Jobar

This is meant to be a continuation of a discussion amongst Albert Cipriani, Jaliet, myself, and others, in EoG- "Albert Cipriani, Why Do You Believe In God?" Jaliet wishes to discuss pantheism and atheism, and I think the topic of sufficient abstraction to fit in here.

"Uni verse"- "one song." Also it can be translated from the Latin as "one thing." All the things we observe are parts or aspects of a single system- originating from a single 'Big Bang' from which all we see expands. In the Ur-moment of beginning, as far as we can tell, all forces, all matter, all space, and all time were unified. 'Before' the start of expansion (or inflation) there were no dualities. At present we can perform theoretical analyses of conditions in that beginning, back to 10 exp -43 second after expansion started. This is the point at which the strong nuclear force separated from the electroweak and gravitational forces. It is at present impossible to say anything meaningful about any occurance 'before' this instant, because we have no theory to understand this unified state. A complete Unified Field Theory *may* allow us to go back to 'time zero' but we can't do that today.

That is the status of our understanding of the ultimate beginning of our universe- all we can see and know- as it stands right now. Is this clear to all?

The idea of ultimate unification- of non-duality- is also at the very core of many Eastern religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta. All these philosophy/religions agree that the "world of ten thousand things" (in the words of the Tao Te Ching) which we live in is only apparently made up of separate, independent, unrelated objects and events. Even our own conscious minds are not 'other than' the things we observe- subject and object are unified too.

Western science attempts to approach the process of observation and analysis from 'outside' as it were- objectively, impersonally. We know that our individual POVs are fallible and incomplete- so the method of science is multiple observation and experiment, continually checked and tested, affirmed by all individual observers. Any observation not agreed upon by all able to make the observation, is considered unreliable, still an open question. Only what is mutually consented to is considered 'real'- in the (never quite achieved) ideal case, this consent amongst all observers is universal, with no dissenting voice.

The Eastern philosophies I've mentioned approach the world from the 'inside'- subjectively, individually. Just what *is* our experience of reality? What do *I* see? How do *I* know? Why is it that the world appears inside my head, and I am aware? And perhaps the final question, from their POV- *Who/What am I?*

What do these different methods of questioning the human universe have in common? Both search for ultimate, complete, single answers. The Unified Field Theory. Union with All. I say they approach the same goal from opposite directions!

I have not yet brought up 'God' here, please note. Although Vedanta/Hinduism includes hundreds (even thousands) of gods, the other two are basically a-theistic and identify no god or gods as independent entities in the universe. (Hinduism is actually a syncretism of a large number of different religions, many of them quite ancient. Vedanta is the most intellectually rigorous of these, and is in practice atheistic.)

The Western idea of a single all-powerful God- monotheism- is rejected by practitioners of Eastern religions because God is a separate, supernatural 'being' independent of his 'creation', the universe. Monotheism is rejected by modern Western science as well- because we search and search, outward and inward, explaining the things we see as we go- and find no Heaven, no God. If there is an ultimate Creator of the universe who is separate from it, our seeking sciences put him farther and farther away, and find no trace of His handiwork anywhere. The latest advances of cosmology make even a deistic, hands-off god unlikely- the universe seems more and more to be self-actualizing. No independent creator is needed.

I leave for later discussion the nature of any Universal Mind within the world, the unitary nature of consciousness and experience (the subject/object duality) and the problems we have attempting to express ultimate meanings about reality, which is (IMO) unified and non-dual, with language, which is necessarily dualistic. Also, the disagreements between idealism (the world of observation is more like ideas than materials) and materialism (vice versa) will surely come up soon.

In conclusion, I feel quite justified to call myself a pantheistic atheist, or equivalently an atheistic pantheist. There are two completely different definitions of 'theos' involved here!