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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781785354137 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hunt, John Publishing |
| Publication date: | 01/27/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 472 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Pandeism: An Anthology
By Knujon Mapson
John Hunt Publishing Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 Knujon MapsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78535-413-7
CHAPTER 1
Section I
Fundamentals of Pandeism
What is the essence of Pandeism? This section contains articles broadly examining the heart of the proposition. It is logic-based, friendly to science and scientific discovery, and yet accounts for spirituality, and for characteristics of the human experience that defy quantification.
First, in "The Idealist Interpretation of Pandeism," Bernardo Kastrup PhD argues "for an interpretation of the facts of reality that renders Pandeism both genuine as a theology and metaphysically sound."
Next, in "A Theorem Concerning God," Robert G. Brown PhD sets forth a logical proof, effectively a mathematical argument demonstrating that any entity which could properly be called "God" in fact must be either pandeistic or panendeistic.
Alan H. Dawe then examines a divine reality, in "God, the Universe and Pandeism," outlining broadly the capacities of what he terms God-Consciousness, the operative force which undergirds both the pandeistic Creator, and the more expansive theological model of Dawe's own The God Franchise.
After a poetic interlude, we find "God Without Religion," wherein Dr Michael Arnheim sets forth the particular case for Deism as against both Atheism and Theism, and makes an especial plea for unity among those holding to variations of this middle view, including proponents of Pandeism.
In "Pantheistic God-Concepts: Ancient, Contemporary, Popular, and Plausible Alternatives to Classical Theism," Raphael Lataster argues for an end to the myopic focus of religious studies on the dichotomy between Theism and Naturalism, pointing to the often-ignored expansive history of pantheistic, panentheistic, and pandeistic theological options.
Lastly, in "Why Pandeism Is Better Than Theism," Knujon Mapson argues for the logical superiority of Pandeism as a theological model accounting for everything that theistic models claim, but doing so with fewer assumptions.
Sunflower Galaxy
Amy Perry
Miss Perry is a poet living in Southern California, amidst palm trees, pink and orange sunsets, and hummingbirds. Her poetry examines macro- and microcosmic elements of existence. She allows her intuition to be her flame guiding her onward with her spiraling Spiritual path. Please research reasons to go vegan!
The sunflower communicates with the galaxy.
Perfectly symmetrical, Mathematically identical.
* * *
They speak the tongue of Fibonacci spiral, Licking up wisdom and light.
One and the same. A spaceship for Life.
The Idealist Interpretation of Pandeism
Bernardo Kastrup PhD
Dr Kastrup has a PhD in Computer Engineering with specializations in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the world's foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Bernardo has authored many scientific papers and philosophy books. His three latest books are: More Than Allegory, Brief Peeks Beyond, and Why Materialism Is Baloney. Alongside a managerial position in the high-tech industry, Bernardo maintains a philosophy blog and a video interview series, and continues to develop his ideas about the nature of reality. He has lived and worked in four different countries across continents, currently residing in the Netherlands.
The theology of Pandeism, in a nutshell, posits that God created the universe by becoming the universe. It is elegantly parsimonious in that it avoids the notion of a Creator separate from Its Creation. It also eliminates the distinction between God's will and the operation of the laws of nature: the latter is seen as the very expression of the former. The idea of a personal God interfering with nature from the outside finds no place under this view. As such, Pandeism is one of the most naturalistic theological formulations ever proposed.
It is so naturalistic, in fact, that one may wonder if it can still be considered a theology — that is, a discourse (logia) about God (theos). By equating the present state of God with nature itself, and the expression of God's will with the operation of the laws of nature, doesn't Pandeism actually negate the spirit of the word 'God'? Doesn't it effectively do away with God under a linguistic smokescreen? Isn't it, at bottom, just a version of atheism cleverly disguised by a pseudo-religious cloak?
As will later become clear, my answer to these questions is a categorical 'No.' But before we get there, we will need to critically reassess some of our least-examined assumptions about the nature of reality.
My project with this essay is to rigorously articulate a metaphysics that is both consistent with Pandeism and preserves ontological space for what the spirit of the word 'God' denotes. In other words, I intend to argue for an interpretation of the facts of reality that renders Pandeism both genuine as a theology and metaphysically sound.
Before I begin, though, a quick observation is in order. Pandeism has a sister theology called Panendeism. It's identical to Pandeism except in that Panendeism posits that only a part of God became the known universe, while another part transcends it. In my view, Pandeism and Panendeism imply nonetheless the same ontology. In both cases, there is only God and God is only cognizable to us in the form of the universe. The difference is merely epistemic: Panendeism suggests more explicitly that we, humans, cannot know everything about God; that there is always a part of God fundamentally beyond our cognitive capacities.
Indeed, this is eminently reasonable, for there can clearly be much more to the universe than what we humans can apprehend. Earth-based primates didn't evolve to perceive or understand the entirety of the cosmos. Notice, however, that what the universe is or isn't doesn't depend on what we humans can or cannot know about it. It simply is. God's being doesn't depend on our capacity to cognize it fully. As such, from the ontological angle that is the focus of this essay, Pandeism and Panendeism boil down to the same theology. The argument that follows endorses Panendeism as much as it endorses Pandeism.
The Meaning of the Word 'God'
For Pandeism to be a genuine theology, it must grant that God exists today — not only in a remote past — in a manner that honors the spirit of what theologians mean by the word 'God.' But just what do they mean by it? Obviously, there is no consensus at the level of details and nuances. But if one drills down into the semantic core of the word, I believe there would be broad agreement that the following four attributes are both necessary and sufficient to characterize God:
Attribute 1: God is the primary cause.
Attribute 2: God is omnipotent.
Attribute 3: God is omnipresent.
Attribute 4: God is omniscient.
Attribute 1 means that God is the ultimate cause of everything, but is Itself uncaused. In other words, everything in the universe must be ultimately explainable in terms of God, but God Itself cannot be explained in terms of anything else. Attribute 1 holds intact under Pandeism: since God created the whole universe by becoming it, it follows trivially that God is the ultimate cause of everything in the universe, while remaining Itself uncaused by anything in the universe.
Along similar lines of reasoning, it is straightforward to assert that Attribute 2 also holds under Pandeism: since all causal powers pertaining to the unfolding and evolution of the universe are comprised in the laws of nature, and since the laws of nature, under Pandeism, are the expression of God's will, it follows that everything that happens in the universe does so by the will of God. God is thus omnipotent under Pandeism.
Unlike the previous two cases, however, whether Attribute 3 holds is less straightforward to assert: since God becomes the universe, to what extent can we say that God is still present after the completion of the process of becoming? Is the caterpillar still present in the butterfly after the latter emerges from the cocoon? If we could coherently assert under Pandeism that the universe is still essentially the same as its Creator, then the omnipresence of God would follow trivially. But can we make such an assertion without violating the internal logic of Pandeism? In what sense can we say that something is still the same after it has become something else? It gets even less straightforward: for Attribute 4 to hold under Pandeism, we must grant that the universe as a whole is sentient. After all, since Pandeism posits that God can now only exist as the universe itself (for It became the universe), unless the universe as a whole is sentient there cannot be an omniscient God today. From a mainstream perspective, however, asserting that the universe as a whole is sentient is seen as metaphysically problematic.
In the next sections, we will explore how Pandeism, as well as the universe itself, must be interpreted so that Attributes 3 and 4 hold.
The Nature of Becoming
When the caterpillar weaves its cocoon, it encloses itself in an isolated environment. Nothing goes in or out. Within this self- contained system, what used to be the caterpillar then turns into a butterfly. In other words, the essence of the caterpillar reconfigures itself into the butterfly. No new or foreign elements come from outside the cocoon, for the caterpillar doesn't eat or drink during metamorphosis. It is the very organic building blocks of the caterpillar, as they entered the cocoon, which rearrange themselves into the form and function of the butterfly. Therefore, the difference between what enters and what leaves the cocoon is purely one of configuration, not of essence: the latter remains the same. What we call a butterfly is simply a different configuration of the original essence. If we had a designation for this essence — say, S — we would say that S entered the cocoon and the same S left it, unchanged.
Cut to Pandeism: since, by hypothesis, in the beginning there was nothing but God, no new or foreign elements could have come from outside God to take part in Its transformation into the universe. Like the caterpillar's cocoon, the system was self- contained. Whatever essence started the process of becoming was the same essence that emerged from the process in the form of the universe. The difference between what started the process and what emerged from it is, necessarily, one of configuration alone.
Therefore, by interpreting the word 'God' to mean the divine essence itself — as opposed to just one of its possible configurations — we allow Attribute 3 to hold intact under Pandeism: it was God-the-essence that started the process and God-the-essence that emerged from it. The universe is still God because it is made entirely of the essence of that which created it, just as the butterfly is made entirely of S. Therefore, God is omnipresent in the universe today.
Notice that taking the word 'God' to mean the essence, instead of one of its particular configurations, is the only interpretation that does justice to the spirit of the word. For the same reason that the spirit of the word 'man' applies to a male human whether he is sitting down or standing up, the spirit of the word 'God' applies, under Pandeism, both to the universe and its Creator. As such, what I am proposing here isn't an arbitrary semantic game, but an invocation of the very spirit of the word 'God': if this spirit is honored, Attribute 3 holds under Pandeism.
Notice that the hypothesis that the universe is made of a different essence than its Creator would, under Pandeism, entail an arbitrary, magical transmutation. Technically speaking, if the universe were of a fundamentally different ontological class than the Creator, there would be nothing about the Creator in virtue of which the universe could have been created from It. An unbridgeable causal gap would appear, contradicting the core claim of Pandeism and violating Attribute 1.
Therefore, the interpretation of Pandeism under which God is the essence whose mere configuration changes during Creation is the only one that is both technically coherent and does justice to the spirit of the word 'God.' A direct implication of this interpretation, of course, is that the world we see around us is God in one of Its possible configurations. "When you see the world you see God. There is no seeing God apart from the world," said Nisargadatta Maharaj. "Holy art Thou, O God ... of whom All-nature hath been made an image," proclaims The Corpus Hermeticum. We will return to this point later, so as to make explicit what this change in configuration consists of.
The Facts of Nature
Having shown that Attributes 1, 2 and 3 hold coherently under Pandeism, we are left with Attribute 4. As we've seen earlier, for this last attribute to also hold the universe as a whole must be sentient. Naturally, whether this is the case or not is a question of metaphysics, not of science. The allegedly objective methods of science allow us to model the formal and structural aspects of the universe — how its various observable elements relate to one another — but can give us no access to what, if anything, it is like to be the universe as a whole. This intrinsic view escapes the extrinsic methods of science.
As such, any ontological interpretation of nature entailing or implying that there is nothing it is like to be the universe as a whole — such as mainstream physicalism — is metaphysics, not scientific theory. The physicalist metaphysics cannot claim rational or empirical high ground based on the success of science, for it isn't — and couldn't, even in principle, be — derived from the application of scientific methods. Therefore, the key metaphysical question we need to answer in this section is wide open today, despite science's indisputable success as enabler of engineering.
To address this open question, I will ground myself on basic empirical facts available to observation, making no a priori metaphysical assumptions. My criteria for making inferences will be empirical honesty, logical consistency and ontological parsimony. I will allow the available evidence to lead me wherever it goes. As such, I will not aim per se at a metaphysics that validates Pandeism. That we will ultimately arrive at a conclusion that happens to be consistent with Pandeism is helpful for the purposes of this essay, but not at all derived by construction. For clarity, I will elaborate on my argument on a point-by-point basis.
I start by asserting nine things we know about the universe, irrespective of theory or metaphysics. These are empirical facts accessible to anyone through simple observation:
Fact 1: There is subjective experience. This is the primary and incontrovertible datum of existence.
Fact 2: From Fact 1, we know that there is that which experiences, since experience entails an experiencer. Notice that I am not, at least for now, passing any judgment or making any assumption about the fundamental nature or boundaries of that which experiences. I am not saying, for instance, that it is or isn't human, or physical, or spiritual, or informational, etc. I am simply asserting that it inevitably exists, whatever it may or may not be, and wherever its boundaries may lie. For ease of reference, I will henceforth refer to 'That Which Experiences' simply as 'TWE.'
Fact 3: A person's experiences are at least largely private, in the sense that other people do not have direct access to them at least ordinarily.
Fact 4: There is at least a partial correlation between measurable electrochemical activity in a person's nervous system and the person's private experiences.
Fact 5: Measurements of the activity of a person's nervous system can only be known insofar as they are themselves experienced in the form of perceptions. For instance, if a neurologist performs a functional scan or an electroencephalogram (EEG) of your brain, the results are only known insofar as the neurologist — or someone else — sees them consciously.
Fact 6: From Facts 4 and 5, we know that there is at least a partial correspondence between two types of experience: conscious perceptions of activity in a person's nervous system on the one hand, and the private thoughts, emotions and perceptions of that person on the other. Let us call these the extrinsic and intrinsic views, respectively. Both views, of course, are still experiences insofar as they can be known.
Fact 7: A nervous system has the same essential nature — that is, it belongs to the same ontological class — as the rest of the physical universe. After all, nervous systems are physical systems. They are composed of the same types of basic subatomic particles that make up the universe as a whole.
Fact 8: We all inhabit the same universe, despite the different points of view from which each person observes it and the different ways in which each person interacts with it.
Fact 9: The universe unfolds according to patterns and regularities that are at least largely independent of our personal volition. Human beings cannot change the laws of nature.
An Idealist Metaphysics
The question that presents itself to us now is this: What is the most parsimonious metaphysical explanation for these nine facts? Here I use the qualifier 'parsimonious' in the sense of Occam's Razor: the most parsimonious metaphysics is that which requires the lowest number of postulates while maintaining sufficient explanatory power to make sense of all known facts. In what follows, I offer nine inferences that, together, aim to answer this question.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pandeism: An Anthology by Knujon Mapson. Copyright © 2016 Knujon Mapson. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Acknowledgments,
A Brief History of Pandeism, by Knujon Mapson,
Section I: Fundamentals of Pandeism,
Sunflower Galaxy, by Amy Perry,
The Idealist Interpretation of Pandeism, by Bernardo Kastrup,
A Theorem Concerning God, by Robert G. Brown,
God, the Universe and Pandeism, by Alan H. Dawe,
On Celebrating Life, by Amy Perry,
God Without Religion, by Michael Arnheim,
Pantheistic God-Concepts: Ancient, Contemporary, Popular, and Plausible Alternatives to Classical Theism, by Raphael Lataster,
Why Pandeism Is Better Than Theism, by Knujon Mapson,
Section II: Philosophical Implications of Pandeism,
Earth Child, by Amy Perry,
Omniscience, Omnipotence and Pantheism, by Richard Francks,
Leibniz's Best World Claim Restructured, by William C. Lane,
Transhumanism and Theistcideism, by Zoltan Istvan,
Full Moon Basking Bake, by Amy Perry,
Pantheistic Reflections, by Poffo Ortiz,
Pandeism, the Holographic Universe, and Simulation Theory, by Anthony Peake,
Section III: Criticism and Analysis from Other Views,
The Sequence, by Amy Perry,
Hindu Dharma — Living on the Edge of Infinity, by Sushma Sahajpal,
Beyond Creator and Universe: From Pandeism to Ismaili Muslim Neoplatonism, by Ismaili Gnosis,
Omnientheism: God According to Biblical Universalist Unitarianism, by Orlando Alcántara Fernández,
Axioms of Reality — Concluded, by William Walker Atkinson,
An Atheist Critique of Pandeism, by Dan Dana,
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, by William Wordsworth,