by Jan GarrettContents

What is Pantheism?

Pantheism and Western Monotheism

Differences With Western Monotheism

Pantheism and Personal Divinity

Pantheism and Immortality

Pantheism and Atheism

Is Pantheist Love of Nature Objectively Grounded?

Pantheism and Humanism

The Sacredness of the Earth

Pantheism and Progress

The Question of Divine Providence

For Further Information about Pantheism What is pantheism? Pantheism is the view that the natural universe is divine, the proper object of reverence;or the view that the natural universe is pervaded with divinity. Negatively, it is the idea that wedo not need to look beyond the universe for the proper object of ultimate respect.

Paul Harrison writes,

One of the chief clues to understanding modern pantheism is its consistent refusal toengage in anthropomorphism. "Anthropomorphism" here means the practice of attributingfamiliar human qualities to objects outside us when there is no good evidence that they have suchqualities.

Refusal of anthropomorphism explains one of the key differences between pantheism andpaganism. In ancient times, "pagans" referred to adherents of polytheistic pre-Christian religionswhich Christianity was trying to suppress. Pagans, or people who worship gods and divinities innature, obviously have much in common with pantheism. But there was a tendency, at least inthe paganism of the past, to impose familiar human qualities on natural objects that may not havethem, for example, to regard a tree as if it could perceive in the way that animals do or even as ifit were a self-conscious being. Most contemporary pantheists would refuse to do this and wouldregard such an attitude as anthropomorphic. Pantheism and Western Monotheism How does pantheism relate to traditional Judaeo-Christian conceptions of God? As PaulHarrison ("Defining the Cosmic Divinity," SP website) points out, traditional (Western) religiondescribes a God who is ultimately a mystery, beyond human comprehension; awe-inspiring;overwhelmingly powerful; creator of the universe; eternal and infinite; and transcendent. Thedivine universe fits some of these descriptions without modification and it fits others if we allowourselves to interpret the terms flexibly.

The divine universe is mysterious. Though we can understand the universe moreadequately as scientific research proceeds, there will always be questions to which we will notyet have answers; and explanations of ultimate origins will always remain speculative (they aretoo far in the past for us to decipher clearly).

The divine universe is awe-inspiring. Would a creator behind it be any more awe-inspiring than the universe itself?

The universe is clearly very powerful. It creates and it destroys on a vast scale.

So far as we know, the universe created all that exists; which is to say that, the universeas it is now was created by the universe as it was a moment ago, and that universe by theuniverse that existed a moment before that, and so on. If we view universe in this way, we cankeep the idea of creator and creation and yet have no need to imagine a being apart from theuniverse who created it. The divine being is indeed a creator, in the pantheist view. Indeed, thecreativity of the natural universe is probably the best evidence for its divinity.

Is the universe eternal? Well, it depends on how you understand eternity. TraditionalWestern theology understands eternity as a quality of a God that exists altogether outside time. Yet the dynamic and changing universe is very much bound up with time, so it is not eternal inthe theological sense. Possibly it is everlasting, maybe it had no first moment and will nevercease to exist. Scientific evidence does point to a Big Bang several billion years ago, from whichour universe in roughly its current form originated, but if we accept the time-honored precept thatnothing comes from nothing, we cannot rule out the existence of a material universe before thisBig Bang.

Is the universe transcendent? In Western theology transcendence is a term often pairedwith eternity. A transcendent being is essentially outside and independent of the universe. Ofcourse, the divinity which pantheists revere is not transcendent in that way. However, inordinary language, to transcend is to surpass. Well, the universe which includes us also certainlysurpasses us, as it surpasses everything we are capable of knowing or observing. Differences with Western Monotheism

Pantheism has clear differences with the traditional description of God. It departs fromthe picture of God given in the Old Testament to the extent that the Old Testament attributeshuman attributes to the divine being, such as a willingness to make deals (You worship me and I'll make you my Chosen People) and anger (for example, Yahweh's anger at the Israelites'worship of the Golden Calf).

Pantheism also avoids some features of the theological conception of God which arisesfrom a mix of Greek philosophical influences and Judaeo-Christian thought. For example,pantheism does not hold that the divinity we revere is a first cause wholly independent of matter,or that the divine being freely creates the physical universe from nothing but its own will. Pantheism and Personal Divinity Do pantheists believe that the universe is a personal God? Possibly some do, but mostcontemporary pantheists do not. We can stand in awe of creative or divine nature withoutregarding it as a father. One can be thankful that it supports us and heals us, without attributingto it a deliberate plan to help or hinder us, without believing that it loves us as a mother or fathermight. Pantheists can observe and respect the divine creativity of being without engaging inwishful thinking. They tend to believe that talk of God as a father or mother who cares for us ina parental way engages in anthropomorphism.

C. Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse, authors of New Thought: A Practical AmericanSpirituality, have married the process theology of Alfred N. Whitehead and others with thereligious tradition known as New Thought. They have criticized pantheism for its resistance tothe idea of a personal divinity. Their criticisms are interesting because process theology agreeswith pantheism in bringing God and Nature together. But process theologians Anderson andWhitehouse are not pantheists--they are panentheists. That is, they regard the material universeas the body of God--everything material is in God--but God's mind or personhood is somehowsomething extra or more than the universe. God is impartial, they say, but he is not impersonal--he loves us all as a good father loves his children. Whitehouse accuses pantheists of replacingGod as a loving father by a "formless, impersonal Ground of All Being into which we allultimately melt, or get ground!" On this scenario, says Whitehouse, "we [humans] are illusion,without individuality, smothered by a God that Alan Anderson calls the universal wet blanket'"(cited in D. Whitehouse, "God: Person, Eternal, and New," Unity Magazine April 1996).

Several charges are made here, in just a few words. The charge that the pantheist divinityis a "universal wet blanket" seems to boil down to the charge that pantheists do not accept theview that the divinity literally loves us as a parent would. To that the pantheist response issimple: there is almost as much evidence that the universe hates us as there is that it loves us, inother words, not much. On the other hand, the fact that we are still here is evidence that theuniverse nurtures us and supports us, at least for the time being. We can certainly be thankful forthat.

Deb Whitehouse's charge that pantheism denies the reality of the human individual doesactually fit some pantheist philosophies of earlier times, for instance, the seventeenth-centuryphilosophy of Spinoza. But it does not fit modern pantheism as expressed, for example, in mostof the publications of the Universal Pantheist Society or the text of Paul Harrison's "ScientificPantheism" website. Nor is the divine being as conceived by these pantheists "the formless . . .Ground of All Being" (as Whitehouse puts it) since for them, as for modern scientists, the divineuniverse is anything but formless. Immortality of the Soul Do pantheists believe in the immortality of the soul? Not usually. And they have lessmotivation to do so than mainstream Western traditions. Pantheists do not find nature eitherrepulsive or without vitality. Thus they do not feel horror at the prospect of dissolution back intonature at the time of their individual deaths. Of course, there is immortality in the sense that ourmaterial components re-enter natural cycles; indeed, that goes on simultaneously with life itself. More significantly, as even Plato recognized, our deeds live on after us, insofar as they areremembered. And the ideas which we have made part of our lives continue to exert influenceafter we are gone--this sort of imperfect immortality is not denied to us. Pantheists will askwhether it is not better to rely on the possibility of such imperfect immortality, for which there isgood evidence, than on the idea that the soul can be detached from everything material and attainperfect immortality. To my knowledge, nobody has ever made a persuasive case for this kind ofimmortality. The greatest thinkers in the Christian tradition, such as Thomas Aquinas, admit thatthe existence of an immortal soul is a teaching which cannot be rationally proved. True, Platolong ago, in a beautiful dialogue called the Phaedo, offered several proofs for the immortality ofthe soul, but while they are all interesting, none of them are logically persuasive. Plato's proofscould convince neither his student Aristotle, who shared quite a few assumptions with him, norThomas Aquinas, who, as a Christian, would have liked to have had a proof for this teaching. Why should he be able to convince modern pantheists? Pantheism and Atheism Pantheists are sometimes accused of being atheists in disguise. Are they? We cannotanswer that question until we define "atheism." Is it literally a denial that there is anythingdivine or worthy of ultimate reverence? If that is what atheism is, then by definition pantheistsare not atheists. Is it the denial of divinity beyond the sphere of human beings? If that is whatatheism is, then once again pantheists are not atheists. Pantheism can be equated with atheism,of course, if atheism is defined as disbelief in the existence of a God who is a person. Mostmodern pantheists do not conceive the divinity as a person.

Now, some people who call themselves atheists might really be pantheists because theyvalue the natural world and only reject the concept of a personal God or gods, which they havemistaken for the only possible conception of divinity. On the other hand, some people whomight think of themselves as atheists are humanists and not pantheists because they place allultimate value in things human or some characteristic which only human beings possess. Is Pantheist Love of Nature Objectively Grounded? Pantheists are clearly quite impressed by beauty in nature, and infer from this beauty thatnature itself is worthy of our reverence and respect. But, a critic might say, aren't they justmistaking their own aesthetic experiences of nature for value of nature itself? The objectionseems to be that pantheists find something to be revered in nature only because they confuse theirperceptions of nature with nature itself.

Although it's risky to generalize about all pantheists, many pantheists reject the idea that when ahuman being has an aesthetic experience of nature and sees beauty in it, this is nothing but ahuman projection upon nature. They don't mind admitting that humans who experience naturalbeauty are contributing something to the experience, but let us remember , they say, (1) that nature hasherself given humans the capacity to recognize her beauty and (2) that nature provides the objectwhich we recognize as beautiful. Human beings do not invent the beauty and value of nature--we only recognize it. And we are not the only beings who do. As process philosopher CharlesHartshorne argues, birdsong cannot be entirely explained in terms of its Darwinian function inbiological survival and finding a mate. It is probable that birdsong is sometimes a bird's open-hearted response to the natural beauty the bird itself experiences. Pantheism and Humanism How does pantheism relate to humanism? Humanism, like atheism, can be understood inmany ways. If humanism is the view that human things--actions, experiences, products,customs, institutions, and history--are of immense interest and importance, then there is nothingcontradictory in being both a humanist and a pantheist. (A teacher of the humanities who is a pantheist is entirely possible, for example.) But if humanism is the view that humanbeings are the best things in the universe, then pantheists are not humanists. If humanism is theview that only human beings have inherent worth and are deserving of being treated as ends, thenpantheists are not humanists. And if humanism is the doctrine that everything else in theuniverse exists for the sake of human beings, then pantheists are most emphatically nothumanists.

A pantheist might well agree with humanists that all or at least most human beings haveinherent value and are worthy of our basic moral respect, and that there are many importanthuman achievements worth preserving and transmitting. But a commitment to the idea thathuman beings and many human achievements are valuable cannot justify blindness to the valueswhich we humans can discover beyond culture in nature.

The pantheist refusal of the idea that humans are the best things in the universe is notmerely a matter of faith or attitude. Pantheists might even grant that we do not know whether thereare other biological individuals that are superior to humans, e.g., aliens with higher intelligenceor greater capacities of cooperation. But pantheism can make the following case:

(1) Surely humans have some value, but clearly

(2) non-human individuals on the earth have some value as well, even if pantheists have to granttheir critics that the value of a non-human individual is less than a human's. Well, then, consider the biosphere or the living Earth.

(3) It includes both humans, with their value, and non-humans, with their value, howeverminimal you want to claim it is.

(4) This collective being must contain at least as much value as these humans and non-humansput together.

Conclusion: (5) there is a being more valuable than humans, namely, the biosphere whichincludes both humans and non-humans.

Similar reasoning can support the conclusion that the cosmos itself is of still greater value.

For historical reasons, moreover, pantheists are suspicious of the claim that humans arethe best things in nature. They are especially aware of the perverse use to which this idea hasbeen put over the last four centuries. It is part of the myth that has been used to justify Westernhumanity's domination of nature on Earth and the eradication of many cultures, species, andecosystems as part of the cost of taming nature and allegedly perfecting it, i.e., making it over to fit our human whims, which means, to a great extent, the whims of the industrial and post-industrial growth economy.

For those who believe the idea that humans are the best species, it is more anunquestioned article of faith than an empirically verifiable proposition--in fact, given whatmembers of the human species have done to each other and other species, it appears that humansdo not on the whole have a very good record. It is a bad argument to use the rare cases--theAristotles, the Shakespeares, the Beethovens, the Schweitzers, the Gandhis--as arguments for thesurpassing nobility of the human species. Such highly creative or eminently ethical heroes andheroines are far from the average. The Earth Is Sacred It should be clear by now that pantheism is attractive for some people today because it is a way ofdissociating themselves from the kind of "humanism" that can be used to rationalize ecologicaldestruction. Environmental concern is so strong among pantheists that Paul Harrison lists as thesecond of pantheism's central tenets the claim that "the earth is sacred." He explains it asfollows:

Is pantheism essentially a reverence for nature apart from the section of naturetransformed by human culture? Well, the Universal Pantheist Society, the only pantheistmember organization of which I am aware, seems to encourage open air ceremonies that evokerespect for nature, and it insists that a building is not necessary for the experience of the divine,that sometimes a building can get in the way of that experience. But I do not think thatpantheism implies that you can only contemplate the divinity when you are out in the woods farfrom artifacts that human beings have created.

Still, respect for nature independent of human interference is essential to pantheism. Pantheists are bound to look with mixed feelings upon most social institutions and technologicalmarvels. They know how often those institutions and that technology have given humans thecollective strength and the material means for mounting an assault upon nonhuman nature. Pantheism and Progress

Are pantheists opposed to scientific and technological progress? Modern pantheists are definitely not opposed to the scientific method as a method for understanding nature. They are not inclined touse pre-scientific myths to explain inclement weather, for example, as sent by angry gods. Theyfavor scientific explanations whenever we can get them. They recognize that some explanationsare better than others, so that if a person first accepts one theory, then another, and still later athird, and each successive theory gives a better explanation of the same phenomenon than thepreceding one, that surely is scientific progress worth celebrating. Seen in this light, scientificprogress is mainly about understanding, not about control over nature.

Technological progress usually refers to increasing control over the environment. Tocontrol something is to render it passive, to make it into something that can be manipulated bythe controller. But nature is nothing if it is not active, if it does not have "a source of motion initself" (Aristotle, Physics ii). Therefore, technological progress in this sense is profoundlydisturbing for a pantheist.

It is not a healthy form of pantheism to celebrate the absorption of nature into the humaneconomic-technological machine, as one website which calls itself pantheist (www.the-truth.com) does. Not only is this tantamount to celebrating the "death of nature" on Earth, but itis guilty of overweening pride. For it assumes that because we have the power to push aside thebiological diversity that evolved over millions of years and the cultural diversity that developedalongside it over the last several thousand years, it follows that we and our puny Westerntechnology can substitute ourselves for the richness of what we are displacing. The perverseform of anthropocentric "pantheism" to which I am now referring is also guilty of ignorance: it confuses thetemporary domination of the planet by the economic-technological machine with the totalabsorption of nature and God by human (that is, Western) culture. No matter how totally humans control the planet, they cannot control much beyond the planet. There is a lot more universe outthere, as pictures and data from the Hubble Space Telescope strikingly confirm. Besides, we probablycannot even control as much as of the planet as we would like. For example, we can't figure outhow to reverse the damage we have caused the stratospheric ozone layer, only how to slow downthe rate of additional damage in the hope that natural processes will revive the ozone layer afterseveral decades. And we cannot figure out how to do away safely with our nuclear wastes oreven how to store them safely over the very long period in which they remain toxic.

If technological progress is a problem, and in many instances an abomination, when itworks at dominating nature and making it into something passive and a mere resource, it doesnot follow that there is no acceptable technical progress. Some technologies are less invasive ofnature than others. For example, those which use wind power for augmenting human energy andpassive solar collection for heating are ethically less ambiguous than fossil fuels or nuclearenergy. One can imagine continuously improved technical solutions of this sort. It is possible thatexperience in organic farming and composting since the 1960's has developed a battery of soft-technological practices that would constitute an acceptable kind of technical progress. In anycase, pantheism as a religious perspective strongly endorses our learning how to live more lightlyupon the earth. The Question of Divine Providence

Do pantheists believe that the divine universe cares whether we are good or bad, and thatit punishes us if we are bad and do not get punished appropriately in this life? Since ancient times, political leaders have held that beneficial social consequences derive from belief in powerful gods who see what we do even when no humans see it and who punish wrongdoing, either in this life or in an afterlife. On their view, people must be convinced that nothing that we do escapes the attention of the divine being. We find political philosophers, both ancient and modern, who do not really believe in a wrathful god but think that it is not a bad idea if most people do.

Even if they were right about human psychology and the crime rate--and, it is not, so far as I know, empirically proven that they are--this fact would not settle the issue of whether the divine being, in the pantheist case, the universe as a whole, really knows and cares about what we do. And pantheists will generally deny this, because it would require that the divine universe has or is a single mind, and that would amount to saying that the universe is a divine person, an idea most modern pantheists would prefer to abandon. Therefore most pantheists do not conceive the divine power as an observer of our misdeeds and as a punisher of the ones that our fellow humans fail to catch.

However, pantheists can admit that there is at least a metaphorical sense in which the universe hasprovidentially arranged for punishment and reward. Here they can borrow a page from the Stoics, whowere also pantheists of a sort. The Stoics observed that human beings are endowed with a greatcapacity for wisdom as well as ignorance, and claimed that if we judge ignorantly we receivemisery while if we judge wisely we receive tranquillity. They had in mind the insight that wemake ourselves miserable by setting our hearts on things beyond our control. These things, theysay, are not truly our private possessions and in claiming them for our own, or acting as if theyshould be, we are sinning or transgressing against nature. Yet if we do this, we are quicklydisappointed and so the ignorance associated with this transgression is swiftly and automatically"punished" by our undergoing fear and distress (Cf. Seneca, De providentia). The Stoic insightis that, in producing us as beings with capacity for reason, the universe has created us with thepower to interpret events so as to avoid at least the more extreme forms of emotional turmoil. Such internal turmoil besets individuals who do not have their priorities in proper order and tryto treat as their own and under their control things which are actually beyond their control.

For further information about pantheism, see Paul Harrison's Scientific Pantheism website.

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AN INTRODUCTION TO PANTHEISM - Personal/Professional