At the Tokyo gallery Koki Arts this winter, five ice-cast gods sat melting in a vitrine. The water dripping off of Virgin Mary, Buddha, Anubis, Ares, and Ganesha flowed down into a plastic bottle to be collected and refrozen. The next day the gods would be recast in their same forms, and this process would repeat each day of the exhibition.

Kyoko Hamaguchi, the artist who created this installation, calls it God of the Day. Hamaguchi is a Tokyo University of the Arts graduate and an MFA student at Hunter College in New York. Her work deals with themes of transformation, circulation, and time. She also often employs pinhole cameras, as she did at this exhibition, Do Gods Travel Lightly?

In an upper corner of the room Hamaguchi had installed Space Watcher, a pinhole camera with an exposure that lasted for the one-month duration of the show. Meanwhile, the photograph End to End (NYC Subway), taken with another pinhole camera, was arranged in the melting gods line of sight. The image captured the two-minute exposure of the end-to-end journey of New York Citys S Train. Together, these three pieces spoke to themes the multimedia artist continues to explore.

Tokyo Art Beat interviewed Hamaguchi about her work.

My installations take many different forms but conceptually they are also rooted in the nature of photography.

TAB: Your works are expressions of clear ideas. Do you consider yourself a conceptual artist?

KH: I think every artwork has conceptual and visual components, but the emphasis varies. For me, the concept takes priority and drives my decisions about form, materials, and processes. I am constantly searching for ways to utilize a materials fundamental properties to reveal new perspectives about the systems and structures of everyday life. Still, I am invested in the visual outcome and the aesthetic properties of the work, so there is always a push and pull while I am working.

TAB: You started out in oil painting but now work in photography and installations. What has shifting between media been like for you?

KH: In my oil paintings, I was putting down 15 to 20 layers in each painting. As I waited for each layer to dry, time was piling up. This accumulation of time became one of my interests. While exposing a photograph, marks also accumulate as a function of time, so I found photography to be a natural continuation of my interest. My installations take many different forms but conceptually they are also rooted in the nature of photography.

I was wondering if symbols of belonging or objects of faith, which are so often essential markers of identity, could also be presented as flexible.

TAB: How did you choose the five particular gods for God of the Day?

KH: God of the Day is a project with multiple iterations. Each version has a unique combination of gods. I try to choose a diverse grouping from a variety of geographic locations around the world, showcasing gods with a range of physical characteristics.

TAB: To me, God of the Day speaks to a kind of pantheism or interchangeability among religions. Is this the message you were going for?

KH: Today, people, ideas, information, and news travel faster and more flexibly than ever before. With the Internet, it is possible to look up anything at any time instantly and to move from one topic to another fluidly. So, I was wondering if symbols of belonging or objects of faith, which are so often essential markers of identity, could also be presented as flexible. This could be thought of as interchangeability as you say. Perhaps a single spirit can move fast enough to inhabit all of the gods. In God of the Day, the morphing and fluidity of water becomes analogous to this transformative spirit, melting, mixing, and reforming into each god.

Immigrants are always circulating between their original home and their new one, even if they are not doing so physically.

TAB: Youre interested in migration, fluidity, and the passage of time. How do these ideas fit together for you?

KH: For me, circulation is the key word that connects migration, fluidity, and the passage of time. The unprecedented ability to move through the world enables people and ideas to travel and interact with each other to form new identities and notions of home. Immigrants are always circulating between their original home and their new one, even if they are not doing so physically. The fluid mixing of old and new cultures becomes a unifying force that breaks down antiquated barriers. All of these interactions and processes happen in time and may also be revealed through it.

By following my instincts rather than trying to make something that someone else thinks constitutes Japaneseness, I believe I can better understand my culture.

TAB: How has moving between Japan and New York influenced your practice?

KH: New York is a place where many cultures from around the world mingle together. So, you have to stand strong to keep hold of your identity and ethnicity. However, I also realized that in the art world there are so many biases about who you are and what you are interested in based on your background. Often people expect an artist who came from Japan to make work about their Japaneseness. But the Japaneseness they think of is far different from what I experienced in my country. These expectations I felt when I moved from Japan to New York had the effect of making me even more determined not to change anything I had previously pursued. By following my instincts rather than trying to make something that someone else thinks constitutes Japaneseness, I believe I can better understand my culture.

TAB: How is working and living in New York at the moment?

KH: In New York, we have experienced stay-at-home orders for two and a half months, and now, after George Floyds brutal murder at the hands of police in Minneapolis, we are out in the streets protesting to fight systemic racism. We have gone from extreme isolation to intense gathering. This fluctuation and the energy and purpose behind it has been astonishing to witness and participate in. Listening as much as I can has helped me understand the injustices deeply rooted not only in America but in countries all over the world that continue to this day. For me, this moment has been a time of witnessing and learning new histories, not only by reading about them but by experiencing history in the making.

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Time and Transformation | TABlog - Tokyo Art Beat

With its theme of Possible Worlds, the third season of Cosmos was awkwardly timed. The series, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, concluded last week on Fox and the National Geographic Channel. It conjures dreams of interstellar travel at a moment when most people are much more concerned about whether they can make it to the grocery store and back without contracting COVID-19.

The backdrop of a pandemic was, of course, unique to this season. It probably contributed to a lower-than-hoped-for viewership. But as writers for Evolution News have demonstrated in recent weeks, Cosmos 3.0, as we call it, is in other ways right in line with its predecessors. Like the 1980 original with Carl Sagan and the 2014 reboot with Dr. Tyson, this Cosmos series advances numerous myths about the relationship between science and faith.

Here is the final narration from Cosmos 2020:

Stars make worlds, and a world made life. And there came a time when heat shot out from the molten heart of this world and it warmed the waters. And the matter that had rained down from the stars came alive. And that star stuff became aware. And that life was sculpted by the earth, and it struggles with the other living things. And a great tree grew up, one with many branches. And six times it was almost felled, but still it grows. And we are but one small branch, one that cannot live without its tree. And slowly we learned to read the book of nature, to learn her laws, to nurture the tree, to become a way for the cosmos to know itself, and to return to the stars.

Tyson ends his summary of cosmic history since the Big Bang with this soaring narrative focused on earth. It sounds like the exalted prose of the book of Genesis minus God. It is a worldview-shaping narrative, a myth in the anthropological sense.

When connected with earlier Cosmos episodes that give details (typically without sufficient evidence), this narrative answers profound questions. Or it seeks to answer them. Where did we come from? Answer: we are star stuff shaped by the branching tree of evolution, powered by unguided material processes. What is our purpose (teleology)? Answer: to be one of the ways, along with extraterrestrial civilizations, that the universe knows itself through science. Where are we going (eschatology)? Answer: our destiny is to become connected with civilizations located around countless other stars, and thereby be liberated from terrestrial religions and scientific infancy (Tyson earlier held a baby to make this point). Six times terrestrial life worked hard to avoid total extinction and succeeded, but in the seventh period we will enter our cosmic rest of extraterrestrial enlightenment.

While resting in the lap of ET we will read the Encyclopedia Galactica, Tyson suggests. This book represents the fantastically advanced accumulated knowledge of cosmic communal intelligent life, an idea that Carl Sagan helped transfer from science fiction to documentary film back in the 1980 Cosmos series. Well enjoy heavenly bliss while reading the good book. Thats a key message from the Cosmos franchise.

The season finale is titled: Seven Wonders of the New World. In Biblical terms, seven symbolizes completion. Are we uncovering Team Tysons numerological opium for the masses? The Cosmos storytellers invented a 2039 New York Worlds Fair with seven theme park attractions that celebrate cosmic history and lifes heroic accomplishments. The year 2039 would be the centennial of the 1939 New York Worlds Fair that helped awaken Carl Sagans scientific-materialist imagination (also depicted endearingly in this final episode). Sagans legacy grows with each multimillion-dollar retelling.

Such Worlds Fair science-fiction storytelling works well as it builds upon a certain measure of legitimate science. There are five widely recognized mass extinction events in our planets history. Throw in human-caused global warming as the sixth catastrophe (allegedly in the making in our own time) and you have a great recipe for cosmic mythology. Lets save our Mother Earth in act six and join the extraterrestrial choir of enlightened ETs in the triumphant seventh act. Hey everyone, make sure you oppose those fanatically religious geocentric, flat-earth-believing, climate-science deniers who are destined for extinction. Science is our only salvation. (See my historical analyses of Christianity as being responsible for flat-earth-belief here and unthinking resistance to Copernicanism here).

The makers of Cosmos wish to reach your heart with their message. Its a materialistic imitation of biblical religion and eschatology. Mother Nature is god and Tyson is her prophet. Learn her laws, he declares, echoing Moses. Nurture the Tree of Life she has mindlessly created. Countless times in the series Tyson says Come with me, imitating Jesus call for disciples.

The grand story is dressed up to look scientific, but at heart it is mostly materialistic mythology. Its bipolar identity teeters between atheism and pantheism. I make a rigorous case for this conclusion in my book Unbelievable, which includes the chapters Extraterrestrial Enlightenment and Preaching Anti-theism on TV: Cosmos. In the Cosmos chapter I discuss Cosmos 1980 and 2014. Cosmos 2020 dishes up more of the same. Many will swallow it.

Did you notice the timing of the season finale, on April 20? It aired two days before Earth Day, which this year celebrated its 50th anniversary. Many now celebrate Earth Day within a Deep Ecology worldview that owes much to pre-modern pagan earth worship. Easter, which also falls at this time of year, had long ago largely displaced the old earth-worshipping holidays in Europe. Do the makers of Cosmos hope that Earth Day will win back this time of year from Easter? It sure looks that way when you combine my analysis here with this critique of the flimsy Cosmos treatment of global warming. It is no surprise that the National Geographic Channel blasted Cosmos viewers with many Earth Day-related TV advertisements (I lost count of just how many).

Meanwhile, after celebrating or ignoring Easter and Earth Day, many coronavirus-besieged earthlings toggle between anxiety and quarantined boredom. Cosmos 3.0 doesnt seem to be helping much. But for some people false hope is better than no hope at all. For some, futuristic dreams via Cosmos might bring comfort. Team Tyson envisions how in the near future a persons neural network (connectome) might be resurrected. In this future world, maybe with ETs help (or so the story goes), we will be able to recreate a deceased persons connectome. Its your own personal techno-Easter, if you will (provided that others in the future approve of your reappearance). The details for how this could happen are not provided. Sci-fi is under no such obligation. The constraints on this kind of storytelling are minimal.

Carl Sagans widow, Ann Druyan, is the key figure who made the Cosmos series rise again (twice now). She had this to say about her teams storytelling:

Every story that we tell has to satisfy different criteria. It has to be a way into a complex scientific idea or an important scientific idea. Were aiming for your brain, your eye, your heart, your senses, your ear via effects. Everything has to be working together in concert to give you a consummate experience, and to attract you to want to know more.

Referring to traditional religions, especially the one that celebrates Easter, she finally says in the same interview: I think we have a much better story to tell than they do. I doubt this even if both were treated as fictional narratives. Of course the truth or fiction of each story is the subject of the main debate.

Seth MacFarlane (a Hollywood atheist worried about the influence of intelligent design) introduced Ann Druyan to atheist Brannon Braga, who helped Ms. Druyan produce the two reboots of Cosmos. Heres a sample of how I treat Bragas key role in the Cosmos franchise. Its from the Cosmos chapter of my book Unbelievable. The materialist agenda of Braga is documented below and in my books footnotes (omitted here).

The executive producer of Cosmos 2014 says that he has spent most of his professional life creating myths for the greater truth of atheism. His name is Brannon Braga. Speaking at the 2006 International Atheist Conference, he celebrated his part in creating atheistic mythology in more than 150 episodes of Star Trek: Next Generation. He summed up his mission which violates the original Star Trek prime directive of not altering native culture as showing that religion sucks, isnt science great, and finally how the hell do we get the other 95 percent of the population to come to their senses? These are remarkable confessions. As we saw in Chapter 8, Kepler helped establish sci-fi as a way to promote very different ideas: God rules the cosmos, isnt science great, and finally how for heavens sake do we get the other 99.9 percent of the population to come to their senses so they can embrace Copernican astronomy?

According to Braga, teaching atheistic myth is the work of sci-fi films and TV documentaries like Cosmos. Indeed, he said that Cosmos 2014 was designed to combat dark forces of irrational thinking. He emphasized: Religion doesnt own awe and mystery. Science does it better. But as we have seen, rendering Christianity as the historical enemy of science is itself an exercise in unreasonable and reckless historiography. Myth, not science, recognizes the cosmos as all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Sagan knew this statement would inspire awe because it imitated the biblical description of God. No doubt, Braga and his team of like-minded creators were delighted to rerun this mythical mantra at the beginning of Cosmos 2014. It served well the greater good of anti-theism.

Theres much more where that came from: Its Unbelievable!

Editors note: Find further reviews and commentary on the third season ofCosmos, Possible Worlds, here:

Image: Host Neil deGrasse Tyson in a screenshot from the trailerfor Cosmos 3.0, Possible Worlds.

Go here to see the original:

Echoing the Bible, Cosmos Concludes with a Materialist Origins Myth and Future Heavenly Bliss - Discovery Institute

The new Cosmos season, Possible Worlds, with host Neil deGrasse Tyson is a lot cleverer than harsh, in-your-face New Atheists of the Jerry Coyne/Richard Dawkins variety. In this it follows in the path of the original Cosmos and the 2014 re-boot. Rather than openly mock religion in some oafish or venomous way, Cosmos advances a winsome case for pantheism, an attitude of awe before nature, anthropomorphizing it, and invites us to do the same. At times this is expressed in Biblical cadences. Think of Carl Sagan on the cosmos as all that is or ever was or ever will be.

As philosopher Jay Richards and science historian Michael Keas discuss on a new episode of ID the Future, that is a much easier sell.Easier for slipping it into the public schools! It wont alarm the parents nearly as much as an all-out siege on theism. Very clever, Dr. Tyson.

Download the podcast or listen to it here. Richards and Keas reflect on the programs treatment of arch-heretic Giordano Bruno, pantheist philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and more. Dr. Richards is co-author of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery, now out in paperback with a new Foreword. Dr. Keass recent book is Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. The Cosmos season concluded last night with an episode on the Seven Wonders of the New World. We will have more to say. See below for previous coverage of the season from Evolution News:

Image: Baruch Spinoza, shown about 1665, by an unknown artist / Public domain via Wikimedia.

Read the rest here:

Clever Move Cosmos Pushes Pantheism - Discovery Institute

Source: Reusableart.com

As a word maven, I am enjoying something during all the stories about the novel Coronavirus pandemic. I am enjoying the use of the specific, but previously rare, word "pandemic" itself.

On the other hand, I'm reluctant to write that we're "in the middle of" a pandemic -- not because I'm worried about the word pandemic, but I'm worried about "in the middle." It always reminds me of my mother, who did a lot of sewing. When she needed to cut two things from a piece of fabric, she wanted to find the middle. To do that, she would hold one end of the fabric. I would hold the other and bring it up to her hands. Then we knew where the middle was, the same distance from both ends. Without knowing the end, how can you say we're in the middle? (I get the same way about "middle age.")

But at least I'm hearing the word pandemic, not just epidemic. My old faithful dictionary, Webster's New Twentieth Century, second edition, calls pandemic "a type of epidemic that affects large numbers, whole communities, or the majority of a place at the same time." Epidemic is "a disease prevalent in a locality, an epidemic disease; also, the rapid spreading of such a disease."

The prefix pan- is defined on Dictionary.com as "a combining form meaning all, occurring originally in loanwords from Greek (panacea; panoply), but now used freely as a general formative (panleukopenia; panorama; pantelegraph; pantheism; pantonality), and especially in terms, formed at will, implying the union of all branches of a group (Pan-Christian; Panhellenic; Pan-Slavism)."

So a pandemic is an epidemic affecting us all, or the majority of a place.

The majority of a planet, perhaps?

Margaret Serious has a page on Facebook. Stop by for a socially distanced visit.

Are you ready for something different to read? A Sustaining Book to Help and Comfort, or comments about word usage? Then subscribe today and have Margaret Serious delivered!Type your e-mail address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam-free, and you can opt out at any time.

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What's the difference between pandemic and epidemic? - ChicagoNow

Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia, The Creation of the World and Expulsion from Paradise, 1445

The proposed ecological examinations of conscience only serve to politicize Penance before we even enter the confessional.

With the push for same-sex marriage, the past few years have witnessed the politicization of matrimony. As divorced-and-remarried persons demand Communion irrespective of the status of their matrimonial vows, we have also seen the politicization of the Eucharist.

Perhaps, then, it was only a matter of time before the Sacrament of Penance was politicized. And in the frenzied push for environmental examinations of conscience, that is exactly what is happening right now.

To preface this discussion, we need to recognize mans proper rights and duties with regard to his natural environment.

To be sure, individuals have a moral duty to care for the eartha duty evidenced in Genesis 2:15: The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. This is a two-fold duty: to develop (till) it and protect (keep) it. This should be a joyous duty, rooted in mans reciprocal love of God. As Pope Saint John Paul II saw it, caring for the created world is an expression of gratitude toward God.

Along with the duty, man has a corresponding right to develop Creation in order to support and advance himself, his family, and society. This right, however, does not permit man to indiscriminately engineer nature or pollute the environment.

By extension, societies have rights and duties to protect the environment. At the 1990 World Day of Peace, Pope Saint John Paul II stated, The State should also actively endeavour within its own territory to prevent destruction of the atmosphere and biosphereensuring that its citizens are not exposed to dangerous pollutants or toxic wastes. Similarly, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states, A correct understanding of the environment prevents the utilitarian reduction of nature to a mere object to be manipulated and exploited.

Even the greenest environmentalist would likely agree with the above statement of the Compendium, but it is in its very next sentence that company begins to part: At the same time, it must not absolutize nature and place it above the dignity of the human person himself. In this latter case, one can go so far as to divinize nature or the earth...

The Compendium gets to the heart of the problem here by illustrating the two-fold environmentalist temptation: first, to worship creation rather than Creator; second, to view the natural world as more important than man himself.

These interrelated temptations are hardly new. The strange and apostate god of pantheism (everything is god) dates back to the ancient Greeks, and the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza found a more modern audience for pantheism in the 1600s. Though the name Spinoza is rarely on the lips of modern men, his influence is on their minds. His essential argument was that everything is part of one substance; from this perspective, there is no substantive difference between a baby chipmunk and a baby human. That would be dangerous enough, but some of todays environmentalists take Spinoza one step further.

Some argue that a baby chipmunk is substantively better than a baby human. Why? Becausein the minds of some hyper-environmentalistswhile the baby chipmunk poses no threat to the environment, the baby human does. Therefore, he must be stopped, even before he is formed in the womb. That is why population control

is an essential ingredient in environmentalism and terms like responsible parenthood are commonthe clear implication being that the most responsible parenthood is no parenthood at all.

This conceptthat man and nature have equal ontological value, or that man is subservient to natureis diametrically opposed to Catholic teaching. The Church recognizes that man is created in the image and likeness of God and is called to share in the unending happiness of the Divine Trinity. Man transcends the material worlda claim that no other creature on earth can make.

Mans worth exceeds the material world, and not only in its component parts but in its totality. By virtue of her divine likeness, one tiny girl in the womb is greater than the rest of the physical universe combined. Add up the Pacific Ocean, the North Star, and Saturnadd up all the oceans and stars and planetsand they will never equal the worth of one baby girl. They will dry up and burn out, but she is immortal.

She is loved by God. And so are you.

In our sins, we fail to recognize or fully accept all this. We fail to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength. We fail to love our neighbor. We fail to love ourselves.

If you want to write an examination of conscience, seek to find ways we have failed to love the immortals in our lives. Seek to find the ways we have sinned against those whom we are called to love: God, neighbor, self. At best, the talk about sins against the environment and eco-sins obscures this focus and re-directs it at mere matter. An examination of conscience hyper-focused on ecological sins constitutes a dangerous diversion that seems to flirt with the divinization of nature.

If a man intentionally harms the environment, that may very well constitute a sin. But, ultimately, it is not a sin against the environment. Rather, it is a sin against God, Who entrusts us with dominion over Creation and directs us to care for our neighbor. That is not a semantic difference.

The worst tragedy of our age is not that man abuses the environment for his own pleasure; rather, it is that man abuses man for his own pleasure. That statement is evidenced by the prevalence and promotion of abortion, pornography and adultery. Of course, it is not politically correct to refer to these things as sins anymore. Instead, we encourage mea culpas on the misuse of plastics and maxima culpas on the failure to recycle.

It is no secret that both local and foreign governments are trying to encroach upon the Sacrament of Penancein effect, to try to force priests into revealing what occurs in the confessional. But the proposed ecological examinations of conscience only serve to politicize Penance before we even enter the confessional.

To those who insist on these eco-examinations, I would point out that Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium have already provided us with ample direction in terms of our environmental responsibilities. And the concept of quasi-ecclesiastical/quasi-governmental agencies drawing up examinations of conscience offends every Catholic sensibility. Rather than an examination of conscience written by those whose goalsstrangely enoughoften seem to align with the political Left, I would suggest an examination of conscience that was written long ago and has served us well: The Ten Commandments.

See the original post:

The Politicization of the Sacrament of Penance - National Catholic Register

Before I touch this subject, I confess my lack of knowledge of Bengali language, which I believe, has been partly compensated by my study of Tagores best-known work Gitanjali translated into chaste English by Tagore himself. In the case of Iqbal, I have in my view most of his Urdu and Persian works, but more specifically Baal-e-Gibriel which I believe is truly representative of his genius.

It is said that comparisons are odious, especially between two equally gifted personages. Most people have drawn comparisons and contrasts between Tagore and Iqbal to show that one was superior to the other, which I think violates against the best literary traditions. Two equally gifted poets could be different in their outlook about man, nature and God, their subject matter, their form and mode of poetic expression, but not fundamentally as poets.Which one is better than the other is only a matter of ones personal choice which varies from person to person.

The palpable commonalities between the two were that both were great poets and contemporaries and both hailed from the Indian sub-continent. Both were conversant in more than two languages; Tagore, in Bengali and English, while Iqbal in Urdu and Persian.Both were imbued in their local as well as western culture, and had benefited from the philosophic and religious currents of their time.But they were vastly different in their approach to life and treatment of their subject matter.

Tagore wrote in the common language of the Bengali people and raised its status from a dialect to a rich and authentic language by abandoning the ancient form of the Indian (Hindi) language, despite criticism from his own Indian critics and scholars.

Tagores reputation as a writer was spread in the western world more swiftly than that of Iqbal with the publication in 1912 of Gitanjali: Song Offerings, in which Tagore tried to find inner calm and explored the themes of divine and human love. The poems were translated into English by Tagore himself. His cosmic visions owed much to the lyric tradition of Vaishnava Hinduism and its concepts about the relationship between man and God. Gitanjalis introduction was written by the famous English poet William Butler Yeats, who wrote These lyrics -which, in its original Bengali version, are full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention, which display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life. His poems were praised by great literary icons like Ezra Pound, who drew the attention of the Nobel Prize committee, which awarded Tagore with Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. This was the primary reason why he won the Prize as against his great contemporary Iqbal, whose works were more dynamic, diversified and philosophical in nature, but none of them had been translated in English by that time, which was the only language which the Nobel Prize Committee could understand and appreciate.In one of his reviews, Ezra Pound wrote There is in him(Tagore) the stillness of nature. The poems do not seem to have been produced by storm or by ignition, but seem to show the normal habit of his mind. He is at one with nature, and finds no contradictions and this is in sharp contrast with the Western mode, where man must be shown attempting to master nature if we are to have great drama. Iqbal was such a poet whose works displayed the great drama by attempting to master nature, but unfortunately the western world remained oblivious to his work and art because of the barrier of language which they could not understand or appreciate.

A comparison of the tenor of their work shows that Tagore brought out the romantic in man; Iqbal the heroic. Tagore exulted in feminine beauty; Iqbal in masculine strength. There was music in Tagores poetry; there was fire in Iqbals poetry. Tagore was humble; Iqbal was proud. Tagore was inspired by Hafiz; Iqbal drew his strength from Rumi.

Did Rabindernath Tagore break away from the age-old beliefs and traditions ? No. His conception of life was perfectly in tune with the teachings of the Upanishad. His poetry and songs were saturated with pantheistic thoughts and ideas which he drew from the Upanishad, and the Persian mystic poets like Hafiz and others. He saw the vision of his Beloved in the moon, the stars and flowers and other beauties of Nature and perceived her footfalls in the stormy night behind the clouds; he heard her singing in the birds and whispering in the breeze. He feels constant pangs of separation from her and is ever anxious to meet her. Complete identification with her is the cry of his soul. His imagination ends there and cannot go beyond that. The following extracts from Rabindranath will bear me out:

Let there be no distinction between you and me

So that I may see myself at one with you, both in and out.

I have come to this world only as a pawn of your sports

My own desires will die unto your pleasure and love

And in weal and woe, none shall survive except you.

A comparison of the tenor of their work shows that Tagore brought out the romantic in man; Iqbal the heroic

Rabindranath Tagore is out and out a mystic poet of Pantheism, bordering, at places, on paganism. The burden of all his philosophic poems and songs is separation from, and hankering after complete communion with his consort. Like the Vedantists and the Sufis, he also tries to flee from life and merge himself into the Ultimate Being. Death is the target of his life! The glorification of death and self-effacement thus constitutes his principal message to mankind. In a typical fashion he plays on soft sentiments of love and separation and does not bother about the duties and responsibilities of man towards God and the World.

Against this Idealistic-Pantheistic-Vedantic-Sufistic background of under-estimation of life, Iqbal boldly proclaimed the individuality and immortality of the Soul and its never-ending progress and development in our after-life. He says that this visible world is not a baseless fabric of fantasy; it is also real and meaningful. Man is also real and his Ego or Soul will not be absorbed. Here man has been bracketed with God and given the exalted position of His Viceroy. This proves that there is no intermediary in between God and Man and that man has limitless power and potentiality in him. Indeed man is destined to rule the universe as the representative of God. Evidently, as long as God is, man is. God is no doubt our Creator, but once He has created us, He will not absorb or annihilate us. It is His pleasure that we live eternally with Him. This philosophy, of course, is not his own; it is broad-based on the teachings of the Holy Quran which vouchsafes eternal life not only to the dwellers of Paradise, but also to those of Hell. Iqbal has given a philosophic shape to this eternal veracity of Islam. Herein lies his contribution. I quote below a few lines from Iqbal to corroborate my views:

Life is preserved by purpose;

Because of its goal its caravan-bell tinkles. Life is latent in seeking.

Its origin is hidden in desire.

Desire keeps the Self in perpetual uproar ..

Negation of life is death to the living.

Abandon self and flee to God

Strengthened by God, return to thy self.

It is sweet to be Gods Vicegerent in the world

And exercise sway over the elements.

He gives new values to life and urges upon strengthening of the Soul. He believes that, in the scale of being, the status of every object is determined according to the degree of strength it attains. As God is the perennial source of all power and success, and as mans is not yet a complete personality, it is essential that he should come in close contact with God for borrowing strength from Him. The motivating idea behind this should be not to absorb himself into God, but rather to absorb God into himself. Man has to mouldhis character in accordance with the character and Attributes of Allah. Indeed, the nearer is a person to God, the greater is his personality. A man full of divine qualities is the perfect man. Iqbal calls him Insan-i-Kamil or the Perfect Man, as opposed to Neitzsches Superman. Iqbal pays tribute to the perfect man in these two immortal lines:

Develop thyself, so that before every decree

God Himself will ascertain from thee what is thy will?

In short, while the terminus station of Rabindranaths journey of life is God, that of Iqbal is Eternity. Iqbal is a perpetualtraveller; he does not stop at God, but goes further beyond. Rabindranaths span of life is, therefore, shorter than that of Iqbal, his outlook is also narrow and antiquated and mediaeval in character, having no dynamic appeal to this new age of space-flight and inter-planetary journey. Iqbal is the poet of today and also of to-morrow.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence

Excerpt from:

Tagore and Iqbal - Daily Times

MONTREAL, November 20, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) The Canadian bishops international charitable arm recently released a video highlighting the importance of nature and its protection in which it is claimed that Jesus came to save the planet and that Mother Earth has rights.

Development and Peace (D&P) currently under investigation for partnering with dozens of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual groups in developing countries released the video on October 1, just days prior to the opening of the Amazon Synod in Rome where the pagan idol Pachamama was worshiped in the Vatican Gardens at an event attended by Pope Francis.

Titled Speaking up For our Common Home - Intergenerational, the video showcases various people who lament how the world is affected by climate change.

In one section of the video, popular author Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, asserts that Jesus came not just to save people, Jesus came to save the planet, and Mother Earth itself has rights.

At another point, a woman digs her hands into the earth and calls it sacred.

The video includes a call for Catholics to learn from indigenous peoples who need to teach us how to keep this earth a beautiful place.

However, the message of the video leans in the direction of pantheism and is misleading at best, according to one theologian.

If the claim that Jesus came to save the planet as well as peoples souls is understood in the sense of St. Pauls teaching in Romans 8:19-23, theres nothing wrong with it, said Father Brian Harrison, a priest of the Society of the Oblates of Wisdom, and retired associate professor of theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.

The Apostle says there that Christs redeeming work will eventually restore the whole fallen and sin-stricken universe, that has been groaning under a curse since Adams Fall. Both Old and New Testaments also speak of a New Heaven and a New Earth that is to come, he told LifeSiteNews in an email.

However, to say Mother Earth itself has rights is not true, except perhaps understood as a loose figure of speech. Its at best misleading, Harrison added.

For only persons can have rights, and to personify the earth as a real Mother with rights would lean in the direction of pantheism.

Father Harrison pointed out that man has a responsibility toward the earth that derives from his duty to God.

It is true that we human beings have a duty to God not to the Earth itself! to avoid unnecessary harm and contamination to the earth and its resources. Thats part of the stewardship over the earth that God gave us in Genesis 1, he told LifeSiteNews.

Christian concern for the environment, he added, must not become exaggerated or tainted with pantheism, or politicized for purposes of globalist politics.

Thats echoed by Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute, which recently petitioned the U.S. bishops to withdraw support for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the U.S. counterpart of D&P, for persistent funding of organizations that promote abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and Marxism.

He rejected the notion of Mother Earth, observing that in the D&P video, someone actually says that they are part of the earth, and the earth is a part of them, and that it is their mother.

Our Mother is the Mother of God, Blessed Mary Ever Virgin! The entire concept of a mother earth, which is perpetually pregnant and never delivering the child in the womb, is the very image of a fruitless faith, Hichborn said.

But the more insidious and dangerous aspect of this video is its participation in the global environmentalist movement, he told LifeSiteNews.

Leonardo Boff, the laicized priest and theologian of reference for the Amazon Synod, said in 1980 the global environmental movement would be used to promote the revolutionary process, and Boff said of Marxist liberation theology, To the cry of the poor we added the cry of the earth, Hichborn pointed out.

Brazilian Dominican Frei Betto, who spoke of the opportunity to use the (Amazon) synod to promote liberation theology also warned that the phrase liberation theology sets people on edge, so instead, he proposed talking about socio-environmental issues, he added.

While it is true that we all have a duty to be good stewards, the devils ploy is to twist the truth without denying it. Certainly, we can find better ways to handle refuse and toxic chemicals, but the agenda of these socialist environmentalists goes well beyond that, Hichborn said.

The fundamental goal of the socialist-environmentalist agenda is depopulation through abortion, contraception, and even homosexuality.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him (154), and that we are to take good care of God's gift to us, noted Steve Mosher, president and founder of Population Research Institute.

However, to suggest that creation is somehow equivalent to the creature us that it was created for, is to misstate its purpose and exaggerate its importance, he said.

Yet that is what the video does in saying that Jesus came not just to save people, Jesus came to save the planet. And Mother Earth itself has rights, he told LifeSiteNews.

We are a fallen race who have sinned before God and require salvation. Inert matter, nerveless plants, and even soulless animals are incapable of sin and therefore do not require salvation, Mosher added.

God did not send his only Son to die on a cross for endangered species, or to combat global warming, but to save fallen mankind. Period.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis said last week that hes thinking of adding ecological sin to the Catechism, and he quoted the Amazon Synod final document, in which the bishops proposed to define ecological sin as an act or omission against God, against neighbor, the community, and the environment, LifeSiteNews reported.

As for the review of the Canadian bishops review of Development and Peace partnering with 52 groups overseas that promoted abortion or homosexuality, its findings have not yet been published.

Contact information for respectful communications:

CCCB President The Most Rev. Richard GagnonArchbishop of WinnipegCatholic Centre 1495 Pembina HighwayWinnipeg (MB) R3T 2C6Tel: (204) 452-2227Email: [emailprotected]CCCB general email: [emailprotected]

Msgr Frank Leo, Jr., C.S.S.CCCB General Secretariat2500 Don Reid Dr.Ottawa, ON K1H 2J2Tel: (613) 241-9461Email: [emailprotected]

Originally posted here:

Canadian bishops charity: Jesus came to save the planet ... Mother Earth has rights - Lifesite

Last month the Vatican and Pope Francis hosted the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, a meeting to discuss the challenges facing Amazonia and the Catholic Church therein that managed to be extremely wild and extremely predictable at once.

The wild part featured not just the expected debates about married priests and female deacons, but an extended meltdown over whether a wooden statue of a naked, kneeling pregnant woman, used in a ritual on the Vatican grounds, embodied indigenous reverence for the Virgin Mary or indigenous pantheism and nature-worship. Vatican officials seemed determined not to clarify the matter, traditionalist outrage ran wild, and eventually a young traditionalist swiped one of the statues from a Roman church and pitched it into the River Tiber making himself either a successor of Saint Boniface or a racist iconoclast, depending on which faction of Catholic media you believed.

All exciting stuff but also a bit irrelevant to the actual outcome of the synod, which featured little of the conservative resistance that characterized earlier synodal battles over divorce and remarriage, and eventually produced a document backing the major project of the Francis era: the decentralization of doctrine and discipline, with priestly celibacy the latest rule thats likely to soon vary across different Roman Catholic regions, as the interpretation of church teaching on divorce and remarriage already does.

And even the act of traditionalist defiance was part of the predictability of the proceedings. As conservative resistance to Francis has grown more intense, it has also grown more marginal, defined by symbolic gestures rather than practical strategies, burning ever-hotter on the internet even as resistance within the hierarchy has faded with retirements, firings, deaths.

Four years ago I wrote an essay describing the Francis era as a crisis for conservative Catholicism or at least the conservative Catholicism that believed John Paul II had permanently settled debates over celibacy, divorce, intercommunion and female ordination. That crisis is worse now, manifest in furious arguments within the Catholic right as much as in online opposition to the pope himself. And I dont think were any closer to a definite answer to what happens to conservative Catholicism when it no longer seems to have the papacy on its side.

While the synod was going on, I conducted a long interview with one of the popes most prominent conservative critics, Cardinal Raymond Burke. I had never met him before, but he was as I anticipated: at once obdurate and guileless, without the usual church politicians affect, and with a straightforward bullet-biting to his criticism of the pope.

The Burke critique is simple enough. Church teaching on questions like marriages indissolubility is supposed to be unchanging, and thats what hes upholding: "I havent changed. Im still teaching the same things I always taught and theyre not my ideas." What is unchanging certainly cant be altered by an individual pontiff: "The pope is not a revolutionary, elected to change the churchs teaching." And thus if Francis seems to be tacitly encouraging changes, through some sort of decentralizing process, it means "theres a breakdown of the central teaching authority of the Roman pontiff," and that the pope has effectively "refused to exercise [his] office."

This is a position with some precedents in Catholic history. John Henry Newman, the Victorian convert, theologian and cardinal recently sainted by Francis, once suggested that there had been a "temporary suspense" of the churchs magisterium, its teaching authority, during eras in which the papacy failed to teach definitively or exercise discipline on controversial subjects. And the churchs saints from such periods include bishops who stood alone in defense of orthodoxy, sometimes against misguided papal pressure.

But you can also see in my conversation with the cardinal how hard it is to sustain a Catholicism that is orthodox against the pope. For instance, Burke himself brought up a hypothetical scenario where Francis endorses a document that includes what the cardinal considers heresy. "People say if you dont accept that, youll be in schism," Burke said, when "my point would be the document is schismatic. Im not."

But this implies that, in effect, the pope could lead a schism, even though schism by definition involves breaking with the pope. This is an idea that several conservative Catholic theologians have brought up recently; it does not become more persuasive with elaboration. And Burke himself acknowledges as much: It would be a "total contradiction" with no precedent or explanation in church law.

The pull of such ideas, though, explains why you need only take a step beyond Burkes position to end up as a kind of de facto sedevacantist, a believer that the pope is not really the pope or, alternatively, that the church is so corrupted and compromised by modernity that the pope might technically still be pope but his authority doesnt matter anymore. This is the flavor of a lot of very-online traditionalism, and its hard to see how it wouldnt (eventually) lead many of its adherents to a separation from the larger church, joining the traditionalist quasi-exile pioneered after Vatican II by the Society of Saint Pius X.

Are there alternatives to Burkes tenuous position or the schismatic plunge? At the moment there are two: One is a conservative Catholicism that strains more mightily than Burke to interpret all of Francis moves in continuity with his predecessors, while arguing that the popes liberalizing allies and appointees are somehow misinterpreting him. This was the default conservative position early in the Francis pontificate; it has since become more difficult to sustain. But it persists in the hope of a kind of snapping-back moment, when Francis or a successor decides that Catholic bishops in countries like Germany are pushing things too far, at which point there can be a kind of restoration of the John Paul II-era battle lines, with the papacy despite Francis experiments reinterpreted to have always been on the side of orthodoxy.

Another alternative is a conservatism that simply resolves the apparent conflict between tradition and papal power in favor of the latter, submitting its private judgment to papal authority in 19th-century style even if that submission requires accepting shifts on sex, marriage, celibacy and other issues that look awfully like the sort of liberal Protestantism that the 19th-century popes opposed. This would be a conservatism of structure more than doctrine, as suggested by the title of a website that champions its approach: "Where Peter Is." But it would still need, for its long-term coherence, an account of how doctrine can and cannot change beyond just papal fiat. So it, too, awaits clarifications that this papacy has conspicuously not supplied.

The importance of that waiting is the only definite conclusion that I can draw from the whole mess. Where conservative Catholics have the power to resist what seem like false ideas or disastrous innovations they must do so. But they also need to see their relative powerlessness through their own religions lens. That means treating it as a possible purgation, a lesson in the insufficiency of human strategies and wisdom, and a reason to embrace T.S. Eliots poetic admonition: There is yet faith, but the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.

Ross Douthat (@NYTDouthat) writes for The New York Times.

Excerpt from:

Ross Douthat: What will happen to conservative Catholicism? - The Register-Guard

Iqbal: The Metaphysics and The Reconstruction- Part I

The difficulty of research on Iqbals The Development of Metaphysics in Persia -- his doctoral dissertation -- is as great as the paucity of material on it. We are told by some Iqbal biographers that it was praised highly by orientalists such as T.W. Arnold and R. A. Nicholson etc. Such praise may have been incidental to what else was being said about Iqbal in the beginning of the 20th Century, for the work as a whole seems to have gone without much detailed commentary, even by the said orientalists themselves.

In the more than one hundred years since, the situation hasnt changed much. As far as I have been able to see, apart from some valuable and mostly recent contributions of a few pages in some edited volumes on Iqbal, there is very little dedicated entirely to the study of Iqbals dissertation. One reason for this would perhaps be what Iqbal Singh said of this work: It is somewhat unsatisfying. It leaves the reader with the impression of something that he can neither accept as serious work nor reject as something trivial and unworthy of attention. For a research thesis its scope is too wide; and for an original and interpretative study of the subject it seems too sketchy, too descriptive

Some of the points raised by Singh may be relevant to the fact that the Munich examiners were not greatly impressed by Iqbals mastery of Zoroastrian and medieval sources. But they passed it because they felt that it drew sufficiently upon manuscript research and because they trusted the judgment of experts such as Arnold (Rizvi 2015 with reference to Durrani 2003). Arnold, Iqbals teacher in Lahore and London, had put in a good word for Iqbal. The work was treated as a dissertation in oriental philology and not philosophy because the committee was not satisfied with its quality in the latter area (Rizvi 2015).

Singh, like others after him, also finds that the work dates badly. How the work dates is a tricky question. Those who point to this problem fall short of discussing the issue in detail. Singh himself says nothing further. But there is another, personal sense in which the work dates and which may explain the lack of attention that befell this work. Almost immediately after the dissertation appeared (perhaps even at the time Iqbal submitted it) he had started undergoing a change and very soon abandoned the pantheistic outlook that is understood to mark this work.

The Urdu translation of this 1908 work appeared in 1936. In 1927, Iqbal told the translator that he didnt think much of it because his ideas had undergone a revolution and in German separate books had been written on Ghazali, Tusi, etc., leaving very little in the book that could survive criticism. Iqbal did not specify what that German research was, and that poses a few problems, if we take his 1930-34 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam to be the work where that new research would find mention.

Tusi can be safely put aside because he does not figure much in The Metaphysics and in The Reconstruction appears in a very different context. There does not appear to be a huge difference between the Ghazali of The Metaphysics and the Ghazali of The Reconstruction. In The Metaphysics Ghazali is one of the greatest personalities of Islam who anticipated Descartes and Hume, systematically refuted philosophy and completely annihilated the dread of intellectualism (read reason and philosophy) which had characterized the orthodoxy. He put dogma and metaphysics together into an education system that produced great men of intellect. He examined all the various claimants of "Certain Knowledge" and finally found it in Sufism. ((I do not know if the irony of the comparisons involving Ghazali, Iqbals celebrated destroyer of rationalism, on the one hand, and Descartes, the founder of modern rationalism and Hume the atheist on the other, was truly lost on Iqbal. But such time-less and ahistorical comparisons are Iqbals permanent hallmark visible in The Metaphysics and omnipresent in The Reconstruction).

In The Reconstruction, we are once again reminded of Ghazalis greatness as the precursor of Descartes who despite his skepticism being a rather unsafe basis for religion not wholly justified by the spirit of the Quran and despite going a little too far broke the back of that proud but shallow rationalism in the Muslim world -- much like Kant, the great gift of God to his people, who revealed the limitations of human reason and reduced the whole work of the rationalists to a heap of ruins. There is, Iqbal notes, one important difference. Kant, consistently with his principles, could not affirm the possibility of a knowledge of God. Ghazali, finding no hope in analytic thought, moved to mystic experience, and there found an independent content for religion.

In The Metaphysics, Ghazali harmonizes Sufi pantheism and the Asharite dogma of personality, a reconciliation which makes it difficult to say whether he was a Pantheist, or a Personal Pantheist of the type of Lotze. Ghazali moves towards a conception of the soul which sweeps away all difference between God and the individual soul. Realizing the Pantheistic drift of his inquiry, he preferred silence as to the ultimate nature of the soul. Iqbal does not critically engage with Ghazali here and that is typical of him in The Metaphysics for the most part. This account of Ghazalis mysticism is not rejected or modified in any way in The Reconstruction. The spiritual content of Ghazalis silence over the soul though is replaced by a philosophical account of the problem of thought and intuition, where Iqbal gives his own ideas on how the finite (thought in serial time) and the infinite (intuition) are organically linked. something that, according to Iqbal, both Ghazali and Kant failed to realize and which led to Ghazali drawing a line of cleavage between thought and intuition. Iqbal, it appears, is also trying to break through Ghazalis silence over the nature of God and soul, having restated it in a peculiar way. Iqbals own consistencies, contradictions, successes and failures in doing so, at this point, are not the issue.

We can see here that, to the extent Iqbal reproduces his account of Ghazali and his contribution in the history of thought, there is hardly any difference. The Metaphysics is meant to be a historical account whereas The Reconstruction is an interpretative endeavor -- an allegedly philosophical attempt at reconstructing Muslim thought. What is significant in our context is that Iqbal cites no new research while discussing Ghazali. What then do we make of his reference to the new research on Gazali and Tusi? Not much, I believe, by way of explanation.

(To be continued)

The writer is a student of literature and philosophy at the Forman Christian College.

Email: [emailprotected]

Read the original here:

Iqbal: The Metaphysics and The Reconstruction- Part I - The News International

From Marx to Gaia

By Dr. Samuel Gregg, Catholic World Report, October 23, 2019

Thirty years ago, the world rejoiced as the crack-up of Communisms grip on Eastern Europe, forever symbolized by the Berlin Wall, began. This, however, created enormous dilemmas for prominent representatives of a theology which had taken Marxism very seriously from the late-1960s onwards throughout Latin America.

Perhaps one reason why some Latin Americans have embraced various evangelical confessions is that many such movements put Christ first, and keep politics firmly in its place. Thats a lesson, however, that some Latin American liberation ecologists and their ecclesial fellow-travelers havent absorbed

What became known as liberation theology was never a monolithic movement. Nevertheless its most influential strands were influenced by Marxist thought, as many liberationists freely acknowledged. Cursory reading of Gustavo Gutirrezs 1971 classic A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation soon confirms this. That stimulus was even more apparent in the works of prominent liberationists like Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino.

Socialisms collapse in Eastern Europe created significant challenges for those liberationists who relied on Marxist analysis. While many asserted that the Soviet Bloc was a deviation from Marxist ideals, such systems had given expression to key Marxist commitments. Examples included the minimization (if not the effective abolition) of private property, laws formal subordination to Marxist ideology, and hostility to religion.

1989 didnt, however, lead some liberation theologians to question substantially their fundamental assumptions. Many simply transferred their attention to the environment. Among the things we have learned from the Amazon Synod is how far such thinking has burrowed its way into Latin American Catholicism.

Environmental liberation

Of the liberation theologians who transitioned to whats called liberation ecology, Leonardo Boff has gone the furthest in trying to immerse Catholicism in environmentalist concerns and ideology. In Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (1997), Boff stated that the Church cannot enclose religious persons in dogmas and cultural representations. It must serve as an organized place where people may be initiated, accompanied, and aided [in expressing] the spirit of the age.

That the spirit of the age doesnt always accord with the truth about God isnt a question addressed by Boff. In any case, the spirit of the age, at least for Boff, was environmentalism of the deep Green variety. Boffs 1997 book, for instance, argued that the Earth is not a planet on which life exists . . . the Earth does not contain life. It is life, a living superorganism: Gaia.

The Gaia hypothesis was first articulated by the chemist James Lovelock in the 1970s. It has since made its way into other disciplines, including theology. On several occasions, Boff has acknowledged that The vision of James Lovelock . . . helped us see not only that life exists on Earth, but also that Earth itself is a living organism.

Lovelocks argument was that all living entities (animals, plants, etc.) on Earth effectively cooperate with inorganic compounds (oxygen, metals, etc.). This makes the planet a self-regulating, perhaps even self-directed entity which preserves all the essentials for life, provided humans dont interfere too much with whats going on.

By the late-1990s, the hypothesis began collapsing under the impact of heavy scientific critique. Some scientists pointed out, for example, that Gaia theory couldnt account for the fact that some parts of the natural world had naturally detrimental effects on other parts of the environment. In short, there was considerable disharmony in nature that owed nothing to human action.

Other scientists criticized Gaia theorys non-scientific and teleological aspectsfeatures which Lovelock himself waxed and waned about. Its pseudo-religious connotations emerge when we discover that Gaia is the name of one of the most primordial of Greek goddesses. In Greek mythology, Gaia (who takes the even more revealing name Terra in the equivalent Roman mythos) personified the Earth itself. Ascribing divine status to Gods creation rather than God himself has a name: i.e., pantheism.

Central to Boffs embrace of Gaia theory is his insistence that humans accept that they are not only homo sapiens (man the wise) but also, Boff claims, homo demens (man the deranged): a species whose dementedness is expressed in failure to recognize the natural world as humanitys equal. At the core of Boffs liberation ecology is thus a type of biological egalitarianism. In the forthcoming ecological and social democracy, Boff states, religion will promote the idea that it is not just humans who are citizens but all beings . . . Democracy accordingly issues in a biogracy and cosmoscracy.

How plants, animals, glaciers, fire or metals would exercise their citizenship in Boffs biogracy is unclear. After all, they lack reason and free will. But Boff did outline a distinct political structure for his eco-social democracy. It should coalesce around global bodies, such as the United Nations and its eighteen specialized agencies and fourteen worldwide programs. A highly centralized, top-down approach towards environmental questions and politics more generally was the future. As in his pre-Gaia days, the principle of subsidiarity doesnt appear to have exerted substantive influence upon Boffs thought.

Heaven on Earth

There is another characteristic of liberation ecology which was prefigured in Marxist-influenced liberation theologies. This concerns tendencies to immanentize the eschaton, to use the expression employed by the political scientist Eric Voegelin.

One feature of many pre-1989 liberation theologies was their relative silence about the life which Christianity teaches lies beyond death. It wasnt that they denied it outright. Rather, their focus was almost exclusively upon earthly injustices and overcoming them. Many liberation theologians even portrayed traditional Christian teaching about suffering as potentially redemptive in the same way that Marx presented religion: i.e., a rationalization of unjust status quos which anesthetized people to the structural unfairness surrounding them. Some liberationists subsequently held that removal of all oppressive structures would inaugurate a more natural state of affairs: a world free of alienation and remarkably similar to the earthly utopia which Marx said lay at the end of history.

Similar patterns permeate some liberation ecologists thinking. In a 2016 interview, Boff contended that the intellectual and economic revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries gave rise to the idea of conquest of people and the Earth. The Earth was no longer viewed as the great Mother, alive and purposeful. Instead, it was reduced to something to be exploited by humans for wealth accumulation. From this standpoint, the pre-Enlightenment, pre-capitalist environment was a placid, almost pristine world which was naturally hospitable to humans.

Such claims are historically questionable. Humans were extensively usingand often abusingthe natural world long before the seventeenth century. That includes pre-Christian indigenous societies. In A God Within (1973), the Pulitzer-prize winning biologist Ren Dubos illustrated how Maya peoples inflicted immense ecological damage throughout southern Mexico and Central America long before the Spanish conquest. These nations had never heard of Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, or market economies.

More generally, liberation ecology has a distinctly romantic edge to it. Its adherents seem reluctant to concede that, with or without humans, the natural world isnt a symphonic paradise. Animals, for instance, are hardly kind to each other. Millions of species have disappeared without any human involvement. Moreover, nature has inflicted enormous harm upon people for millennia through unpredictable events like earthquakes. The claim that the environment is somehow naturally benign and nurturing, save when humans disrupt it, simply isnt true.

To this we should add that neither pre-Enlightenment Judaism nor Christianity invested plants or animals with a status equivalent to humans, let alone that of a divine-like Mother. Indeed, Judaism and Christianity played the pivotal role in de-divinizing the natural world. They thus helped sweep aside the pagan religions of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Babylon which irrationally ascribed divine qualities to elements like water and activities such as war. Certainly, the Scriptures present the created world as good. But they dont portray the natural world as perfect or claim that nature is somehow intrinsically better than or equal to humans: for therein lie slippery slopes to syncretism and paganism.

No Salvation outside politics

There is, however, another important similarity between yesterdays liberation theologians and todays liberation ecologists. None have succeeded in stemming the drift of Latin Americans away from Catholicism.

Theres many reasons for this decline, but one is surely the way in which many liberation theologians and liberation ecologists locate salvations essence in politics. In remarks written in 1984, Joseph Ratzinger observed that most liberation theologians believed that nothing lay outside politics. Hence, he said, they regarded any theology which wasnt practical, i.e., not essentially political . . . as idealistic and thus lacking in reality, or else is condemned as a vehicle for the oppressors maintenance of power. Judging from their writings, many liberation ecologists embrace this position.

The problem is that politics cant answer those ultimate questions about life, death, good, evil, and humanitys ultimate origins and destiny which haunt everyones imagination. Perhaps one reason why some Latin Americans have embraced various evangelical confessions is that many such movements put Christ first, and keep politics firmly in its place. Thats a lesson, however, that some Latin American liberation ecologists and their ecclesial fellow-travelers havent absorbed. And like liberation theology, the consequent damage inflicted by radical liberation ecology upon Catholicisms abilityeven willingnessto evangelize Latin Americans is likely to be deep and lasting.

Article first appeared HERE.

Original post:

Liberation theology never went away. It morphed into liberation ecology. - Catholic Citizens of Illinois

MEXICO CITY, Mexico, November 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) A Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Mexico City, whose video posted over the weekend went viral after he burned effigies of the pagan Pachamama statues in atonement for the sin of idolatry at the Amazon Synod, is defending his actions, saying that they fall within the law of God.

Fr. Hugo Valdemar Romero, the former spokesman of the Archdiocese of Mexico City, told LifeSiteNews in an exclusive interview (read full interview below) that he was motivated to lead his congregation in prayers of reparation, burning the effigies of the Pachamama, because of the scandal and the pain caused by the serious acts of idolatry, carried out in the Vatican with Amazonian idols during the Synod of the Amazon.

Many very wounded and angry faithful looked to me, asking us (clergy) to do something to show our repudiation of idolatry and to ask God for forgiveness for so many sacrileges and profanations, so I decided to do these acts of reparation, he said.

When asked if he had received retaliation from members of the hierarchy for burning the Pachamama effigies, Fr. Valdemar Romero replied that so far, he had not, but that he was willing to answer for my actions.

I have not yet received any censorship, and of course I am willing to answer for my actions. These actions, however, are not outside the law of God or canon law. I am not afraid because I feel protected by God and especially by Our Lady of GuadalupeI will always defend Her Honor.

The priest contrasted the idol Pachamama with the Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico in 1531.

I spoke to an exorcist from Mexico City who told me that the figure of the Pachamama was a parody of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Fr Valdemar Romero explained.

Our Lady, Santa Maria de Guadalupe appears in Her holy image as a pregnant woman. She came to give birth to Jesus, Light of the World and the only True God, the sole purpose of our life. She came as The Woman of the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun with the moon at Her feet, he said.

This Pachamama, in contrast, is about to give birth to a red creature, demon colored, and that creature is nothing less than a new church. This church was born by the synod that has just ended this so-called church with an Amazonian face that pretends to have orthodox rites, but is promoting (the notion of) female deacons and married priests, all contrary to Catholic doctrine and the tradition of the (Roman) Church.

Fr. Hugo Valdemar Romero provided LifeSite with the prayers (see below) that he used in leading the congregation to make reparation for the worshiping of Pachamama in Rome during the Amazon Synod.

***

LSN: What inspired you to lead your congregation in prayers of reparation, and then burn the effigies of the Pachamama?

Fr. Hugo Valdemar Romero: The scandal and the pain caused by the serious acts of idolatry, carried out in the Vatican with Amazonian idols during the Synod of the Amazon. Many very wounded and angry faithful looked to me, asking us (clergy) to do something to show our repudiation of idolatry and to ask God for forgiveness for so many sacrileges and profanations, so I decided to do these acts of reparation.

Have you spoken with exorcists in Latin America, and do you believe that demonic influence was involved in these rituals?

Yes, I spoke to an exorcist from Mexico City who told me that the figure of the Pachamama was a parody of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Our Lady, Santa Maria de Guadalupe appears in Her holy image as a pregnant woman. She came to give birth to Jesus, Light of the World and the only True God, the sole purpose of our life. She came as The Woman of the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun with the moon at Her feet. This Pachamama, in contrast, is about to give birth to a red creature, demon colored, and that creature is nothing less than a new church. This church was born by the synod that has just ended this so-called church with an Amazonian face that pretends to have orthodox rites, but is promoting (the notion of) female deacons and married priests, all contrary to Catholic doctrine and the tradition of the (Roman) Church.

In your video, we see you speaking about Our Lady of Guadalupe. In S. Maria in Traspontina, the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was seen, pushed aside by one of the side altarswhere the Pachamamas were placed. Do you believe this is significant?

Of course, it is the great imposture of the satanic goddess Pachamama. It seeks to usurp the place of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to remove from the Catholic faith, She Who is the Mother of the True God to put in Our Ladys place Mother Earth, which in reality is idolatry, pantheism and superstition.

How was Our Ladys apparition at Guadalupe significant to counter paganism in Latin America?

It was fundamental, because as St. John Paul II said it was the perfect model of inculturation. That is to say, Our Lady took elements of the culture of the indigenous world, not in order to create syncretism with paganism, but to purify certain symbols and give them a Christian sense. Meanwhile, with the Pachamama, the intention is not authentic inculturation but a diabolical usurpation to restore idolatry.

There seems to have been a rise of the occult in Mexico, including Santeria. Do you believe the rituals in the Vatican were similar synchronism, and why?

Unfortunately, where Faith is weakened, paganism and superstition return. This is what we see, not only in Mexico but throughout the Western world, which has abandoned Christianity, supplementing it with superstitions, New Age and Satanism.

Critics have said you disrespected indigenous culture by burning the effigies of the Pachamama. Speak to how Latin American history, including in Mexico, supports your acts of reparation and prayer.

Those who demand respect must also respect. No one would have said anything if the Amazonian idols had been exhibited in the Vatican museums or in some exhibition hall, but what they did was a real abomination and sacrilege. We watched, stunned, as the idols were worshipped in front of the Pope himself, in the Vatican gardensand witnessed daily rituals of worship in the church of Santa Maria Traspontina. In addition to being a crime against Divine Law, it was an offense to Catholics who reject idolatry and who do not want to witness the desecration of our churches.

We have seen, in recent months, a Colombian Bishop exorcising his diocese (because of the high-level of drugs, violence and occultism), along with violent pro-abortion feminists trying to burn the Cathedral in Mexico City. News of escalating cartel violence is being reported, from Mexico. Do you think these are related? What is the remedy?

Behind all that destroys human life, such as abortion and the crimes of narcotics, is Satan. He is "the liar and murderer from the beginning," as Jesus calls himand we may say that these two attributes are the demon's preferred practices. We'll always find his influence when we see these.

Many, after seeing your video, are calling for their priests and bishops to stand up and do similar acts of reparation. Still more are concerned that you will receive retaliation by certain members of the hierarchy, and that their clergy are afraid of this. What do you say to all of this?

Unfortunately, the tolerance, dialogue and mercy so often exhorted by this pontificate seems only for those outside (the Church), while for those inside there is censorship, silence and reprisals. Yes, there is a lot of fear, and especially a fear that a schism will result. A de facto schism, unfortunately, is already here. In my case, however, I have not yet received any censorship, and of course I am willing to answer for my actions. These actions, however, are not outside the law of God or canon law. I am not afraid because I feel protected by God and especially by Our Lady of GuadalupeI will always defend Her Honor.

Any other messages?

Only that we must not lose Faith! Faith is what overcomes the world. Do not fail to love Christ with all of your soul. Do not fail to love His Holy Mother and the Church, which is going through a great tribulation but in which, in the end, Christ will triumphhave no doubt about it.

***

Prayers of Reparation

Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, receive from the hands of the Immaculata, Mother of God, Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, from our contrite heart, a sincere act of reparation for the acts of worship of idols and satanic fetishes that occurred in Rome, the Eternal City and the heart of the Catholic world, during the Synod for the Amazon.

Pour into the hearts of cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious men and women your Spirit, Who will expel the darkness of minds, so that they may recognize the impiety of such acts, which offended Your Divine Majesty and offer acts of reparation and relief.

In all the members of the Church, shed the light of the fullness and beauty of the Catholic Faith. Ignite in all the ardent zeal to bring the salvation of Jesus Christ, True God and true man to all men, especially people in the Amazon region, who are still enslaved to the service of idols and superstition, so that all people from that region reach the freedom of the children of God, and have the indescribable happiness of knowing Jesus Christ, and through Him in the life of Your Divine Nature.

Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you, the only True God, outside Whom there is no other god or salvation, have mercy on your Church. Look especially at the tears, the contrite and humble sighs of your faithful and bless and protect the true Christian heroes, who in their zeal for your glory and in their love for Mother Church prophetically threw the idols of the abomination into the water.

Have mercy on us: forgive us, Lord! Have mercy on us: Kyrie eleison!

Deprecatory Prayers

1. Forgive us, Lord, for the sacrilegious act of adoration of the Pachamama and the Amazonian idols in the Vatican gardens

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

2. Forgive us, Lord, for the desecration of the basilica and the tomb of the blessed apostle St. Peter, where they prayed and sang to the Amazonian idols.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

3. Forgive us, Lord, for the procession of the cursed canoe with Amazonian fetishes carried by bishops, religious and lay people to the synodal hall.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

4. Forgive us, Lord, for the desecration of the church dedicated to your Blessed Mother, in her invocation Santa Mara in Traspontina, in Rome, where they housed the diabolical idols of the Pachamama and worshiped her, offending the memory of our Blessed Mother and the holiness of your House.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

5. Forgive us, Lord, for the desecration of your Holy Via Crucis, the Way of Reconciliation, in Rome, in which they offended your glorious Passion.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

6. Forgive us, Lord, for the prayers to the abominable idol of the Pachamama composed by the Pastoral Agency of the ItalianEpiscopal Conference and prayed in several churches in Italy.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

7. Forgive us, Lord, for the desecration of the Cathedral of Lima Peru, in which they praised the idol Pachamama, begotten by and deceived through Satan.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

8. Forgive us, Lord, for all the bishops, priests, religious men and women who have offended your holiness as One God, committing the crime of idolatry and defending, spreading and worshiping Satan in the deceit of Pachamama idol.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

9. Forgive us, Lord, for the Catholics who see and yet do not see, and hear and yet do not hear, and defend these demonic and abominable acts of adoration of the Amazonian idols, deceit of Satan. Do not allow their souls to be lost, give them Your Divine Light to become one with You, the only True God.

Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

10. Forgive us, Lord, for endorsement of integral ecology, contempt for human beings, lack of courage to defend the unborn, abortions and the endless crimes of your children.

Lord have mercy, Christ, have mercy.

Translated in part by Maria Cancel

Originally posted here:

EXCLUSIVE: Catholic priest defends burning Pachamama effigy as within law of God - Lifesite

ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Cardinal Raymond Burke is warning that the Amazon Synod isn't about local evangelization in the Amazonbut aboutrevolution inthe wholeChurch.

During an interview with Italian media published Monday, the former head of the Vatican's highest court is decrying the"dishonest attitude" in masking the true nature ofthe synod.

"The Synod is presented as being for the pastoral care of the people to be evangelized in the Amazon, but the German bishops state clearly that the goal is to revolutionize the whole Church," relates Burke. "Even the bishop of Essen, Monsignor Franz-Josef Overbeck,said very recently that after the Amazon Synod 'nothing will ever be the same again'in the Church."

Burke's words are supported by similar remarks from the Vatican's head liturgist, Cdl. Robert Sarah. In an interview also published on Monday, Sarah remarkedthatusingthe synod as a "laboratory for the universal Church" would be "dishonest and misleading."

"To take advantage of a particular synod to introduce these ideological projects would be an unworthy manipulation, a dishonest deception, an insult to God, who leads his Church and entrusts him with his plan of salvation," assertedSarah.

He exclaimed, "I am shocked and outraged that the spiritual distress of the poor in the Amazon is being used as a pretext" to support such projects as ordaining married men, creating women's ministries and giving jurisdiction to laypeople.

Asked duringMonday's interview about the synod's emphasis on "appreciating different cultures and religions," Burke warned that thisapproach is alwaysineffective and maycause a missionary to lose his faith.

"If a missionary starts with the sole intention of appreciating whatever culture he finds,then we can be sure there will be no evangelization, it's more likely that these missionaries will end up losing their faith," cautioned Burke.

"We are in a profound crisis," related Burke, when asked why he andBp. Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, on Tuesdayissuedan appeal for prayer and fasting. They did sowith the intention that the heresies in the synod's preparatory document called the Instrumentum Laboris would be rejected.

"According to the profoundly mistaken view of the Instrumentum Laboris, Christ and the cosmos are one and God also reveals himself in other circumstances. This view is closely connected to pantheism. Therefore it is a cult of the natural world," Burke clarified.

When asked about the apparent"decline in vocations," Burke revealed thatthose pushing the so-called "new Church" are turning away vocations in order to justify the ordination ofmarried men.

"Those who are promoting a 'new Church'do not want vocations, they discourage them in order to justify their own position which attacks celibacy," asserted Burke. "It is no coincidence that the religious institutes, perhaps with young congregations and many vocations, are the ones being particularly targeted at the moment."

Vocations still exist, said Burke, but what is lacking in many places is "an apostolate for vocations and prayer for vocations."

Celibacy that's being attacked by the synod, explained Burke, actually freesapriest to give himself completely to God and to fully live out hispriesthood. At the same time, he discounted the falsehood that evangelization is best done by simply "doing good and being good."

The priest is called to celebrate the Eucharist, to offer himself as victim for the salvation of souls, to give himself totally to Christ. This is what is essential, all the other priestly activities teaching, assisting the faithful in difficulty, charitable work, even the defence of the Indians are a consequence and even if they were unsuccessful, this would not take anything away from the ministry.

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Original post:

Cdl. Burke: Revolution Is the Goal - Church Militant

Pope Francis celebrates Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica on Holy Saturday, April 15, 2017. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

The group, concerned about evils and the current situation within the Church, will meet for a prayer vigil near the tomb of St. Peter on Oct. 5

Lay faithful from across Italy are expected to gather in a piazza near St. Peters basilica next week to pray for the Church as she faces a catalogue of challenges, oneswhich the event organizers have included in a prayer list.

Recalling Cardinal Joseph Ratzingers words in 2005 excoriating the filth in the Church, and his later words on the terrifying sin and persecution from enemies within the Church, the organizers wish to draw attention to the extent of the current evils ranged within the body of the Church and to urge the faithful to pray for her.

The Church is living through her Passion, one of the vigils organizers calledFather Giuseppewrote in a letter to Vaticanist Marco Tosatti that was later reported in the Italian dailyIl Tempo.

Titled Lets Pray for the Church!, the prayer vigil is scheduled to take place at 2.30pm on Oct. 5, in Largo Giovanni XXIII an open space, usually the location for media on special occasions, at the far end of Via della Conciliazione, the central boulevard leading to St. Peters Square(the event has aFacebook pagehere). The Pan-AmazonSynod runs Oct. 6-27 at the Vatican.

The organizers point out that Benedict wished to remind the faithful that there are men in the Church who are not of the Church, do not belong to her, and who indeed work more than anyone else for her destruction. And they warn that such people will one day become the majority, according to St. Pauls prophecy in his Second Letter to the Thessalonians.

We, a group of Catholic friends, both lay and consecrated, therefore want to pray together with all those who wish to join us as close as possible to the tomb of St. Peter, where the popes, with few exceptions, have always desired to reside, they explain in their publicity.

Referring to Benedicts comments above, they also stress the initiative is not an anti-Pope Francis event because the origins of the current challenges long pre-date his election. Even the last two years of [Benedicts] pontificate were, for believers, ones of intense suffering, wrote Father Giuseppe, and the obstacles placed in his path by declared or hidden enemies were evident to all.

The organizers and participants will be asking for 10 graces during the prayer vigil. These include praying that those involved clerical abuse scandals not be promoted but removed from leadership positions; that the deposit of faith not be adulterated; that the Church be courageous in preaching the Gospel; and that she avoid acting like sociologists, political scientists, climatologists and logists of every kind.

They will also call on the Lord for the grace so that the non-negotiable principles are taught and the inviolability of life upheld, that love for Creation not be confused with paganism or pantheism, and that people are reminded that ones country is a mother for each person but defense of identity has nothing to do with nationalism or other aberrations.

The organizers will also pray to listen to the cry from the church in Africa and Eastern Europe, for Chinese Catholics, and the persecuted throughout the world.

The public prayer vigilis meant as a sign of hope, says Francesco Agnoli, one of the events participants. In the midst of so much confusion, there is a small flock in addition to some cardinals that is calling for an end to the storm.

October 5, 2019 in Rome, largo Giovanni XXIII, 2:30pm

Lets Pray for the Church!

It was Good Friday 2005, and then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would soon become Pope, declared these unmistakable words: How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!... (Stations of the Cross, IX station).

Once he became Pope, Benedict XVI travelled to Fatima. During an inflight press conference, on May 11, 2010, he told journalists who had asked about the Virgins message: The sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin that exists in the Church today we are seeing it in a truly terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies outside, but arises from sin within the Church.

As cardinal and as Pope, Benedict wanted to remind us that there are men in the Church who are not of the Church, who do not really belong to her, and who indeed work more than anyone else for her destruction; the villains and hypocrites who are in the Church, St. Augustine said in De Civitate Dei [The City of God], will one day become the majority, according to the prophecy of St. Paul in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians.

We, a group of Catholic friends, both lay and consecrated, therefore want to pray together with all those who wish to join us as close as possible to the tomb of St. Peter, where the popes, with few exceptions, have always desired to reside. We are asking God for these graces:

Email: ottobre_5@yahoo.com

See the article here:

Lay Faithful to Gather in Rome to Pray for the Church on Eve of Amazon Synod - National Catholic Register

The gods of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India (c. 1200 bce), represented for the most part natural forces. Exceptions were the gods Prajapati (Lord of Creatures) and Purusha (Supreme Being or Soul of the Universe), whose competition for influence provided, in its outcome, a possible explanation of how the Indian tradition came to be one of pantheism rather than of classical theism. By the 10th book of the Rigveda, Prajapati had become a lordly, monotheistic figure, a creator deity transcending the world; and in the later period of the sacred writings of the Brahmanas (c. 7th century bce), prose commentaries on the Vedas, he was moving into a central position. The rising influence of this theism was later eclipsed by Purusha, who was also represented in Rigveda X. In a creation myth Purusha was sacrificed by the gods in order to supply (from his body) the pieces from which all the things of the world arise. From this standpoint the ground of all things lies in a Cosmic Self, and all of life participates in that of Purusha. The Vedic hymn to Purusha may be regarded as the starting point of Indian pantheism.

In the Upanishads (c. 1000500 bce), the most important of the ancient scriptures of India, the later writings contain philosophical speculations concerning the relation between the individual and the divine. In the earlier Upanishads, the absolute, impersonal, eternal properties of the divine had been stressed; in the later Upanishads, on the other hand, and in the Bhagavadgita, the personal, loving, immanentistic properties became dominant. In both cases the divine was held to be identical with the inner self of each human person. At times these opposites were implicitly held to be in fact identicalthe view earlier called identity of opposites pantheism. At other times the two sets of qualities were related, one to the unmanifest absolute brahman, or Absolute Reality (sustaining the universe), and the other to the manifest brahman bearing qualities (and containing the universe). Thus, brahman can be regarded as exclusive of the world and inclusive, unchanging and yet the origin of all change. Sometimes the manifest brahman was regarded as an emanation from the unmanifest brahman; and then emanationistic pantheismthe Neoplatonic pantheism of the foregoing typologywas the result.

Shankara, an outstanding nondualistic Vedantist and advocate of a spiritual view of life, began with the Neoplatonic alternative but added a qualification that turned his view into what was later called acosmic pantheism. Distinguishing first between brahman as being the eternal Absolute and brahman as a lower principle and declaring the lower brahman to be a manifestation of the higher, he then made the judgment that all save the higher unqualitied brahman is the product of ignorance or nescience and exists (apparently only in human minds) as the phantoms of a dream. Since for Shankara, the world and individuality thus disappear upon enlightenment into the unmanifest brahman, and in reality only the Absolute without distinctions exists, Shankara has provided an instance of acosmism.

On the other hand, Ramanuja, a prominent southern Brahman who held to a qualified monism, argued strenuously against Shankaras dismissal of the world and of individual selves as being mere products of nescience. In place of this acosmism he substituted the notion of world cycles. In the unmanifest state brahman has as his body only the very subtle matter of darkness, and he decrees, May I again possess a world-body; in the manifest state all of the things of the world, including individual selves, are part of his body. The doctrine of Ramanuja approaches panentheism; he has certainly advanced beyond emanationistic pantheism. There are two aspects to the single brahman, one absolutistic and the other relativistic. As in panentheism, the beings of the world have freedom. The only qualification is that, although it is brahmans will to support the choices of finite beings, he has the power to prohibit any choice that displeases him. This power to prohibit indicates a preference for the absolute in Ramanujas thought, which is reflected in many ways: although God is the cause of the world, for example, and includes the world within his being, he is never affected by that world, and his motive in world creation is simply play. In sum, since the absolutistic categories were given the greater emphasis in his thought, Ramanuja is representative of a relativistic monistic pantheism.

The presence in the Hindu tradition of both absolutistic and relativistic descriptions of the divine suggests that genuine panentheism might well emerge from the tradition; and, in fact, in the former president of India, S. Radhakrishnan, also a religious philosopher, that development did occur. Although Radhakrishnan had been influenced by Western philosophy, including that of Alfred North Whitehead, later discussed as a modern panentheist, the sources of his thought lie in Hindu philosophy. He distinguishes between God as the being who contains the world and the Absolute, who is God in only one aspect. He finds that the beings of the world are integral with God, who draws an increase of his being from the constituents of his nature.

Some 600 years after the historical Buddha, a new and more speculative school of Buddhism arose to challenge the 18 or 20 schools of Buddhism then in existence. One of the early representatives of this new school, which came to be known as Mahayana (Sanskrit Greater Vehicle) Buddhism, was Ashvaghosha. Like Shankara (whom he antedated by 700 years), Ashvaghosha not only distinguished between the pure Absolute (the Soul as Suchness; i.e., in its essence) and the all-producing, all-conserving Mind, which is the manifestation of the Absolute (the Soul as Birth and Death; i.e., as happenings), but he also held that the judgment concerning the manifest world of beings is a judgment of nonenlightenment; it is, he said, like the waves stirred by the windwhen the quiet of enlightenment comes the waves cease, and an illusion confronts a human being as he begins to understand the world.

Whereas Ashvaghosha treated the world as illusory and essentially void, Nagarjuna, the great propagator of Mahayana Buddhism who studied under one of Ashvaghoshas disciples, transferred shunyata (the Void) into the place of the Absolute. If Suchness, or ultimate reality, and the Void are identical, then the ultimate must lie beyond any possible description. Nagarjuna approached the matter through dialectical negation: according to the school that he founded, the Ultimate Void is the middle path of an eightfold negation; all individual characteristics are negated and sublated, and the individual approaches the Void through a combination of dialectical negation and direct intuition. Beginning with the Madhyamika, or Middle Way, school, the doctrine of the Void spread to all schools of Mahayana Buddhism as well as to the Satyasiddhi (perfect attainment of truth) group in Theravada Buddhism. Since the Void is also called the highest synthesis of all oppositions, the doctrine of the Void may be viewed as an instance of identity of opposites pantheism.

In the Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism founded by Zhiyi, as in earlier forms of Mahayana Buddhism, the elements of ordinary existence are regarded as having their basis in illusion and imagination. What really exists is the one Pure Mind, called True Thusness, which exists changelessly and without differentiation. Enlightenment consists of realizing ones unity with the Pure Mind. Thus, an additional Buddhist school, Tiantai, can be identified with acosmic pantheism.

Indeed, although a mingling of types is discernible in the cultures directly influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism, acosmic pantheism would seem to be the alternative most deeply rooted and widespread in these traditions.

Just as the early gods of the Vedas represented natural forces, so the Canaanite deities known as Baal and the Hebrew God Yahweh both began as storm gods. Baal developed into a lord of nature, presiding with his consort, Astarte, over the major fertility religion of the Middle East. The immanentism of this nature religion might have sustained the development of pantheistic systems; but, whereas the pantheistic Purusha triumphed in India, the theistic Yahweh triumphed in the Middle East. And Yahweh evolved not into a lord of nature but into the Lord of history presiding first over his chosen people and then over world history. The requirement that he be a judge of history implied that his natural place was outside and above the world; and he thus became a transcendent deity. Through much of the history of Israel, however, the people accepted elements from both of these traditions, producing their own highly syncretistic religion. It was this syncretism that provided the occasion that challenged certain individuals of prophetic consciousness to embark upon their purifying missions, beginning with Elijah and continuing throughout the period of the Hebrew Bible. In this development, the absoluteness and remoteness of Yahweh came to be supplemented by qualities of love and concern, as in the prophets Hosea and Amos. In short, the categories of immanence came to supplement the categories of transcendence and, in the New Testament period, became overwhelmingly important. The transcendent Yahweh, on the other hand, had fitted more naturally into the categories of absoluteness. And, in the Christian West, it was the transcendent God who appeared in the doctrines of classical theism, while pantheism stood as a heterodox departure from the Christian scheme.

Originally posted here:

Pantheism | Britannica.com

In the comment mines I suggested, off-handedly, three possible metaphysical explanations for consciousness, without endorsing any of them.

A reader John responds to one of these suggestions:

To my primitive mind, this seems to be the most valid argument:

3. In fact, it is not possible to explain consciousness from nonconscious entities. Therefore, the most fundamental thing in existence is a mind, and we are parts of that mind. Matter is just a delusion which this mind believes in for some unknown reason. (I don't find this view plausible at all, but that's not the point.)

This is a longstanding view from oriental philosophy, and it intrigues me why you don't find it plausible.

Thanks for your comment. My main reason for finding this type of Pantheistic/Idealistic view implausible are these:

1. Matter sure seems like something with a real, consistent, and objective nature, quite unlike a dream. For example, when I wake up my furniture and stuff is always in more or less the same place. There are trees by the road whether or not I care for them to be there. As a physicist I can make precise models of how matter will behave under certain circumstances, and in fact it does those things. It does not consult my wishes except when I act on it using my body, and even then things do not always go according to plan.

Matter is a very parsimonious explanation of practically every experience I have. So considering it a delusion seems unjustified. And even if matter were a illusion, it must still exist as an illusion; if I hallucinate a blue tiger, there may not be a real tiger in the room but there is still a real image in my mind. So saying matter is an illusion doesn't actually reduce the number of entities which need to be explained! Actually it makes things worse, because I cannot think of any reason why God would have the type of schizophrenia required to think he is multiple persons living in a common environment. Nor can in turn be an illusion that I suffer from illusions, since that would be a logical contradiction.

(Speaking very broadlysince there are many varieties of Hinduism and Buddhisma lot of these oriental philosophies don't really believe in logic in the first place, or only use it to argue for contradictions, so that we give up our dualistic forms of logic. But I could never accept that perspective on logic in a million years---there is literally nothing more illogical than denying the validity of logic! I refuse to be insane.)

2. If we define God as the ultimate explanation for the Universe, which cannot itself be explained, then to say that everything is God is to say that nothing at all can be explained. But if a view explains nothing, it is less good than a view which explains, well, anything! I touched on this point in my discussion of Pantheism in my series on Fundamental Reality.

3. The actual Creator of the universe has spoken to me both in the Bible and in personal conversation, and he does not seem to regard other people as as part of himself in the requisite fashion. To Moses, he says "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:16), not "I am who you are". In fact he seems to disapprove of a number of specific things which human beings dowe Christians call these things "sin". And as I have argued, if God is good and we are not, then it follows that we are not God. To think that we are parts of God might be gratifying to our pride, but it is more wholesome to realize we are not God, and instead accept that we are created beings loved by him. As St. Chesterton said:

I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one's self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different. If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love is obviously impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himself, but he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must be a monotonous courtship. If the world is full of real selves, they can be really unselfish selves. (Orthodoxy, "The Romance of Orthodoxy")

Only in the case of one human being did God identify himself so fully with him, as to allow him to share completely in his divine titles and identity. And Jesus was no ordinary human, what with being the Word of God, who pre-existed with him from the beginning! If we were divine beings, we would know it.

True, by receiving the gift of Jesus's Spirit, we do become by grace "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). But this is not the same as being the unique and uncreated Son of God. To be commune with God is not the same as to be God.

So it's important for the distinction between the Creator and created to be sharply distinguished from the beginning. Once that's 100% clear, we can allow the mystics the liberty to speak the "language of love" concerning the intimate union between themselves and God, without fear of being misunderstood. I could say to my wife that I am part of her and she is part of me, without either of us thinking that we must be the same person in a literal sense.

Follow this link:

Against Pantheism Undivided Looking - Wall

Early Greek religion contained among its many deities some whose natures might have supported pantheism; and certainly the mystery religions of later times stressed types of mystical union that are typical of pantheistic systems. But in fact the pantheism of ancient Greece was related almost exclusively to philosophical speculation. For this reason it is more rationalistic, possessing a style quite different from the pantheisms thus far examined.

The first philosophers of Greece, all of whom were 6th-century-bce Ionians, were hylozoistic, finding matter and life inseparable. The basic substances that they identified as the elements of realitythe water proposed by Thales, the boundless infinite suggested by Anaximander, and the air of Anaximeneswere presumed to have the motive force of living things and thus to be a kind of life, a position here called hylozoistic pantheism.

Impressed by the absolute unity of all things, the adherents of another philosophical position, that of Eleaticism, so-named from its centre in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy, found it impossible to believe in multiplicity and change. The first step in this direction was taken by Xenophanes, a religious thinker and rhapsodist, who, on rational grounds, moved from the gods and goddesses of Homer and Hesiod to a unitary principle of the divine. He believed that God is the supreme power of the universe, ruling all things by the power of his mind. Unmoved, unmoving, and unitary, God perceives, governs, and apparently contains, or at least he embraces, all things. So interpreted, Xenophanes provides an instance of monistic pantheism, inasmuch as, in this view, the Absolute God is united with a changing world, while the reality of neither is attenuated. This paradox may have encouraged Parmenides, possibly one of Xenophanes disciples (according to Aristotle), to accept the changeless Absolute, eliminating change and motion from the world. Reality thus became for him a unitary, indivisible, everlasting, motionless whole. This position is basically that of absolutistic monistic pantheism in that it views the world as real but changeless. Insofar as the change and variety of the world are only apparent, Parmenides also approaches acosmic pantheism.

A third fundamental position is that of the Ephesian critic Heracleitus, among whose cryptic sayings were many that stressed the role of change as the basic reality. Heracleitus continued the hylozoistic tendencies of the Ionian philosophers. Fire, his basic element, is also the universal logos, or reason, controlling all things; and since fire not only has a life of its own but exercises control to the boundaries of the universe as well, the system is more complex than hylozoistic pantheism. In view of the circumstance that everything is either on the way from, or to, fire, this basic element is actually or incipiently everywhere. Since the divine works here from within the universe, indeed from within a single, but basic, aspect of it, the system is an instance of immanentistic pantheism.

The philosopher Anaxagoras, one of the great dignitaries at Athens in the golden age of Pericles, approached the problem somewhat in the manner of Heracleitus. Nous (or Mind) he held to be the principle of order for all things as well as the principle of their movement. It is the finest and purest of things and is diffused throughout the universe. This, like the preceding system, is an instance of immanentistic pantheism.

From the standpoint of the typology here employed, Plato may be regarded as the first Western philosopher to treat the problem of the absoluteness and the relativity in God with any degree of adequacy. In the Timaeus an absolute and eternal God was recognized, existing in changeless perfection in relation to the world of forms, along with a World-Soul, which contained and animated the world and was as divine as a changing thing could be. Although the material can be variously interpreted, panentheists hold that Plato has adopted a dual principle of the divine, uniting both being and becoming, absoluteness and relativity, permanence and change in a single context. To be sure, he envisioned the categories of absoluteness as situated in one deity, and those of relativity in another; but the separation seems not to have pleased him, and in the tenth book of the Laws, by invoking the analogy of a circular motion, which combines change with the retention of a fixed centre, he explained how deity could exemplify both absoluteness and change. Plato thus may be viewed as a quasi-panentheist.

Aristotle, on the other hand, with his exclusivistic, transcendent God, exemplifying only the categories of absoluteness, anticipated the absolute God of Classical Theism, existing above and beyond the world.

Stoicism, one of the foremost of the post-Aristotelian schools of thought, represents an immanentistic pantheism of the Heracleitean variety. First of all, the Stoics accepted the decision of Heracleitus that an indwelling fire is the principal element entering into all transformations and is also the principle of reason, the logos, ordering as well as animating all things, but that, second, there is a World-Soul, which is diffused throughout the world and penetrates it in every part. Rather than approximating Platos spiritual World-Soul, the Stoic World-Soul is more like the Nous of Anaxagoras. The Stoics were Materialists, and their diffuse World-Soul is, thus, an extended form of subtle matter. That everything is determined by the universal reason is an unvarying theme in Stoicism; and this fact suggests that Stoic pantheism, despite its immanentism, stresses the categories of absoluteness rather than those of relativity in the relations holding between God and the world.

The life of reason brings human beings into harmony with God and with nature and helps them to understand human fate, which is the place of the species in the universal system. Although the view is an amalgam of several types of pantheism, this particular mixture has retained its identity. It is therefore useful to call this position, or any similar combination of themes, by the name Stoic pantheism.

Plotinus, the creator of one of the most thoroughgoing philosophical systems of ancient times, may be taken to represent Neoplatonism, an influential modification of Platos attempt to deal with absoluteness and relativity in the divine. Plotinus system consists of the Onethe absolute God who is the supreme power of the systemthe intermediate Nous, and the World-Soul (with the world as its internal content). His World-Soul follows the Platonic model. The system really blends pantheism with classical theism, since the categories of absoluteness apply to the One, and the relativistic categories apply to the World-Soul. The doctrine of emanation, whereby the power of the One comes into the world, is a clear attempt to bridge the gap between absoluteness and relativity. For Plotinus, as for classical theism, there is immanent in each human being an image of the divine, which serves as well to relate humanity to God as does the divine spark in Stoic pantheism. Even classical theism may thus contain a touch of immanentistic pantheism. This view, or any similar combination of themes, is an instance of emanationistic or Neoplatonic pantheism.

Though Scholasticism, with its doctrine of a separate and absolute God, was the crowning achievement of medieval thought, the period was, nonetheless, not without its pantheistic witness. Largely through Jewish and Christian mysticism, an essentially Neoplatonic pantheism ran throughout the age.

The only important Latin philosopher for six centuries after St. Augustine was John Scotus Erigena. Inasmuch as, in his system, Christs redemptive sacrific helps to effect a Neoplatonic return of all beings to God, Erigena can be said to have turned Neoplatonism into a Christian drama of fall into sin and redemption from its power. When Erigena said that, even in the stage of separation from God, God in his superessentiality is identical with all things, he advanced beyond a strictly Neoplatonic pantheism to some stronger form of immanentistic or monistic pantheism.

In the two principal writings of the esoteric Jewish movement called the Kabbala, known for its theosophical interpretations of the Scriptures, a mystically oriented system of 10 emanations is presented. A Spaniard, Avicebrn, a Jewish poet and philosopher, similarly presented a Neoplatonic scheme of emanations. And in Spain, Averros, the most prominent Arabic philosopher of the period, represented an Aristotelian tradition that is heavily overladen with Neoplatonism. For Averros, the active intellect in a human being is really an impersonal divine reason, which alone lives on when that person dies.

The German Meister Eckhart, probably the most significant of philosophical mystics, developed a markedly original theology. From his Stoic pantheism there arose his most controversial thesisthat there resides in every person a divine, uncreated spark of the Godhead, making possible both a union with God and a genuine knowledge of his nature. But Eckhart also distinguished between the unmanifest and barren Godhead and the three Persons who constitute a manifest and personal God. Thus, the system has similarities to both Stoic and Neoplatonic pantheism.

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, whose broad scholarship and scientific approach anticipated the coming Renaissance, continued the tradition into the 15th century. The learned ignorance, in which an individual separates himself from every affirmation, can have positive results, in Nicholas view, because each human being is a microcosm within the macrocosm (or universe), and the God of the macrocosm is thus mirrored in all of his creatures. He also held that, in reference to God, contradictions are compatiblehis coincidence of opposites doctrine, in which God is at once all extremes. Clearly, Nicholas wished to ascribe to God both the categories of transcendence and those of immanence without distinction. But in fact he displayed some preference for the categories of the absolute, insisting, for example, that the creatures of the world can add nothing to God since they are merely his partial appearances. Despite this bias toward absolutism, and even to acosmism, Nicholas can be appropriately viewed as espousing an identity of opposites pantheism.

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Pantheism - Pantheism and panentheism in ancient and ...

Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an expression of Gods nature. It comes from pan meaning all, and theism, which means belief in God. So according to pantheism, God is everything and everything is God.

First, pantheism rejects the idea that God is transcendent. According to traditional Western conceptions of God, He is an entity that is above and beyond the universe. So, although God may be fully present in the universe, He is also outside of it. Simply put, He transcends the totality of objects in the world. When pantheists say that God is everything and everything is God, this is meant to capture that idea that God does not transcend the world.

A second important difference between pantheism and traditional theistic religions is that pantheists also reject the idea of Gods personhood. The pantheist God is not a personal God, the kind of entity that could have beliefs, desires, intentions, or agency. Unlike the traditional God of theism, the pantheistic God does not have a will and cannot act in or upon the universe. These are the kind of things that only a person, or a person-like entity, could do. For the pantheist, God is the non-personal divinity that pervades all existence. It is the divine Unity of the world.

While these two points may clarify how pantheism and traditional theism differ, they may make us wonder if theres much difference between pantheism and atheism. After all, pantheism denies the existence of a transcendent, personal God, which is the God of traditional theism. So, in that sense, pantheism seems to be a form of atheism. Its not clear what exactly pantheists are talking about when they talk of God. If pantheists just consider God to be the totality of all existence, then why talk of God at all? Moreover, if thats what God means to the pantheist, then the slogan God is everything and everything is God now seems circular and redundant. As Schopenhauer, a critic of pantheism, says, to call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word world.

But Schopenhauer seems to be operating with a very narrow definition of God here. Why suppose that God must be personal and transcendent in order to be God? This limits the concept of God in an ad hoc way that privileges the traditional theistic view of divinity. Looking at other non-theistic religious traditions, we find many conceptions of a divinity that pervades all existence, like Lao Tzus Tao, Sankaras Brahman, and arguably also Hegels Geist and Plotinuss One. To call all these views atheist simply because they reject the traditional theistic conception of a personal, transcendent God is to miss the point. Atheism, after all, is not a religion.

If we accept that pantheism differs from atheism, in that it does posit some kind of divinity in the world whereas atheism does not, its still a little difficult to see in what sense pantheism is a religion. There are no pantheist churches or services, for example, and its not even clear if there are any particular pantheist rituals or practices. Do practices like prayer or worship even make sense in the pantheist scheme of things?

Love of nature is often associated with pantheism, but that does not seem to be a central tenet of the religion. Self-professed pantheists like Wordsworth, Whitman, and other Romantic poets certainly had a deep love of nature, but that was not necessarily the case for pantheists like Spinoza and Lao Tzu. Nevertheless, for some pantheists the idea that nature is something that inspires awe, wonder, and reverence is important. This attitude toward nature is perhaps what motivates many contemporary pantheists to identify themselves as such. It is no coincidence that there are strong ties between pantheism and the ecology movement.

Given some of the issues raised here, I look forward to having a number of questions clarified during our upcoming show. One important question is: what exactly is the relationship between pantheism and atheism? Are they complementary or conflicting views of the world? Can we distinguish pantheism from traditional theism without the view simply collapsing into atheism? Is pantheism really a religion, or just a metaphysical view of the world? Does it have distinctive rituals or practices? What would motivate someone to identify as a pantheist? And how central is reverence for nature to pantheism?

Joining the conversation with John and Ken will be Philip Clayton, Dean of the Claremont School of Theology and Provost of Claremont Lincoln University. He is also the co-author of The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy and Faith.

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Pantheism | Philosophy Talk

Etymology: pan[Greek ] + theos[Greek] = ALL is GOD

Pantheism: Everything is Connected, Everything is Divine

Pantheism essentially involves two assertions: that everything that exists constitutes a unity and that this all-inclusive unity is divine. Alasdair MacIntyre, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Pantheism 1971

The belief in or perception of Divine Unity Michael Levine,Pantheism: A non-theistic concept of deity

Pantheism the belief in the divine unity of all things is consistent with some of the earliest recorded human thought. But modern day pantheism goes well beyond the wonder of our pre-historic ancestors. Today, it is much more a tangible resultant of the action and reaction between Science and Religion than the ghost of speculations past. Discover the history of Pantheism, from 3500 year old Vedic poetry to our current scientific quest for a Theory of Everything, here.

Pantheism.com is an educational site, providing information, news, groups, and connections. Celebrate your views, discuss the nature of Nature, learn about the history and flavors of Pantheism (there are many!), find or start a local event, and in general, hang out with fellow freethinkers and travelers. Click to learn more about the people who keep the lights on around here.

Organizations:

Universal Pantheist Society, est. 1975 by Harold Wood

World Pantheist Movement, est. 1998 by Paul Harrison

Ayahuasca Pantheist Society, est. 2003 byRegis A. Barbier

The Paradise Project, est. 2004 byPerry Rod

Spiritual Naturalist Society, est. 2012 by DT Strain

Biopantheism, by Poffo Ortiz

Panmeism, by Guyus Seralius

Not Two, by Waldo Noesta

Fays of Life, by Fay Campbell

Evolution of Consent, by William Schnack

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About | Pantheism.com

by Matt Slick

Pantheism is the position that God and nature are the same thing. Pantheism comes from two Greek words, pan meaning all and theos meaning 'god.' So, it would teach that all the stars, galaxies, planets, mountains, wind, and rain, are all one and the same... part of what God is. So, pantheists would say that all is God.

Biblical Christianity teaches that God is separate from his creation and he created it (Gen. 1:1-30), where pantheism says that Godand creation share the same nature and essence.

A huge problem with pantheism is that it cannot account for the existence of the universe. The universe is not infinitely old. It had a beginning. This would mean that God also had a beginning, buthow can something bring itself into existence? This is impossible, so this leaves us with the question of where God and the universe came from. Pantheism cannot answer this question, and it naturally leads to absurdities.

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What is pantheism? | CARM.org

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