Consul wrote: ↑May 27th, 2019, 6:04 pmI agree. Order is either extramental or it's created by consciousnesses.Michael McMahon wrote: ↑May 25th, 2019, 6:44 amPantheism, on the other hand, avoids these pitfalls. It's simply the belief that a single energy lives through all conscious entities.What's the point of calling such a(n impersonal) cosmic energy a god or God?!
"[P]antheism is a concept that invalidates itself, since the concept of a God presupposes as its essential correlative a world different from him. If, on the other hand, the world itself is to take over his role, there remains simply an absolute world without God, and so pantheism is only a euphemism for atheism. …But even the assumption of some cause of the world different therefrom is still not theism. For this demands a world-cause that is not only different from the world, but is intelligent, that is to say, knows and wills, and so is personal and consequently also individual; it is only such a cause that is indicated by the word 'God'. An impersonal God is no God at all, but merely a word wrongly used, a misconception, a contradictio in adjecto, a shibboleth for professors of philosophy, who, having had to give up the thing, are anxious to slip through with the word."
(Schopenhauer, Arthur. "Fragments for the History of Philosophy." In Parerga and Paralipomena. Vol. 1. 1851. Translated by E. F. J. Payne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. pp. 114-5)
However, if consciousnesses are not selves but are bundles of experiences then absolute experience is more than just a possibility. This is a synthesis of pantheism and absolute idealism.