Anyone here a Category 7?

[vulcanlogician]

We'll get this out of the way first: There is a 0.1^-157,000 chance that a being like Odin or Yahweh really did create the universe... that's one reason not to be a 7. (Ever heard of a cosmic joke?) Anyhoo, I'd be a 6.999999 on the scale just because of this. But this is besides the point.

I'm going to purposely ignore the latter half of your post.  It's an important question, but not what I want to get at right now.

What do you consider knowledge, and do we need 100% certainty that something couldn't have happened to consider that it didn't happen knowledge?

That standard would seem to rule out the possibility of knowledge altogether, which would leave me wondering what you think we mean when we use the word, and whether even using the word at all is appropriate under any circumstance.

Kind of a tall order there, Jor, seeing how "What is knowledge?" has been a burning question for philosophers for over twenty centuries.

Of course, I accept the basics of empiricism (ie sensory information gives us all the information we have about the world). But I'm heavily influenced by rationalists like Plato and Spinoza who saw knowledge chiefly  as "that which is intelligible and discernible."

As my logic professor put it: "100% certainty is too high a measure." A 6/7 means "I don't fucking believe in it." I'm a 6/7 on unicorns, leprechauns, pyramid power, dowsing, everything Huggy says etc.

I hope that clarifies. Let me know if I answered your question.

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Pantheism to me is hardly distinguishable from atheism (disbelief in gods).

Then it's been miscategorized as theism, just as pantheism miscategorizes the universe as a god.  Get out the whiteout. 

I get that your position is that it has to do with reverence or attitude......but that's not why it's called pantheism.  It's called that because the adherents really do think that the universe has the attributes of a god.

A religion of nature is possible, and it's possible without pantheism...just as other religions are possible without any mention of gods.  I'll note again that pantheism poses no challenge to my position on gods..because we're still just talking about the universe, whatever a pantheist gets right or wrong about it.

Let's not get caught up on words. Somewhere along the line somebody coined the term "pantheism." A religion of nature is certainly possible. But "nature worship" usually refers to people who worship the winds, the sun, and other stuff. Pantheism says that THE ALL is divine. Nature AND its laws.

Look at it this way. If I were to sell all my shit, go to India, cast of my sandals and spend my days and nights worshipping some Hari Babakrishna dude. You might say that I consider this Babakrishna guy to be "God." Any outsider might just consider Babakrishna to be a fly-covered, mumbling mess. But not me. The term pantheism fits because what does the pantheist consider God? The all. Hence the term "pantheism" is appropriate in a way.

I admit, it's leading to difficulties in our conversation. The weak point in the pantheist view is that it has a difficult time answering the question: "Why call it God?" I get that. But, as it is, the "belief system" is distinguishable from materialism for the reasons I've laid out. We've got to call it something. Somewhere along the line some dude said "it's pantheism." Sure. I could think of worse words.

One little issue is that it is conflated with "deism where God is material and endowed with human-like individuality." Remember that guy, Quick, who posted for a couple months? He called himself a pantheist, but was hardly a Spinozist. Meh. Whatever. Words are inaccurate.