Defending Pantheism

[Alan V]

I think of pantheism as a halfway house between theism and atheism.  It's for people who are still trying to work out some system of apologetics for a God-concept because they still think they need to worship something.  Since the whole universe has all power, by definition, then you are already part way there!  Never mind that when people believe in God, they are thinking of a conscious and willful being with superpowers. It's also a kind of power trip, as Aegon pointed out.  You can be God too!  Finally, pantheism assumes some kind of unity in the universe which is not apparent.  Instead, what we find are discrete objects crashing into each other or competing with each other.  You can't possibly take all sides.  "To protect the fox is to harm the rabbits."

According to Wikipedia:

"Pantheism is the belief that reality is identical with divinity, or that all-things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheist belief does not recognize a distinct personal anthropomorphic god and instead characterizes a broad range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity."

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

As for me, I haven't seen anything yet which is worthy of worship, although some people sure try to make such things.  To worship anything undermines the whole skeptical project in my mind.  The reality seems to be that there are pluses and minuses to everything.  Nothing is worthy of worship, so it's a mistake to worship anything. This perspective is consistent with atheism in my opinion.

But what about free will?

To me, pantheism only makes sense when understood in the context of a deterministic universe. That means, as Spinoza thought, free will is a myth. Every action in the universe is determined by a prior cause. Since it is metaphysics, it is unlikely if we will ever resolve the issue of whether or not we have free will, but I think it's quite plausible that we don't.

Taking this into account, that means that the entire universe has as much free will/autonomy as any of us. (NONE.) And considering all the power the universe contains, meh, why not call it God?

The standard deterministic argument conflates material causes with reasons.  If we act in certain ways because of reasons, we have free will.  Since the universe doesn't have consciousness and willfulness, it doesn't qualify as a God from my point of view.