Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?

[The Grand Nudger]

What happens to expressions of god that aren't gods will - are those the things that get eradicated by natural laws? Which natural law is going to eradicate the cabbage man?

[Seax]

What happens to expressions of god that aren't gods will - are those the things that get eradicated by natural laws?  Which natural law is going to eradicate the cabbage man?

If frying cabbage is against the Will of God than he will naturally meet his end from frying cabbage. But I don't think that frying cabbage is against the Will of God.

[The Grand Nudger]

How, what natural law will accomplish this task?

Why don't you think that frying cabbage is against the will of god? What if every other person and piece of metal on the everything bus were against it? We've already established that one mans will is not the will of god - but what about every other thing in existence, aside from that one man, all against cabbage frying. Is that enough whateverness...then... to be the will of god?

[Foxaèr]

If pantheism was the same as atheism, pantheism wouldn't exist. Logic. It's not that hard, folks.

[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.

[Belacqua]

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 maybe even quasars to fully explain.

This is what Blake means when he says 

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

and 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour

We invent the separations through the limitations in our thinking. The momentary desire is infinitely woven into the world.

[vulcanlogician]

I heard that quote in a movie a long time ago. Val Kilmer, The Doors. I always liked it. Didn't know it was Blake.

[Belacqua]

I heard that quote in a movie a long time ago. Val Kilmer, The Doors. I always liked it. Didn't know it was Blake.

It would be interesting to trace this back.

I'm pretty sure Jim Morrison got it from Aldous Huxley, who quoted Blake but added the connection to psychedelic drugs. Blake got it largely from Jacob Boehme and a few other Protestant mystics. Who got it from a whole series of minority-tradition Christians, including Eriugena, Pseudo-Dionysius, etc. And before them Neoplatonists who believed in the One. 

So this whole pantheism thing is a variation on something with deep roots.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[vulcanlogician]

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.

But it also tells us something about free will, and why we (perhaps mistakenly) believe we have it.

There can't be lots of causes for anything...in pantheism.  Just the one.

Ultimately, yeah. But it takes some explaining how the big bang resulted in the desire for cabbage. I mean, it did, but it isn't necessarily true that a rapid expansion of energy into space always results in such a thing. So we tend to look at how things happened historically... queue the lyrics for the Big Bang Theory sitcom...

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.

Some people think desires randomly come forth. You of all people ought to have seen that in your debate with theists over the years. In any case, I don't blame anyone for thinking this way. To the person who has the desire, it feels like the desire just comes out of nowhere (at a phenomenological level). I mean, we ALL used to think like that until we attended biology class, right?

So here is an interesting lecture... the first 10 minutes or so is more interesting than the rest...

---

---

The lecturer decides to simplify the subject matter by dividing pantheists into two camps: 1) theistic pantheists and 2) atheistic pantheists.

You could imagine a continuum:

atheism--atheistic pantheism--theistic pantheism--panentheism--theism

Many criticisms, not yours Nudger... but many atheists... assume that all pantheism is "theistic" pantheism. And when confronted directly with the notion of "atheistic pantheism" they ask: why call it God? You seem to have ask this question in your dismissal of atheistic pantheism as "mere atheism." I happen to like the lecturer's justification for atheistic pantheism:

Do pantheists who deny that God is anything more than the natural world have any reply to the suggestion that they are really atheists? Perhaps they do. They may say that in referring to the system of nature as a whole, as God, they fitly express a reverence and awe and gratitude that it deserves as a thing of wondrous beauty, the source of our life and all that we enjoy. Some of them might add that in heightened awareness of nature that they experience a transcendence of petty self-centered concerns which they regard as typical of religious mysticism at its best.

... hence the identification with a religious mode of thinking (theism) with a worldview that is (in scientific and epistemological matters) in complete alignment with atheism.

I like to think of it like Zen Buddhism that aims to remove every scrap of superstitious thinking from Zen Buddhism and then add Western science. What you're left with after that isn't typical Western atheism. It's something else. And, since it's different, we may as well call it something different.

Kind of like we call them "plantains" instead of "little bananas." If you want to call pantheists atheists, sure. You're mostly right. (I mean atheistic pantheists here.) But someone might want to differentiate themselves from atheists for the reasons listed above.

And, by the way, a LONG time ago, you expressed sympathy for a viewpoint that captured "Zen mysticism" while maintaining "atheist realism." THIS is what I'm talking about here. Nothing more. Nothing less.