those basic beliefs are before joining a group.
The basic concepts comprise:
Reverence for Nature and the wider Universe.
Active respect and care for the rights of all humans and other living beings.
Celebration of our lives in our bodies on this beautiful earth as a joy and a privilege.
Strong naturalism, without belief in supernatural realms, afterlives, beings or forces.
Respect for reason, evidence and the scientific method as our best ways of understanding nature and the Universe.
Promotion of religious tolerance, freedom of religion and complete separation of state and religion.
(7)
and in a longer mission statement:
1. We revere and celebrate the Universe as the totality of being, past, present and future. It is self-organizing, ever-evolving and inexhaustibly diverse. Its overwhelming power, beauty and fundamental mystery compel the deepest human reverence and wonder.
2. All matter, energy, and life are an interconnected unity of which we are an inseparable part. We rejoice in our existence and seek to participate ever more deeply in this unity through knowledge, celebration, meditation, empathy, love, ethical action and art.
3. We are an integral part of Nature, which we should cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. We should strive to live in harmony with Nature locally and globally. We acknowledge the inherent value of all life, human and non-human, and strive to treat all living beings with compassion and respect.
4. All humans are equal centers of awareness of the Universe and nature, and all deserve a life of equal dignity and mutual respect. To this end we support and work towards freedom, democracy, justice, and non-discrimination, and a world community based on peace, sustainable ways of life, full respect for human rights and an end to poverty.
5. There is a single kind of substance, energy/matter, which is vibrant and infinitely creative in all its forms. Body and mind are indivisibly united.
We see death as the return to nature of our elements, and the end of our existence as individuals. The forms of "afterlife" available to humans are natural ones, in the natural world. Our actions, our ideas and memories of us live on, according to what we do in our lives. Our genes live on in our families, and our elements are endlessly recycled in nature.
6. We honor reality, and keep our minds open to the evidence of the senses and of science's unending quest for deeper understanding. These are our best means of coming to know the Universe, and on them we base our aesthetic and religious feelings about reality.
7. Every individual has direct access through perception, emotion and meditation to ultimate reality, which is the Universe and Nature. There is no need for mediation by priests, gurus or revealed scriptures.
8. We uphold the separation of religion and state, and the universal human right of freedom of religion. We recognize the freedom of all pantheists to express and celebrate their beliefs, as individuals or in groups, in any non-harmful ritual, symbol or vocabulary that is meaningful to them.
(7)
Paul Harrison, a writer chiefly associated with pantheism, offers this commentary on naturalistic/scientific pantheism:
Why "scientific" pantheists?
Scientific pantheism is called scientific not because it claims to be a science, but because it adopts a scientific approach to reality to complement its religious and aesthetic approach:
1. It accepts the results of science, while being fully aware that science is not static, and that facts and theories change.
2. It respects empirical evidence and is based on evidence rather than faith in improbabilities and impossibilities.
3. It is based on investigation of reality rather than on revelation in ancient books.
4. It has a basically materialist paradigm, which is also the basis of science. (But see below for the definition of matter).
5. It respects Occam's razor by not multiplying unnecessary entities. Where two theories have equal predictive power, it would prefer the simpler theory.
6. It remains in principle revisable in the light of new evidence and theory.
However, scientific pantheism is not blindly uncritical of science:
6. You do not have to be a scientist, or even to know anything about science to be a scientific pantheist. All you need is a reverential attitude to nature and the universe.
7. While we rely on science and the senses for a proper understanding of the world around us, we attach great importance to spiritual aspects of life such as emotions, religious, mystical and aesthetic feelings and experiences.
8. Scientific pantheism does not believe that science will necessarily be able to explain everything in the universe. Above all, the fundamental mystery of the sheer existence of matter/energy is likely to remain impenetrable.
9. Scientific pantheism condemns the pursuit of scientific knowledge by unethical means, including cruelty to animals and experiments on humans without fully informed consent.
10. Scientific pantheism does not unthinkingly endorse the products of modern technology - in particular, it wishes to see all technology that damages the environment replaced by non-damaging technology that is sustainable indefinitely.
"Universe"
"Universe" written with a capital U means the totality of existence past, present and future. It includes the universe known to us, but also includes parts of the universe not accessible to us at present, and any parallel universes that may be shown to exist.
"Matter"
The word "matter" here is used in its philosophical sense. Matter is defined to include all physical objects, forces and fields that have been or may in the future be detected by the senses or extensions of the senses, or that may reasonably be deduced as existing by established scientific methods, procedures, and evidence.
Use of the word is not restricted to forms of matter or energy known only at the present time. And implies all the discoveries about matter of quantum mechanics. In other words, matter is not dead, matter is not mechanistic, matter is not made of hard little Newtonian balls. Matter is unpredictable, restless, vibrant, creative, mysterious.
"Matter/energy"
Matter/energy indicates that these two aspects are completely interchangeable. Matter can be seen as frozen energy, energy as liberated matter.
(7)
Pantheism is monistic in that it views the universe as composed of only one kind of stuff, the same stuff as modern physics, i.e. matter-energy, but chooses to call this 'God' to express a religiously reverent attitude and reaction toward it.
One of the most common objections to pantheism is linguistic; namely, that to use a word such as 'God' when actually referring to the totality of nature/the universe is both misleading to others and superfluous, since words already exist for those concepts. Arthur Schopenhauer said: "To call the world 'God' is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'world'."
Paul Harrison counters this by saying that for pantheists the word 'God' — the
theos in
pantheos — is appropriate to use because while it is entirely different from the
theos of monotheism,
it fulfils the same function; it is a focal point of awe, mystery, wonderment and reverence. Explaining the world is the proper business of science; pantheism is the emotional and aesthetic reaction to that endeavour. Pantheism is predicated upon an emotional reaction to and engagement with the natural world — a nature-based spirituality:
Love of nature is often associated with pantheism, but that does not seem to be a central tenet of the religion. Self-professed pantheists like Wordsworth, Whitman, and other Romantic poets certainly had a deep love of nature, but that was not necessarily the case for pantheists like Spinoza and Lao Tzu. Nevertheless, for some pantheists the idea that nature is something that inspires awe, wonder, and reverence is important. This attitude toward nature is perhaps what motivates many contemporary pantheists to identify themselves as such. It is no coincidence that there are strong ties between pantheism and the ecology movement.
(5)
This ties in with a thread started by Rhiannon on the sacred and the use of such a term outside of a traditionally theistic paradigm - what we hold to be of inherent, non-instrumental worth and of supreme value. For pantheists this is, as Spinoza (arguably the most famous pantheist ever) so often wrote,
Deus, sive Natura - "God, or Nature." Unlike almost any other kind of theism it's not a set of propositional beliefs thrown out as purportedly objective facts about reality to be proven or disproven; an emotional/aesthetic reaction to nature no more admits of 'proof' or 'disproof' than does a preference for Alien Sex Fiend over Mozart. It's a constellation of intellectual, emotional and aesthetic impulses to the stimulus of the universe, personal, personalised, individual and subjective.
The relationship between pantheism, denying as it does any transcendent, personal, personalistic deity, leaving only a natural universe of matter-energy, and atheism is complex. For some like Richard Dawkins pantheism is merely "sexed-up atheism," though this doesn’t strike me as any kind of fatal criticism since Dawkins clearly recognises pantheism as a metaphorical or poetic synonym for nature/the cosmos. Pantheism is clearly non-theistic or atheistic (depending on taste) in much the same way that Buddhism is, so from the viewpoint of traditional (mono)theism it is clearly atheistic, but with certain other features — principally the religion-esque veneration for and reverence of nature — laid on top that atheism alone generally lacks. There is a reason that Wordsworth is so often quoted by pantheists and in any discussion on pantheism and that reason is to be found in a famous passage from
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798:
… I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
To me pantheism (particularly and especially of the naturalistic/scientific kind I've outlined here) would seem to offer a place - even a home - or perhaps a vehicle for emotional and aesthetic reactions to nature without requiring any form of 'faith' or the suspension of sceptical, critical faculties, the abandonment of reason and the adoption of quite staggeringly implausible beliefs about the nature of reality. On the downside it offers no form of community other than the one(s) that one seeks out for oneself (online, perhaps); it has no "sacred texts," only certain texts - the writings of Richard Jeffries; the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and so on - interpreted as pantheistic; and it offers nothing in the way of ritual or the commemoration of life events/rites of passage - pantheism is more of a philosophy/worldview than a religion in that sense. On the other hand it fits in with the picture of reality which science has built upon empirical observation, experimentation and methodological naturalism but also offers a place for an emotional and aesthetic vocabulary that atheism alone might lack. In
Pale Blue Dot Carl Sagan wrote:
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?" Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
The same old quibbles about whether there is really any justification for the
theos in pantheism will continue, but just maybe naturalistic/scientific pantheism is that very thing.
References:
(1):
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism(2):
http://naturepantheist.org/(3):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism(4):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism(5):
http://philosophytalk.org/community/blog/laura-maguire/2015/04/pantheism(6):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_pantheism(7):
http://www.pantheism.net/manifest.htm
