Any man or woman who professes to speak on God's behalf -- is a fraud. It is an act of rhetorical manipulation -- somebody trying to get you to do do something, or not do something, based on 'Divine Heresay'. God doesn't make ethics. Men and women make ethics -- and then sometimes, oftentimes, attach God's name to the result -- fraudulantly -- in order to give the ethics more 'rhetorical power'. The power of 'Divine Authority'. The power of fraudulant Divine Authority.
A religion needs to be judged by its system of ethics; not the reverse. Not by the professed Authority of God. That is an act of righteous fraud. If you want to judge a religion as being 'healthy' and/or 'pathological', then you have to judge it by ist system of ethics. This system of ethics is made by men in positions of religious power; not by the power and the word of God.
God is a myth -- sometimes a good myth, sometimes a bad myth, depending on whether people are helping each other, caring for each other, in God's name -- or killing each other.
God's name has been used just as often to promote violence as it has been to stop it. God's name has been used endlessly to support and give rhetorical power and manipulation to man's narcissitic and righteous -- ethical or unethical -- intentions. That is why a religion needs to be judged by its system of ethics -- just as a political party does, just as a business does, and just as the men and women operating behind the scenes -- making and breaking the 'professed' ethics -- do. That is why 'idealism' in the philosophy of Marx becomes turned on its head and called 'ideology' which in Marx's system is not a good thing. Ideology in Marx's system of philosophy essentially means 'fake idealism and realism'. Ideology to Marx means 'a smoke and mirrors' cover up for man's real behavior -- his 'narcissistic materialism'. That rule of thumb generally applies for 21st century politics: idealism equals fake ideology equals hypocrisy. The same equation has been just as rampant in religion over man's history as it has in politics. rigtheous idealistic and ideological intentions disguise and cover up man's real intentions: narcissism and materialism. Schopenhauer and Marx are smiling at me in their respective graves.
Religion -- without humanistic-existential ethics and values, meaning a balance of compassion and accountability, self-assertiveness and social sensitivity - generally degenerates into righteous intolerance based on 'either/or' ethics. Good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the Devil...Excommunicate those who are bad, associated with Hell and the Devil...Curse them...This is the religion of promoting hatred and violence. It is not the religion of tolerance, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.
They -- meaning the Amsterdam Jews, those who had understandably fled the righteous intolerance, the hate, the persecution and the torture of the Spanish and Portugese Inquisition -- turned around and betrayed the finest and most ethical among them -- Baroch Spinoza. The man who dared to integrate Science and Religion -- God and Nature in Spinoza's eyes were One. Not God ruling over Nature. But God in Nature. God and Nature being synonymous. God being the Spirit of Nature. This is a myth too -- just like God the Creator and Ruler over Man and Nature -- without the negative side effects. Without the righteous intolerance based on 'Either/Or' Ethics. God and Nature as being one and the same -- is a good myth. Because now when I look at Nature, I look at Nature with new meaning and substance. I look at Nature and feel a part of Nature -- with a sense of awe and splendor. Enjoying the most of it because it may not last. (Or I may not last.) Not something to be tossed away like a rag doll. Polluted until you are afraid of the dangers of its toxicity. I saw Daytona Beech in the 1960s. I would probably cry if I saw it now. I once jumped into Lake Ontario at Ontario Place when I was drunk (in the 1980s). I had to throw out my clothes when I got home. I smelled like a sewer rat. You were once able to swim at Woodbine Beech in Toronto. I wouldn't want to swime there now. People have to go further and furhter north to find safe swimming. 'You pay paradise and you put up a parking lot.' -- Joni Mitchell.
When I use the word 'God', I do not use it righteously unless it is to protect Nature and Reglious Tolerance in the name of Spinoza, and after him, in the name of Albert Einstein. I don't say that my ethics comes from God. It comes from pre-Enlightenment philosophers like Spinoza, Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Adam Smith and Diderot and Voltaire and Paine and Jefferson. It comes from Romantic philosophers like Rousseau and Schelling. It comes from Dialectic philosophers like Hegel and early humanistic Marx. It comes from Humanistic-Existentialists like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. It comes from political humanists like Erich Fromm. And it comes from General Semantics empiricists like Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa. To repeat, it doesn't come from God. It comes from me. I will take full responsibility and accountability for my philosophical ethics. And I will use God's name symbolically, metaphorically and mythologically -- not epistemolotically.
Epistemologically (or ontologically), if you ask me if God exists, I will say, 'I don't know. I think that makes me an 'Epistemological Agnostic'. Spiritually, I will call myself a pantheist -- or some derrivative of a Spinozian-Einsteinian Pantheist.
That is where I stand today.
dgb, Aug. 30th, 2007.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Spinoza's Room
I view this essay as a first draft. I expect that I will write a variety of updated modifications of this essay at a later date. You see, this is my first real attempt to grapple with the fascinating ideas of a perplexing philosopher -- Baruch (Hebrew for 'blessed') or Benedictus (Latin for 'blessed) Spinoza (1632-1677). The name 'Spinoza' derives from the word 'thorn' in Portugese (Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza, 2006, Random House of Canada Ltd., Toronto.) Together, Baruch Spinoza's name seems fitting appropriate -- 'blessed thorn'. In my opinion, and the opinion of many, all of mankind is 'blessed' for having been exposed to Spinoza's extraordinary ideas -- he holds the 'dual and paradoxical distinction' that he can be viewed as both a precursor of 'Enlightenment Philosophy' and 'Romantic Philosophy' at the same time. There is perhaps, to my knowledge, only one other Western philosopher before the 1700s who can arguably hold such a dual distinction --and that is the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535BC-475BC). There are other 14th to 17th century precursors to Enlightenment (Scientific-Humanistic) Philosophy -- William of Occam (1290-1349), Montaigne (1533-1592), Galileo (1564-1642), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Isaac Newton (1643-1728), and John Locke (1632-1704) to name some of the more important ones. Rousseau can be viewed as the 'father' of Romantic Philosophy -- the point at which Romantic Philosophy grew out as a rebellion against 'unadulterated' Enlightenment Philosophy (reason, reason, and more reason -- did we forget 'passion' and even 'unreasonable passion'?), rather than being on the integrative 'Pantheistic' (scientific-spiritual) path of both Heraclitus and Spinoza.
There is at least one more very famous member of this 'triadic' scientific-spiritual-pantheistic' movment that Heraclitus started and Spinoza embellished -- and that is one of the most famous intellects in the history of mankind -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Einstein's conception of God can be found at the end of this essay and is very important because it is very 'Spinozian based' and a flagship of a very well developed pantheistic position. At the end of the paper, we will also look at a quick definition of pantheism along with some of its derivatives and distinctions vs. other forms of spiritualism and/or religion.
Spinoza has been labelled the 'renegade Jew' and a 'sneaky atheist' (Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza) and a 'Bu-Jew' (not sure what Goldstein meant by that but I will do my own interpretation here). I see Spinoza as being a 'Budhist-like renegade Jew' who both stimulated the Romantic Movement of the late 1700s and yet at the same time, except for his pantheistic vision of God, was very 'unromantic' in personality. He didn't marry or father a child. He didn't like or support 'high emotion, passion, appetite, and drama' either in his philosophy or in his life (even though he spent his whole life provoking it in the responses of others to his rebellion against orthodox Judaism, and for that matter, any type of orthodox religion. When you start saying that 'God' and 'Nature' are the same thing -- synonyms for each other, no more, no less -- especially back in the 1600s, you are asking for trouble.)
The only type of person that this pantheistic vision, at least at first blush, might be attractive to is a philosopher or a scientist who would like to add some 'spiritual depth' to his work and thus, in some form or another, integrate religion and science, creation and evolution. This, at least partly if not mainly, seems to be the type of persons who were most attracted to his work, or at least, his pantheistic work. Schelling integrated Hegel and Spinoza to create a more 'dualistic and dialectic romanticism and spiritualism. I follow Schelling in this dialectical spiritualistic direction due also in main part to my post-Spinozian in combination with post-Hegelian vision. In this respect, a distinction can be made between a 'unilateral or unconditional wholist' (Spinoza, Alfed Adler) vs. a 'dialectical integrationist and wholist' (Schelling, early Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, Freud, Jung, Perls, me...) Anyway, I would call Einstein the most honorary member to Spinoza's vision, which in my opinion, his much more 'spiritual depth' than any flat out atheistic position. Spinoza was not a sneaky atheist but rather a profoundly religious, ethical, and deep spiritual person in a way that most people during his time could not, and would not accept. Even today, this is significantly still the case. Spinoza was thinking 'outside the normal religious box'. There are many more sides to Spinoza's thinking that I have not described here -- his rationalism (which I will challenge in my epistemology section), his trumpeting of the pre-Enlightenment ideas of 'freedom of speech' and 'religious tolerance' which would become central to the Scottish Enlightenment, The British Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, and the American Enlightenment in the middle 1700s. (I will visit Spinoza here again in my Enlightenment section.)
The Spinozian vision that I have focused on here in this section is his pantheistic vision which I will spend numerous essays to follow exploring different possible avenues relative to the potential further evolution of this pantheistic vision.
dgb, Aug. 27th, 2007.
.....................................................................................
Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................Pantheism (Greek: πάν ( 'pan' ) = all and θεός ( 'theos' ) = God) literally means "God is All" and "All is God". It is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract God; or that the Universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence, and the Universe (the sum total of all that is, was, and shall be) is represented or personified in the theological principle of an abstract 'god'. However, it is important to understand that Pantheists do not believe in a personal, creative deity or deities of any kind, the key feature which distinguishes them from panentheists and pandeists. As such, although many religions may claim to hold pantheistic elements, they are more commonly panentheistic or pandeistic in nature.
Reference: Wikipedia
....................................................................................
Panentheism
Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the Universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate. Whereas pantheism finds God to be synonymous with nature, panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone. Some find this distinction unhelpful, while others see it as a significant point of division. Many of the major faiths described as pantheistic could also be described as panentheistic, whereas naturalistic pantheism cannot (not seeing God as more than nature alone). For example, elements of both panentheism and pantheism are found in Hinduism. Certain interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and Shri Rudram support this view. Reference: Wikipedia
...................................................................................
Pandeism
Pandeism is a kind of Pantheism which incorporates a form of Deism, holding that the Universe is identical to God, but also that God was previously a conscious and sentient force or entity that designed and created the Universe. God only became an unconscious and nonsentient God by becoming the Universe. Other than this distinction (and the possibility that the Universe will one day return to the state of being God), Pandeistic beliefs are identical to Pantheism.
Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Pantheistic concepts in religion
Hinduism
It is generally asserted that Hindu religious texts are the oldest known literature that contains the ideas of Pantheistic doctrine[1]. In Hindu theology, Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all things in this Universe, and is also the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. This pantheistic doctrine is traceable from some of the more ancient Upanishads to later Advaita philosophy. All Mahāvākyas(Great Sayings) of the Upanishads, in one way or another, seem to indicate the unity of the world with the Brahman. Chāndogya Upanishad says "All this Universe indeed is Brahma; from him does it proceed; into him it is dissolved; in him it breathes, so let every one adore him calmly". Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Judaism
The radically immanent sense of the divine in Jewish mystical Kabbalah is said to have inspired Spinoza's formulation of pantheism. However, Spinoza's views have not been accepted in Orthodox Judaism.
Additionally, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, had a mystical sense of the divine that could be described as panentheism.
Biblical Judaism asserts the origin of the Universe was brought forth by the Torah [law] of nature. Thus the original Torah is found not within the writing of Moshe, but within nature itself. "Reading" the Torah of nature is seen as equivalent to "reading" the Torah of revelation and theoretically will agree with one another in the end [as illustrated for example in the discovery of the Big Bang in 1965]. Rabbinical Orthodoxy viewing this as a discrepancy, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A view rejected by Biblical pantheists.
Maimonides, though Orthodox, reflected the sentiment that the Torah of nature and the Torah of scripture were equivalent and found its logic inescapable, in his comments on the reconciliation of science with scripture. These instructions no doubt served as background for the development of Baruch Spinoza's later views.
Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
There is at least one more very famous member of this 'triadic' scientific-spiritual-pantheistic' movment that Heraclitus started and Spinoza embellished -- and that is one of the most famous intellects in the history of mankind -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Einstein's conception of God can be found at the end of this essay and is very important because it is very 'Spinozian based' and a flagship of a very well developed pantheistic position. At the end of the paper, we will also look at a quick definition of pantheism along with some of its derivatives and distinctions vs. other forms of spiritualism and/or religion.
Spinoza has been labelled the 'renegade Jew' and a 'sneaky atheist' (Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza) and a 'Bu-Jew' (not sure what Goldstein meant by that but I will do my own interpretation here). I see Spinoza as being a 'Budhist-like renegade Jew' who both stimulated the Romantic Movement of the late 1700s and yet at the same time, except for his pantheistic vision of God, was very 'unromantic' in personality. He didn't marry or father a child. He didn't like or support 'high emotion, passion, appetite, and drama' either in his philosophy or in his life (even though he spent his whole life provoking it in the responses of others to his rebellion against orthodox Judaism, and for that matter, any type of orthodox religion. When you start saying that 'God' and 'Nature' are the same thing -- synonyms for each other, no more, no less -- especially back in the 1600s, you are asking for trouble.)
The only type of person that this pantheistic vision, at least at first blush, might be attractive to is a philosopher or a scientist who would like to add some 'spiritual depth' to his work and thus, in some form or another, integrate religion and science, creation and evolution. This, at least partly if not mainly, seems to be the type of persons who were most attracted to his work, or at least, his pantheistic work. Schelling integrated Hegel and Spinoza to create a more 'dualistic and dialectic romanticism and spiritualism. I follow Schelling in this dialectical spiritualistic direction due also in main part to my post-Spinozian in combination with post-Hegelian vision. In this respect, a distinction can be made between a 'unilateral or unconditional wholist' (Spinoza, Alfed Adler) vs. a 'dialectical integrationist and wholist' (Schelling, early Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, Freud, Jung, Perls, me...) Anyway, I would call Einstein the most honorary member to Spinoza's vision, which in my opinion, his much more 'spiritual depth' than any flat out atheistic position. Spinoza was not a sneaky atheist but rather a profoundly religious, ethical, and deep spiritual person in a way that most people during his time could not, and would not accept. Even today, this is significantly still the case. Spinoza was thinking 'outside the normal religious box'. There are many more sides to Spinoza's thinking that I have not described here -- his rationalism (which I will challenge in my epistemology section), his trumpeting of the pre-Enlightenment ideas of 'freedom of speech' and 'religious tolerance' which would become central to the Scottish Enlightenment, The British Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, and the American Enlightenment in the middle 1700s. (I will visit Spinoza here again in my Enlightenment section.)
The Spinozian vision that I have focused on here in this section is his pantheistic vision which I will spend numerous essays to follow exploring different possible avenues relative to the potential further evolution of this pantheistic vision.
dgb, Aug. 27th, 2007.
.....................................................................................
Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................Pantheism (Greek: πάν ( 'pan' ) = all and θεός ( 'theos' ) = God) literally means "God is All" and "All is God". It is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract God; or that the Universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence, and the Universe (the sum total of all that is, was, and shall be) is represented or personified in the theological principle of an abstract 'god'. However, it is important to understand that Pantheists do not believe in a personal, creative deity or deities of any kind, the key feature which distinguishes them from panentheists and pandeists. As such, although many religions may claim to hold pantheistic elements, they are more commonly panentheistic or pandeistic in nature.
Reference: Wikipedia
....................................................................................
Panentheism
Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the Universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate. Whereas pantheism finds God to be synonymous with nature, panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone. Some find this distinction unhelpful, while others see it as a significant point of division. Many of the major faiths described as pantheistic could also be described as panentheistic, whereas naturalistic pantheism cannot (not seeing God as more than nature alone). For example, elements of both panentheism and pantheism are found in Hinduism. Certain interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and Shri Rudram support this view. Reference: Wikipedia
...................................................................................
Pandeism
Pandeism is a kind of Pantheism which incorporates a form of Deism, holding that the Universe is identical to God, but also that God was previously a conscious and sentient force or entity that designed and created the Universe. God only became an unconscious and nonsentient God by becoming the Universe. Other than this distinction (and the possibility that the Universe will one day return to the state of being God), Pandeistic beliefs are identical to Pantheism.
Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Pantheistic concepts in religion
Hinduism
It is generally asserted that Hindu religious texts are the oldest known literature that contains the ideas of Pantheistic doctrine[1]. In Hindu theology, Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all things in this Universe, and is also the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. This pantheistic doctrine is traceable from some of the more ancient Upanishads to later Advaita philosophy. All Mahāvākyas(Great Sayings) of the Upanishads, in one way or another, seem to indicate the unity of the world with the Brahman. Chāndogya Upanishad says "All this Universe indeed is Brahma; from him does it proceed; into him it is dissolved; in him it breathes, so let every one adore him calmly". Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Judaism
The radically immanent sense of the divine in Jewish mystical Kabbalah is said to have inspired Spinoza's formulation of pantheism. However, Spinoza's views have not been accepted in Orthodox Judaism.
Additionally, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, had a mystical sense of the divine that could be described as panentheism.
Biblical Judaism asserts the origin of the Universe was brought forth by the Torah [law] of nature. Thus the original Torah is found not within the writing of Moshe, but within nature itself. "Reading" the Torah of nature is seen as equivalent to "reading" the Torah of revelation and theoretically will agree with one another in the end [as illustrated for example in the discovery of the Big Bang in 1965]. Rabbinical Orthodoxy viewing this as a discrepancy, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A view rejected by Biblical pantheists.
Maimonides, though Orthodox, reflected the sentiment that the Torah of nature and the Torah of scripture were equivalent and found its logic inescapable, in his comments on the reconciliation of science with scripture. These instructions no doubt served as background for the development of Baruch Spinoza's later views.
Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The Epistemology, Mythology, and Ethics of 'God' and Religion
This essay may not be something that the 'religiously devout' person wants to hear. It is an 'rational-empirical' philosopher's perspective on the 'epistemology' vs. the 'mythology' of 'God' and 'religion'. My thesis is basically that the 'epistemology' of 'God' -- meaning the 'realness of His or Her existence' is highly suspect and questionable based on 21st century rational-empirical knowledge or epistemology. There are too many 'leaps of faith' and 'suspensions of disbelief' of normal, every-day, common-sense knowledge necessary to turn the possibility of 'God's existence' into a probability, let alone a 'fact'. Does God have a 'physical presence' and 'physical boundaries'? What does 'He or She or It look like? Are we really to believe that 'God has an ever-lasting life-span, unlike anything else on earth that we have ever seen or heard of? Are we really to believe that 'God is all-powerful'? And that 'God is inherently good when there is so much destructive and selfish evil in this world?'
From an 'epistemological' point of view, the existence of 'God' is highly improbable. 'God' is more rationally seen as a 'mythological construct' -- a projection of many of man's wishful and/or fearful needs -- that has been used for thousands of years by man to 'ward off a fear of death' and to 'help him ethically behave better on earth' (and some might cynically say allow people in power to better control the behavior of the masses and to get them to do things that they would not normally do because these behaviors would violate the 'pleasure and happiness' principle.) The ethical and moral virtue of God and religion can be better supported 'mythologically' than 'epistemologically' but even this comes with a serious 'caveat emptor'. Mythologically-speaking, religion is neither 'good' or 'bad' but the type of man-made ethics, attitude, and behavior that support the religion all make it so -- or not so. You have to 'dig into the contents' of the religion in order to determine whether it is 'good' or 'bad' for man. And you have to 'dig into the particulars' of how each and every person is using his or her religion for the good or bad of him or herself -- and others around him or her -- to determine its relative 'personal health content' or 'personal pathology content'.
Returning to an epistemological point of view, the closest I can come to connecting 'rationality' or 'reason' with 'God' is through 'Intelligent Design Theory'. In other words, it is easy to argue that the world -- and everything in it -- is so amazingly well-designed, so 'intelligently' well-designed, that it is very hard not to, indeed, almost impossible not to, believe that there must have been some intelligent designER behind the incredible complexity of this design. It is very hard to believe the opposite point of view -- that the world, and everything in it, with all of its individual and collective complexities of functional design, was created simply by 'accident'. Even evolution theory -- is a little stale and 'parameter restricted' if by evolution theory we want to restrict ourselves only to the Darwinian perspective of 'genetic evolution over numerous generations'. This cannot account for much faster forms of evolution such as human evolution through individual and/or social learning. Hegelian social evolution or dialectic (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) theory is a much stronger way of accounting for faster forms of evolution than classic Darwinian Theory, particularly if it too is broadened to account for 'individual and social, biological intelligence' -- i.e., the power to compensate, modify, mutate, adjust, change -- in even the smallest of animals and plants like 'ants' and 'viruses' and 'bacteria' that are not generally regarded as having 'intelligence'. Even plants can be said to have 'intelligence' in that, for example, they will bend towards the sun, and certain plants -- like say the 'pau d arco' plant -- have 'learned' to fight off and become 'immune' to, its arch enemy -- fungi -- in ways that can only be described as 'learned over time' and 'immune function based on plant intelligence'.
All of this brings us back to the question of, 'Where did this intelligence come from?', and was/is there something 'more all-encompassing, and/or more all-overseeing' that put this type of 'evolutionary intelligence' into every animal, mineral, and plant on earth.
Now it is a major leap of 'faith', 'trust', 'assumption', 'presumption', or a 'suspension of disbelief' as they say in the entertainment business, to jump from 'intellignet design' theory and even the idea of an 'intelligent designer' -- which could be a more intelligent race of people from a different world who may be playing with this world as their 'hobby' or 'university course' -- to the idea of 'God' which include many, many more assumptions -- and probably man-made 'idealistic projections' -- than an 'intelligent designer' theory.
Thus, as an empirically and rationally based philosopher (or at least that is what I would like to think that I am), I can state with conviction that the idea of an 'intelligent designer' theory can be rationally and empirically supported; however, the 'leap of faith' if you will, or 'leap into metaphysics', or 'suspension of disbelief' that takes us from intelligent designer theory to 'God' -- cannot be rationally, empirically, and/or epistemologically supported in the same way.
We look back now at the many 'Gods' of the ancient Greeks -- a 'God of War', a 'God of Love', etc. -- and we partly smile and call them 'myths'.
What would cause us to believe that the 'one God' that many people believe in today, and that most religions righteously trumpet, would be any less of a 'myth' than the 20 Gods that are now being called a myth, some 2700 years ago.
There is only one possible reason: many people NEED to believe in God (for example, fear of death) -- even if this means 'suspending their epistemological sense of disbelief' in order to sustain their belief in God's existence -- and an 'afterlife'.
This is not to say that all myths are bad; there are plenty of myths, fairy tales -- and Gods -- that may, indeed do, play a useful and functional role in man's life (eg. Santa Clause, Peter Pan, the tooth fairy, and so on...)
However, from an empirical philosopher's point of view, the existence of God cannot be rationally supported -- are we really to believe that 'God' has no 'lifespan' and no 'physical presence or boundaries'. (If we believe that God has no boundaries, then we are, in effect, getting close to Spinoza's idea of spiritual pantheism -- 'God is Nature' or 'God is everywhere and in everything'.
Any orthodox or unorhodox form of religion or belief in God is simply a different form of myth. If you want to -- or need to -- choose a 'God' myth; just make sure that it is beneficial to both you and the people around you, and be tolerant of other people's 'myths' as long as they do not violate any human rights laws as put forth by the United Nations, and/or any and every humanistic country that does not tolerate religious suppression and violence.
Whether you are a Muslim, a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican, a Mormon, a Jew, or a Spinozian Pantheist, the question of importance is not whether your God 'exists' or not; but rather, whether you are a 'better' or 'worse' person for your belief in the 'myth' of 'God'.
Mythologically and functionally, 'God' -- in any form -- can be supported, if it makes you a better person to yourself and others. Epistemologically, the existence of God can't -- at least not based on any kind of rational philosophical empiricism that I can come up with.
I do not have any problem with the president of The United States being a mormon -- or any other 'humanistic' religion.
However, I have a big problem with politics, the State, and religion being epistemologically and ethically connected.
You do not bring a myth to epistemology, law, science, or politics any more than you would a fairy tale; and you do not lead a country based on either a myth or a fairy tale in situations where good, sound, credible, reliable, empirical epistemology is what is needed.
Thus, when and where I use the term and concept 'God', I am using it symbolically, mythologically, and spiritually -- but not epistemoligically. This is a very, very important distinction, not only for me, but for anyone who is seriously interested in digging into the ethical merit of their religion, and the relative health or pathology of the particular religious ideas that they are being asked or told to 'buy into'.
Ask not first what you can do for your religion, but rather what your religion can do for you, the people who are practising the religion, and the people outside of the religion. Is it helping people to live happier lives? Or is it making people miserable? Is it making the people within the religion more tolerant, caring, and peaceful towards other people? Or is it making people righteously intolerant, unaccepting, even aggressive and violent towards other people of differing religious or unreligous ideas? Is it making people submissive and masochistic? Or is it making people assertive and independent in balance with compassionate, caring, and socially sensitive and giving? I am looking for a new evolution and breed of religions -- of any name or faith be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any other form of religion -- that is based on 'humanistic-existential values and ethics'; not squashing the same.
db
From an 'epistemological' point of view, the existence of 'God' is highly improbable. 'God' is more rationally seen as a 'mythological construct' -- a projection of many of man's wishful and/or fearful needs -- that has been used for thousands of years by man to 'ward off a fear of death' and to 'help him ethically behave better on earth' (and some might cynically say allow people in power to better control the behavior of the masses and to get them to do things that they would not normally do because these behaviors would violate the 'pleasure and happiness' principle.) The ethical and moral virtue of God and religion can be better supported 'mythologically' than 'epistemologically' but even this comes with a serious 'caveat emptor'. Mythologically-speaking, religion is neither 'good' or 'bad' but the type of man-made ethics, attitude, and behavior that support the religion all make it so -- or not so. You have to 'dig into the contents' of the religion in order to determine whether it is 'good' or 'bad' for man. And you have to 'dig into the particulars' of how each and every person is using his or her religion for the good or bad of him or herself -- and others around him or her -- to determine its relative 'personal health content' or 'personal pathology content'.
Returning to an epistemological point of view, the closest I can come to connecting 'rationality' or 'reason' with 'God' is through 'Intelligent Design Theory'. In other words, it is easy to argue that the world -- and everything in it -- is so amazingly well-designed, so 'intelligently' well-designed, that it is very hard not to, indeed, almost impossible not to, believe that there must have been some intelligent designER behind the incredible complexity of this design. It is very hard to believe the opposite point of view -- that the world, and everything in it, with all of its individual and collective complexities of functional design, was created simply by 'accident'. Even evolution theory -- is a little stale and 'parameter restricted' if by evolution theory we want to restrict ourselves only to the Darwinian perspective of 'genetic evolution over numerous generations'. This cannot account for much faster forms of evolution such as human evolution through individual and/or social learning. Hegelian social evolution or dialectic (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) theory is a much stronger way of accounting for faster forms of evolution than classic Darwinian Theory, particularly if it too is broadened to account for 'individual and social, biological intelligence' -- i.e., the power to compensate, modify, mutate, adjust, change -- in even the smallest of animals and plants like 'ants' and 'viruses' and 'bacteria' that are not generally regarded as having 'intelligence'. Even plants can be said to have 'intelligence' in that, for example, they will bend towards the sun, and certain plants -- like say the 'pau d arco' plant -- have 'learned' to fight off and become 'immune' to, its arch enemy -- fungi -- in ways that can only be described as 'learned over time' and 'immune function based on plant intelligence'.
All of this brings us back to the question of, 'Where did this intelligence come from?', and was/is there something 'more all-encompassing, and/or more all-overseeing' that put this type of 'evolutionary intelligence' into every animal, mineral, and plant on earth.
Now it is a major leap of 'faith', 'trust', 'assumption', 'presumption', or a 'suspension of disbelief' as they say in the entertainment business, to jump from 'intellignet design' theory and even the idea of an 'intelligent designer' -- which could be a more intelligent race of people from a different world who may be playing with this world as their 'hobby' or 'university course' -- to the idea of 'God' which include many, many more assumptions -- and probably man-made 'idealistic projections' -- than an 'intelligent designer' theory.
Thus, as an empirically and rationally based philosopher (or at least that is what I would like to think that I am), I can state with conviction that the idea of an 'intelligent designer' theory can be rationally and empirically supported; however, the 'leap of faith' if you will, or 'leap into metaphysics', or 'suspension of disbelief' that takes us from intelligent designer theory to 'God' -- cannot be rationally, empirically, and/or epistemologically supported in the same way.
We look back now at the many 'Gods' of the ancient Greeks -- a 'God of War', a 'God of Love', etc. -- and we partly smile and call them 'myths'.
What would cause us to believe that the 'one God' that many people believe in today, and that most religions righteously trumpet, would be any less of a 'myth' than the 20 Gods that are now being called a myth, some 2700 years ago.
There is only one possible reason: many people NEED to believe in God (for example, fear of death) -- even if this means 'suspending their epistemological sense of disbelief' in order to sustain their belief in God's existence -- and an 'afterlife'.
This is not to say that all myths are bad; there are plenty of myths, fairy tales -- and Gods -- that may, indeed do, play a useful and functional role in man's life (eg. Santa Clause, Peter Pan, the tooth fairy, and so on...)
However, from an empirical philosopher's point of view, the existence of God cannot be rationally supported -- are we really to believe that 'God' has no 'lifespan' and no 'physical presence or boundaries'. (If we believe that God has no boundaries, then we are, in effect, getting close to Spinoza's idea of spiritual pantheism -- 'God is Nature' or 'God is everywhere and in everything'.
Any orthodox or unorhodox form of religion or belief in God is simply a different form of myth. If you want to -- or need to -- choose a 'God' myth; just make sure that it is beneficial to both you and the people around you, and be tolerant of other people's 'myths' as long as they do not violate any human rights laws as put forth by the United Nations, and/or any and every humanistic country that does not tolerate religious suppression and violence.
Whether you are a Muslim, a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican, a Mormon, a Jew, or a Spinozian Pantheist, the question of importance is not whether your God 'exists' or not; but rather, whether you are a 'better' or 'worse' person for your belief in the 'myth' of 'God'.
Mythologically and functionally, 'God' -- in any form -- can be supported, if it makes you a better person to yourself and others. Epistemologically, the existence of God can't -- at least not based on any kind of rational philosophical empiricism that I can come up with.
I do not have any problem with the president of The United States being a mormon -- or any other 'humanistic' religion.
However, I have a big problem with politics, the State, and religion being epistemologically and ethically connected.
You do not bring a myth to epistemology, law, science, or politics any more than you would a fairy tale; and you do not lead a country based on either a myth or a fairy tale in situations where good, sound, credible, reliable, empirical epistemology is what is needed.
Thus, when and where I use the term and concept 'God', I am using it symbolically, mythologically, and spiritually -- but not epistemoligically. This is a very, very important distinction, not only for me, but for anyone who is seriously interested in digging into the ethical merit of their religion, and the relative health or pathology of the particular religious ideas that they are being asked or told to 'buy into'.
Ask not first what you can do for your religion, but rather what your religion can do for you, the people who are practising the religion, and the people outside of the religion. Is it helping people to live happier lives? Or is it making people miserable? Is it making the people within the religion more tolerant, caring, and peaceful towards other people? Or is it making people righteously intolerant, unaccepting, even aggressive and violent towards other people of differing religious or unreligous ideas? Is it making people submissive and masochistic? Or is it making people assertive and independent in balance with compassionate, caring, and socially sensitive and giving? I am looking for a new evolution and breed of religions -- of any name or faith be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any other form of religion -- that is based on 'humanistic-existential values and ethics'; not squashing the same.
db
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