Episode-04- Pantheism, Panentheism and Pandeism
Today we look at the concepts of Pantheism, Panentheism and Pandeism and beyound that I will tell you why I tend to think like a Panendeist if there even is such a thing. I go into why I feel we should not really look at these as individual faiths, rather as philosophies within the larger Deist umbrella.
I will also discuss a bit about why I feel most people are actually Deists, even if they don’t call themselves that, how a Christian for instance is a Deist with a theism attached to their Deism. I also talk about telling others about Deism and growing our movement with a “soft evangelism”.
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I do not believe a dissection of deism into a number of subsets, or conjoint spaces and then a “choice” process, would work for me. As stated (I believe as comment to the first instalment) my personal take on it is:
God is the creator of this and all possible universes
God has set out all natural laws discovered or to be discovered by science, necessary for the universe to follow his purposes with it
God is outside space and time
God did NOT collapse into the universe
God however CAN “look into” all his creations at his volition
Should he want to he could even, very selectively intervene
He does NEVER do so on behalf or at the supplication of an individual, rather to further optimise “evolution”.
Cheers!
In my opinion, Jack, much of this centers around what happened to the “person” of God upon/after creation. Did God walk away after he created everything? Did God dissolve himself into creation? Did God create creation inside himself but still retain his being or personhood? Speaking only for myself, God, to me, is a concept for a creative force larger than humanity. I’m reticent to relegate that creative force to some kind of anthropomorphic “being” or “person”. Therefore, I’m not, technically speaking, a theist. Yet I find that I have a very personal relationship with creation. I take it personally. It inspires in me great awe and meditation and wonder and, in some sense, an almost “holiness” that I used to find in religion. But I attribute this to the creation that I find myself in, that I am part of. So the question of where is or what happened to God, while interesting to consider, is probably beyond our reach and, perhaps for some like me, irrelevant.
BTW, I have no problem with deists who describe our creator as a consciousness or an intelligence that is behind creation. That makes sense to me and both the teleological argument and the presence of life in the universe seem to support that idea. But I do get a bit skittish around classical deists who insist that our creator is a being or a person. Doing so, IMO, limits deism too much and also often leads us to creating God in our own image. I enjoy wondering about our creator, but I don’t want to be too dogmatic on it.
First I don’t see the creator as a person, so I agree with that.
Postulation of that idea though to me doesn’t limit deism at all. The beauty of deism is there are no rules as to what you believe other than you don’t get to tell others what they should believe.
If you’re ever up to it, Jack, I’d enjoy having a beer with you some day. I live in north Fort Worth in a little town called Saginaw. 🙂