God Is a Scientific Hypothesis

[CraigD]

So for me definition for "God" is all what is.

You are, then, by definition, a pantheist. You’re in good company. By sensible interpretations (and at least 3 reputable sources cited by wikipedia) Lao Tsu, Spinoza, Emerson and Einstein were pantheists.

 

From my personal perspective, pantheism provides a loose, highly personalizable system of beliefs that requires the acceptance of no theistic dogma, yet allows one to express a sense of awe and reverence for the universe with the elegance millennia of theist have reserved for the veneration of god(s). A thoughtful theist adequately familiar with the concept of pantheism is likely, rightly I think, to consider a pantheist naught but an atheist with poetic leaning.

[Vox]

You are, then, by definition, a pantheist. You’re in good company. By sensible interpretations (and at least 3 reputable sources cited by wikipedia) Lao Tsu, Spinoza, Emerson and Einstein were pantheists.

 

From my personal perspective, pantheism provides a loose, highly personalizable system of beliefs that requires the acceptance of no theistic dogma, yet allows one to express a sense of awe and reverence for the universe with the elegance millennia of theist have reserved for the veneration of god(s). A thoughtful theist adequately familiar with the concept of pantheism is likely, rightly I think, to consider a pantheist naught but an atheist with poetic leaning.

 

 

Yes it is a "loose approach" but that it retains the key strengths within by allowing things emerge just like they are without fixed mind´s resistance.

 

But there are also risks involved: :)

 

In the West Pantheism went into retreat during the Christian years between the 4th and 15th centuries, when it was regarded as heresy. The first open revival was by Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake in 1600) / Wikipedia

[Ken]

How you/human/men could have "Outer experience", whatever we experience it is inner experience due it is processed by our individual brain/mind?

We are using words/symbols/mathematics to express, think, receive and transmit these inner experiences, but they all are less than "real reality".

Hopefully I have repeated my "core point" what I am trying to make enough many times ;)

From my perspective "God" cannot be described by any means less than "real reality”. So thinking cannot touch/explain true "essence" of “God”. Thinking/mind at its best can create only mere reflection of “God”?

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

We really seem to be speaking different languages. You speak the language of Philosophy, arguing by logic - though in this case you seem to be arguing for non-rational belief which to my way of thiniking is the language of Theology.

 

I am attempting to speak the language of Science which closely follows the "logic" of Logical Positivism and can simply be expressed by the belief "If you can't measure it, forget it." :) For Science "words/symbols/mathematics" are the only useful reality because they serve as the descriptors of fundamental observations.

 

You and I see the world from very different perspectives. I have no problem with that.

[Vox]

 

You and I see the world from very different perspectives. I have no problem with that.

 

That is what makes the world great fun, varieties.

 

Thanks for sharing the ideas though.

[Qfwfq]

You are, then, by definition, a pantheist. You’re in good company. By sensible interpretations (and at least 3 reputable sources cited by wikipedia) Lao Tsu, Spinoza, Emerson and Einstein were pantheists.

 

From my personal perspective, pantheism provides a loose, highly personalizable system of beliefs that requires the acceptance of no theistic dogma, yet allows one to express a sense of awe and reverence for the universe with the elegance millennia of theist have reserved for the veneration of god(s). A thoughtful theist adequately familiar with the concept of pantheism is likely, rightly I think, to consider a pantheist naught but an atheist with poetic leaning.

These matters are highly debated, between reputable sources. One major source of disagreement is how these topics are oozing with semantic issues, making critical discussion so often become pointless.

 

The idea that such doctrines are equivalent to atheism is held by those who's notion of god is restricted to the type often called "personal god" which is exactly what Spinoza, and followers such as Einstein, were opposed to. Heck, I recently discovered that even Dawkins respects their belief and hence recognizes their notion as distinct from the personal god that he is so caustically against.

 

A great source of confusion about Spinoza's doctrine is also due to his well known words Deus sive Natura which, according to Steven Nadler, author of the SEP article on Spinoza, is ambiguous to readers not versed in the topics because it tends "either to divinize nature or to naturalize God", reason for which "The friends who, after his death, published his writings must have left out the “or Nature” clause from the more widely accessible Dutch version out of fear of the reaction that this identification would, predictably, arouse among a vernacular audience." Nadler follows with the paragraph:

 

There are, Spinoza insists, two sides of Nature. First, there is the active, productive aspect of the universe—God and his attributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used in the

Short Treatise

, calls

Natura naturans

, “naturing Nature”. Strictly speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that which is produced and sustained by the active aspect,

Natura naturata

, “natured Nature”.

and then quotes Spinoza's words:

 

By

Natura naturata

I understand whatever follows from the necessity of God's nature, or from any of God's attributes, i.e., all the modes of God's attributes insofar as they are considered as things that are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived without God.

I take his to be the distinction between Creator and Created, just like in Abrahamic tradition, except that at the same time Spinoza's doctrine holds that "God—an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible being—is the only substance of the universe" (Nadler's words) which makes Nature (the Created) part of God but doesn't imply the two things coincide. Nevertheless, it earned Baruch a harsh writ of cherem from the Sephardic community of Amsterdam and this kind of doctrine had long been considered heresy by the Roman Catholic church too.

[modest]

I take his to be the distinction between Creator and Created, just like in Abrahamic tradition, except that at the same time Spinoza's doctrine holds that "God—an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible being—is the only substance of the universe" (Nadler's words)

 

A rather important distinction, I should think.

 

which makes Nature (the Created) part of God but doesn't imply the two things coincide.

 

I believe there's a post of Craig's in the aether that distinguishes between pantheism and panentheism. Though... with the new layout... I'd be unsure how to find it :unsure:

 

~modest

[Qfwfq]

pantheism and panentheism

Actually... there are those who see Baruch as being a proponent of immanence, more than of those two.