Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Michael McMahon]

'God' is a fiery, passionate entity whose willing to give us all the moral guidance we need not to go to hell for breaking its edicts. 'Source', being polar opposite is ice cold - it loves you as infinitely as it loves anything that would eat or prey on you.

To say God as the universe is circular and redundant ignores the fact that the universe is temporal with a past, present and future. We don’t know the future and so there’s an aspect of “God” that’s mysterious to us. But we do know the present so that we can improve ourselves to leave the world a better place when we die. The past is like the common source of where we came from. Therefore pantheism can be made compatible with open-ended interpretations of theism.

[Papus79]

To say God as the universe is circular and redundant ignores the fact that the universe is temporal with a past, present and future. We don’t know the future and so there’s an aspect of “God” that’s mysterious to us. But we do know the present so that we can improve ourselves to leave the world a better place when we die. The past is like the common source of where we came from. Therefore pantheism can be made compatible with open-ended interpretations of theism.

I wouldn't say that it's circular, I just see that examining nature and examining - lets say the 'broader conscious system' leads in Tom Campbell, Bernardo Kastrup, and Donald Hoffman directions. In a way I might be saddling the term 'God' with all of the expectations one would pile on to a personal theistic deity, ie. the kinds of expectations my parents pile on that deity when they say grace along with a handful of petitions before every meal. For me the character of the God of the bible, or even the very neoplatonized god of Christianity which makes Jesus resemble Adam Kadmon in so many ways, ends up taking people to places where the quality of Christian they are is largely showcased in the quality of connection that they feel like they have to Jesus. My biggest problem with that - I don't know that this is always necessarily fair, much like my overwhelming spiritual transformative experiences were with Mary/Isis/Sophia, or 'She who has 10,000 names'.

I guess I'd have to hear more about what your framing of open-theism is to see what I'd agree or disagree with. As it is while I'd say I've been a hard determinist in the past I'm still trying to figure out what the unknown-unknowns are, it seems like hyperdeterminism is just a given based on causality or contents of information and options in the flow of time but that the outcomes of determinism are complex enough not to be simple slavery to immediate causes (most of the time if you care - for example - you'll outclass your circumstances, but even that could be causally determined).

I think more of what I was getting at - the popular definition of 'God' is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and adding to this from the Abrahamic perspective, particularly as detailed in the Psalms of David, knowing the numbers of hairs on our heads and being keenly interested in each one of our outcomes. 'Source' seems to be learning but incomplete, not perfect, obsessed with not losing information, every human life is a bit of an experiment with its own sorts of balancing and buffering factors, and we seem to sit in an incredibly odd place where on one flank animal instinct and the winning of zero-sum games is the province of narcissists and psychopaths, where they climb the social ladders and throw us down with the greatest of ease because they're obsessively focused on one thing where the rest of us aren't, but at the same time the 'humanness' of our ability to self examine, something some chose but many don't, seems to yield deep insight and vision and qualities that would deeply benefit a future human race that could get past all of the X-risks (nuclear, synthetic biology, throwing the whole biosphere in the economic engine to keep people from killing each other over status and 'stuff') and in some ways either taming or at least putting the psychopaths in places where what they are is best suited for the tasks rather than simply dominating everywhere they go.

This is also where it feels like something is either fundamentally changing in terms of what's valued or 'fit' for the human environment or, alternately, we all go off a cliff together and leave the eskimos and aborigines to tell tales of a civilization of educated idiots who played with fire too much and wiped themselves out. I'm still not sure what the outcome is or whether the universe is deeply interested in which way this goes for us. On one level it's quite likely that almost everyone will be met by simulacra of loved ones when they die, taken to peaceful places, and reabsorbed. The question is - what the heck does that 'zone' lets just say (whether many separate forms of consciousness with hierarchical connection or just one diffracting into many) have in the way of engagement or priorities with this particular stage of reality. If it has no problem with us wiping ourselves out then that's probably exactly what happens. Watching the first half of the 20th century across Europe and Asia and how many tens or even hundreds of millions lost their lives in horrific conditions based on various wars of ideology or domination, and you see the worst of that in Mengele, the Russian gulags, and Japan's Unit 731, that the broader conscious system sat by and watched that leniently doesn't send comforting signals about our future.

[Michael McMahon]

Killone Abbey grotto

Outdoor worship can help emphasise the panentheistic aspects of religion. The scenery in the background can bring our attention to our unity with nature. Secluded religious gardens symbolise an area of calm and beauty within an overgrown backdrop. Also notice the amazing scenery around historic spiritual hubs:


Montserrat Cathedral Spain


beehive huts in Skelligs, Kerry

[Sy Borg]

I enjoy photos like the above for the reasons given. They remind us of the reality that we tend to be too busy to notice. The Earthrise photo, taken from the Moon, is famous for highlighting the Earth's unity and vulnerability.



That's all of us right there, finely balanced between falling into the Sun's gravity well or hurtling off into the void.

[Michael McMahon]

Fruit and pleasant flowers growing off thorny stems symbolise aesthetic patterns within the harshness and absurdity of its root existence.



“Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.”
-khanacademy

While the physical universe was in existence since the Big Bang billions of years ago, the mental attributes of our human unconscious only formed around 200,000 years ago. The origins of consciousness can perhaps be interpreted as distinct from the beginnings of the physical universe. Theists are duty-bound to say a conscious God came before the Big Bang while atheists claim we come from a materialistic creation. Whether designed or not, a compromise could be that we were mystically created from the abyss of nothingness! Maybe we could interpret those billions of years as invisible until those first humans appeared. Then it’d be like the first self-aware creatures were created within the eternity of a separate physical universe. In other words our primordial mental and subconscious sphere was initiated by those first humans. Therefore we could distinguish between a symbolic mental origin forming and evolving during the absurdity of those hundreds of thousands of years and also a timeless physical starting point located billions of years in the past. If we all come from nothing, then existential nothingness is itself a shared feature of our lives. This is much like the phrase ashes to ashes and dust to dust. We each have nothingness in common! The billions of years of non-temporal oblivion between the Big Bang and life resemble a mystical gap and formless chasm of time! An analogy might be how we can create any shape from a blank slate.




Meadows can represent the abundance of life, complexity and effortless energy when the environment is left to itself and its own devices. It demonstrates the potential for wonder, bemusement and glimpses of order in a realm ironically left in disarray.

[Papus79]

The dreaded project that's been taking up so much of my time and well being for the last few years might be coming to a close in the next few months.

I'm hoping to get back to Hermetic practices again.

For me a lot of the Hermetic diaspora and their meditation regimens are the kinds of things you do if you take your pantheism or panentheism seriously. It comes from the consideration that we're in a sort of industrial processing of consciousness and these meditations are something you do to keep your own internal and neuro-endocrine development on the rails and doing so in the context of a universe of the sort that Donald Hoffman would describe - ie. a social network of conscious agents, in a sense something like a mental version of Stephen Wolfram's hypergraph, and recognizing it - as well as yourself - as an equilibrium system that you're both adjusting locally and adjusting to.

I was listening to Mark Stavish again (talking to David Metcalf) last night about the future of occultism / esoterism in the west vs. 'occulture' (the strictly trendy / social side of it) and got some inspiring reminders that it's worth pursuing. I remember his Between the Gates having some good meditation techniques and I can see where it might be something to pick back up and run at as what I might think of as 'sane' reality starts to return.

[Papus79]

Michael McMahon

I consider myself incredibly lucky that I was able to see this in my lifetime. Unfortunately I was with a tour group so it wasn't a particularly long stay but it's as crazy to see in person as it is in the photos. This isn't my pic, I still have mine, just not in Photobucket or anything like that at the current moment:

[Michael McMahon]

For me a lot of the Hermetic diaspora and their meditation regimens are the kinds of things you do if you take your pantheism or panentheism seriously.

High ceilings can bring our attention to a higher state of mind!

Theists interpret their competing images of God as a creator of both themselves and the world. From a panentheistic standpoint it’s also possible to interpret their specific faith belief as a unifier or a connecting force between all of the people saying the same prayers or mantras. So a theistic way of looking at it is to say a prayer connects you to God while a panentheistic viewpoint is perhaps where a prayer connects you to the other members of the congregation who are saying the prayers in unison and focusing their energy on a collective spirituality and an idealised frame of mind.

[Michael McMahon]

From a religious standpoint a further benefit of panentheism besides pluralism might be an enhanced appreciation of enlightened historical religious scholars. For example there’s 2,000 years worth of monastic interpretations and spiritual prayers in Christianity. As a mere bystander I noticed during routine mass there might be less focus on perhaps academic texts external to the Bible. I know there’s time constraints with rituals, homilies and so on! Of course I do understand from the Christian’s perspective why all emphasis at lay mass is on fundamental concepts. I’m sure theologians study all these works at school but maybe an occasional variety section might be an interesting side-note at a mass!

[Michael McMahon]

"Apparently, the fiery 93-year-old avowed atheist reporter, Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica, set the social media world aflame after writing in Italian that when asked about the fate of "bad souls," the pontiff responded, "Hell does not exist."
The pope continued, according to Scalfari, saying (emphasis ours), "The disappearance of sinful souls exists."
The statements spurred Catholics and other believers to grab their virtual pitchforks to express their fury, which the Vatican has since tried to cool."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... 1288233004

As a pantheist I don't believe in the literal interpretation of demons and angels. Perhaps we could interpret them symbolically in the sense that some people are merely good and bad while others at another level of being self-sacrificing martyrs or evil murderers. So the adjectives angelic and demonic are a metaphorical state of mind rather than an actual transcendent being if we approached it in a mundane way.



"Mr McAllister’s analysis of the footprints suggests that this group of humans were capable of running at up to 23 mph, bare foot and over soft mud in their pursuit of prey. Or perhaps they were being pursued themselves, trying to avoid becoming a meal for one of the many super-predators that they shared their Australian home with."
https://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/b ... -time.html

People hundreds of years ago had far more time to contemplate spiritual matters and were probably more devout than even the most religious of us of us today. But if we extend back an unimaginable length of time to prehistory, they had very different physiques and morphologies than we do today. We tend to dismiss or disparage these early humans as ape-like. We only have access to the fossils so we don't fully know what their psychology was like. But being so much more diverse and stronger than modern humans they probably had a very different self-awareness than we do today. For example they had extreme strength, endured painfully harsh climates, suffered a lack of resources and had limited awareness of the physical world in terms of science. People these days might respond to pain either angrily or kindly. So if we extrapolate that back to a time when people lived in such chaos far worse than the stresses of today along with having bizarre human bodies, then maybe this trend would be exaggerated such that some pre-humans were demonically, sadistically evil and others were angelically kind. That was just a weird analogical line of thought I had to which of course I've no evidence.

"Neanderthals, who coexisted with Homo sapiens until roughly 20,000 years ago, may have also posed a challenge to modern humans in terms of power... Australopithecus afarensis (represented in part by the famed "Lucy" fossil) had just come down from the trees in an evolutionary sense. Their bodies still reflected chimp features such as longer arms and a stronger upper body built for fighting and swinging through the trees."
https://www.livescience.com/2747-cavema ... -gold.html

"There is no doubt that Neanderthals engaged in and were the recipients of acts of violence..."
https://scroll.in/article/978151/was-th ... anderthals

[Michael McMahon]

"The Devil is the title given to the supernatural being who is believed to be a powerful, evil entity and the tempter of humankind."
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/devil

Even if religions disagree on who God is they all have common ground and a common enemy in viewing their adversary of the devil as evil. Thus all religions are united against an evil being of some kind. We can extend that further and say that humanists and atheists are also united with religion against evil though not necessarily a supernatural version of evil.



"Theologically speaking, according to Islam, Jesus always speaks the truth. The problem is not about what Jesus said, but about our understanding of what Jesus said. Do we understand Jesus correctly?
Muslim theologians will first look for verification of the statement and then at the words Jesus used in their original form or language. The common ground with Christians is the belief that Jesus always speaks the truth. Even if we cannot solve all of our theological differences in this way, we can get to know each other better and find ways we can cooperate and areas where we do agree. In the end, we find that we are not as different as we thought we were."
https://www.christiancentury.org/articl ... us-muslims

It's often mentioned how Islam appreciates Jesus as a spiritual and holy figure though not as the Son of God. By extension they also acknowledge the Jewish God as they're all Abrahamic religions. Christianity does of course return the favour towards Islam in terms of being welcoming and tolerant. Although what's sometimes left out to avoid awkwardness is that Christianity doesn't necessarily reciprocate to the exact same degree in recognising the spirituality of the Prophet Muhammad. Pluralism sometimes gets criticised as religions can have contradictory or mutually exclusive messages. But the above article is a subtle reminder that there's still a lot of overlap and we can always have some form of pluralism even if religions don't always see eye to eye. If I agreed with everything Hinduism advocated for example then I'd simply identify as being a Hindu. That fact that I don't means that indeed I'm not exactly 100 percent pluralistic; but I can still strive to be mostly or even 99 percent pluralistic.


"Bono: He went round saying he was the Messiah; that's why He was crucified because he said he was the Son of God. So either in my view He was the Son of God or he was not. No not a rock and roll messianic complex this; like I mean Charlie Manson type delirium. I find it hard to accept that all the millions and millions of lives (in) half the earth for 2,000 years have been touched (if he wasn't God). I felt their lives (being) touched and inspired by some nutter (is false). I just I don't believe it.
Gay Byrne: it follows that you believed he was
divine?
Bono: Yes"
-The Meaning of Life RTE

That's very true and we've to remember we can also apply that very same logic pluralistically to the 1.4 billion Hindus, 1.8 billion Muslims, 500 million atheists, and so on!

[Michael McMahon]

"Our tentative conclusion is that even nonreligious people are tempted toward religious belief, if only implicitly, in the face of death."
https://psmag.com/social-justice/do-ath ... ions-43291

A pantheistic interpretation of a religion might be a convenient compromise for atheists who change their mind before death but nonetheless disagree with other parts of the religion.

[Michael McMahon]

[yid]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOQClgNRoPc[/yid]
(Bono: Who Is Jesus?)

What I was saying is that a Buddhist could justify their belief in Buddhism by the same token of having over 500 million adherents. This rationale doesn't scientifically prove their specific beliefs but it does reveal the consistency and shared appeal of their faith in finding meaning in life.


"A paradigm is a global organizing model or theory with great explanatory power."
https://homeweb.csulb.edu/~plowentr/Kuhn.htm

Each religion is like a different paradigm of metaphysical belief and sometimes their languages don't always overlap commensurately. For example both Christianity and Buddhism advocate the virtue of humility like the other world religions but the term humility has many different nuances and so what exactly is implied by the word might be somewhat different in each religion. There are many different interpretations of the best way to be humble.

[Michael McMahon]

Below are some more references to religious paradigms in terms of the compatibility of different religions and conversion between them.


"It would be strange to suggest that the first Christians ‘mistook’ the meaning of the term ‘Messiah’ or ‘abused’ the Messianic concept when applying it to Jesus Christ. They were entitled to do so because this was part and parcel of the paradigm shift they underwent. To put the point more moderately: Since the reference to Jesus the Christ suggested itself from within the perspective of the new paradigm they embraced, the first Christians may well have been entitled to apply the term this way. Thus, the charge that they stole the term ‘Messiah’ from the Jews is to be rejected. They stole it as little as Einstein stole the term ‘mass’... In sum, both the early Christian and the Jewish communities are entitled to read the prophecies in their different ways. The reason that both can be entitled to their different readings is that both perceive reality under a different perspective. They ‘live in different worlds’ so that it is natural that they read the Tanakh differently. Both are entitled to their different readings since they approach reality – respectively the religious aspects of it that are relevant in this case – under different perspectives."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10. ... 17.1422988


"Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm-shift can be used as a methodological tool in the study of religious conversion. The same way that the scientist is limited to work within a scientific paradigm, the believer can be said to exercise religion within a theological paradigm. And as anomaly can lead to science crises and a change of worldview, anomaly within the horizon of the believer can lead to existential crisis and religious reorientation. A reservation towards the application of Kuhn's theory on religious conversion is, however, proposed by the author who does not see that different worldviews necessarily are incommensurable. Religious conversion is more often than not a reorientation that combines (what Kuhn's theory would consider as) incompatible differences."
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... digm-Shift

[Michael McMahon]

"Trinity, in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity is considered to be one of the central Christian affirmations about God."

Christianity can be open-ended if we emphasise one part of the trinity instead of the other two. If we focus on God the Father, Christianity sounds very theistic where God might seem very similar to the Jewish and Abrahamic God. It connotes a more impersonal God that's separate from the universe. Alternatively were we to concentrate on the Holy Spirit side of the Trinity then it becomes a bit more mystical and panentheistic. After all a Holy Spirit is more of a spiritual notion. Finally if we focus on the Son of God in isolation, now it comes off more as pantheistic in nature. Were we to exclude the Holy Spirit and God the Father, then Jesus could be interpreted through the title "Son of Man" as he often described himself. It'd be like the teaching of Jesus lives on through his followers. Perhaps another way to think of this idea is that the Holy Spirit and God the Father were concepts Jesus used to help explain his own prophecy and his connection to others.