RE: Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?
March 17, 2021 at 10:54 pm
(This post was last modified: March 17, 2021 at 10:56 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 17, 2021 at 8:47 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: If a person on a bus desires cabbage, it would be incorrect to say "the bus desires cabbage."Which is why..quietly, and without much fanfare, questions like this are the most difficult for pantheism to answer. There are difficult questions for any given set of beliefs to answer..but, this is a weird one - as it denies something so common and uniform as our own apprehension of our own desires as our own possessions.
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.
Quote: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.There can't be lots of causes for anything...in pantheism. Just the one.
Quote: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.Bigger bus.
Quote: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.Who thinks that desires for cabbage randomly come forth?
At any rate..I agree that some convoluted way of thinking is what pantheism genuinely entails..but, pantheism in practice - in my experience and in this thread. It's just atheism. Our friend pantheist friend in this thread..an atheist - for example.
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