What do you think about pantheism?
Comparatively More Logical Than Abrahamic Monotheism
Our planet is self-regenerative.
Our body is self-regenerative.
The process of nature and its evolutionary constituents are self-regenerative.
The quantum framework of space and time is self-regenerative.
Atoms, molecules, particles and other agents of space and time are self-regenerative.
Language, reason, purpose, morality, emotion, action, consequence are all self-regenerative.
Pantheism with a mix of ancient lost knowledge of the Universe is the richest and highest form of thinking to ever exist on this planet.
Critical thinking is the highest and most objective form of thinking to ever exist as it is entirely immune to subjective interpretation
this doesn’t fit well with
And ‘critical thinking’ is a vague category. bel if we take critical thinking to mean a loose set of practices, as it is usually conceived, it is a category error to compare it to pantheism, which is a specific belief rather than a methodology for arriving at beliefs. Though I do see that he made the category error first and you took up that gauntlet.
Last critical thinking cannot, alone, decide if critical thinking is doing well.
It fits better for me than the strange primarily transcendent deity models. I would include panpsychism in this also. As far as effects I think it avoids some of the catastrophic indifferences created by the Abrahamic transcendent deities and also removes some of the 'oh, I am a little piece of nothing, God is Great, type relations that are also destructive though in a different way.
One can be a critical thinker and have an open
mind as the two are not mutually incompatible
You do not have critical thinking if there is spiritual lacking. Those that lack critical thinking are disconnected from reality, and those that have spiritual lacking are disconnected from inner reality. The projected cannot be without the projector, and the projector cannot experience without the projected.
Pantheism ~ at least you can meet and talk to the gods and goddesses. They can be your intermediary between you and whatever the divine infinite is, and without being an infinite being myself I kinda need that.
When I read that I thought you were opposing it [spirituality].
I can see that. Been reading a bit about animism, which is related to pantheism/panpsychism, and the idea that their ethics and epistemology are relation based. Learning how to relate, developing relationships, as opposed to naturalist epistemologies that are based on understanding the parts and mechanisms of objects. Animism focusing on the dynamic between, naturalism focusing on the make up of. Made me consider that epistemology leads to ethics or at least affects them. And I do consider the greatest threat right now to be the complete objectification of everything, including ourselves, coupled with the related rise of non-person entities with tremendous power. Thinking here of corporate personhood, but then also AIs - connecting, of course to other threads of yours - and GMO/transhumans. Once your epistemology says that knowledge is gained only by removed all emotion and whittling the ‘knower’ down to an observer (a camera) and the idea is to consider the observed object as a mechanism with parts
there is no respect for persons - using this term in the animist sense of any human, animal, plant or even place. It also undercuts all possible objections to any transformation of matter at all. Any company, later AI, can using epistemology, argue that felt reactions to their actions and policies can be dismissed on epistemological grounds. The company/AI will focus on function. We have improved function. If it feels bad or gives you intuitive discomfort, these are mere qualia and not relevent to knowledge.
One rather easy example of this trend is in the entire pharmaceutical based regulation of emotions. If the majority of people find modern life unpleasant, this is not information to regulate the system, but rather shortcomings on the part of humans that can be control via chemical mechanisms.
We adapt us to society, not society to us.
Pantheist/animist epistemologies (and beliefs) allow for the full range of the mammalian brain - to put it in the crass physicalist terms the machines like - to be brought to bear on making society, rather than just the portion of the brains that are more mechanistically inclined. Empathy, relationships, minimizing bad stress, allowing for the place of desire and so on all come back on the table.
since everything derives from the data one is willing to look into at the moment of the inquiry, please define subjective interpretation? How can one refute the correspondence between the micro and macro (picture), hence that the Whole is One and otherwise or patheism? Subjectivity doesnt exist but Reality, how far one is willing to take it.
Subjectivity is the product of a 3-D coward that will substitute reality rather than face the one and only reality which existed before they and their ancestors were ever born into a realm that is self-existing, self-evolving and self-regenerative. This is to say, Red + Blue = Purple. Just because someone has a different eye sight, doesn’t mean it has any effect on what reality is. I can try to read a book with my eyes closed and say I’m blind, but everyone else can clearly read the book by not covering their eyes, now can they?
Merely a lower, more primitive and incomplete ontology.
Of course you would say that james, but there are two kinds of pantheism. There’s the spiritual native American new age stuff by the alien conspiracy section and there’s the bruno/spinoza rationalism of the enlightenment. Now that you mention it AO is readily compatible with what ontology there is in these philosophers ideas. I don’t see how you don’t recognize the substance philosophy of spinoza to be something like the affectance. It’s a singular acausal plane of immanence of effects over what we observe as the material world. These pantheists are arguing from a technical point of view… the causal and logical problems of two substantial things such as ‘god’ and ‘creation’ coexisting and being able to relate. How does the work? Hint: it doesn’t.
Pantheism, the real stuff, not what the couple at the coffee shop poetry reading in turtleneck sweaters call themselves… i promise you they got that word out of an astrology book. I’m talking about property dualism (monism), not substance dualism. None of this conflicts with the basic tenants of AO.
Of course you would say that james, but there are two kinds of pantheism. There’s the spiritual native American new age stuff by the alien conspiracy section and there’s the bruno/spinoza rationalism of the enlightenment. Now that you mention it AO is readily compatible with what ontology there is in these philosophers ideas. I don’t see how you don’t recognize the substance philosophy of spinoza to be something like the affectance. It’s a singular acausal plane of immanence of effects over what we observe as the material world. These pantheists are arguing from a technical point of view… the causal and logical problems of two substantial things such as ‘god’ and ‘creation’ coexisting and being able to relate. How does the work? Hint: it doesn’t.
Pantheism, the real stuff, not what the couple at the coffee shop poetry reading in turtleneck sweaters call themselves… i promise you they got that word out of an astrology book. I’m talking about property dualism (monism), not substance dualism. None of this conflicts with the basic tenants of AO.
Since pantheism could be a part/facet of one’s ontology, I am assuming you then believe then that there are some things not a part of God.
I merely said that it was primitive. RM:AO is not so much so.
And although Espinoza was at least clever enough to attend to definitions in proper rationalist style, it too was relatively primitive. Espinoza’s version of Pantheism relates God to what he would have accepted as Affectance. But that is an issue of proper definition, most importantly of “God”. A substance cannot be God merely due to the definition of God (any one of many).
There is a definite distinction between God and physicality. Pantheism implies simple ignorance of that distinction.
By definition, there are “things” that are not part of God (again any one of many definitions).
There is a
Conceptual/Divine realm, a
Physical/Mortal realm, and recently designated
Perceptual/Apparent realm.
God only belongs in one of the three.
When asked: “What is most important to you in life?”
Pantheist: “Everything”.
“But that is an issue of proper definition, most importantly of “God”. A substance cannot be God merely due to the definition of God (any one of many).”
Right because that would be circular reasoning. But if being infinite, eternal, uncaused or self caused or any of the other characteristics we usually attribute to a ‘god’ is possible, then some aspects of nature cold be said to be ‘godly’ in that respect. Thats what spinoza did… Deify nature. But we add nothing to nature by calling it god, so you could probably get away with calling spinoza an atheist.
In any case i don’t know about that three realm stuff. Thats the kind of obscure stuff you don’t have to sort out if you’re a monist. Which realm is god located in, Gary? The second one, sir? NO. The first one. Why? Because transferentional interdimensionals don’t correspond in 2d? That is correct, Gary!
I think youre just unwilling to accept there are big problems with transcendent theories of god… Logical and causal problems. The theoretical model of god with the least amount of obfuscation is probably spinoza’s. Its certainly the simplest. Less can go wrong with it… Think your uncles old Buick. Now think about AO and one of those new scions. Look at how jam packed the engine is and all that gratuitous wiring. It would take you an hour just to get to the problem if you even knew what it was.
This is the kind of problem you might have with the AO three realm theory of god. It overcomplicates things.