...deism is just sexed up Theism."

I disagree.

Einstein, Jung, Spinoza, Bruno, Thoreau, Emerson, Aurelius, Epicurus, Lao Tzu, Confucius and Democritus were Pantheists, not Atheists.

Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Muir, Mark Twain, Max Planck and Voltaire were Deists, not Theists.

Well, Dawkins does tend more toward sound bites than academic dissertations. I imagine he realizes that snarky comments like this would be laughed out of any undergraduate religion course, but that's not the crowd he's playing to.

What is pantheism?

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism

If everything in the universe composes an all-encompassing God, then how would the way a pantheist tries to understands the all-encompassing God (the universe) differ from how an atheist would try to understand the universe?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2015 12:42AM by thingsithink.

thingsithink Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If everything in the universe composes an
> all-encompassing God, then how would the way a
> pantheist tries to understands the
> all-encompassing God (the universe) differ from
> how an atheist would try to understand the
> universe?


Dawkins' point exactly, I believe.

posits cast iron is god.

Seriously, is atheism the ONLY thing you can talk about?! You are reeaaally starting to sound preachy here against athiesm. People arent going to change their minds or beliefs by you posting the same content OVER and OVER again. For crying out loud.

Is there a limit on free speech around here?

Lots of people might be given the impression around here that there's no other option than being an Atheist when you're an ExMo, which isn't true at all.

Lots of people are not Theists and not Atheists.

In fact 20% of Americans are Not Theists, the fastest growing religious identity since 9-11.

Only 1.6% of Americans are Atheists.

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2015 12:26AM by koriwhore.

No, but do we need five posts a day from you on the same topics: athiesm, pantheism, einstein, dawkins, and harris? Im not an admin, I have no say, and Im going to go ahead and just scroll right past any of your quotes. But seriously, I think your relentlesness is pretty obnoxious. I just had to vent.

Dont click on the threads?

Your complaint is off topic, nothing to do with his good questions, keep your complaints to yourself, when they have nothing to do with furthering free inquiry...

Her questions have been asked over and over and responded to dozens of times. I dont see how others dont see a problem with this. In the past week, she has written over a dozen posts using the same quotes from various famous people, but she really hasnt brought up any new subjects.

stupid quote flattening the distinctions between pantheism and atheism, diesm and theism.

It deserves discussion here and if you don't think so, why waste your time discussing it?

Yeah, she keeps bringing up quotes from a very few people. Nobody buys into the pantheist euphemism game.


http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

Unlike atheism, pantheism does not have enough enough adherents to rate a category.

People recognize the pantheist shell game for what it is. It is a way for atheists in an anti-atheist world to use god as a meaningless euphemism for nature. They can then use a non-theist version of the word god.

People find all sorts of ways to hide their true beliefs when society views those beliefs in such negative ways as it views Atheist.

just move along if you're not interested in a topic.

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there a limit on free speech around here?
>
> Lots of people might be given the impression
> around here that there's no other option than
> being an Atheist when you're an ExMo, which isn't
> true at all."

There, right there! Your agenda is showing. You arent inquiring, you are preaching against athiesm in a not vrry hidden round about way.

I just think it's really bizarre that so many ExMos are Atheist when only about 1.6% of the US population is Atheist, according to the latest stats I've seen on the subject.

Yes, I have heard this stat that you mention on every thread. Granted, I think your question is interesting, and one I've wondered myself. But I realize I'm not going to figure it out, because the answer is unproveable... hmm... much like god... weird.

The problem I have is you arent pointing out anything new in these threads, you are rehashing the same quotes over and over. Why not just ask people why they are athiests after leaving mormonism? Seems to me it would be more productive than quoting athiests or whatever who have never been mormon.

That to me is why you sound preachy rather than wanting to expand knowledge.

She uses numbers of Atheists to try to discredit atheism, that is clear.

Then she tries to champion pantheism.

But unlike atheism, pantheism has so few adherents, it does not even warrant its own category!


http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

If the low numbers of Atheist is some sort of negative for Atheism, the far lower numbers of Pantheists makes Pantheism worse than atheism.

It is a euphemism shell games. It is like when Mormons use the word "frack", nobody really believes they are talking about "Frack". They just look silly and immature using the Euphemism.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2015 01:36AM by MJ.

I think a survey of ExMormon religious identity is entirely possible and would be fascinating, especially as it relates to the rest of society.
I have no idea of how many ExMo's identify as Atheist/Pantheist/Agnostic/Deist/Theist, but I'd be curious to find out. According to JD, more than 50% of us are Atheist/agnostic, which would include me. But he doesn't say what survey he got that information from or what percentage are Atheist and what percentage are Agnostic.
He acts like its some kind of a tragedy that most exMormons don't just sign up for another religion after being burned by Joseph's Myth. I don't know that it is a tragedy, but I wonder if ExMormons are more anti social and antagonistic towards 'others" than they were as Mormons.

There IS a limit of free speech on this discussion board because its a PRIVATE discussion board. See the board's "General Guidelines."

Another point is that unaffiliated does not necessarily mean non theistic. You can believe in God and not identify with a specific religion. People do it all the time.

Nobody really cares if you disagree. Few if any really believe in Pantheism. At least atheism rates a spot on the poll!

If we want to rename God to be whatever we want, the word God becomes meaningless.

There are so few pantheists they do not even rate being listed.

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

Yeah, you can find some people that believe, but it still does not even register among the general population.

Pantheism just give an out for Atheists that do not want to be known as atheist in an anti-atheist world. They can then use the word "god" interchangeably with nature making the use of the word "god" to have the meaning of nature and not the meaning of any theistic God.

It is simply redefining God to make the word God meaningless. Might as well call my friend's Dog Denver god for all the meaning pantheists attribute to God.

Pantheism is to religion what Josh Weed is to gay marriage.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2015 01:28AM by MJ.

MJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nobody really cares if you disagree. Few if any
> really believe in Pantheism. At least atheism
> rates a spot on the poll!

There may be more Pantheists out there, but in our increasingly irreligious society, where people concoct their own belief systems "cafeteria style," they be Pantheists/pantheistic without knowing (or caring about) the term.

>
> If we want to rename God to be whatever we want,
> the word God becomes meaningless.

Don't overlook "Monism," the doctrine that all existing things are "God." Pantheism is that there is a distinct spiritual entity existing within each thing. In Pantheism, humans can (purportedly) relate appeal to individual tree spirits, animal spirits, nature spirits, etc. Anthropologists used to call these "primitive religions;" now they're called "primal."

>
> Yeah, you can find some people that believe, but
> it still does not even register among the general population.
>
They can then use the word "god"
> interchangeably with nature making the use of the
> word "god" to have the meaning of nature and not
> the meaning of any theistic God.

In previous generations, distinctions were crafted with great intellectual rigor. There was serious debate between the explicit Christians and the Deists of Jefferson's stripe about how to invoke Divinity. They finally compromised on using the phrase "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence.
>
> It is simply redefining God to make the word God
> meaningless. Might as well call my friend's Dog
> Denver god for all the meaning pantheists
> attribute to God.

For the Pantheist, "I'm God, you're God, Denver's God,* the tree is God, the worm, the rock, the river..." I call Pantheism the "participation trophy for divinity."
>

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For the Pantheist, "I'm God, you're God, Denver's
> God,* the tree is God, the worm, the rock, the
> river..." I call Pantheism the "participation
> trophy for divinity."
> >


That's a very funny line.

I think that many today may be gravitating toward Panentheism. This still allows for a separate somewhat nebulous divinity, and plays well with the "God is in each of us" crowd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion#Overall_statistics

Buddhism, Confuscism, Taoism, Chinese Folk religions, Native American and African Folk religions, Paganism, Sikhism, Jainism, Shinto, and Zoroastrianism are all pantheist religions.

All the other religions have elements of pantheism also, some more than others.

Um, what does a list of people who declared themselves one thing or another do for "reasons" for your disagreement?

Those people were probably what they said. Their reasons were probably varied and personal. That has nothing whatsoever to do with Dawkins' statement, or your disagreement with it.

It's not just individuals, there are elements of Pantheism in almost all forms of religion.

"Philosopher Michael Levine has said that there may be more pantheists than theists worldwide.:p.14 There are elements of pantheism in some forms of Christianity, Islam (Sufism), Buddhism, Judaism, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, and Theosophy as well as in several tendencies in many theistic religions.
The Islamic religious tradition, in particular Sufism and Alevism, has a strong belief in the unitary nature of the universe and the concept that everything in it is an aspect of God itself, although their perspective, like many traditional perspectives, may lean closer to panentheism.
Many other traditional and folk religions including African traditional religions and Native American religions:p.67 can be seen as pantheistic, or a mixture of pantheism and other doctrines such as polytheism and animism. A variety of modern paganists also hold pantheistic views."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism#Pantheism_in_religion



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2015 03:17PM by koriwhore.

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's not just individuals, there are elements of
> Pantheism in almost all forms of religion.

That's nice. Dawkins isn't religious.
And that still doesn't clarify why YOU "disagree" with him.

A common thread I've seen in all your posts: you seem to want to let other people do your thinking for you, or at least use them as "see, I'm right" examples. Appeals to both popularity and authority aren't really good arguments, you know...

This is getting really tiring and a waste of bandwidth and is totally preaching.

If koriwhore wants to go set up her church of Sam Harris, let her; oh wait there's already a church that has all of her ideal, philosophy, etc... It's call the Unitarians.

Preaching on non-existent spirits, whether human or god have no place on a recovery board from any religion; whether recovering from mormonism, jehovah witness, scientology, etc...

I am with those who are sick of the subject,but I do believe Koriwhore is a guy.

I did a google search on koriwhore and the name is used on several boards and a blog as a girl... and surprise! She posts on the same topic everywherw.

If everything is god, then the word loses its meaning. I agree with Dawkins.

To have a god you need to have something that is not a god. It's a pretty simple formula, no?