Panpsychism in Catholic Thought

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I don’t either. I think he tried to make his ideas conform. They just didn’t fir in the end
 
Panpsychism is NOT the same thing as a “universal consciousness”, though I believe it can easily coincide with that idea (though I do not think that is Catholic at all).

It is a bit different.
 
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I think it’s a tool to seperate the soul as the source of consciousness and so God as a source as well.
 
I realize this might sound stupid and utterly simplistic, but think about the paintings from the middle ages where they show even the sun being witness to Christ’s Crucifixion (the history channel may say that it is a ufo!), or all the Scripture that says all of Creation praises God (even commanding water, etc to praise Him), or that hymn All nature stood still in wonder when you gave flesh to your own flesh’s Creator.
And then I think about Chesterton’s little adage about children and the sun.
 
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It would still follow that God is the first cause, prime mover, necessary being etc… so I don’t think it removes God from the picture.
 
I agree. it isn’t confined to the idea of universal consciousness.More like a modern explanation or application for the universality of ancient peoples polytheism. Like Jung used it as a tool to explain just about everything humans think and do
 
I don’t think it does either. The universality of myth is a phenomenon of a collective memory to me. We all share the same genesis experience. Jung interpreted as the collective unconscious.

Edit: should write Genesis Event instead of experience
 
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So the minerals in rocks have minds??? Is that what is being said?
…if so, can I laugh at that?
 
Plato argued for it and I know Catholicism has been pretty kind to Patonic thought through the years.

It’s not a new concept, but very old as a philosophical idea.

You can connect it to the anima mundi (though I do not think it is Catholic I do think it funny to think that pantheists are correct in their experience but wrong in their explanation, and that the universe would be alive and all that jazz but there’s still only one Transcendent God, it is just a creation of His; I have a weird sense of humor if you can’t tell), but it is NOT the same thing.

Also if we want to just expand this to all things being alive in a sense then we could do this as well, they are essentially the same thing on a certain level.
 
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it all boils down to the question of Creation. Did God create ex nihilo, I mean something out of nothing or did God use a part of Himself to create
 
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I don’t think so.

Say God created ex nihilo, but decided to create a living thing. Could He? Yes, absolutely, if you believe He created ex nihilo (pretty sure that is Church teaching), then He created life as we are life. If it’s different because we are made in His Image, then are dogs alive? Of course they are.
 
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Well God created ex nihilo that’s Catholic. But if He used a part of Himself that leads to Pantheism and all their explanations of life. God is in everything not just present but everything is God
 
Panpsychism doesn’t imply pantheism (afaik).

If you are referring to Anima mundi (which I don’t think jives well with Catholic teaching), then that may seem like it implies such, though I find it funny to think of the universe as being alive and all that jazz but it’s just a grand creation of God (not saying I believe that, just that it’d be funny).
 
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I’m don’t know much about what anima mundi…I was refering to how belief that everything being made from divine substance would lead to worshipping things as gods…like cows and stuff
 
From the Catechism:

"God creates “out of nothing”

296 "We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance.144 God creates freely “out of nothing”:145
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If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.146
297 "Scripture bears witness to faith in creation “out of nothing” as a truth full of promise and hope. Thus the mother of seven sons encourages them for martyrdom:
I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws. . . Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.147"
 
Yes, pantheism may lead to that such as in Hinduism. Surely pantheism is not Catholic, and in its purest form is simply atheism.

However, the idea that God is in everything and omnipresent is Catholic I do believe.
 
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No we believe God is omnipresent. Present to everything. Not substantially. Hindu’s believe that God created everthing out of His own substance. We don’t believe that Different kind of in is all.
 
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