The World Pantheism Movement

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 9:33 am

I'm going to post the top nine belief's listed by the World Pantheism Movement (WPM). I was hoping that some people here on the forum would take a look at these belief's and state the number(s) of the belief's that strike you as being invalid and state why you feel that way.

This is an interesting type of theism because just like atheism it doesn't believe in a literal God being of any type, just the universe itself. The only difference that I see here between atheism and pantheism is that pantheists are basically nature loving atheist's by the sound of it:

The belief statement of the World Pantheist Movement (WPM):

1. We revere and celebrate the Universe as the totality of being, past, present and future. It is self-organizing, ever-evolving and inexhaustibly diverse. Its overwhelming power, beauty and fundamental mystery compel the deepest human reverence and wonder.

2. All matter, energy, and life are an interconnected unity of which we are an inseparable part. We rejoice in our existence and seek to participate ever more deeply in this unity through knowledge, celebration, meditation, empathy, love, ethical action and art.

3. We are an integral part of Nature, which we should cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. We should strive to live in harmony with Nature locally and globally. We acknowledge the inherent value of all life, human and non-human, and strive to treat all living beings with compassion and respect.

4. All humans are equal centers of awareness of the Universe and nature, and all deserve a life of equal dignity and mutual respect. To this end we support and work towards freedom, democracy, justice, and non-discrimination, and a world community based on peace, sustainable ways of life, full respect for human rights and an end to poverty.

5. There is a single kind of substance, energy/matter, which is vibrant and infinitely creative in all its forms. Body and mind are indivisibly united.

6. We see death as the return to nature of our elements, and the end of our existence as individuals. The forms of "afterlife" available to humans are natural ones, in the natural world. Our actions, our ideas and memories of us live on, according to what we do in our lives. Our genes live on in our families, and our elements are endlessly recycled in nature.

7. We honor reality, and keep our minds open to the evidence of the senses and of science's unending quest for deeper understanding. These are our best means of coming to know the Universe, and on them we base our aesthetic and religious feelings about reality.

8. Every individual has direct access through perception, emotion and meditation to ultimate reality, which is the Universe and Nature. There is no need for mediation by priests, gurus or revealed scriptures.

9. We uphold the separation of religion and state, and the universal human right of freedom of religion. We recognize the freedom of all pantheists to express and celebrate their beliefs, as individuals or in groups, in any non-harmful ritual, symbol or vocabulary that is meaningful to them.

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 9:52 am

Well they read much like affirmations of humanism.

Much I would agree with.

However, parts of nature or the universe are downright hostile to life, so perhaps the beliefs are a bit sanguine in that context.

Also number 8 seems an overstatement. With good methods and technology we can study chunks of reality, but individuals alone simply do not have much access considering the range of the electromagnetic spectrum and our limited brains/sense organs combo. for one.

As a series of ethical touchstones,not a bad list.

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:23 am

Yeah, number 8 is certainly something to question.

I think that they mean that ultimate reality is that everything is interconnected or something to that effect. It seems to me like they're suggesting that Guru's and Priests are not really necessary for coming to understand that deep aspect of the universe. They seem to be suggesting that everyone can find this reality on there own if they seek it.

I'll have to ask someone from the website what they meant with number 8.

Here's another article that goes over Richard Dawkins take on it:

http://www.pantheism.net/atheism.htm?gclid=CKiZmqv5sJECFQFflwodBguXfA

Just Arrived Joined: Feb 06, 2008 Posts: 7

I was a member of the WPM so I'll share my understanding of belief statement #8.

I believe all Paul Harrison (founder of the WPM) is stating is that for those who seek a transcendent "spritual" (for lack of a better word) experience, we can explore and find this experience in and for ourselves. No spiritual leader or religious institution is required. Paul is an atheist and does not believe in the supernatural. Think more along the lines of meditation (with or without the aid of mind altering substances).

Paul is trying to get a new term accepted into common usage: Scientific Pantheism. There are those who, while atheist, also want some way to express or experience their feelings of awe and reverence for reality and to form a community. Atheism only addresses what we don’t believe. Sci-Pan tries to provide a framework for some beliefs shared by many atheists.

The WPM quotes this on their front page. I think it sums up their philosophy quite nicely.

Carl Sagan
“A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.”
Pale Blue Dot

I eventually let my membership lapse. The only reason I won’t label myself as a Scientific Pantheist is because the term is still too obscure. Most people, including some Sci-Pans, just can’t let go of calling reality God. They’ll swear they mean the word “God” in a totally non-theistic way, but eventually this group will start talking in a way that betrays their anthropomorphizing of nature, reality, the universe. I will never be a member of the “let’s redefine god into something palatable even though our definition is totally different from the commonly accepted definition” school of thought. God is what our cultures have made it/them to be and it’s a little late to try to change it/them into something different.

That being said, I still believe Paul’s goals are laudable and I wish success for the WPM.

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 6:05 am

PantheistWorldView wrote:

This is an interesting type of theism because just like atheism it doesn't believe in a literal God being of any type, just the universe itself.

Pantheism is not theism in any sense. Theism is defined as a belief in a supernatural deity. Pantheists believe in the universe and it's beauty and sometimes refer to the universe as God, but everything that occurs in the universe, well, everything that has been observed, is grounded in the natural not the supernatural.

Pantheism, in the words of Dawkins, is "sexed up atheism"

Everything that is stated I feel the same way except I dont feel the need to entitle the universe as "God"

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 9:08 am

You guys nailed the problem.

But I don't really mind people calling the Universe God because I know what they mean by it. When those that don't know what they mean say God, I know what they don't realize about it.

It's a peaceful place to be in because the term God is not a bother to my ears, as is the case for most atheists. A panthiest truly is nothing more than a 'sexed up atheist'. There's no deity literalism here. God as a literal being does not exist in the modern format. The mystery that the God is referring to does exist however, and that's what a Pantheist seems to be keen to.

I like how Allan Watts breaks it down and says that we are the fabric and structure of existence itself. That's really what a given mythic God symbolizes in its esoteric sense anyways - as opposed to a literal supernatural being. It's actually referring to the natural mystery of life and existence.

As is the substance of the creator to the substance of the creation, so is the fabric of existence to space/atom based stuctures.

The wholistic perception of the universe, or God as some prefer, seems the most logical to me.

I thought that Paul stated the list pretty nicely.

1. The mystery of the universe is the main point in Campbell's comparitive mythology lessons, so a Good firm choice for the first belief (IMO).

It's listed as the first function of mythology time and again. All of the other four functions play off of, and are supported by, the deep mystery of the cosmos symbolized as the highest God.

The positioning of the mystery as the first belief comes off as well thought out on his part.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:40 am

Beliefs 3 and 8 strike me as a little akward.

Quote:

3. We are an integral part of Nature, which we should cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. We should strive to live in harmony with Nature locally and globally. We acknowledge the inherent value of all life, human and non-human, and strive to treat all living beings with compassion and respect.

I am not one to see nature AS NATURE to be more worthy of "cherishing" than the synthetic. In fact, I think that the synthetic is just as beautiful, special, and important as the 'natural.'

It seems to me, though, that this is saying that as we should "preserve" nature, that we should minimize attempts to change it to meet our needs. After all, "preserve" means "keep in its present state," (at very least; at most, it means, "to bring back to a past state.")

I don't see anything wrong with changing - I can't resist - the nature of nature towards the synthetic.

So, as to number 3, I do not share the sentiment that nature, as such, is uniquely special.

Quote:

8. Every individual has direct access through perception, emotion and meditation to ultimate reality, which is the Universe and Nature. There is no need for mediation by priests, gurus or revealed scriptures.

Like PJS, I have a problem with this one. We do not have any "direct access" to nature. We do have our senses, but our senses only tell us so much. We, with the help of technology, can study things that our immediate senses do not have access to, but to say that we have "direct access" is certainly not true. It takes work and effort to get even indirect access.

Other than that - and the new agey feel of the wordings - I really have no problem with any of the prongs on this list.

Would I consider myself a pantheist? No. Probably because I do not share the idea that everything in the universe is one. Rather, we can see everything as one, or we can see everything as distinct. It is simply a difference of vantage points.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 9:33 am

That's interesting. One thing is for certain, everything that we create stems from nature in some way. We combine things with one another and come up with what some would consider 'unnatural things' because we created them.

But ultimately, if man is nature, as opposed to being separate from nature, then nature is merely fooling around with itself all the while and nothing is actually unnatural in that respect. Not even the synthetics - good point.

He pretty much just seems to be saying that we shouldn't destroy the planet from what I'm getting on number 3, and that anyone can understand ultimate reality on their own if they so choose in number 8.

I'll go into a little philosophy.

I can look around at nature, the planet, and the night sky, and consider that I'm looking around at the very fabric and structure of existence itself all around me. I can then consider I am made out of the fabric of existence myself, just as everything else that I see around me.

All of the different looking forms and images as well as the space in-between the images are ultimately making up the fabric of existence itself as a totality - as a unified whole - in a quantum entangled sort of way to use a scientific term.

I'm not sure, but I think that this is the ultimate reality that he's referring to. The many things, are essentially the one existence that is common to all. What can exist that is not specifically the fabric of existence itself?

This can be realized through deep thought and contemplation concerning the natural universe. So we have direct access to ultimate reality in this philosophical sense and stems from considering nature very deeply.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:36 am

patheistworldview wrote:

That's interesting. One thing is for certain, everything that we create stems from nature in some way. We combine things with one another and come up with what some would consider 'unnatural things' because we created them.

But ultimately, if man is nature, as opposed to being separate from nature, then nature is merely fooling around with itself all the while and nothing is actually unnatural in that respect. Not even the synthetics - good point.

Yes. The distinction between natural and artificial is somewhat illusory because the artificial is simply a recombination of natural things.

But what I did not like was the insertion of the word "preserve" into the equation because, as i said, "preserve" means (at least) "to keep the same," and (at most) "to revert back to a previous state."

Thus, by implication, it sounds to me that the third point is suggesting that we must strive to keep nature in its natural state. (I cannot see what else could be meant by "preserve nature.") I disagree with that.

Quote:

I can look around at nature, the planet, and the night sky, and consider that I'm looking around at the very fabric and structure of existence itself all around me. I can then consider I am made out of the fabric of existence myself, just as everything else that I see around me.

But by the same token that we can see everything as made from the same stuff, we can also see that all things are quite different from eachother, if only in the way that stuff makes up each thing seperately. Each cell grows on its own and each organism is a different organism than each other organism. If one of my cells dies, others live on, and if I die, others live on.

So, we are all connected in that we are all made of the same stuff, but seperate in that we are all seperate entities (and in the case of sentient life, we all have different consciousnesses.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:43 pm

Once again, good point.

Through all of this coming and going, the underlying fabric of existence of it all is perpetual - trucking right along.

"So, we are all connected in that we are all made of the same stuff, but separate in that we are all separate entities (and in the case of sentient life, we all have different consciousnesses."

I'm not sure that a pantheist would disagree with you there. We are all connected in one sense, and separate in another sense. The only thing is that while viewing the differences a pantheist is grounded in the awareness of the underlying connectivity beneath it all. Viewing the many different things through a wholistic perspective.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:34 am

You may also want to look up the "Continuum Fallacy".

Appealing to a continuum is not always a fallacy, just as appealing to reducio ad absurdum is not always a fallacy, but pantheism is very much in danger of appealing to it in a fallacious way.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 7:34 am

kmisho wrote:

Appealing to a continuum is not always a fallacy, just as appealing to reducio ad absurdum is not always a fallacy, but pantheism is very much in danger of appealing to it in a fallacious way.

Interesting. I am not really that familiar with "appealing to a continuum" as a fallacy. Can you explain how you mean here? Why would you consider pantheists in danger of fallaciousness when appealing to a continum.

(Not to argue. I have never really heard this and would like to hear your thoughts more in depth.)

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:43 am

As would I.

I've been reading through Milo Wolff lately who's put forward the wave structure of matter theory. It suggests that space acts as, and has the properties of a wave medium, and that particles are actually spherical standing waves vibrating in the wave medium of space (space resonance). This sheds light on the particle/wave duality issue.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7823900830226715648&q=Milo+Wolff&total=3&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

The theory interconnects everything that exists in the universe through the wave medium structure of space and solves the issue of the one and the many in a very direct way.

His book is "Exploring the Physics of The Unknown Universe", and his website is www.quantummatter.com If you'd like to read up on it.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:56 pm

Kevinthepragmaticist wrote:

kmisho wrote:

Appealing to a continuum is not always a fallacy, just as appealing to reducio ad absurdum is not always a fallacy, but pantheism is very much in danger of appealing to it in a fallacious way.

Interesting. I am not really that familiar with "appealing to a continuum" as a fallacy. Can you explain how you mean here? Why would you consider pantheists in danger of fallaciousness when appealing to a continum.

(Not to argue. I have never really heard this and would like to hear your thoughts more in depth.)

You've probably heard of Sorites Paradox about when how many grains does it take to have a heap.

Here's the little wiki page on it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

I often see a number of "all is one" type of arguments that lead to conclusions like these:

everything is alive: because you're alive and there is no clear dividing line between you and everything else

denail of self, there is no "you": for the same reason, but in reverse

I often hear philosophizing of this sort from people who advocate differing degrees of east-meets-west buddhistic or pantheistic ideas.

And finally a warning from Herman Melville about being too taken with nature (Moby Dick chapter 35):
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:—

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient “interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 2:38 am

MILO WOLFF

Technotran Press
1124 Third Street, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Abstract:

"The great philosophers of cosmology, Clifford, Mach, Einstein, Wyle, Dirac, Schroedinger, have pointed out that only a wave structure of matter (particles) can conform to experimental data and fulfill the logic of reality and cosmology. This Quantum Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) has been found and is the origin of the natural laws. Since the WSM provides a quantitative origin of the fundamental natural laws, it becomes the basis of physical sciences.

Only three basic Principles of Nature determine the wave medium and enable quantitative calculation of the WSM and the origin of the natural laws. The medium of the waves is space. The properties of particles and the laws embedded in them are derived from the properties of space. This 'single entity', described by three principles, underlies 'everything'.

For the electron, the structure is a pair of spherical outward and inward quantum waves, convergent to a center, existing in ordinary space and termed a space resonance. Every space resonance shares its binary wave structure pair with all others in our universe. Thus we exist in an inter-connected binary universe.

The predictive power of the WSM shows how the electron's wave pair is the physical origin of the previously unknown quantum spin. These two waves are a Dirac spinor satisfying the theoretical Dirac Equation. Spin occurs because the inward quantum wave continually undergoes spherical rotation at the center transforming to the outward wave. The significance of the WSM on communication, life, and our connection with the binary universe is discussed."

It pays to get into understanding wave physics because it stands to correct tradition point particle physics and former misconceptions concerning matter in the universe. In short, all matter is a wave structure of space. It is the 'primary substance' of life and existence. We can't call space alive or living, because particles are formed by repeating waves centers in space and life as we understand it is formed by repeating waves centers(matter) that moved on to become replicating repeating wave centers in space through evolution.

So the "all is alive" perspective doesn't work through the new physics, yet, the "all is one" perspective is the foundation of it all. You should read through the site and perhaps go over the book as well. This is the future of physics being pioneered by atheist scientists, not Buddhist or Hindu wishful thinking.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7823900830226715648&q=Milo+Wolff&total=3&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0


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