>For one thing, it manages to create a profound metaphysical intimacy with God without denying His transcendence.
this kind of thinking which I often see when people express pantheistic views is exactly what turns me away from it. It's just as much of an anthropomorphization as the article accuses traditional conceptions of God of.
I guess you can think that the universe is in some vague sense conscious, although I don't think the arguments for that are great either, but to jump from this to thinking one can experience 'intimacy' with it (and explicitly not "him") is I think already making mistakes. One can experience intimacy while being in nature but not 'with nature', Intimacy is a human emotion, 'nature' does not empathize back.
To me pantheism just seems like a misapplied psychological need. People have a (understandable) revulsion against seeing the universe as mechanic, or random, or 'cold' or what have you, and pantheism not unlike Gaia type theories are comforting.
> To me pantheism just seems like a misapplied psychological need. People have a (understandable) revulsion against seeing the universe as mechanic, or random, or 'cold' or what have you, and pantheism not unlike Gaia type theories are comforting.
Pantheism is nothing more than seeing the universe, or nature, as god. What you’re reading is one particular flavor of pantheism. A pantheist can also view god, or universe, or nature, as cold and mechanical as well.
If god is the same as the (scientific) universe, calling it "god" doesn’t add anything. To make calling it "god" meaningful, something has to be added. The GP (I believe) opposes whatever is being added.
I don't think "comforting" is an apt description of pantheism; in fact, it postulating a cold mechanical universe (as opposed to the idea that a God must necessarily be omnibenevolent) is often cited as a criticism of pantheist frameworks.
I find that panentheist flavors tend to dabble more with metaphysical supernatural stuff, but that pantheism is characterized by its rejection of blind belief. Talks about intimacy and experience feel strongly panentheistic to me, whereas a pantheist might instead summarize their position with something along the lines of "the laws of physics are omnipresent and omnipotent, and that's the hard scientific evidence of the conceptual thing you call God"
I agree that "I believe X because it makes me feel Y" isn't a good argument. But it's also not a good argument to say "you believe X because it makes you feel Y." We could apply that, fallaciously, in any direction.
For example, I could say "you believe in pantheism because you find it comforting," or "you believe in materialism because it makes you feel like a strong, tough-minded person who does need that fuzzy comforting stuff."
Pantheism is a compromise between the existence of an Abrahamic monotheistic god and lack thereof. It's a belief system without submission nor worship which are the cornerstones of judeo-christian religions including islam by extension. You might argue that the psychological need for a superhuman all-powerful deity is in our genes and it may well be the case, but canalizing the need it onto nature/universe while cutting down submission sometimes is not enough because submission (intimacy, feeling vulnerable in the company of a powerful being) is as much a powerful need as believing in something.
There's a tiny part of your brain called the Ego that thinks it is human and special. The rest of your brain knows you are just part of the universe. Inextricably so, from before birth to after death. One and the same, like a drop of water returning to the ocean. What could be more intimate than that?
To follow this line of thinking, are you suggesting I can have an intimate relationship with a rock? If you're not speaking to the point about intimacy, what point are you speaking to, because your post isn't very clear what point, if any, you were trying to make.
Do you have intimate relationships with rocks? and if so can you describe what that relationship is like? Does your conscious self acknowledge this relationship or are you just speaking in some metaphysical sense that is completely intangible?
Well, the universe is full of rocks. “Intimate” may not be a great word (too anthropic and intangible), but writing off all these rocks as boring and banal is probably narrow sighted. Birds, sun and vegetation may feel intimate, but try to feel that without a rock right under your feet. They have a point, imo. We tend to ignore “default” things, but it doesn’t make them irrelevant, they are an important part of the setup. The next thing to feel intimate relationships with is gas (the universe is full of gas that produced you after all, isn’t that as close to “intimate” as it can get).
Intimate was the centerpiece of my curiosity. Sure I can have feelings about the universe and the rocks that exist within this universe, but there is no intimacy.
> isn’t that as close to “intimate” as it can get
No, intimacy isn't a feeling that just happens to you or a circumstance you happen to be in, it's an active relationship where both parties involved do something to foster or maintain the intimacy.
Can someone feel as though rocks were actively fostering or maintaining intimacy with them? I mean, I guess? I'm not sure what that would look or feel like to believe that inanimate objects were actively working to deepen their relationship with you.
Rather it feels like this metaphysical spiritual jargon I read here is just co-opting a word to give more significance to a different kind of relationship someone might feel towards inanimate objects. It's harmless I'm sure, but at the root of it, it feels very selfish and condescending to take a word that has clear meaning and suggest to someone they just aren't using all of their brain if they can't understand intimacy with inanimate objects.
Now, understand I really don't mind misuse of words if it's towards a greater goal of communication, but here it feels like it's towards a lesser goal of demeaning people who use the word only for effective communication.
I see why you're offended now. It was not my intention.
I don't think I can describe it in words. Like I said, our egos stop us from taking the idea too seriously, perhaps out of a survival instinct. There are some drugs that will cause "ego death". The part of your brain that distinguishes between the self and the other literally ceases to function. It sounds metaphysical and silly, but when it happens, you understand how insignificant your ego truly is in comparison with the world, and yet it tells you that it contains every perception that tells you what the world is, and it's only when that ego stops that you can see that the world, including you, can go on without your ego.
So, just like intimate moments with a lover, or a musical instrument, or blessed peaceful moment, you are allowed to forget about yourself. That is my understanding of intimacy.
I've tried basically every ego-death drug that exists (or that I'm aware of) and I've still not felt the need to assert to people that they have a non-functioning part of their brain they aren't using to understand "intimacy" with inanimate objects.
I've had intimacy with a lover because the lover is participating in the intimacy. I've never had it with an instrument, I have felt it with a musician. Again, intimacy requires two participating entities. An instrument is dull and lifeless and only a tool used by the musician to facilitate in intimacy. Without the musician the instrument is effectively a curiously shaped rock.
I've also had intimate moments, where again there was an entity participating in the intimacy. The very roots of the word mean to impress or make familiar, which requires two participants. A rock can't be impressed it cannot feel familiar. Likewise a rock cannot impress itself upon you even if you feel impressed by the rock, it also cannot make itself familiar to you even if you feel familiar with it.
Again though, it's not about the incorrect usage of the word, which people do all the time to _improve_ communication. It's about the assertion that I, or anyone else who feels like me, is wrong and just isn't using part of their brain. Has it occurred to you that maybe you're wrong? Maybe you're misusing a part of your brain to imagine something that has never existed.
I'm fully aware that I may be wrong and there may be something beyond my natural senses that would allow this intimacy on a spiritual level that maybe can be revealed only by taking drugs that unveil a part of our psyche that sees this more clearly. Are you aware that you may be entirely wrong? I suspect not since you've asserted your position comes from a greater understanding, although I suspect you've had no experience that was vastly different from my own, you've just chosen to believe that experience imparted a superior understanding to you than I might have.
I did no ego-death drugs, but I definitely can feel how the complexity of things I interact with reacts to my changes and approaches. It is animate, and intimate to my understanding of that word (I can’t even describe it to the others). One may say thay it’s all in my head, and in a sense would be right, but it’s all in your head as well. Were you a rock, you couldn’t feel it. Were your lovers p-zombies, you couldn’t tell it. But on the other hand, despite having relationships in my life, I can’t tell that they were more intimate than that, so that I could somehow choose one over another if asked to. Maybe I cannot feel intimacy it at all? Another possibility is that neither of us are wrong, stumbling on a definition of a rock. Any phenomenon is complex enough when you dig deeper, and the complexity is never inanimate, it interacts back.
Also, I too didn’t want to sound condescending or superior, and more importantly do not feel that way, but I understand the initial comment you replied to. One issue with this subthread is it never defined rocks or intimacy, which I tried to explore but then left.
it's an active relationship where both parties involved do something to foster or maintain the intimacy
Both yes and no. At wake up in the morning level, it is correct, but when you get into something deep/high enough, lines start to blur. Is a human the most complex being? Is he really what we think it is? Are we objects and not parts of something more sophisticated as a whole? Being non-religious non-esoteric I’m not speaking sprirituals here, these are physical questions you have to ask yourself anyway. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28870858
Edit: and if you feel that these comments are quite delusional, it’s fine, because problems of consciousness (which intimacy fully bases on) live exactly on that level. The more you think about it, the less ground you feel.
Oh, I totally believe I might be wrong. I'm just sharing from my experience, as you are. I'm sorry you are taking it as implying some kind of deficiency because I'm truly not trying to.
I play piano for myself sometimes. I used to play because I was supposed to, but now I play because I can make such beautiful sounds, which sounds like bragging but I don't mean it that way. It's me and the piano together, for a moment, making something incredible.
It's ok if you haven't felt that with an inanimate object. It doesn't make you bad or lacking. And in fact, I do agree that this intimacy is a hallucination, borne of a perception that exists only in my own mind, meaningless to anyone else. That doesn't make it any less real to me. It still IMHO is as real and meaningful as a relationship with another human being.
Have you seen midnight mass? The protaganist from that movie in the final scene, says something along those lines... as she herself is dying. She was asked earlier in the movie: "What happens when we die"... and iirc she gave a more christian-themed notion as she herself was very religious, but you can see her shift from the dogma of catholicism to one more pantheistic.
When the memory of Riley asks her what happens when we die she responds:
“Speaking for myself? Myself. My self. That’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the whole thing. That word: self. That’s not the word, that’s not right, that isn’t — that isn’t. How did I forget that? When did I forget that? The body stops a cell at a time, but the brain keeps firing those neurons. Little lightning bolts, like fireworks inside, and I thought I’d despair or feel afraid, but I don’t feel any of that. None of it. Because I’m too busy. I’m too busy in this moment. Remembering. Of course. I remember that every atom in my body was forged in a star. This matter, this body, is mostly just empty space after all, and solid matter?
It’s just energy vibrating very slowly and there is no me. There never was. The electrons of my body mingle and dance with the electrons of the ground below me and the air I’m no longer breathing. And I remember there is no point where any of that ends and I begin. I remember I am energy. Not memory. Not self. My name, my personality, my choices, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after, and everything else is pictures picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlets printed on the tissue of my dying brain.
And I am the lightning that jumps between. I am the energy fighting the neurons. And I’m returning. Just by remembering, I’m returning home. It’s like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it’s always been a part. All things, a part. All of us, a part. You, me, and my little girl, and my mother, and my father, everyone who’s ever been. Every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it. More galaxies in the universe than grains of sand on the beach.
That’s what we’re talking about when we say God. The one. The cosmos, and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simply a dream that I think is my life, every time. But I’ll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. But now, in this split second, in the moment I remember, the instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. Made again and again and again and again and again and again and on into eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.”
This monologue gave (continues to give me goosebumps)... I'm exmormon/agnostic, but still inspired and have some spirituality...I believe there's something bigger and better and our 'energy' continues on in some respect, or we're at least in a simulation and maybe will respawn and get another chance to get life 'right'.. either way, I think death isn't the end, and this was just a very beautiful way to think of it...
I agree that pantheism is a misapplied psychological need, but no more so than any relgion or beleif system.
I've decided that to fill this need, it is useful to choose a fundamental belief system of some sort. I have choosen Taoism and parts of other Philosophical systems, like Stoicism, where I feel there are gaps.
not very much, that is to say I'm skeptical of metaphysics altogether. I'm partial to Wittgenstein's attitude, that is to say I think projects like pantheism deflate if you scrutinize them and inquire to what degree they say anything meaningful or well-defined about the world, or if they're really expressions of psychology or linguistics or desire.
I do agree with you that all kinds of belief systems may fulfill legitimate needs, but I think they're just that, personal, subjective and private expressions of the individual's attitude towards the world, not meaningful claims about the world as such.
I think concepts like Spinoza's or Deism or people who declare themselves "not religious but spiritual" are just having trouble parting with the comfort of religion even though they know there's nothing there.
Spinoza was writing at a time when it was easy to become exiled or dead for publishing material that doesn’t align with the mainstream religious position. So some degree of the religious comfort aspect of his work can arguably be more of a practical necessity to get his ideas published in the first place.
I don't think I would conflate things like Deism with spiritualism. You can apathetically believe there is a God of sorts and not be in the least spiritual.
I don't mean that they're equivalent, I mean that they're ways to avoid labelling yourself as an atheist when you're irreligious. They're like diet atheism. Something you can say to not feel completely alienated from religious culture.
I've often said that being "agnostic" isn't a position on whether or not one believes in God. You can be agnostic theist, or agnostic atheist. But I no longer think that's accurate.
One reason people opt for it, which I find understandable, is owing to the popular connotations that atheism carries, not unlike theism. You can avoid having to explain "I'm not saying I know that God doesn't exist". But the qualifier is explicit. One needn't necessarily be certain whether they believe in a God or not and I don't think that's well represented by the term "atheist". By the same token I don't think Deism is anywhere near atheism-lite. It is explicit belief in a God with the caveat that it's irreligious.
I like the term "apatheism" because it also captures the way I feel about the question of whether God exists.
Nature in South America's jungles, the Arctic, or Australia doesn't give a shit if you live or not. You have better chances of dyeing fast than being alive. You know, still nature. Harsh, but nature.
Stack plagues, bacteria-ridden water, parasites, funghi, predators and so on, and I'd say "nature" doesn't like you at all.
That isn’t an answer to the question and doesn’t in anyway nullify the broader concept of nature as indifferent - animals are merely part of nature and my experience from truly being in raw primal nature is that, of course things react to you, as you are also in nature, but in those circumstances the forces of survival outweigh any anthropomorphism that humans would normally attribute to the interactions we more normally encounter in our garden environment
That’s not the point you’re making, in fact you’ve really failed to make any point except a poor attempt to anthropomorphise nature and not provide any examples of how nature ‘caring’ is a universal phenomenon
I haven’t assumed you’ve made it, I’ve asked you what it is. That you can’t detect that from my plain language is concerning as to your capacity to parse my sentences.
But if that is what you’ve concluded, why don’t you make your point then, as opposed to jumping around it as though you’ve stated it (which you haven’t) or assuming it’s blindingly obvious (which it isn’t?) it’s a red flag when someone has the arrogance to assume that their view is so universally understood that their dismissive curt replies will suffice for what should ostensibly be an exchange of ideas
I think it is more complex than that. People can 100% care about the person in the street while still choosing not to help. They might believe that the person is insane and can’t be helped, they might believe that helping encourages the person to not self-help, or they simply prefer to spend their time/energy on people they love instead of strangers.
> It's just as much of an anthropomorphization as the article accuses traditional conceptions of God of.
For the record (just to clarify the overall context), the traditional conception of God, in the Catholic view, is not anthropomorphic. From metaphysical analysis, God is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the Subsistent Act of Existing Itself[0]. You see this declared in the Torah in Exodus 3:14[0]. Faith only enters into the picture with the identification of the God of Scripture with the God of philosophy, but it is not much of a leap given the agreement between the two.
That God is personal does not imply anthropomorphism. That the Logos became incarnate does not imply anthropomorphism.
Also, w.r.t. "God without denying His transcendence", the traditional Christian view of God is one who is both transcendent and immanent.
> For the record (just to clarify the overall context), the traditional conception of God, in the Catholic view, is not anthropomorphic. From metaphysical analysis, God is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the Subsistent Act of Existing Itself[0].
You may say that God is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens but if you then say that Ipsum Esse Subsistens is jealous, merciful, leader of heavenly armies... which is the traditional conception of God in the Catholic view then we most certainly are talking about an anthropomorphic conception of God.
> The belief that one's deity chose to assume the physical form of a man: isn't that about as anthropomorphic as you can get?
In my opinion, no.
Anthropomorphism (as commonly understood) means to ascribe human characteristics to things not human; we don't talk about anthropomorphizing your grandma, but we do talk about anthropomorphizing a constellation.
Now if you believe, like the Rawlsians suggest, that there are pre-incarnate spirits floating around and these then decide to inhabit specific bodies according to a lottery, then this is also not an anthropomorphism, but is rather a creation account of how humans come to exist.
You may not believe it's accurate, but it's still a creation account. It is no more an anthropomorphism than saying that man was molded into being from a piece of clay into which God blew his breath. That is not an attempt to anthropomorphize clay.
Finally if you believe that God literally became a man, then this is yet another origin account of a specific man. It's only if you don't believe that he became a literal man that you can speak of anthropomorphizing. Suppose he was an angel that only looked like a man, but wasn't really a man. Then anthropomorphism would be correct. But if he really was a man, and not just like a man, then it's not anthropomorphizing.
So the miracle of incarnation describes a creation account of one specific man, much like the creation of Adam from dust is a creation account of another man. If you are extending the label of "anthropomorphizing" to one, then you should also extend it to the other, at which point you've left the commonly understood meaning.
Catolicism belief is without further discussions in Trinity - Holy Father, Holy Son and Holy Spirit(which had earlier representation of anthropomorphic Jewish God).
Since no one really has read a Bible, I can remind the source:
>>Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
>>"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
According to Bible - God created humans in his image - this is very problematic passage for Christianity, if there is an alien life out there, because apparently they would not be createad by a God.
Any deviations from anthropomorphic nature of a God in Christianity does look like a herecy. Because any other deviations from Christian religious dogmas basically brings to the result, where Aztec god that requires sacrifices and Sol Invictus, not to mention Allah and Yahweh are the same immanent transcendences of a God.
I don't really follow your train of thought. When we say someone is brave as a lion, does that mean we lionmorphize the person? I invite you to read about the many different schools of thoughts in the scholastic-tradition (catholic/eastern/Anglican etc) rich variants of Christianity. Some were seen as heretical and became doctors of the church... etc
Edit: The bearded guy in the sky notion of God is the least popular in my circles (Catholic/Muslim/Hindu mostly)
this kind of thinking which I often see when people express pantheistic views is exactly what turns me away from it. It's just as much of an anthropomorphization as the article accuses traditional conceptions of God of.
I guess you can think that the universe is in some vague sense conscious, although I don't think the arguments for that are great either, but to jump from this to thinking one can experience 'intimacy' with it (and explicitly not "him") is I think already making mistakes. One can experience intimacy while being in nature but not 'with nature', Intimacy is a human emotion, 'nature' does not empathize back.
To me pantheism just seems like a misapplied psychological need. People have a (understandable) revulsion against seeing the universe as mechanic, or random, or 'cold' or what have you, and pantheism not unlike Gaia type theories are comforting.