Keith Russell

Greetings:

If you believe that the universe (or, 'existence') is 'God', what changes when, instead of calling the universe 'the universe', you call it (or realize that it is also) 'God'?

Phrased another way, what characteristic of the universe leads you to the conclusion that, in addition to being 'the universe', the universe is also 'God'?

Keith.

luvluv

I was reading some Spinoza today, and this aspect of his thought confused me too. But shouldn't this thread be titled "question for the pantheists among us".

Maybe I am misunderstanding you...

Keith Russell

luvluv:

Perhaps I should have titled it 'for the deists or pantheists among us', and perhaps I should have asked the question--because I either do not know, or do not perceive--what is the difference between deists and pantheists?

Keith.

Miss Piggy

There is a lot of differences between deism and pantheism. Deists believe that God created the universe and then just watches it passively. Pantheists believe that the universe created itself and there is no creator outside it. See http://www.sullivan-county.com/id2/pantheism.htm

Jayhawker Soule

It is the difference between the presumptuous and the superfluous. The deist asserts God and then presumes to know what God will or will not do. The pantheist takes the Universe, gives it the additional name 'God', and believes that something has been added thereby.

Amos

God did not create the universe but only that which finds existence in the universe. The universe is space without created existence and is therefore not God.

Lethonomia

Keith Russell,

It's a pretty common misunderstanding to believe that pantheism is merely a verbal maneuver, simply using the word "God" to refer to the universe while everyone else uses the expression "the universe". But pantheism really has some significant content.

When pantheists say "God is the universe.", the more philosophically sophisticated adherents usually mean that everything is identical to the one thing that exists, which is God. Their fundamental belief is that one individual thing exists and that either the appearance of a plurality of individual and distinct things (ie. me, you, your computer, your car and everything else) is either illusory or mere modifications or states of the one thing, God.

Deists on the other hand believe in at least two distinct, individual things, God and creation. But of course the vast majority of deists believe that there is a plurality of objects ( you and I really are distinct, individual and separate things and are thus not identical).

luvluv

Lethomonia hit it on the head. I was reading a review of the philsophy of Spinoza, and he was the big time pantheist among the philosophers. He thought that the universe was the only real substance, and that you and I (and everything else which is less than the entire universe) are merely PROPETIES of the universe, not self-existent substances.

However I, too, did not understand what he meant by calling the universe "God". (Hardly surprising because I didn't understand much of anything he said). Spinoza did attribute perfection and necessary existence to the universe, so perhaps that's where the deification slips in.

Keith Russell

Lethonomia:

Thanks for the clarification.

I'd still like to know why pantheists (by your definition) think that only one thing exists, and that everything we perceive is merely an aspect of this 'one' thing.

Keith.

Jayhawker Soule

At issue is whether or not this 'One Thing' is deemed purposeful and inaccessible to the methods of science. If so, it's just the God-of-the-Gaps au natural. If not, how is it other than superfluous?