Editor's note: This article was originally published on January 21, 2017.
Story by Joseph Ford Cotto
“PANTHEISM (Gr. πᾶν, all, θεός, god), the doctrine which identifies the universe with God, or God with the universe …. the system of thought or attitude of mind for which it stands may be traced back both in European and in Eastern philosophy to a very early stage,” the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica explains.
Story by Joseph Ford Cotto
“PANTHEISM (Gr. πᾶν, all, θεός, god), the doctrine which identifies the universe with God, or God with the universe …. the system of thought or attitude of mind for which it stands may be traced back both in European and in Eastern philosophy to a very early stage,” the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica explains.
For starters.
“At the same time
pantheism almost necessarily presupposes a more concrete and less sophisticated
conception of God and the universe,” Britannica continues. “It presents
itself historically as an intellectual revolt against the difficulties involved
in the presupposition of theistic and polytheistic systems, and in philosophy
as an attempt to solve the dualism of the one and the many, unity and
difference, thought and extension.”
“At this period of
enlightenment, a declaration from the pulpit that Christian Science is
pantheism is anomalous to those who know whereof they speak — who know that Christian
Science is Science, and therefore is neither hypothetical nor dogmatical, but
demonstrable, and looms above the mists of pantheism higher than Mt Ararat
above the deluge,” Mary Baker Eddy’s religion declared in 1898.
What does the Roman
Catholic Church have to say?
“The Church has
repeatedly condemned the errors of pantheism …. the Vatican Council
anathematizes those who assert that the substance or essence of God and of all
things is one and the same, or that all things evolve from God's essence …. The
straining after unity in the pantheistic sense is without warrant,” it claimed
in 1914.
So much strife over
such a straightforward doctrine! Since when is a reasonable quest for truth
about our world and its creation a bad thing?
Dr. Paul Harrison
is an environmental scientist who built and helms the World
Pantheist Movement. In its own words, the organization’s “primary
aims are to make our naturalistic, scientific form of pantheism available to a
wider and wider public as a religious option. This is partly to provide an
alternative to the many forms of irrational belief that are being actively
promoted around the world, often with huge financial resources backing them.”
Harrison shares his
views with me in this first part of a four-piece series.
****
Joseph Ford Cotto: Where can the origins of pantheistic
thought be found?
Dr. Paul Harrison: Really as soon as humans started
speculating outside the boxes of religions, in Greece, India and China. There
were many thinkers long before Toland who thought along the same lines and can
be called pantheists in retrospect. In the West we can go back to the 6th
century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said “The cosmos was not made by
gods or men but was and is and always shall be ever-living fire.”
The Stoics were
pantheists – the most famous of them was the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius with
his beautiful book “Meditations.” Then there’s a long silence in the Christian
West from the fourth century until the 16th - 17th centuries, because you could
be executed for heresy, as Giordano Bruno was in 1600 AD. Pantheism really got
moving in the late 18th century, when the Germans became interested in Spinoza.
By the 19th century it was regarded as a serious threat to theistic religions.
In the East it’s
fair to say that the Daoists Lao Tzu and his follower Chuang Tzu were
pantheists. They have a very reverential approach to Nature and the Heavens,
and they never speaks of supernatural gods. Some forms of Buddhism – especially
Zen - are close to Pantheism.
Cotto: Describe the meaning of
pantheism.
Harrison: Basically the term means “belief that All is
God.” The Irish writer John Toland, who first used the word “pantheist” in
1705, defined it as someone “who has no eternal being but the Universe.” In
modern usage, it has come to mean a belief that everything is, in some sense, a
unity, and is deserving of our reverence.
Cotto: Richard Dawkins famously called pantheism "sexed-up
atheism". What is your take on his perspective?
Harrison: All forms of pantheism revere the Universe,
or the totality of everything that exists, rather than a thinking judging
creator being like the God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, or any other
supernatural god. So in that sense all forms of Pantheism are atheistic.
But Pantheism is
not just a form of atheism. Atheism states only what you do not believe in and
people need more than that negative. Pantheism expresses what you do believe
in: that Nature should be our main focus deserving of our care, and that
everything is in some sense a unity deserving of our reverence. I would say
that this is indeed “sexed-up” compared to straight atheism.
Dawkins is quite
positive about pantheism but he is really talking about naturalistic,
scientific pantheism, the type expressed by Einstein and many other scientists.
However, Dawkins disapproves of their using the term “God.” And in fact most
scientific pantheists avoid using the term “God,” because it immediately brings
up thoughts of the Abrahamic God.