Pantheism Is Confused Atheism
Peter writes:
Pantheism is the belief that nature/the universe/the totality of everything is god. Within pantheism we can make a further distinction, between those who attribute nothing to the universe besides facts derived empirically, whom I shall call rational pantheists, and those who attribute certain additional, mystical, properties to it, whom I shall call irrational pantheists. Clearly there is no chance that irrational pantheism will collapse into atheism. However, irrational pantheism isn’t an especially attractive position; by accepting certain facts on faith alone it isn’t on any firmer ground than traditional religious belief. Rational pantheism has greater draw, within certain circles, since it tries to free itself from a foundation of blind faith while at the same time retaining some elements of traditional religious belief. However, I claim that rational pantheism is the same as atheism, meaning that the beliefs of atheists and rational pantheists have the same content, and that they differ only in terminology (emphasis added).
...snip...
The word “god” carries many connotations with it, it is used by many to designate the final arbiter of right and wrong, the creator of the universe, and usually a being who should be worshipped. By hanging onto this old word pantheists run the risk of unconsciously projecting some of these old connotations onto the universe. And even if the pantheists themselves don’t make that mistake many people who hear them will. Thus it seems wiser, to me, to simply call the universe “the universe” and leave “god” out of it. This is why I would describe the (rational) pantheist as a confused atheist; they believe the same things that the atheists do, but they discuss their thoughts using an archaic terminology that often encourages confusion, unnecessarily.
I read this article a few days ago but I didn't give it a lot of thought until I read the article on Richard Dawkins by Ruth Gledhill. I commented in a previous post that after reading Gledhill's article I wondered if Dawkins' atheism was a matter of semantics rather than conviction. In light of that, some of the points raised in Pantheism is Confused Atheism suddenly seem more poignant for me.
Hat tip: Stephen
Note: Moving the date forward because this is on my mind again recently.
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Comments
I'm a panentheist and not a pantheist. But I would think the problem most rational pantheists might have with interchanging atheist for pantheist is that technically, the term atheism stands against theism thereby indirectly giving power to theism (belief in a God "out there"). A-theism simply means against belief in a God "out there". If you believe all is God and there is nothing beyond all that we experience, the term "atheist" fits but I think many pantheists feel it is more powerful to define one's stance as "for" rather than "against".
Goödel teaches us that any mathematical system as complicated as arithmetic must contain truths that are unprovable. Logic can show us the consequences of our assumptions but it cannot free us from the need to make some assumptions, to take some unprovable statements as truths. Thermodynamics teaches us that in any system that is not closed there are sources of energy outside the system and physics offers us at most one closed system—the universe.
If we believe that the physical world is accurately described by mathematical and logical systems, it is not unreasonable to infer that like one of Gödel's mathematical systems, the universe is open, and that the number of closed systems doomed to heat death by the three laws is actually zero. Many other modern disciplines, such as quantum with its uncertainty principle, and Chaos Theory also hint at the existence of the essentially unprovable, at sources of value, energy, information, truth outside the most complete possible system.
None of this proves, in fact it declares itself that it cannot prove, that there is such a source of truth, motion, or value, but it does all point in the direction of Aristotle's Uncaused Cause or Unmoved Mover. And if it does merely hint and not prove, it also rejects disproof. And so, such reasoning demonstrates that it is not at all irrational or unreasonable to believe in the Uncaused Cause, the Unmoved Mover, which philosophers for thousands of years have called "God".
Belief in the Uncaused Cause, and calling God is not irrational, and need not depend solely on mysticism. It is, I would argue quite reasonable, and I would suggest in keeping with aesthetic principles, and of course science itself is a discipline that rests not merely on either pure reason, or empirical facts, but on aesthetics as well. Occam's famous razor is at its heart, the embodiment of an aesthetic judgment or principle, that simplicity is better than complexity. And having recognized that science rests on a foundation of aesthetics as well, we are well advised to apply our aesthetics as carefully as our logic.
Don't mind me. As a philosopher by training, I tend to be rather invested in those parts of philosophy that I've spent a lot of time with.
Brons