Talk:World Pantheist Movement/Archive 1

(cur) (last) . . 19:41, 19 Apr 2004 . . Bkonrad (stop redefining pantheism to suit your POV)

Where have I "re-defined" pantheism to suit my POV? Curious? Maybe you should look up the "objective" definition of pantheism or cosmotheism in the dictionary, Bkonrad?-PV

By changing every reference of pantheisn in this article to your neologism panatheism you are redefining the terms. Bkonrad | Talk 21:54, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On the contrary, the WPM is falsely calling itself pantheism, when they are actually only advocating Pan atheism. The "neologism" and "redefining" of terms is actually only on the part of the WPM, when they aren't actually any pantheists. Just go and see the way that this term pantheism is actually defined in any standard English dictionary.-PV

PS-An example of why these so-called "Pantheist" religious organizations have been called atheist and/or Pan-atheist can be clearly seen in an Atheist Magazine interview with Paul Harrison, the leader of the WPM.

This may or may not be true. I don't really know or care. But it is a strongly biased POV to simply replace pantheism with your neologism. You can express criticism without destroying the other POV. Bkonrad | Talk 17:39, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This may or may not be true. I don't really know or care.

It is true, as I have given NPOV evidence to back it up. Since you don't know or care, you shouldn't be "reverting" at all until you do.-PV

All I'm saying is you are biasing the article with your POV by changing the terms. You claim to be unbiased, but I do not think you could find a single other user on WP that would agree. You can express your criticism without destroying other POVs. Bkonrad | Talk 18:19, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since you are too lazy to link to the interview, read here, and this is the "unbiased" evidence to support my NPOV and factual claim and criticism:

"Can Scientific Pantheism be a Form of Atheism?

Recently, on an Atheist Community of Austin e-mail discussion group posting, Mike Dolph mentioned an interesting sounding web site. The site is the Scientific Pantheism site maintained by Paul Harrison of the United Kingdom, who also runs a 450-strong mailing list, with mostly US members. I decided to take a look around the site and find out what a Scientific Pantheist is. The concept was so interesting that I decided to ask Paul Harrison if he would let me do an Interview with him for The Atheist.

In answering my questions, Paul included a note that I thought was quite revealing. He wrote: “If and when you do re-order everything, could I have a glance at it? These things are so sensitive, one wrong word can give the wrong impression.” Obviously the Scientific Pantheist position has been carefully thought out. I think it deserves some attention as it involves a type of “positive atheism” we talk about, but often find difficult to define.

 ~John Koonz

The Atheist: What do you mean by Pantheism?

Paul: The dictionary defines pantheism as the belief that equates the Universe with God. But most of us rarely or never use the word God. We mean that we accept the existence of nature and the Universe as the ultimate reality, we feel a very deep reverence for them and sense of belonging, and we want to express that sense.

The Atheist: How is Pantheism different from atheism?

Paul: Actually our scientific type of pantheism shares many beliefs in common with atheism. Somebody once called it panatheism. Many or most of our members have gone through atheism before joining and many would still call themselves atheists in many ways. For example, we don't believe in any kind of supernatural beings, we don't believe there is any such thing as "the supernatural", we are usually skeptical about magic, reincarnation, ESP.

But atheism as such is just a negative. It says what you don't believe in, not what you do believe in. Most of us have very positive attitudes to nature and to bodily life on this earth, and we want to express these.

I think that with this addition atheism gains in strength and confidence when dealing with other religions. We're not just negative, we have our own positive set-up that brings all the non-imaginary benefits of most religions without any of the costs in intellectual integrity. Nobody can turn on us and say, you're just negative and pessimistic and bleak, how can you stand it? There's no real reason why any atheist cannot add this dimension to their atheism, they don't have to sacrifice one shred of their skepticism or rationality to gain it.

The Atheist: Are there any special days, such as the solstice, in the Pantheist year?

Paul: Of course the solstices and equinoxes are very important, not for mumbo jumbo, but as a time to remember in a more intense way our place in the solar system and how that affects life on earth. The anniversary of Giordano Bruno's martyrdom by the Vatican on February 17 1600 will probably also become important, as a symbol of religious oppression and courage in resisting it and speaking out against it. We also try to be outdoors when we get the big meteor showers, or at eclipses and so on. Hale-Bopp was a big thing for us. But it's all 100% scientific: we watch what's real, and we celebrate it. We have fun.

The Atheist: How have atheists reacted to the Pantheist movement?

Paul: As I say, many atheists who have deep feelings for nature or awe for the Universe have actually joined us. Many well known atheists have also been pantheists: Lucretius had a pantheistic love for nature, Shelley was a pantheist, Carl Sagan was probably a pantheist of our type. John Toland, who invented the word pantheist, was an atheist.

I was very pleased the other day to see that the American Humanist Association has added us to their list of related movements. Other atheists just see the word pantheism and don't bother to read any further. Others again read on, but have problems with the religious vocabulary. In fact in our belief statement there is only a single religious word in the whole thing, when we say the Universe's "overwhelming power and fundamental mystery establish it as the only real divinity." It took us weeks to get this compromise.

Personally I feel that if we use no religious vocabulary, we will never appeal to anyone but those who are already atheists, whereas if we do, we may attract disenchanted Christians, Jews, and so on, who still feel a need for what they see as religion. I think that with a judicious use of a very limited number of carefully chosen religious words, we can actually rescue more folk from theism than we could without such use. Then again, many of us never ever let a single religious word pass their lips, and that's okay too.

In the end I think we will have two versions of the belief statement, one with a bit of religious vocabulary, and the other with none at all. But they will both mean the same thing.

The Atheist: What reaction have you received from theists?

Paul: Theists perceive us as atheistic heathens, because we attack the theistic religions on my pages and many others of our group. I personally love dismantling theist positions, especially Christian ones. Even so, there are literally millions of doubting disaffected Christians out there who are just looking for some positive religious alternative.

The Atheist: History tells us that movements, including religions, do not always end up as their originators intended. Given that Pantheism uses some religious words, what assurance can you give prospective members that the movement wont be taken over by theists?

Paul: That's why we have a belief statement that makes it plain that we do not believe in separate spirits or souls or after lives and that we believe that only matter/energy exists. We urge people to read this before they join. We have a constitution that requires the directors to sign the belief statement, and if they are found later to disagree with it, they have to resign. The odd theist might join us by mistake, but they could never get into a position of leadership. We are not going to the great trouble of setting all this up only to leave it open to takeover by its opposite, all the directors are adamant about that. Anyway with the sort of things we say, I really don't think theists would have any interest at all in joining us. Would they join the American Humanist Association in order to shift its message? I doubt it. The odd one that leaks into our mailing list usually leaves fairly quickly. They only have to look around to see what kind of company they're in.

The Atheist: I asked about the “hostile take-over” because I know it has actually happened here in America. Some parent group, originally out to stand up to the theocratic right ended up being taken over from the inside. Is there a strong evangelical movement in England right now? How do they compare to our American made rednecks?

Paul: I don't know this case, but we are aware of the risk and we will do everything in our power to frustrate takeovers. In the UK we have a lunatic religious fringe, but they are very much quieter than in the USA because we are now essentially a non-religious society where religious enthusiasm is viewed generally as a joke. However, three quarters of our group's 450 members come from the US, so they do have rednecks to contend with and are very affected by that.

The Atheist: Much of Pantheist philosophy reminds me of the Green Party platform. What political opinions are held by Pantheists?

Paul: Our general principles include reverence for nature and other species and efforts to live in harmony with nature. But we don't specify details. So our members include vegetarians, but also meat-eaters and even hunters, because you can make out a pantheistic case for either of these.

We have back-to-nature folk, and we have folk who believe passionately in colonizing space. As for politics more generally, we don't have rednecks or Nazis, but short of that the spectrum is pretty broad.

The Atheist: What about New Agers? I can see how your respect for all of nature might appeal to them. Have any tried to join and swing things in a supernatural direction?

Paul: We do occasionally get the odd New Ager joining and talking about ESP and reincarnation and near-death experiences. These people join by mistake -they just haven't read the description of our beliefs carefully. They don't get expelled from the mailing list for mentioning these ideas - we are supposed to be open-minded and in theory it is always possible for scientific evidence of ESP to harden. But it hasn't hardened yet, and posts like that usually provoke a lot of responses from our skeptics. As for New Agers trying to shift our direction, no. They can see which way the wind blows in our list. Once we have membership subscriptions, they will probably think twice before joining.

The Atheist: How important is the battle for state/church separation to pantheists?

Paul: As important as it is to atheists and minority religions in general. We would be solidly together in any battle for religious freedom. It is unacceptable that religious symbols should be put up in public places, or that religious doctrines should be taught in schools except as part of comparative study. It is intolerable that people can be hounded out of their jobs or neighbourhoods for not being Christian.

The Atheist: Are you working on getting Pantheism recognized as a bona fide religion for the purposes of taxes, performing marriages and funerals and such.

Paul: Yes. The World Pantheist Movement is incorporated as a religious charity in the State of Colorado, so we are tax-exempt. We will set up some sort of scheme where people can get someone to perform a pantheistic wedding or burial, if they can't design a ceremony of their own. This aspect is quite important - if you're not careful you can end up being buried with a Christian ceremony that would make you turn in your grave.

The Atheist: Do most pantheists maintain a skeptical view of the claims of alternative medicine?

Paul: We respect the findings of science, and science is finding that certain forms of alternative medicine can be very effective - acupuncture for example, or vitamin therapy. Most modern medicines were derived from herbs, so many herbs are effective. We know that the mind affects the immune system: the placebo effect can cure 40% of symptoms, so even "quack" systems, if they give the patient confidence they will get better, can sometimes work. But that doesn't mean we would endorse quackery.

The Atheist: In the commentary you wrote for your web site, you wrote: “Scientific pantheism does not believe that science will necessarily be able to explain everything in the universe." Are you saying that there are other ways than science to know about the universe, or that some mysteries of the universe just won1t ever get solved?

Paul: Science is the only way to get solid reliable knowledge about the universe, but obviously there are other ways to “experience” the universe, through aesthetic appreciation of the Hubble pics, feelings of oneness with it all, and so on. I wasn't suggesting here that there is anything that is supernatural. What I meant there was that there will probably always be fundamental unanswerable mysteries or givens, the main one being: why does anything exist at all? We will never be able to answer that. I believe it is a meaningless question, but that won't stop anyone including myself from going on asking it.

The Atheist: I ask that because one thing I get from Christians is that “Well, your science is just one way of knowing about the universe.” It is as if they have some secret path to knowledge that is valid, but is not science. What answer would you give then if asked why anything exists at all?

Paul: Our standard answer is probably very similar to the atheist answer: It just is. The question "Why?" amounts to asking: has the Universe a cause or a purpose? By definition the Universe includes all time and all space and so it cannot have a cause or a purpose external or prior to itself. If we find a possible cause before the big bang, that will still be part of the Universe or Multiverse - though maybe not of our local universe. It is part of our human nature to look for causes, but I argue that it is logically impossible for something that includes 3everything2 to have a cause. Theists accept that at least one thing has no cause - God. We say: so why can't the universe have no cause?

The Atheist: I have found, much to my surprise, that a number of atheists do not accept the big bang model. It seems that some atheists see the entire theory as a theist plot to introduce the idea of a creator. Most of the non-big bang atheists seem to accept the plasma cosmolgy model. Does this subject come up much in Pantheist discussions? What are your thoughts on this?

Paul: I think it is risky to reject a scientific theory simply because you think it doesn't fit your theology - or anti-theology. After all, that is why the Vatican resisted Copernicus and Darwin for so long. In our group we keep an open mind as to which way theory will go in future. There is pretty good scientific evidence for the big bang theory - it predicts the temperature of the cosmic background radiation, the exact distribution of elements in the universe, and the recession of galaxies. I don't think the people who dreamed it up had any religious agenda in mind. It just fits the evidence better than the rival steady state theory.

One can see why the Big Bang appeals to the Pope and others. But it shouldn't. It contradicts the Bible flatly, and if you admit it you admit that Genesis is not literal - and that raises questions about Adam and Eve and the Fall, and therefore about Jesus and salvation. It threatens the whole structure of Christian belief, just as Darwin does. And it is a very risky way of starting off a universe that will end up producing intelligent or human life. If everything started off as a microscopic dot, you would have very little certainty about how it would turn out. If you were a God wanting to be sure to create an intelligent species, is that how you would start?

Personally I am attracted to the inflation theory of Alan Guth and Andrei Linde. Linde assumes that our local universe is just one bubble of an eternal and infinite set of universes that is continually throwing up new universes, and one or more of these are more or less bound to be suitable for life. Then there is Lee Smolin (The Life of the Cosmos) who believes that new universes bud off old ones through black holes. Then there would be a natural selection process which favoured universes producing black holes - and these would also be suitable for life.

The Atheist: Years ago, I read about the Gaia hypothesis; the idea that the earth can be thought of as a living organism. How does a Pantheist react to this idea?

Paul: Well some pantheists go all the way with this idea and build Gaia up into a living superorganism or a Goddess. Scientific pantheists, as always, try look at the science more carefully. To me the basics of the hypothesis are fairly clearly established: namely that living organisms evolve so as to regulate the earth's atmosphere, climate and so on so

they are generally hospitable to life. It's all done by normal processes of natural selection, there's no superorganism or supernatural involved. But there are limits: the Gaia mechanism can't fend off ice ages, it can't stop meteorites hitting us and wiping out 70% of species, and so on. I prefer to see Gaia as a community of living beings, more like a super-ecosystem than a super-organism. But that too has it religious aspect: it creates a closer feeling of mutual interdependence. Nature is not just something beautiful to look at: it keeps us alive, too.

The Atheist: I imagine that the internet is a part-of-the-universe send to the Scientific Pantheist cause. How widespread is the movement?

Paul: Without the Internet we could not have got going. Our current e-mail group has been going properly only since December and is 450 strong, with people in 30 countries, and growing by 50-70 people a month. We will shortly be opening for subscribing members. There is the smaller Universal Pantheist Society, with around 120 members. On top of that there are many rational pagans there who believe the same as us but are pagan for lack of an alternative. Taoists, many Zen Buddhists, perhaps a third to a half of Unitarian Universalists, deep ecologists, plus atheists and humanists with a deep feeling for nature or the night sky, all believe basically the same as us. I would guess that potential pantheists of our scientific type in the West would number into many millions, but of course they have yet to hear of it.

The Atheist: Are any Pantheists currently involved in any legal disputes over any aspect of Pantheism?

Paul: Not that I know of.

The Atheist: What are your hopes for the future of Pantheism?

Paul: My hope are specifically for the scientific type of pantheism, I don't have any hopes for pantheisms that believe in reincarnation, magic and so on. I hope that in a few hundred years it will be the second largest religion in the West. And hopefully not too long after that it will be the main religion in the West. It may happen sooner than that, as better education makes people more critical and less willing to accept dogma and scripture just because their parents did. I hope that the human race will have "come of age," grown up from its infantile fantasies, faced up to reality and accepted just how fantastic nature and the Universe are. Who needs more? Next to reality, any idea of a theist God is just a pale shadow.

The Atheist: What books, websites, or discussion groups are out there for those interested in learning more about Pantheism.

Paul: Books are very thin on the ground. There is Pantheism by Michael Levine if you can afford $80 and want an academic text. I'm just writing acheap pocket book "The Elements of Pantheism" for Element Books, which will cost about $10. Then of course there are the classic authors, but only Spinoza is widely available and he is not much to my taste. There is the Universal Pantheist Society http://users.aol.com/pansociety/index.html but they are open to all types of pantheist including New Agers, reincarnationists, and even a few theists. My site on Scientific Pantheism (http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/index.htm) is the biggest pantheist site on the Web, with a lot of history and theory and practice plus forms to join us.

The Atheist: Thank you for the interview. I think that it is important for non-theists of all types to learn from each other and cooperate whenever possible. I also agree that we shouldn’t let theists get away with labeling us as negative, just because we cannot believe in their god. The universe really is an amazing place.

Paul: I have enjoyed this. I hope you will keep in touch!"

OK? I have even put the RELEVANT ANSWER in BOLD, just in case you missed it-PV

You're insults are not appreciated. It was not necessary to include the entire text of the interview here. It changes nothing. The WPA is a form of pantheism. They may be redefining pantheism in a way that you do not like. YOU may consider that they are heretics and are straying from whatever one true path of pantheism you advocate. But it is wrong to simply deny that there is any connection between the WPA and pantheism. Bkonrad | Talk 18:46, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The WPA is a form of pantheism. They may be redefining pantheism in a way that you do not like.

No. The WPA is a form of "atheism", Pan atheism, and the WPM is clearly NOT Pantheism, by any truely accurate nor objective definiton of the term, pantheism, whatsoever. If you are "insulted" by the objective "proof", and NPOV TRUTH, and the clear evidence from the leader of the WPM, Paul Harrison, that is really only and just your own subjective pov problem.-PV

You are blinded by your own dogmatism. There is little point to discussing it with you as you are impervious to any viewpoint that does not accord with your own. Bkonrad | Talk 19:06, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A classic case of psychological projection. So be it.-PV