Psycho Economist

Happyboy, your post has stirred up some ligering confusion about Scientific Pantheism and I want additional perspectives. This is not directly related to your thread... hopefully putting them in different forums will prevent any cross-talk.

Have fun with it.

I've batted this around in my head for a while, and I just don't understand scientific pantheism. They seem neither scientific nor pantheist to me...

On the one hand, they revere nature as a totality... that's step one in pantheism, sure. But then they insist their reverence for nature is not contingent on the Universe having a supernatural aspect... so they're not theists. But then they throw around "God" and "spirituality" anyway. WHAT GIVES?

Is it just that they want to have their cake (look like they're religious) and eat it too (be atheist)? Or do they not understand what theism, and by extension pantheism mean? (Gene Rodenberry, for example was an honest to God = "the Universe" Pantheist.) Or does it just not matter to them that stargazing is stargazing and meditation is meditation and the two have very little overlap. I suspect this last option is what's at play... but I'd like to know.

Secular humanism actively disavows it's a religion... of course, this leaves it on an uncomfortable nether-ground. On the other hand, Scientific Pantheism's embrace of the trappings of religion (even into their name), without belief leaves it looking, well, silly. In my opinion, anyway. For them to say that nature is "a higher power", while trying to fend off any supernatural connotations leaves you with a simple tautology. To talk about naturalistic spirituality is as oxymoronic as it could be appealing.

I suppose it's just unfortunate that more accurate words have already been co-opted... naturalism is an opposite of dualism, naturism is a euphamism for nudism...

Eudaimonist

My impression is that scientific pantheists could be better described as nature mystics. All they care about is the feeling of "awe" they get from nature, not whether nature has any supernatural dimension or not. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

the_cave

I would not describe myself as a "scientific pantheist", though there are similarities between it & my persuasions. Firstly, I'd take issue with the distinction between stargazing and meditation. Why should these be two separate things? In both instances, you're carefully observing the natural world, contemplating the beauty there, trying to learn more about it, and trying to find order in it--as well as relate to it in an edifying manner.



Why? Why couldn't "spirituality" refer to a part of the natural world? That's what I don't get.

emotional

As I said in happyboy's thread: I threw out the label "pantheist" when I came to the conclusion it was meaningless. "God" has the specific meaning of "personal sovereign". All-God is no God at all. I worship Nature, but I don't call Nature God, as I know she'll never answer my prayers.

As for the "scientific" part, I find it precarious, because the views of science are changing all the time. I think the name of science is not to be taken in vain, and it is to be reserved for natural knowledge-seeking which is independent of any worldview. Thus "scientific pantheism" is no more valid than "scientific creationism".

I now label myself "atheist pagan" or "secular pagan". "Pagan" as in "of the Earth", "of Nature", and "atheist" as in "disbelieving in gods", or "secular" as in "worldly".

Calzaer

Says you.

Nice to know that you've been gifted with the sole right to define loaded words. It is, however, rather disheartening that you've sided with the Christians in defining the word. Why can't "God" be "a being that created the universe" and leave the "personal sovereign" bullshit out of it?

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. What was I thinking? It's all 100% black and white, because you're in high school. There IS no middle ground. I don't know where my brain is today...

Marlowe

You are right to a certain extent. I've been through the World Pantheist Movement website several times and been disturbed that they both deny and claim religiosity. Do not confuse one (small, net-based) group with pantheism at large, which is not an organized religion but a philosophy, or a particular take on spirituality.

However, as to whether pantheists are theists or not - I'd say I am, except that people see theist and assume personalized, supernatural god, which isn't what I mean. I go with Spinoza's definition of pantheism - everything is made of one substance and that substance is divine. Which I suppose makes me an honest God= the Universe pantheist too (not to mention being a Trekkie, though I only recently heard of Roddenberry's pantheist leanings). So there is a god and it is everything. It is not a being, it is being itself.

I don't know how scientific they are, but it was science that lead me personally to pantheism. Who needs a supernatural god when the universe is so amazing? Science alone doesn't cover it, anymore than rationaity covers the whole of human experience. Science has limits and mysticism has limits, the two together are a marvelous complement, much like logic and emotion.

I gotta go with the_cave on this. Meditation, stargazing and religious worship - all the same to me.

Psycho Economist

Meditation is an inherantly spiritualist act, you're using the emotional enormity of the starscape to "feed" the "inner being" that manipulates "your shell" like a marrionette. When stargazing, you appreciate the stars for being points of light in artifically imposed patterns or balls of gas billions of miles away.

Spiritualism is dualistic, naturalism is monoistic. You can have profound emotional experiences in the monoistic universe, but they're depth does not "cleanse" the "soul". So be honest about the emotional quality of the experience, and don't pad it with mumbo-jumbo you alternatively denounce as untrue to make yourselves feel special.

Marlowe

Spiritualism is generally defined as communication with the dead, which no one is talking about. Spirituality is anything having a spiritual dimension. Spiritual means not tangible or material, having to do with the spirit.

Your contention about naturalism being monistic - by which I assume you mean without a supernatural dimension - and therefore automatically precluding a soul... sorry. A soul does not have to be supernatural. It also does not have to be tangible. As a pantheist I rely on science to tell me as much as it can about the universe, but I am aware of its limits. We as humans are incapable of perceiving all of nature. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for example - we can't get to all the data, ever. So some things are always going to be out there that we can't know about, which does not make them supernatural, just mysterious from the human perspective. Therefore it is quite possible to be a naturalist and believe in a soul and have the experience of my soul by observing the stars. An experience in which the stars are essentially a symbol of the grandeur of the universe, which really isn't that different from other religious systems. If some pantheists bag on other religious systems that may be for the accumulated dogma and such, not the underlying spiritual experience.

emotional

I think, as a minimum, God ought to be able to answer prayer. A god who doesn't intervene is quite useless. This isn't the kind of god people had always been referring to when they said "God". People used to pray to God, to ask Him favours, to plead His help. All this isn't possible if God isn't God -- if He doesn't intervene. Believing in a non-intervening god is practical atheism.

I ain't in high school, kid. In fact when I was in high school (and a little later) I believed, as you do now, that the definition of God could be as flexible as anyone wanted. I don't anymore.

At any rate, even if God could be defined as "a being that created the universe", I don't believe in such a being.

Marduk

“Your contention about naturalism being monistic - by which I assume you mean without a supernatural dimension - and therefore automatically precluding a soul... sorry. A soul does not have to be supernatural.”

I agree here, I can look out at the stars, see the universe, feel like part of the universes, feel it running through me, which it does. I am the universe configured in a certain way to be me, I am full of empty space, within atoms, between atoms in me and everything else, quarks all over the place,
Marduck, waxing poetic somewhere in the universe.