RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?
March 17, 2021 at 8:47 pm
(This post was last modified: March 17, 2021 at 9:05 pm by vulcanlogician.)
If a person on a bus desires cabbage, it would be incorrect to say "the bus desires cabbage."
The pantheist is focused on the unitary cause of things. For the pantheist, it's just as problematic to see the desire as having its cause in an individual person. That would be just as erroneous as ascribing the desire for cabbage to the bus.
There are lots of causes for the cabbage-desiring in a given person. His mother used to make him cabbage, and so he acquired a taste for it. It is a New Years tradition to eat it in his country, so that got him thinking about cabbage right at that moment. His prior meal that day left him craving whatever nutrients are found in cabbage.
The desire for cabbage can scarcely be contained within a bus really... you need something bigger to contain it. If you wanted to find the first cause of the cabbage-desiring, it'd take you all the way back to the big bang. Its history would involve Earth's formation, supernovae, and may even require quasars to fully explain.
That's how a pantheist thinks of things. And it isn't an altogether false way of thinking. It's very accurate. In a way, more correct than our notion that the desire for cabbage just sort of "randomly comes forth" in a person or is encompassed only within them.
The pantheist is focused on the unitary cause of things. For the pantheist, it's just as problematic to see the desire as having its cause in an individual person. That would be just as erroneous as ascribing the desire for cabbage to the bus.
There are lots of causes for the cabbage-desiring in a given person. His mother used to make him cabbage, and so he acquired a taste for it. It is a New Years tradition to eat it in his country, so that got him thinking about cabbage right at that moment. His prior meal that day left him craving whatever nutrients are found in cabbage.
The desire for cabbage can scarcely be contained within a bus really... you need something bigger to contain it. If you wanted to find the first cause of the cabbage-desiring, it'd take you all the way back to the big bang. Its history would involve Earth's formation, supernovae, and may even require quasars to fully explain.
That's how a pantheist thinks of things. And it isn't an altogether false way of thinking. It's very accurate. In a way, more correct than our notion that the desire for cabbage just sort of "randomly comes forth" in a person or is encompassed only within them.
