Defending Pantheism

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Just to clarify: pantheism isn't my belief. I identify as an agnostic atheist. What I'm doing in the thread isn't "selling" pantheism. I want to have a reasoned debate about its merits/shortcomings. Why? It's a good intellectual exercise to challenge one's own beliefs on occasion. It might help myself and others grow as thinkers. But I understand the inclination to think I'm "selling" it since you are so familiar with apologetics.

I didn't think you were trying to sell anyone on pantheism, but was under the impression that you were defending a position that you actually hold rather than playing a devils advocate? That you think you fall into "pantheist" bucket, as one might say of Spinoza. Or are you just sympathetic to those view, but don't necessarily see yourself as inclined to hold them? If so, why not? What keeps you from being pantheist?

So? All you're showing is that pantheism is very similar to regular ol' atheism in many regards. I don't disagree; there is quite a lot of overlap between the two. But isn't there plenty of overlap between agnostic and gnostic atheism? Baptist and Methodist theology? Yet there are minor distinctions too. And sometimes such distinctions warrant discussion.

(BTW, I'll get to your earlier post. I'm going through the questions/objections in order.)

I'm not too fixated on whether the pantheism you're defending is better aligned with regular ol' atheism, or a variety of traditional theistic views. I liked to better explore your ideas, the substance of them, and not necessarily argue about the labels for the categories you want to place them in.

If i understand you sympathies correctly, I'm curious as to what exactly is it about pantheism that you find appealing? Is it in essence a result of your sentiments regarding things like the numinous, morality, goodness, etc...? These elements that you might not see as purely reducible to the material, but suggestive of something more? A music to the cosmos, that's always been, with no musician or player type being behind it?

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If you spent as much time listening to atheists as you do inventing shit to bicker about with atheists, you'd realize that the majority of us experience the sense of the numinous, which is...l-o-l, a natural fact of human experience.  

I don't know if the majority of atheists experience the numinous, unless there's some survey out and about that confirms this. I usually find one or two. When it comes to describing or defining what numinous, this seems to be primarily have been done so by religious folks:

"The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its “profane,” non-religious mood of everyday experience. [...] It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures." -Rudolf Otto

"Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told "There is a ghost in the next room," and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is "uncanny" rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a mighty spirit in the room," and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words "Under it my genius is rebuked." This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous" - CS Lewis

I don't know of any self identifying atheists types who have attempted to define it to the extent that religious folks have, or to the extent it matches the religious descriptions above. So when atheists appeal to the numinous, i'm inclined to be curious to hear what they mean by it, and to the extent that our experiences of it are similar. I wouldn't categorize my experience of the numinous as synonymous with awe, like the awe experienced when watching your home team winning the Super Bowl with one tremendous play in the last few minutes of the game. But rather something more profound than that, as if the wind is being drawn out of you.

In -any- objective moral view, an ought is derived from what is against some evaluative principle.  It doesn't matter if we approach it from pantheism, atheism, theism, what have you.  That's what objectivity means in the moral context.  

No, you're putting the cart before the horse, the evaluative principle is derived from the ought. It's because I hold that I ought not do harm, that x cause harm, has any moral meaning to me. Absent of that is no more of moral statement, that x is blue.