I know a lot of people on the board are atheists, but has anyone checked out these two things?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 03:00PM by fidget.

I guess I'm sort of a pantheist. Don't have much background in life sciences, but I have a feeling of awe when I am observing or interacting with any living thing. My world view does not have a marketing division, so I don't try to sell it. Last time I tried to explain it to a doctor (I was in E.R. in bad shape) I got a 5150 (California - 72 hour psych evaluation hold) so I have learned not to go into detail.

The reason my wife says she married me - Many years ago she came to work in the engineering organization where I was. On the second day she found a mega spider in her desk drawer. I caught it in a cup and took it outside, released it in the landscaping. She asked me why I didn't do the typical guy thing and smack it. I told her that the spider didn't need smacking it, it needed to go outside where it could catch some insects.

Really a doctor put you on psych hold? That's crazy.

fidget Wrote:
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> Really a doctor put you on psych hold? That's
> crazy.

I had gotten my truck stuck on a dirt road in a remote canyon. I use crutches and suffer chronic pain. It took me 24 hours to crawl out of there, was in ER with dehydration, rhabdo, on morphine. Dr. said "I hope I can save your kidneys." I offered to sign a DNR if it would help his batting average. My attempt at humor. He said "I don't think you understand the severity of the situation." I told him "eventually everybody dies of something."

He decided I was in morbid depression and 5150'd me.

I have an interest in panentheism.

fidget Wrote:
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> I know a lot of people on the board are atheists,
> but has anyone checked out these two things?

Depends upon what is meant by pantheism, I suppose.

It can be as simple as animism -- the idea that "spirits"
inhabit every rock and tree.

Or, it can be as profound as Neoplatonistic philosophy.

On thing is for sure -- if any variety of pantheism has
validity, then we can no longer blame some remote god
for the bad things in the cosmos. For, according to one
version of pantheism, YOU would be to balme, because
YOU are God.

An interesting passage from Herman Melville's Moby Dick:


...turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set... In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant, the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep... There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor.... I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there... Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I -- being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude -- how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders...

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient interest in the voyage... But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect... lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

http://sidneyrigdon.com/criddle/Smith-ConMan.htm#Sec06a

Uncle Dale

I have no idea what any of those two things are, but if there is dueling involved, I am so there.

forbiddencokedrinker Wrote:
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> I have no idea what any of those two things are,
> but if there is dueling involved, I am so there.


.. I hope it's sorta like 'duel pianists'....
am I close?

You don't understand. Dueling is the perfect institution. It kills off all the right people, self inflated jerks with anger issues.

Just don't get "pianist envy" when you look someone elses ebony and ivory:)

>am I close?

More like "Duel at Diablo," with Bret Maverick
playing both roles....

... and "Diablo" being God -- and Garner being God --
and all that beautiful Utah scenery in the movie
background being God -- and the popcorn you're
eating, as you watch the gunplay being God...

UD

But under the idea that all the faces of the god/goddess are one. If you want more details on that notion, you can find the info in nearly any neo-paganism book or site.

I'm a monist pantheist. Advaita vedanta.

hello Wrote:
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> I'm a monist pantheist. Advaita vedanta.

Namaskaram, hello-ji

Tat Tvam Asi!

UD

Although I'm a Spinoza fan, I'm not pantheist.

The problem with pantheism, as Schopenhauer pointed out, is that it makes everything divine, including the worst atrocities you can possibly imagine.

Still though, pantheism is definitely a step above the belief in an anthropomorphic god.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 08:18PM by archytas.

Exmormon too. Maybe I can hook you up? :-)

and make up your own version of sky daddy.

MJ Wrote:
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> and make up your own version of sky daddy.


Trouble is -- for the sincere, rigorous pantheist --
that scenario doesn't work. Because you, myself,
Adolph Whatwashisname, and Bugs Bunny are also all God.

As is the flying spaghetti monster and the kid who
begins to chew on his drooping strands of spaghetti.

The Mormon Eloheim is no more god, in that view of things,
than is a hemorrhoid excised from your backside.

Something to think about, for sure.

UD

Or any other known religion.

The OP is, IMHO looking for some version of God that makes sense to him/her.

So may people in that situation just make one up to fit whatever God needs to be.

My point being, why bother searching through the thousands of gods SOMEBODY ELSE made up and just make one up them self.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 11:16PM by MJ.

MJ Wrote:
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...
> My point being, why bother searching through the
> thousands of gods SOMEBODY ELSE made up and just
> make one up them self.


I think that is pretty much what we all do -- ranging
from those who determine that there is nothing supernatural,
to those who profess that everything is supernatural.

But a possible mental exercise for the dedicated pantheist,
would be to account for the origin of all things -- if all
things are Divine, then how do they partake of such divinity?

A possible solution would be to "make up your own God," as
the actuating principle by which all divine things share
that pantheistic divinity. A sort of self-centered apologetic.

Such a made-up-God might be analogous to the sunlight that
pours through stained-glass windows, giving them their
brightness, contrast, and photon-beams of "connection."

A crude sort of image, I suppose -- but, I just made it
up myself, on the spot -- and that is the kind of made up
God we might expect to fabricate, "that makes sense" to
somebody or another (in this case, myself).

UD

Seriously, atheism is the lack of belief in a god, so how can you claim we are making up something, anything by NOT believing?

I can just see it, "I just made up a non-belief that I don't worship!" What BS.

As for your "all things are divine" nonsense, here are some things that pantheist would believe divine:

The Holocaust
Rape
Torture
Incest
Slavery
Children starving to death
Infants with AIDS
The list goes ON, and ON, and ON...

Personally, I would think someone was SICK to think all the horrors on earth are "divine".



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2012 12:01AM by MJ.

MJ Wrote:
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> Seriously, atheism is the lack of belief in a god,
> so how can you claim we are making up something,
> anything by NOT believing?
>
> I can just see it, "I just made up a non-belief
> that I don't worship!" What BS.
>
> As for your "all things are divine" nonsense, here
> are some things that pantheist would believe
> divine:
>
> The Holocaust
> Rape
> Torture
> Incest
> Slavery
> Children starving to death
> Infants with AIDS
> The list goes ON, and ON, and ON...
>
> Personally, I would think someone was SICK to
> think all the horrors on earth are "divine".


My notion of hell, would be an existence in which all the
things you just mentioned were excluded from our experience.

A robotic cosmos, in which some unseen force prevented me
from touching a hot stove, or from pushing the nuclear
trigger that obliterated North Korea, or Manhattan.

Not that I have any desire to do such a thing -- but I'd
call that unseen force demonic, and am content to live in
a cosmos in which it does not supernaturally intrude upon
the existence we all share.

I'll take the bad with the good.

UD

Nice try, but flawed to the hilt. Pantheism is ALL INCLUSIVE. All those things that you want excluded would have to be divine in Pantheism, or it would not be pantheism.

I often think about my worries and challenges in natural settings and look for metaphors to compare and contrast my thoughts with the behavior of plants, animals, and weather.

I consider the motion and habits of living and non-living things as sources of wisdom to draw insights of experience from. Something that is not like me to empathize with and inspire an imitation in the context of whatever I am facing.

I don't really care whether I am a being in a human body or just observing creation taking place for some unknown purpose. I don't find it a very interesting or likely question to have an answer. I just wanna flourish in harmony with as much as possible of this awesome and ruthlessly unapologetic planet.

Does this make me a pantheist?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 10:06PM by Brian M.

Pantyist?

You would....lol

Sorry everyone, I guess I should have been more specific. I've always had this connection with nature. This is what I was looking at.

http://www.pantheism.net/

fidget Wrote:
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...
> I've always had this connection with nature.
...

Perhaps you ARE nature. Perhaps there is no hard and fast
dividing line between what you call yourself and what you
call all the rest of existence.

Think, for a moment, how you would appear to an observer
who could view your every moment throughout your lifetime --
as a connected series images -- across trillions of instants.

All the while the earth was spinning, and the solar system
rotating around the edge of the galaxy -- not to mention
your own many travels, twists and turns in life.

Such an "extended" view of yourself intertwines through
untold miles of space-time, touching a myriad of other
living and non-living things -- interacting with all sorts
of events and situations -- perhaps even creating offspring,
or students, or disciples....

Just an idea.

UD

You pretty much described the vision my yoga instructor projects to us during meditation...

fidget Wrote:
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> You pretty much described the vision my yoga
> instructor projects to us during meditation...


Yeah -- maybe so. The term yoga is related to the
word yoke -- as in yoking yourself to all else that is.

I like to try and visualize my body at the microscopic
level -- full of bacteria, stray cosmic rays, maybe a
virus or two, floating around.

Photons from the sun, hitting my skin, causing molecular
motion -- heat -- increased blood flow -- sunburned skin.

Sounds traveling through the environment, impacting my
eardrums, but also the whole surface of my body.

At the microscopic level, I have a difficult time, trying
to locate my "I" -- and a difficult time trying to separate
whatever is "me," from all that surrounds me -- all that
interacts with me.

UD

Ohhhhhhh yes. That. Well... I see it too. My beliefs are to prepare for my death, where my remains will be scattered within the Chesapeake Bay and I will become one with that amazing place that flows through my veins. It brings me all the peace in the world. It is a spiritual connection. I will join scores of my ancestors there and become one with its tides, flora, and life force.

That kind of stuff I do like. Very much.

MJ Wrote:
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> people that can not let go of the idea of a god
>have one last thing to cling to.

Maybe that's the way it is for some. As a little kid I
came very close to drowning -- and was unreasonably afraid
of death, all the way through kindergarten. So, yes, I
can comprehend some folks "clinging" to whatever they
imagine might exist "out there," to grab onto.

But I can also recall a long-gone girlfriend who said
she loved me, because she knew God loved her. A silly,
sappy sentiment, perhaps -- but something theistic that
rose above mindless clinging.

I never had much use for "a god" -- but am respectful of
the belief that all things are equally divine.

UD

I don't look at it as a god. I look at nature as a symphony of energy where we are all connected.

If it works for me, then is it really such a big deal?

then dismiss other peoples ideas by saying "If it works for me, then is it really such a big deal?"

You tell me why it was such a big deal that you seemed to feel the need to make it a discussion point, then dismiss my negative view of pantheism.

And just how many times have we heard Mormons claim "It works for me"? The whole "Works for me" concept can be used to justify some nasty stuff.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2012 12:27AM by MJ.

I'm not trying to dismiss your view. When you say "...that does not justify renaming it into a theism." I am saying if calling it a theism works for me, then its okay. It doesn't have to work for you.

Everyone would think it strange if I said "I bought my BF a dozen long stem farts for his birthday".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2012 12:36AM by MJ.

Whatever MJ.

It makes no sense to rename things just because "it works for us"

I'm not renaming it. There are people who look at nature as a god. The one true creator.
This conversation is pointless.

I would say the same thing to EVERYONE that tries to rename roses as farts, nature as god, or the moon as cheese.

BTW, trying to make a case by saying "lots of people..." is an appeal to popularity logical fallacy, meaning it does not make the point you seem to want it to make.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2012 12:45AM by MJ.

Pointless conversation. Thanks for hijacking my thread.