Panpsychism; an essay on pantheism (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, September 03, 2017, 19:10 (2636 days ago) @ David Turell

A discussion from a professor of religion:

http://nautil.us/blog/the-case-for-cosmic-pantheism?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaig...

"in more common versions of the multiverse theory—such as inflationary, quantum, superstring, and ekpyrotic scenarios—the creator becomes an omnipresent, immanent, material-energetic principle, whether it is in the form of inflation, the quantum vacuum, the landscape, or an all-governing dark energy. In these multiverse cosmologies, we find a creative principle that is the ever-evolving universe itself. This sort of theology, which identifies God with the physical universe, is a position historically known as pantheism.

"Although various pantheisms can be found in Hindu philosophy, Buddhist cosmology, and ancient Greek Stoicism, the idea also has its modern scientific precursors. Just before the turn of the 17th century, the philosopher Giordano Bruno proposed that an infinite God could produce nothing less than an infinite universe filled with infinite worlds. Bruno’s universe was the unmediated pouring-out of God—not into the universe, but as the universe. Bruno realized that this infinite universe with its infinite worlds was the source of all things, the life in all things, and the end of all things, or in other words, “God.” For the heresy of equating the creator and creation, Bruno was executed by the Inquisition. A few decades later, the philosopher Baruch Spinoza developed a similar idea, which his critics equated with atheism, that led to his excommunication. Spinoza argued that if God is infinite and self-subsistent, then everything in existence must be an expression of God. Spinoza’s God is nature itself: all pervasive, impersonal, and unmiraculous.

"Pantheism denies an anthropomorphic creator, and so it’s also often accused of rejecting divinity altogether. As 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer charges, “Pantheism is only a euphemism for atheism.” For Schopenhauer, pantheism embraces the scientific worldview while clinging to the niceties of religion, and so ends up saying nothing at all. “To call the world God is not to explain it,” Schopenhauer argues, “it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word world.” Or as Richard Dawkins recently put it, “Pantheism is sexed-up atheism.”

"Whether theistic or atheistic, these critics assume that the only thing God can be is an extra-cosmic, masculine monarch. Do away with “Him” and you’ve done away with divinity. Under this assumption, the dialogue between religion and science is reduced to little more than a Ping-Pong game: One side says the monarch exists and the other says he doesn’t. But in the pantheist multiverse, I find a more fruitful way to talk about what we might mean by divinity.

"What if God is the creatively emergent order of nature itself? In this case, the difference between pantheism and atheism might be emotional. Einstein, a professed pantheist, wrote that he experienced a “cosmic religious feeling,” a persistent awe at the “sublimity and marvelous order” of the universe. He was not alone. For the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, religion was a feeling of the whole universe at work in each part of it. Or perhaps the difference between pantheism and atheism is ethical. As neo-pagans, ecofeminists, radical environmentalists, new animists, and even some biologists have suggested, the Western opposition between God and world seems to have endorsed our exploitation of nature. So if God is the world, might we be more inclined to care for it? Or maybe the difference is conceptual: What would it mean to recode divinity as embodied, evolving, multiple, and multiversal? What kinds of new mythologies and spiritual practices might emerge from the unlikely terrain of modern physics?

"Thinking about a pantheist multiverse prompts us to ask a host of psychological, ethical, philosophical, and even theological questions. They may be controversial, and they will certainly be unanswerable in any final sense. But for those who are interested in the history and future of science and religion, such questions should give rise to a far more productive conversation than the tiresome debate over the existence of a supernatural patriarch."

Comment: It seems panpsychism and pantheism are the same concept. Unlike this author I don't think one can explain the existence of the universe by stating it is naturally mental. That is why I embrace the panentheist view: the universe is sourced by the consciousness of God.