Pantheism and Panentheism

[path_of_one]

Originally Posted by the breeze

This is a very interesting point because there's an assumption amongst 'spiritual' folk that any being that communicates from the 'other side' necessarily knows more than we do. Whilst I think there are differing forms of consciousness and sometimes there is info passed between these forms I'm far from convinced of the quality or usefulness of much that is related. We are perhaps too modest and certainly too gullible.

I'd entirely agree with that. Something that is so curious to me as an anthropologist is how common it is for people to completely underestimate the power and capabilities of human beings. Thus, many think rapid culture change, technological innovation, the pyramids and megalithic sites, etc. must have been facilitated, created, or whatever by alien beings. For a species that has so much imagination and diversity, it's amazing how lacking in confidence many of us are in our own species.

In terms of spirits or other non-human beings, I've communicated with what I think are various sorts of entities. My take on it is that the "other side" is more or less like "our side"- some folks know a lot, some don't know much at all, some are honest about things and some are not, some live in their own mythology and everything is filtered through that... not to mention plenty of communication and interpretation problems.

I suppose it depends on what someone wants to learn. My horse can teach me a great deal about energy awareness, living in the moment, and communicating rapidly and non-verbally. I wouldn't go to him for advice on physics, how to bake bread, or stocks to invest in. Beings from the "otherworlds" have their own lives, purposes, limitations, and wills (well, at least from my point of view) and discernment assists in figuring out how these beings could/should fit into my own life, just as the same discernment (formed of both intuition and reason) assists in figuring out how various humans could/should fit into my own life.

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by shawn

All this philosophizing is like watching children play with blocks.....move on.

Whereto?

What makes more sense as a topic for discussion for this forum area: Religion, Faith, and Theology/Belief and Spirituality?

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Actually my primary source in this is Plato and Aristotle ....

What did Plato and Aristotle have to say about G-d's capacity for absolute foreknowledge?

[Avi]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

The difficulty comes in that in terms of mythology, one can hardly distinguish between people contemplating some being with much greater intelligence and power than they and what a "god" is.

Originally Posted by dauer

I don't disagree, but Avi said that "this has nothing to do with God." It seems logical to me, for that reason, that he was intending something else.

Yes, I was diverging for a moment to consider the idea that Tao brought up:

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

To believe that an intelligence gifted us with intelligence is fanciful to say the least and there is a rock solid body of evidence to the contrary that clearly shows how intelligence evolved with no intervention.

I was observing that we really have no way of knowing whether we were gifted with intelligent by an intelligence or not. There are some interesting possibilities with respect to intelligent life both in our universe and/or in other universes.

But I think a more interesting issue, especially with respect to pantheism and panentheism is how did our intelligence evolve ?

Lets say our intelligence (and for that matter humans in general) evolved from the reactions of small molecules. For example carbon based molecules such as carbon (C), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4) and cyanide (CN). And throw in a little phosphorus, sulfur, nitrogen, iron and start cooking.

Lets say that they self assembled over billions of years to form the intelligent beings that we are.

Lets say this self assembly is based on molecular charge, size, shape, etc.

So then one must wonder, why were these particular properties of the molecules the ones which drive the evolutionary process ? And is this the foundational nature of panentheism ? Is it essentially a physics, biology and chemistry cookbook ?

[nativeastral]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

What did Plato and Aristotle have to say about G-d's capacity for absolute foreknowledge?

back to the free will conundrum? neither Plato's Idea or Form of the Good, nor the Greek gods were commensurate with the Abrahamic monotheistic God, were they? Surely the nature of assumptions. [Plato and the Existence of God]. god.pdf and one on Whitehead whiteheads concept of god ]

'Plato spoke of the endless battle between the Gods who find reality in the mind and the Giants who find reality in the perceptible world ('Sophist', 245e-246e)' Article from PHILOSOPHY PATHWAYS Issue 67


'Arguments that knowledge of future contingent events is irreconcilable with human freedom depend on the notion of foreknowledge, on someone's .knowing ahead of time what someone else will 'freely' decide to do. On the face of it, then, the concept of eternity provides a solution to the problem of foreknowledge and free will, as Boethius maintained in introducing the concept. An eternal omniscient knower will be eternally aware of all contingent events as they are occurring, including those that occur in the temporal future, but he will not foreknow them, since nothing eternal can be earlier than anything else. Consequently, arguments purporting to show that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible will not apply to eternal omniscient knowledge, which is evidently compatible with human free will.
But some philosophers have thought that eternality nonetheless fails to provide a solution to the problem of divine knowledge and human freedom, because the fixity and infallibility of divine knowledge seem enough by themselves to make God's knowledge of future contingents incompatible with free will. 'God knows in the eternal present that Paula mows her lawn in 2095' entails that Paula mows her lawn in 2095, and so God's eternal awareness of a future event seems to have the result that the event is inevitable now, before the event occurs, in a way incompatible with Paula's freedom of action. Consequently, the concept of eternity seems after all unhelpful for resolving the apparent incompatibility between divine knowledge and human freedom.'
Eternity

btw can we add Panendeism and Open theism to the mix?!

[shawn]

The panendeist site is interesting and has a good forum.
But while I see that changing 2 letters of the word may somehow be profound to certain types of people, it really is the same as panentheism.
words are made of letters which are symbols that we use to convey meaning to each other.
But the problem inherent in us people is we tend to get caught in the law of words and miss the essence of what they mean.
this extends to religion and causes a multitude of senseless and unnecessary arguments.
( Jesus even talked about this with regularity)
Why do you think that happens?

[dauer]

Shawn,

Perhaps it's possible to both acknowledge similarities between ideas while recognizing and discussing the differences between them. These two statements:

"words are made of letters which are symbols that we use to convey meaning to each other.
But the problem inherent in us people is we tend to get caught in the law of words and miss the essence of what they mean."

don't quite connect. What people are discussing is differences in meaning. You seem to be changing the context of the conversation into a discussion about whether or not we should bother looking at the differences between similar ideas at all. Maybe it would be more fruitful for you to create a thread about just that.

-- Dauer

[shawn]

So is it a distraction to you?
It seems like all the threads kind of meander all over anyway.

[nativeastral]

Originally Posted by shawn

The panendeist site is interesting and has a good forum.
But while I see that changing 2 letters of the word may somehow be profound to certain types of people, it really is the same as panentheism.
words are made of letters which are symbols that we use to convey meaning to each other.
But the problem inherent in us people is we tend to get caught in the law of words and miss the essence of what they mean.
this extends to religion and causes a multitude of senseless and unnecessary arguments.
( Jesus even talked about this with regularity)
Why do you think that happens?

an incorrigible need for distinguishing, differentiation, determination, demarcating, defining, dissecting, dividing, deducting, decreeing, deliberating, demonstrating, depicting, denoting, deriving, detecting, disprovong, diagnosing, discerning, discriminating or deconstructing for the purposes of dialectical and delightful debate,dialogue, design and discovering, or the dreadful debacle of deceit and double dealing, depreciation or destruction.
Is it desire or destiny, is it didactic or diarrhoea. We may be dualistic in our thinking and so still discussing whether or not we took a linguistic turn too far; blame it on the Word. Religion should all be about music n dancing together but it was demonised via something called revelation a long time ago and we are still living within that tradition.

[dauer]

There is a difference between meandering in a thread and repeated attempts by one individual to redirect the thread entirely because his own entrenched biases make theology and philosophy seem like a lot of unnecessary nitpicking. If conversations about theology and philosophy seem irrelevant to you, why not go create some discussion that does seem relevant elsewhere on the boards and let other people continue along lines of discussion that are more to do with the subject of this thread? I think you'll find it leads to more productive conversation if you do so.

[shawn]

Originally Posted by dauer

There is a difference between meandering in a thread and repeated attempts by one individual to redirect the thread entirely because his own entrenched biases make theology and philosophy seem like a lot of unnecessary nitpicking. If conversations about theology and philosophy seem irrelevant to you, why not go create some discussion that does seem relevant elsewhere on the boards and let other people continue along lines of discussion that are more to do with the subject of this thread? I think you'll find it leads to more productive conversation if you do so.

I see it more as one entrenched set of biases rubbing up against another set of entrenched biases.
I'll show you my truth if you show me yours.
Besides, I find that it is more productive to be a bit cheeky in the face of rarified opinionation as it causes the true colors to show.
That is far more enlightening than being forced to read pages of intellectual prattle which is just a show boat for ego's.
(*look at how smart I am as I can string together all these really big words*)

[shawn]

Originally Posted by nativeastral

an incorrigible need for distinguishing, differentiation, determination, demarcating, defining, dissecting, dividing, deducting, decreeing, deliberating, demonstrating, depicting, denoting, deriving, detecting, disprovong, diagnosing, discerning, discriminating or deconstructing for the purposes of dialectical and delightful debate,dialogue, design and discovering, or the dreadful debacle of deceit and double dealing, depreciation or destruction.
Is it desire or destiny, is it didactic or diarrhoea. We may be dualistic in our thinking and so still discussing whether or not we took a linguistic turn too far; blame it on the Word. Religion should all be about music n dancing together but it was demonised via something called revelation a long time ago and we are still living within that tradition.

You got that right nativeastral
That tradition needs a changing.

[Gatekeeper]

I apologize for breaking up the discussion, but I 'think' I may either be a pantheist or a panentheist. Maybe someone here could help categorize my views on God? Here they are in a nut shell:

Could the universe have come into existence from nothing? Nothing means absolutely NOTHING in this case, so the logical answer would be no. So, I must assume that existence has always contained "something" as itself.

Call existence God, or universe, or simply existence, it cannot be denied, as "something" called existence certainly exists. We (As living beings), and as creatures of awareness are able to recognize that "something" exists as existence.

We can think, we can comprehend physical matter, and we feel emotion. [mind - matter - spirit] so it it obvious (To me) that there are both visible and invisible aspects to existence.

Having said that, nothing can exist outside of what exists, right? All things are a part of existence. It might be said/suggested that all things are eternal in nature, also. Assuming of course that existence had no point of creation.

Everything that exists is in a state of constant motion. This includes mind, matter, and spirit. Birth, rebirth, and transformation are simply the [finite] qualities of things that exist [within] the whole of existence (This is the nature of life - Change).

If all this is true, then nothing that exists can cease to exist (Only transform). The finite parts of existence simply continue in the cycles of change within the whole.

So ...

God (To me) is both the Creator, and created. Existing both as the [eternal] aspects of existence, and as the finite [parts] of existence.

Pantheism or Panentheism, or is it something else?

GK

[path_of_one]

GK- I can't tell you, exactly. But that is very similar to how I think about it, and I call myself a panentheist.

There is some potentiality, some existence (as you call it) that has always been and that drives the becoming, the actuality, all that exists in the multiverse.

I call that God.

[wil]

Namaste GK,

Sounds pantheist. If you look them up you'll see the difference, quickly pan=G!d is everything, and Panen=G!d is in everything.

Originally Posted by path_of_one

There is some potentiality, some existence (as you call it) that has always been and that drives the becoming, the actuality, all that exists in the multiverse.

I call that God.

Now I think myself a panenthiestic Christian as I see/feel G!d in everything but am leaning away from the whole Theistic concept and somewhere between there and a nontheistic Chrisitianity.

Just to piss off the other Christians? No, just because that Sunday School Santa Clause/Thor/Michaelangelo combination of thought which dissappeared is now diminishing even more because of folks need to name what is G!d, it seems the naming, which has often been called diminishing in itself is part of the problem, it is a human need to define what is instead of basking in the wonder. Like our need to provide analogies between science and spiritualities, a need of third party verification, a need to be part of something. I'm a Christian because I am entrhalled, enamored, entranced with Jesus teachings, because the words speak to me. But the theism part....I just don't know.