Contents
· Pantheism and Western Monotheism
·
Differences With Western Monotheism
·
Pantheism and Personal Divinity
·
Is Pantheist Love of Nature Objectively Grounded?
·
The Question of Divine Providence
Pantheism is the view that
the natural universe is divine, the proper object of reverence; or the view
that the natural universe is pervaded with divinity. Negatively, it is the idea
that we do not need to look beyond the universe for the proper object of ultimate
respect.
Paul Harrison writes,
When we say that the
cosmos is divine, we mean it with just as much conviction and emotion as
believers say that their god is God. But we are not making a metaphysical
statement that is beyond proof or disproof. We are making an ethical statement
that means no more, and no less, than this: We should relate to the universe in
the same way as believers in God relate to God. That is, with humility, awe,
reverence, celebration and the search for deeper understanding. ("Divine Cosmos, Sacred Earth," from Harrison's
Scientific Pantheism website.)
One of the chief clues to understanding
modern pantheism is its consistent refusal to engage in anthropomorphism.
"Anthropomorphism" here means the practice of attributing familiar
human qualities to objects outside us when there is no good evidence that they
have such qualities.
Refusal of anthropomorphism explains one of
the key differences between pantheism and paganism. In ancient times,
"pagans" referred to adherents of polytheistic pre-Christian
religions which Christianity was trying to suppress. Pagans, or people who
worship gods and divinities in nature, obviously have much in common with
pantheism. But there was a tendency, at least in the paganism of the past, to
impose familiar human qualities on natural objects that may not have them, for
example, to regard a tree as if it could perceive in the way that animals do or
even as if it were a self-conscious being. Most contemporary pantheists would
refuse to do this and would regard such an attitude as anthropomorphic.
How does pantheism relate to
traditional Judaeo-Christian conceptions of God? As
Paul Harrison ("Defining the Cosmic Divinity," SP website) points
out, traditional (Western) religion describes a God who is ultimately a
mystery, beyond human comprehension; awe-inspiring; overwhelmingly powerful;
creator of the universe; eternal and infinite; and transcendent. The divine
universe fits some of these descriptions without modification and it fits
others if we allow ourselves to interpret the terms flexibly.
The divine universe is mysterious. Though we
can understand the universe more adequately as scientific research proceeds,
there will always be questions to which we will not yet have answers; and
explanations of ultimate origins will always remain speculative (they are too
far in the past for us to decipher clearly).
The divine universe is awe-inspiring. Would a
creator behind it be any more awe-inspiring than the universe itself?
The universe is clearly very powerful. It
creates and it destroys on a vast scale.
So far as we know, the universe created all
that exists; which is to say that, the universe as it is now was created by the
universe as it was a moment ago, and that universe by the universe that existed
a moment before that, and so on. If we view universe in this way, we can keep
the idea of creator and creation and yet have no need to imagine a being apart
from the universe who created it. The divine being is
indeed a creator, in the pantheist view. Indeed, the creativity of the natural
universe is probably the best evidence for its divinity.
Is the universe eternal? Well, it depends on
how you understand eternity. Traditional Western theology understands eternity
as a quality of a God that exists altogether outside time. Yet the dynamic and
changing universe is very much bound up with time, so it is not eternal in the
theological sense. Possibly it is everlasting, maybe
it had no first moment and will never cease to exist. Scientific evidence does
point to a Big Bang several billion years ago, from which our universe in
roughly its current form originated, but if we accept the time-honored precept
that nothing comes from nothing, we cannot rule out the existence of a material
universe before this Big Bang.
Is the universe transcendent? In Western
theology transcendence is a term often paired with eternity. A transcendent
being is essentially outside and independent of the universe. Of course, the
divinity which pantheists revere is not transcendent in that way. However, in
ordinary language, to transcend is to surpass. Well, the universe which
includes us also certainly surpasses us, as it surpasses everything we are
capable of knowing or observing.
Pantheism has clear differences with the
traditional description of God. It departs from the picture of God given in the
Old Testament to the extent that the Old Testament attributes human attributes
to the divine being, such as a willingness to make deals (You worship me and
I'll make you my Chosen People) and anger (for example, Yahweh's anger at the
Israelites' worship of the Golden Calf).
Pantheism also avoids some features of the
theological conception of God which arises from a mix of Greek philosophical
influences and Judaeo-Christian thought. For example,
pantheism does not hold that the divinity we revere is a first cause wholly
independent of matter, or that the divine being freely creates the physical
universe from nothing but its own will.
Do pantheists believe that
the universe is a personal God? Possibly some do, but most contemporary
pantheists do not. We can stand in awe of creative or divine nature without
regarding it as a father. One can be thankful that it supports us and heals us,
without attributing to it a deliberate plan to help or hinder us, without
believing that it loves us as a mother or father might. Pantheists can observe
and respect the divine creativity of being without engaging in wishful
thinking. They tend to believe that talk of God as a father or mother who cares
for us in a parental way engages in anthropomorphism.
C. Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse, authors
of New Thought: A Practical American Spirituality, have married the
process theology of Alfred N. Whitehead and others with the religious tradition
known as New Thought. They have criticized pantheism for its resistance to the
idea of a personal divinity. Their criticisms are interesting because process
theology agrees with pantheism in bringing God and Nature together. But process
theologians Anderson and Whitehouse are not pantheists--they are panentheists. That is, they regard the material universe as
the body of God--everything material is in God--but God's mind or personhood is
somehow something extra or more than the universe. God is impartial, they say,
but he is not impersonal--he loves us all as a good father loves his children.
Whitehouse accuses pantheists of replacing God as a loving father by a
"formless, impersonal Ground of All Being into which we all ultimately
melt, or get ground!" On this scenario, says Whitehouse, "we [humans]
are illusion, without individuality, smothered by a God that Alan Anderson
calls the universal wet blanket'" (cited in D. Whitehouse, "God:
Person, Eternal, and New," Unity Magazine April 1996).
Several charges are made here, in just a few
words. The charge that the pantheist divinity is a "universal wet
blanket" seems to boil down to the charge that pantheists do not accept
the view that the divinity literally loves us as a parent would. To that the
pantheist response is simple: there is almost as much evidence that the
universe hates us as there is that it loves us, in other words, not much. On
the other hand, the fact that we are still here is evidence that the universe
nurtures us and supports us, at least for the time being. We can certainly be
thankful for that.
Deb Whitehouse's charge that pantheism denies
the reality of the human individual does actually fit some pantheist
philosophies of earlier times, for instance, the seventeenth-century philosophy
of Spinoza. But it does not fit modern pantheism as expressed, for example, in
most of the publications of the Universal Pantheist Society or the text of Paul
Harrison's "Scientific Pantheism" website. Nor is the divine being as
conceived by these pantheists "the formless . . . Ground of All
Being" (as Whitehouse puts it) since for them, as for modern scientists, the
divine universe is anything but formless.
Do pantheists believe in the
immortality of the soul? Not usually. And they have less motivation to do so
than mainstream Western traditions. Pantheists do not find nature either
repulsive or without vitality. Thus they do not feel horror at the prospect of
dissolution back into nature at the time of their individual deaths. Of course,
there is immortality in the sense that our material components re-enter natural
cycles; indeed, that goes on simultaneously with life
itself. More significantly, as even Plato recognized, our deeds live on after
us, insofar as they are remembered. And the ideas which we have made part of
our lives continue to exert influence after we are gone--this sort of imperfect
immortality is not denied to us.
Pantheists will ask whether
it is not better to rely on the possibility of such imperfect immortality, for
which there is good evidence, than on the idea that the soul can be detached
from everything material and attain perfect immortality. To my knowledge,
nobody has ever made a persuasive case for this kind of immortality. The
greatest thinkers in the Christian tradition, such as Thomas Aquinas, admit
that the existence of an immortal soul is a teaching which cannot be rationally
proved. True, Plato long ago, in a beautiful dialogue called the Phaedo, offered several proofs for the immortality
of the soul, but while they are all interesting, none of them are logically
persuasive. Plato's proofs could convince neither his student Aristotle, who
shared quite a few assumptions with him, nor Thomas Aquinas, who, as a
Christian, would have liked to have had a proof for this teaching. Why should
he be able to convince modern pantheists?
Pantheists are sometimes
accused of being atheists in disguise. Are they? We cannot answer that question
until we define "atheism." Is it literally a denial that there is
anything divine or worthy of ultimate reverence? If that is what atheism is,
then by definition pantheists are not atheists. Is it the denial of divinity
beyond the sphere of human beings? If that is what atheism is, then once again
pantheists are not atheists. Pantheism can be equated with atheism, of course,
if atheism is defined as disbelief in the existence of a God who is a person.
Most modern pantheists do not conceive the divinity as a person.
Now, some people who call themselves atheists
might really be pantheists because they value the natural world and only reject
the concept of a personal God or gods, which they have mistaken for the only
possible conception of divinity. On the other hand, some people who might think
of themselves as atheists are humanists and not pantheists because they place
all ultimate value in things human or some characteristic which only human
beings possess.
Pantheists are clearly quite
impressed by beauty in nature, and infer from this beauty that nature itself is
worthy of our reverence and respect. But, a critic might say, aren't they just
mistaking their own aesthetic experiences of nature for value of nature itself?
The objection seems to be that pantheists find something to be revered in
nature only because they confuse their perceptions of nature with nature
itself.
Although it's risky to generalize about all
pantheists, many pantheists reject the idea that when a human being has an
aesthetic experience of nature and sees beauty in it, this is nothing but a
human projection upon nature. They don't mind admitting that humans who
experience natural beauty are contributing something to the experience, but let
us remember , they say, (1) that nature has herself
given humans the capacity to recognize her beauty and (2) that nature provides
the object which we recognize as beautiful. Human beings do not invent the
beauty and value of nature --we only recognize it. And we are not the only
beings who do. As process philosopher Charles Hartshorne argues, birdsong
cannot be entirely explained in terms of its Darwinian function in biological
survival and finding a mate. It is probable that birdsong is sometimes a bird's
open-hearted response to the natural beauty the bird itself experiences.
How does pantheism relate to
humanism? Humanism, like atheism, can be understood in many ways. If humanism
is the view that human things--actions, experiences, products, customs,
institutions, and history--are of immense interest and importance, then there
is nothing contradictory in being both a humanist and a pantheist. (A teacher
of the humanities who is a pantheist is entirely possible, for example.) But if
humanism is the view that human beings are the best things in the universe,
then pantheists are not humanists. If humanism is the view that only human
beings have inherent worth and are deserving of being treated as ends, then
pantheists are not humanists. And if humanism is the doctrine that everything
else in the universe exists for the sake of human beings, then pantheists are
most emphatically not humanists.
A pantheist might well agree with humanists
that all or at least most human beings have inherent value and are worthy of
our basic moral respect, and that there are many important human achievements
worth preserving and transmitting. But a commitment to the idea that human
beings and many human achievements are valuable cannot justify blindness to the
values which we humans can discover beyond culture in nature.
The pantheist refusal of the idea that humans
are the best things in the universe is not merely a matter of faith or
attitude. Pantheists might even grant that we do not know whether there are
other biological individuals that are superior to humans, e.g., aliens with
higher intelligence or greater capacities of cooperation. But pantheism can
make the following case:
(1) Surely humans have some value, but
clearly
(2) non-human
individuals on the earth have some value as well, even if pantheists have to
grant their critics that the value of a non-human individual is less than a
human's.
Well, then, consider the biosphere or the living Earth.
(3) It includes both humans, with their
value, and non-humans, with their value, however minimal you want to claim it
is.
(4) This collective being must contain at
least as much value as these humans and non-humans put together.
Conclusion: (5) there is a being more
valuable than humans, namely, the biosphere which includes both humans and
non-humans.
Similar reasoning can support the conclusion
that the cosmos itself is of still greater value.
For historical reasons, moreover, pantheists
are suspicious of the claim that humans are the best things in nature. They are
especially aware of the perverse use to which this idea has been put over the
last four centuries. It is part of the myth that has been used to justify
Western humanity's domination of nature on Earth and the eradication of many
cultures, species, and ecosystems as part of the cost of taming nature and
allegedly perfecting it, i.e., making it over to fit our human whims, which
means, to a great extent, the whims of the industrial and post-industrial
growth economy.
For those who believe the idea that humans
are the best species, it is more an unquestioned article of faith than an
empirically verifiable proposition--in fact, given what members of the human
species have done to each other and other species, it appears that humans do
not on the whole have a very good record. It is a bad argument to use the rare
cases--the Aristotles, the Shakespeares,
the Beethovens, the Schweitzers,
the Gandhis--as arguments
for the surpassing nobility of the human species. Such highly creative or
eminently ethical heroes and heroines are far from the average.
It should be clear by now
that pantheism is attractive for some people today because it is a way of
dissociating themselves from the kind of "humanism" that can be used
to rationalize ecological destruction. Environmental concern is so strong among
pantheists that Paul Harrison lists as the second of pantheism's central tenets
the claim that "the earth is sacred." He explains it as follows:
When we say that the
earth is sacred, we mean it with just as much commitment and reverence as
believers speaking about their church or mosque, or the relics of their saints.
But we are not making a statement about the supernatural. We are saying that we
should treat the natural world as believers treat their temples and shrines--a
place to be revered and preserved in all its glory.
Is pantheism essentially a reverence for
nature apart from the section of nature transformed by human culture? Well, the
Universal Pantheist Society, the only pantheist member organization of which I
am aware, seems to encourage open air ceremonies that evoke respect for nature,
and it insists that a building is not necessary for the experience of the
divine, that sometimes a building can get in the way of that experience. But I
do not think that pantheism implies that you can only contemplate the divinity
when you are out in the woods far from artifacts that human beings have created.
Still, respect for nature independent of
human interference is essential to pantheism. Pantheists are bound to look with
mixed feelings upon most social institutions and technological marvels. They
know how often those institutions and that technology have given humans the
collective strength and the material means for mounting an assault upon
nonhuman nature.
Are pantheists opposed to scientific and
technological progress? Modern pantheists are definitely not opposed to the
scientific method as a method for understanding nature. They are not inclined
to use pre-scientific myths to explain inclement weather, for example, as sent
by angry gods. They favor scientific explanations whenever we can get them.
They recognize that some explanations are better than others, so that if a
person first accepts one theory, then another, and still later a third, and
each successive theory gives a better explanation of the same phenomenon than
the preceding one, that surely is scientific progress worth celebrating. Seen
in this light, scientific progress is mainly about understanding, not about
control over nature.
Technological progress usually refers to
increasing control over the environment. To control something is to render it
passive, to make it into something that can be manipulated by the controller.
But nature is nothing if it is not active, if it does not have "a source
of motion in itself" (Aristotle, Physics ii). Therefore,
technological progress in this sense is profoundly disturbing for a pantheist.
It is not a healthy form of pantheism to
celebrate the absorption of nature into the human economic-technological
machine, as one website which calls itself pantheist (www.the-truth.com) does.
Not only is this tantamount to celebrating the "death of nature" on
Earth, but it is guilty of overweening pride. For it assumes that because we
have the power to push aside the biological diversity that evolved over
millions of years and the cultural diversity that developed alongside it over
the last several thousand years, it follows that we and our puny Western
technology can substitute ourselves for the richness of what we are displacing.
The perverse form of anthropocentric "pantheism" to which I am now
referring is also guilty of ignorance: it confuses the temporary domination of
the planet by the economic-technological machine with the total absorption of
nature and God by human (that is, Western) culture. No matter how totally
humans control the planet, they cannot control much beyond the planet. There is
a lot more universe out there, as pictures and data from the Hubble Space
Telescope strikingly confirm. Besides, we probably cannot even control as much
as of the planet as we would like. For example, we can't figure out how to
reverse the damage we have caused the stratospheric ozone layer, only how to
slow down the rate of additional damage in the hope that natural processes will
revive the ozone layer after several decades. And we cannot figure out how to
do away safely with our nuclear wastes or even how to store them safely over
the very long period in which they remain toxic.
If technological progress is a problem, and
in many instances an abomination, when it works at dominating nature and making
it into something passive and a mere resource, it does not follow that there is
no acceptable technical progress. Some technologies are less invasive of nature
than others. For example, those which use wind power for augmenting human
energy and passive solar collection for heating are ethically less ambiguous
than fossil fuels or nuclear energy. One can imagine continuously improved
technical solutions of this sort. It is possible that experience in organic
farming and composting since the 1960's has developed a battery of
soft-technological practices that would constitute an acceptable kind of
technical progress. In any case, pantheism as a religious perspective strongly
endorses our learning how to live more lightly upon the earth.
Do pantheists believe that the divine
universe cares whether we are good or bad, and that it
punishes us if we are bad and do not get punished appropriately in this life?
Since ancient times, political leaders have held that beneficial social
consequences derive from belief in powerful gods who see what we do even when
no humans see it and who punish wrongdoing, either in this life or in an
afterlife. On their view, people must be convinced that nothing that we do
escapes the attention of the divine being. We find political philosophers, both
ancient and modern, who do not really believe in a wrathful god but think that
it is not a bad idea if most people do.
Even if they were right about human
psychology and the crime rate--and, it is not, so far as I know, empirically
proven that they are--this fact would not settle the issue of whether the
divine being (in the pantheist case, the universe as a whole) really knows and
cares about what we do. And pantheists will generally deny this, because it
would require that the divine universe has or is a single mind, and that would
amount to saying that the universe is a divine person, an idea most modern
pantheists would prefer to abandon. Therefore most pantheists do not conceive
the divine power as an observer of our misdeeds and as a punisher of the ones
that our fellow humans fail to catch.
However, pantheists can admit that there is
at least a metaphorical sense in which the universe has providentially arranged
for punishment and reward. Here they can borrow a page from the Stoics, who
were also pantheists of a sort. The Stoics observed that human beings are
endowed with a great capacity for wisdom as well as ignorance, and claimed that
if we judge ignorantly we receive misery while if we judge wisely we receive
tranquility. They had in mind the insight that we make ourselves miserable by
setting our hearts on things beyond our control. These things, they say, are
not truly our private possessions and in claiming them for our own, or acting
as if they should be, we are sinning or transgressing against nature. Yet if we
do this, we are quickly disappointed and so the ignorance associated with this
transgression is swiftly and automatically "punished" by our
undergoing fear and distress (Cf. Seneca, De providentia).
The Stoic insight is that, in producing us as beings with capacity for reason,
the universe has created us with the power to interpret events so as to avoid
at least the more extreme forms of emotional turmoil. Such internal turmoil
besets individuals who do not have their priorities in proper order and try to
treat as their own and under their control things which are actually beyond
their control.
In-depth information on Paul Harrison’s Scientific Pantheism website: http://www.pantheism.net/paul/
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