Ask a Pantheist

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Pantheist

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Hello,

I am a pantheist. By this I mean that God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists. (Spinoza, Book 1, Prop. 11)

And, if God defined in such a way, we are part of God, part of this substance. It follows logically from premises that seem reasonable (and these I accept by faith), and does not evoke things I find non-intuitive, things I don’t wish to have faith in, such as heaven and hell, or prayers.

Certainly, what I wish or do not wish does not determine what is. But this seems to be the most reasonable and natural conclusion from what I have experienced, as well as from inborn reason.

I am looking forward to discussing pantheism here with all of you. Do you have any questions about it?
 
Welcome to the forum! I have a few. How did you become a pantheist? What were you before?
 
Pantheist said:
Reasoning, reading Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, doing science, thinking about what I already believed.

Catholic.

Thank you for your kind welcome!
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You are welcome. I hope that we all learn from each other on here.

What started your drive to this? When did you begin to doubt Catholicism?
 
ralphinal said:
What started your drive to this? When did you begin to doubt Catholicism?
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I am a scientist. I began to wonder how science interfaced with faith. After reading Aquinas and Augustine, it came clear to me that science and the Catholic faith do not conflict directly at all, but then, after reading Kalam and Falsafa, I came to see Islam was also without conflict.

Any faith seems to be without conflict with science, and as such another criterion must be created in order to choose between them. It seems as though the criterion should be able to differentiate between faiths: to say why one is correct and others are not, and to be different, as a type of reasoning, between them (you should not be able to use the same reasons to establish both Christianity and Islam, for example).

So I decided to go back to what I intuitively accepted as obvious, and build from there. I came to a weak idea of some sort of god, and cross-referenced my ideas with philosophers. I came upon Spinoza, found in him much which is agreeable (and a bit which is not), and so became a western pantheist.
 
Pantheist said:
I am a scientist. I began to wonder how science interfaced with faith. After reading Aquinas and Augustine, it came clear to me that science and the Catholic faith do not conflict directly at all, but then, after reading Kalam and Falsafa, I came to see Islam was also without conflict.

Any faith seems to be without conflict with science, and as such another criterion must be created in order to choose between them. It seems as though the criterion should be able to differentiate between faiths: to say why one is correct and others are not, and to be different, as a type of reasoning, between them (you should not be able to use the same reasons to establish both Christianity and Islam, for example).

So I decided to go back to what I intuitively accepted as obvious, and build from there. I came to a weak idea of some sort of god, and cross-referenced my ideas with philosophers. I came upon Spinoza, found in him much which is agreeable (and a bit which is not), and so became a western pantheist.
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That is one of the more logical stories of conversion to pantheism that I have ever heard.

What in Spinoza do you not like?
 
I think it’s sad that this man was a Catholic, knew Jesus Christ and now he doesn’t. I cannot praise you pantheist, I only feel sadness for you. I’m sorry. 😦
 
Nice to see a fellow pantheist around here!🙂 Welcome to the forums.
 
Hi Pantheist - I was wondering, is there an association between Wicca and pantheism? Is pantheism a nature-based faith?
 
Welcome,
Pantheist said:
… things I don’t wish to have faith in, such as heaven and hell, or prayers.
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You have implied that your decision to become pantheist and leave Catholicism behind was rational and a result of education.

The statement quoted above does not support that argument.

Are these things you don’t ‘wish’ to believe in or are they so lacking in empirical support that you ‘can’t’ believe in them?

If the latter, is there really any more evidence for pantheism than Catholicism? If the former how can you be sure that you are not ‘tricking’ yourself because those things cause you discomfort?
 
Shemot said:
Hi Pantheist - I was wondering, is there an association between Wicca and pantheism? Is pantheism a nature-based faith?
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I suppose there could be, but in my case there is not. I suppose in my case there is an association between Christianity and Pantheism, in the sense that certain Christian terms can be used in a Pantheistic way, and are in my case, to preserve my cultural framework.
 
AnAtheist said:
Yes, what is the difference between God and the universe then? I fail to see it.
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From a physical or purely pragmatic perspective, none.

From the perspective of a consistent metaphysics, very much. All things are actually one infinite substance, just different modes existing on different attributes of that substance. If you define God differently, then this pantheist could be an atheist.

But not a materialist.

After all, I hold that the mind exists as a different attribute of this one substance, and so the mind can affect the body as the body can affect the mind. They are all part of one thing, but the physical world is one of infinite attributes of God.
 
Sam_777 said:
What do you believe will happen to you when you die?
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I believe that I am at least two connected modes (my mind and my body) to two separate attributes (the physical and mental world), and that my modes, like waves on an ocean, will fade away. My mental impression will exist in an eternal sense, but likely not in any temporal sense. What this will actually be like, I am still speculating about, but am unsure.
Do you know Arabic?
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No, but I have read translations of selections from their work.
 
Fran65 said:
You have implied that your decision to become pantheist and leave Catholicism behind was rational and a result of education.

The statement quoted above does not support that argument.
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Not necessarily. After all, what is to defend a person accepting one particular view instead of another if it does not deal with desire, and if the desire is not completely driven by passions, then that desire somehow must relate to our purpose.

Rational does not mean simply logical, but also an intuitive sense of things. My intuition leads me to find that a God that literally answers prayer, or a God that has a child, or other forms thereof is undesirable, not in the sense of a simply emotional response, but in the sense of being or at least seeming intellectually unappealing, or at least less appealing than certain other possible frameworks.
Are these things you don’t ‘wish’ to believe in or are they so lacking in empirical support that you ‘can’t’ believe in them?
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I do not base what I accept completely on empirical support, though this is an important means by which we determine what is, at least in the physical world, existing now. I hold that I can (both logically and psychologically) still believe in the things listed above, and indeed the whole of the Catholic system. I simply do not want to, and this because its basis seems to be able to support any notion, or if it is made to support only Catholicism, becomes weak and uncertain.

An example: If I ask you why you are a Catholic and you say “faith”, then that answer seems as though it can be used to support Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or any other belief-system.

If I ask you why you are a Catholic and you say “history”, then you have placed your entire system on uncertainty, because no one can be completely certain that what has been claimed to happen historically happened historically. This uncertainty seems insufficient for the weight of the system, though I suppose it would be in principle acceptable, if you would acknowledge the real possibility of finding new evidence that would lead you to cease being a Catholic.
If the latter, is there really any more evidence for pantheism than Catholicism? If the former how can you be sure that you are not ‘tricking’ yourself because those things cause you discomfort?
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It is possible that I am wrong, but that is true in a great many things, and I think it most responsible that I follow my reason. Reason seems to point to a deity we are all part of, and this by argument from what seem to me to be reasonable and obvious bases.

What evidence is there for Catholicism that cannot be applied to other faith-systems, and that does not, if it becomes the basis for Catholicism, make it a necessarily uncertain proposition subject to your change of mind when something comes along that seems more certain?
 
ralphinal said:
Ok. How would you finish them or fix the problems?
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I don’t know yet, but I’m working on it. I need first to master the Ethics he’s written, as well as the commentaries and his letters. Once that is done, I plan to try to expand upon, and challenge, some of the declarations he’s made about morals, specifically about the nature of good and its relationship to usefulness.

It is an elegant system, and all systems should be respected and understood as they are before they are criticized. I am simply not at the point yet in my understanding to begin a fair criticism.
 
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