It's really not that difficult to pin down.  Gods are any random member of a set of anthropomorphized supernatural entities who hold authority over this or that function of the natural world (functions both real and imagined, no less).  

A believer can bitch and moan when you poo-poo that idea from here till sunday service..but it is what they believe, and what the term has always denoted.

(September 27, 2018 at 7:00 pm)Khemikal Wrote: It's really not that difficult to pin down.  Gods are any random member of a set of anthropomorphized supernatural entities who hold authority over this or that function of the natural world (functions both real and imagined, no less).  

A believer can bitch and moan when you poo-poo that idea from here till sunday service..but it is what they believe, and what the term has always denoted.

I spent a number of years debating with a Christian apologist who I initially met in a Usenet newsgroup.
We once spent most of a year arguing over whether there was a difference between "supernatural" and "paranormal", and whether his notion of "God" qualified as either, or as something else.  

Movable goalposts come in very handy for apologists, I've noticed.

-and the whole time you were debating that..he believed in an anthropomorphized supernatural entity that held authority over the functions of this world.

(September 27, 2018 at 9:40 am)Khemikal Wrote: Lemme see if I can split the baby.  I'd say that where pantheism is competent is in showing that much of what is attributed to a god is, more accurately, misattribution.  However, it's incompetence comes from ignoring those things attributed to gods which distinguish them -from- "the universe"...and this is why it's silly to call the universe a god.

Let's say my kids never see me bake cookies, in their ignorance, they think my brother Jake bakes cookies.  If they find out that I'm the one baking the cookies..would it be sensible, then, for them to start calling -me- Jake?  Is that the rational way to go on that one?

"Do you agree that Khem exists and bakes cookies?  Yes, well..then, Jake exists!"  -no.

There is another way to present your example. "God" is a title, not a name. And if anything deserves such a title it would be the cosmos itself (including what caused the cosmos, what lies beyond the cosmos, everything that is--hence my use of the term the all). "King" is, similarly, a title. When a person has the title of king his subjects are required to recognize his authority, honor him, and do their part to keep his kingdom fine and prosperous. Let's say this king resigns due to ill health. Then the title passes to another person, and the subject's obligations transfer to the new king. They do not vanish into thin air. Although it is clear that this new king is a much different kind of king and serving his kingdom will have a much different sort of requirements. But it has requirements nonetheless.

Now let's look at a new example. One where some of the subjects realize they don't have to serve a king because he never existed in the first place. "The king" was just an illusion orchestrated by the state church Now what? Some peasants continue to recognize the illusion of the king (theism). Others recognize "hey! We've been fed a line of bullshit!"(atheists). But still others recognize that (even without the illusions of the clergy) the kingdom still moves as a unified whole. In other words, "the kingdom itself is the king" and these particular people (pantheists) try to look into the various aspects of the kingdom using reason and logic to try to decipher the "real" king's edicts. Pantheists seek to understand this new king just like the subjects of "the old king" tried to understand and serve him.

One of my favorite poets, Gibran, wrote "You are a cell in the body of God." I think this sums how a pantheist views his place in the universe. Why don't you dust off your copy of the Bhagavad Gita and read the first 11 chapters with Spinozian pantheism in mind? There is a reason that atheists often nod their heads when reading the Gita (one of the most theistic pieces of philosophy ever produced).

Let's look at your cookie example. If we use the word "baker" (as a title of sorts, like the king). At first, your kids think that Jake is "the baker"... but Jake is found out not to be the baker of any cookie whatsoever. Instead, it was Khem all along. Therefore Khem is the real baker.

To address the question "Why call it God?" I don't know if I can go any further than I have. I don't identify as a pantheist and I'm not a Spinoza scholar (only a fan). Some interpretations of Spinoza's God render him a conscious entity. Remember that Spinoza followed in Descartes' footsteps and presented the first rejection of Cartesian dualism. To Spinoza "thought" and "material" were not distinct substances. He was a monist. He saw thought and material as different attributes of the same substance. Therefore, when you say that God is the sum total of all things... "all things" includes "all mind." But just as all matter is unified into a seamless whole in Spinoza's pantheism, so are all minds considered one whole. And (in this way) God possesses a vast mental character. Whether one would call that consciousness on God's part is debatable, and there is much debate on that subject among Spinozian scholars. Unfortunately, Spinoza himself could never weigh in on this because he published the Ethics posthumously.

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(September 27, 2018 at 6:06 pm)Dr H Wrote: And if one were to define "God" as "Laphroaig 10 Year Old single malt", well, then -- Hallelujah! -- I'm a category 1 believer.

Laphroaig is the only scotch I drink. And it is rather godlike.

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(September 28, 2018 at 5:40 pm)Khemikal Wrote: -and the whole time you were debating that..he believed in an anthropomorphized supernatural entity that held authority over the functions of this world.

Also keep in mind that it is the anthropomorphized gods that Spinoza called absurd.

"If anyone deserves to be called a jake, it's Khemikal"

Khem being the real baker still won't make khem a jake.  

Part whole, again.  Concrete boats don't sink..and I'm not incompressible.

Quote:Also keep in mind that it is the anthropomorphized gods that Spinoza called absurd.

-makes it kind of pointless to anthropomorphize the universe, dontchathink? Nevertheless..doing so does make a pantheist god more similar the the other gods in the set of gods than the universe is. Just as contending that it is a conscious entity does.

A "god" that exists and doesn't challenge gnostic atheism in any way can hardly be a god in any sense but the superficial. In this case, the superficial being "well, other people said gods did this or that, and some of that stuff is nature, more properly, so lets call nature a god!"

Hard pass, it's silly.

(September 28, 2018 at 5:58 pm)Khemikal Wrote: -makes it kind of pointless to anthropomorphize the universe, dontchathink?  

He doesn't anthropomorphize the universe. And I think that's where you're getting hung up. He views the universe no differently than Albert Einstein (who was a Spinozist). To you, "gods are necessarily anthropomorphic entities" and if you hold to that, pantheism will always be absurd.

POINT: Pantheism does not anthropomorphize the universe in any way shape or form. To the pantheist, God is a "being," not a "person."

The universe isn't a being.  People are and have beings. Investing the universe with that concept is what brings it closer to the set of other beings we call gods.

I'm a 7 with regard to Yahweh, Ganesh, Shiva, Odin, Osiris, Xtapolapocetl, etc because the evidence supporting then is non-existent and the evidence that they are human creations is pretty conclusive.

On the question of whether there is anything anywhere that might deserve the label "god"...  I'd need an actual definition to decide.  I see no reason to believe in something that can not be defined or demonstrated.  Any god that wanted us to know it existed should be able to do so convincingly so that doesn't appear to be the case; a god that doesn't want us to know could hide and that is functionally equivalent to not existing since we can never know anything about it; any god that doesn't care if we know or not might still be discovered but until that happens there's no good reason to assume it is the case.

No matter how I look at it, either there is no god or there is none I can know anything about.  If pressed into the pedantic "you can't be absolutely certain there is no god" then overall I'd say I'm a 6.9 but for all practical purposes I'm a 7.  Bring some evidence for a god and I'll move down the scale.

(September 28, 2018 at 6:22 pm)Khemikal Wrote: The universe isn't a being.  People are and have beings.  Investing the universe with that concept is what brings it closer to the set of other beings we call gods.

I think you're arguing with the dictionary. You also seem to be forgetting that (to the pantheist) everything that is an aspect of the universe is an aspect of God. Do rocks exist in the universe? Then God has rocks. Are there calcium deposits on those rocks? Then God has calcium deposits. Are there people in the universe? Then God has people. Do people have being? Then God has being. In the pantheist conception you are looking at the whole and nothing but the whole. There is no such thing as a part. A part is a handy tool for us to make sense of shit, but in Spinoza's conception looking at a single part is (in the grand scheme) a grave omission.

Also, the universe is --and anything that is has being, and (in that way) is a being. People have written entire books on what being actually may mean. Your post misses Spinoza's meaning.

I can't explain pantheism any more than I have. I feel like at this point, for me to go any further would be to drift into grimy apologetics. I think pantheism is an admirable and accurate way to conceive of the whole. I like it... much the same way some people like Buddhism but are not Buddhists. I like pantheism but am not a pantheist. For the ardent defense you require, you need to find a genuine pantheist. I've done all I can do here.

That said, I think you should read the Ethics at some point in your life. You would dig it, man. I promise. And I also think you would dig where Spinoza is coming from. The book is not "all about pantheism." It is an endorsement of a materialistic worldview (at a time when this was very controversial), an analysis of how a rational person might analyze his own emotional states, and (as the title promises) an ethical exposition that is tied to all that metaphysics, tempered with inspiration from ancient Stoic philosophy. You might want to wait until you are an empty-nester though. It is the most difficult work I've ever read. Many parts of it I just left without puzzling them out, so I could go ahead and complete it.

edit: If you take anything from this post, I want it to be this: "God has rocks."

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I'm getting to Jor's epistemology question next....

(September 28, 2018 at 7:08 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(September 28, 2018 at 6:22 pm)Khemikal Wrote: The universe isn't a being.  People are and have beings.  Investing the universe with that concept is what brings it closer to the set of other beings we call gods.

I think you're arguing with the dictionary. You also seem to be forgetting that (to the pantheist) everything that is an aspect of the universe is an aspect of God. Do rocks exist in the universe? Then God has rocks. Are there calcium deposits on those rocks? Then God has calcium deposits. Are there people in the universe? Then God has people. Do people have being? Then God has being. In the pantheist conception you are looking at the whole and nothing but the whole. There is no such thing as a part. A part is a handy tool for us to make sense of shit, but in Spinoza's conception looking at a single part is (in the grand scheme) a grave omission.

My living room has people, guess that means it has being.  Does that mean that it is a being? Notice how you've altered your terms from is to has?  You're combining the part whole issue with an absurd level of idiosyncrasy at this point, all to avoid a defining feature of pantheism than differentiates it from simply believing that the universe exists.   

It ascribes to the universe terms and attributes amenable to classification as a god, and insomuch as those terms were anthropomorphization when applied to gods..they are the same when applied to a universe.   

Quote:Also, the universe is --and anything that is has being, and (in that way) is a being. People have written entire books on what being actually may mean. Your post misses Spinoza's meaning.

The most trivial use of the word.  This statement only means "the universe exists". When I say that I am a being, and when a person claims that the universe is a being..they mean more than that. Having being and being a being..your earlier statement and central to pantheism, are substantially different meanings for the word.  Tell me, if you heard that an alien being had come to earth - would you be looking for an inert clump of rock? No, ofc not.

Quote:I can't explain pantheism any more than I have. I feel like at this point, for me to go any further would be to drift into grimy apologetics. I think pantheism is an admirable and accurate way to conceive of the whole. I like it... much the same way some people like Buddhism but are not Buddhists. I like pantheism but am not a pantheist. For the ardent defense you require, you need to find a genuine pantheist. I've done all I can do here.

You do fine.  It's not your fault that pantheism is silly and requires grimy apologetics all to say nothing in particular about gods. 

Just to be thorough

Quote:In philosophy, being refers to the existence of a thing. Anything that exists has being. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies being. Being is a concept encompassing objective and subjective features of reality and existence. Anything that partakes in being is also called a "being", though often this usage is limited to entities that have subjectivity (as in the expression "human being"). The notion of "being" has, inevitably, been elusive and controversial in the history of philosophy, beginning in Western philosophy with attempts among the pre-Socratics to deploy it intelligibly. The first effort to recognize and define the concept came from Parmenides, who famously said of it that "what is-is". Common words such as "is", "are", and "am" refer directly or indirectly to being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being

As a minor aside, recall your earlier efforts to classify the word "god" as a title, and then the comparison to kingship. At every step of the way you have anthropomorphized the universe, while ardently claiming that this is not central to the claim that the universe is a god..or "deserves" to be called something, in fact..even, deserves worship and adulation and reverence. It may all be subtle, seductive, and compelling (at least to you)..but that's why we do it so often.

I see pantheism as a trivial bit of semantics with a goal towards rescuing a word for something we dreamt up in ignorance. That there was some being, like a god. No more, no less. It fails even on this pathetically low bar count.