(October 14, 2021 at 12:15 am)Belacqua Wrote: The quote that Oldandeasilyconfused gave is really good, I think. A clear definition, without oversimplifying.
Pantheists see God as imminent in every particle and point in nature, as the cause and supporter-in-being of everything. This will only sound atheistic to people who have only pictured God as an angry sky daddy. Standard Christian theology, on the other hand, sees God as imminent everywhere, and similarly cause and supporter of everything. The main difference is that the Christian God is all of nature plus infinity, while for Pantheists God is coterminous with nature.
If you have some reason to think that your pencil is a god, and you also belief that all of nature is God, then you're a polytheist.
Only the most naive Christians see God as anthropomorphic. God is the Ground of Being, and the First Cause, and has no human-like body. This part is the same for Pantheists.
Although to be careful we'd have to specify whose pantheism we're talking about. Spinoza's? Emerson's? There are many different flavors.
I think the quote that he gave is insufficient for me.
I referred back to the first post that Seax made.
Since Seax wrote:
“God would not create a universe with laws opposed to His Will.”
^^^^^So, this is the keyword right here. Seax says His Will. So, the pantheist god has a brain.
Since a pantheist thinks of the sum total of the universe as god, I suppose they mean that all this is his brain.
Then, there is the question as to what does he think all day long, is he walking around in his own universe at the moment and talking to other “gods”, ....
I would need a large number of pantheists to ask such questions.
“Only the most naive Christians see God as anthropomorphic. God is the Ground of Being, and the First Cause, and has no human-like body. This part is the same for Pantheists.”
==Seax had written:
“Christianity is essentially dualistic in most ways, though many Christians, especially Catholics, hate the term. They believe that God is separate from nature & regard much that is natural, and in my view healthy, as ungodly. “
^^^^^this seems to be mostly correct. Some christians seem to have the view that this universe did not exist. The jewish god did a “creation ex-nihilo” and poff, this universe existed and then the story of Genesis starts up. There are variations of course. Some christians think that Genesis did not happen and they borrow the version of history as layed out by the sciences (Big bang theory, cosmology, Evolution theory).
So, there is a major problem of synchronization between various sects of christianity. Ditto for judaism, islam, mormonism.
