Defending Pantheism

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Pantheism doesn't posit that any supernatural entity exists. Rather, it looks at the totality of what does exist and pronounces it holy. To the pantheist, things that the religious have always claimed as their own (lie a sense of the spiritual or numinous) are instead understood as properties of the natural world-- not attributes of a supernatural being.

One of the main reasons I sympathize with this way of thinking is that the religious have done the same thing with morality. They say things like: "How can you have a sense of right and wrong without there being a cosmic being who declares some things right and other things wrong." Obviously, theists are trying to claim a monopoly on moral objectivity. And I wonder if they might not have done the same thing with concepts like "holy" or "numinous."

This starts with a very trivial understanding of the religious. The terms supernatural and natural have no clear meaning, even less so hundred of years ago, and most theists have little need to make such distinctions, so they remain relatively agnostic on the terms. No corresponding terms for supernatural nor natural, exists in the bible.

One definition suggested to me by an atheist, which I kind-of like, is ascribing mental elements or prosperities to reality, as supernatural. So ascribing intrinsic meaning, intentionality, teleology etc, and a wide gamut of common religious beliefs classify as supernatural. So i’ll use this.

Under this definition I’d say ascribing things like the numinous, or goodness, a transcendent moral reality, all of which exists outside our minds, into the fabric of the universe itself constitutes as supernatural.

Secondly if you paid attention even to the most basic apologetics, such as WLCs, it’s never that what’s good is declarations of a divine being, but rather good is part of it’s very nature. To be good is to partake in the life of God, rather than the hallow following of some set of rules. Such apologist and theologians also don’t question that atheists have a sense of right and wrong, i mean the Apostle paul even noted that non-christian gentiles understand right and wrong, via their hearts and conscious.

The underly question to atheists is not how can they have any sense of right and wrong while not believing in God, but how can they account for existence of objective morality, absent of teleological assumptions? Without implying some sort of created, or purposeful order.

If we take out the terms supernatural and natural, and just speak of reality itself, some the semantic problems can be reduced here. Perhaps using the term reality instead of the world. For theist God and reality aren’t separate things, God is very much a part of this reality, as an author is to its novel. And we as it’s readers only understand God by the nature of the novel itself, and nothing more.

I'm also curious, how do you define the term numinous ? If it’s not merely some subjective feelings, a person might have.