Panentheism

[davidm]

F4 wrote

The same could be said about panentheism. You may think Plotinus is a good place to start if science and religion are to be united but there is no reason why science should attempt such a unification from this starting point. Science has no interest in verifying speculative claims about a transcendent God. Science is not going to accept the notion of a Source without irrefutable evidence or even pursue the possibility without compelling evidence that it should. To say that one day it will means nothing other than you and Weil or whoever hopes it will………………….

It is really premature to put out the welcome mat. You believe in Plotinus’ One or panentheism (not everyone agrees that Plotinus is a panentheist, consider the problem of the eternal existence of matter); that there is an objective meaning and purpose, and so, since this is the truth, if science deals with truth it will eventually confirm this. The only problem is that no matter how strongly you believe something, no matter how confident you are in your belief, you could be wrong. So far, you have given us nothing to suggest that science will confirm your beliefs, only that it has not, which you take to be a weakness of science rather than a weakness of your claim.

Again, you don’t get the big picture and I don’t know how to better explain it so I’ll let Einstein try. He doesn't deny the big picture but knows that science will eventually reveal the need for a source the depth of human being is called to.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

……………………………..The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.
It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.

It's hard to understand why you think anything that Einstein wrote here bears the faintest resemblance to what you have been saying in this thread.

[fooloso4]

Belinda:

That is why I did not write that Spinoza reconciles religion and science, but instead I wrote 'spirituality' and science.

Rovelli is in agreement with you. He has this to say about Spinoza:

I have read this [Ethics] late in life (it is not an easy book) and it has been a revelation. The deepness of Spinoza intelligence is astonishing. His clarity about Nature, about human emotions, about life, is like a wise guide. My present atheism is serene and is grounded on this book. (http://thebooksproject.co/carlo-rovelli/)

Nick:

I’ll let Einstein try.

I was wondering how long it would take you to implicate Einstein. I see no endorsement of panentheism in the quote from Einstein. He rejects the notion of a transcendent being. What he calls the “beginnings of cosmic religious feeling” is not the same as the place you think is a good place to start. He starts with us and our emotional and intellectual response to the world, not with a questionable premise and what can be deduced from it.

He doesn't deny the big picture but knows that science will eventually reveal the need for a source the depth of human being is called to.

There is no hidden source to be revealed. Einstein, like Spinoza, sees the natural order, the universe itself as the source of itself, and not some being hiding outside of it that has to be revealed.

He says:

We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one.

Your conception is not very different from the usual one. Yours is that science will eventually come around to realize the need for a transcendent God, that science will come to recognize the truth already known to religion.

[davidm]

Einstein did not believe in a personal god or any god, did not believe in a great chain of being, and would not subscribe to anything Nick has written. Indeed, the bit Nick quoted is directly opposed to what Nick has been writing. I am honestly perplexed as to how Nick thinks this Einstein quote supports to case, when in fact it directly contravenes it.

[Belinda]

I wrote:

Spinoza, without pure deductive reason as his guiding star would not have a thesis.

Fooloso4, is that correct? You write in reply to Nick that Spinoza begins from evidence,(although I cannot quote you so i may be mistaken) in which case Spinoza's thesis is not deductive but inductive. I am confused about this and would appreciate your comment.
I do recognise that Spinoza's account of human 'psychology' , in Ethics,is empirical and a worthy forerunner of psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

[Arising_uk]

The irony of what the sage taught me, is that we do descend as children to again live within this planet - that we are all too complacent about it all - since most are atheist and too short sighted to see that our inheritance is what we get..in our future existence.

Except that most are not atheists are they.

How many times do we descend?

[fooloso4]

Belinda:

Spinoza, without pure deductive reason as his guiding star would not have a thesis.
Fooloso4, is that correct? You write in reply to Nick that Spinoza begins from evidence,(although I cannot quote you so i may be mistaken) in which case Spinoza's thesis is not deductive but inductive. I am confused about this and would appreciate your comment.

The Ethics, as the full title indicates, is a geometrical demonstration. It is a deductive argument.

I do not recall saying that to Nick (although Reflex suspects I am suffering from mental illness, so who knows?)

[Arising_uk]

...
Not caring too much about organized religion has nothing whatsoever to do with possessing a “hope” that life does not end for us when our bodies expire. ...

Except that it is a faith for many not a hope.

Nor would a healthier and happier life here on earth erase the questions upon which religions are founded to answer, which is what you seemed to imply. ...

I think we'd be a lot more sanguine about it.

I don’t understand your question. ...

Because you don't live a life of miserable poverty and in an ostensibly liberal democratic society you have had the opportunity to turn faith to a 'hope' and can also not follow what your religious leaders say.

However, if you are under the impression that I am following anything a priest says, then you clearly haven’t the remotest clue of what I am suggesting when I insist that it is time to replace the “old spiritual paradigm” with a new one. ...

See above.

Old paradigm priests (be they Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Buddhist, Hindu, etc., etc.) would be appalled at what I am attempting to accomplish, which is basically my own little feeble effort to put them out of business. ...

Personally I think they wouldn't give a toss as you aren't their audience.

Clearly, you atheists are far too ham-handed and tactless about it, what with your ultimate selling point being eternal darkness and oblivion – something of which you haven’t the slightest knowledge of whether it is true or not.

Clearly you don't understand atheists as unlike you we aren't selling anything.

[Nick_A]

Thanks again Nick for a worthy quotation.

Apart from a quibble about what to call the inspiration of great thinkers--- religion or spirituality--- -- we need to recognise that scientists as scientists doing their work as scientists and not as philosophers, presume that truth corresponds to reality.

Spinoza, without pure deductive reason as his guiding star would not have a thesis. Therefore I suppose one can claim that religion/spirituality in the guise of truth guided Spinoza and , by the same token, other great thinkers including scientists. However the problem remains about truth, does our truth correspond to reality , or alternatively does all that we take to be truth cohere in some grand narrative?

There is no way science can logically accept pantheism since if
God is nature then God is a thing, a creature. So what created the creature? Panentheism assumes an ineffable source without the limitations of time and space but also within creation. As such God IS. Beyond the limitations of time and space means no beginning and no end. The Source provides the means for creation within time and space - within Isness. It provides a reasonable hypothesis for the process of involution beginning with ONE involuting into NOUS. Will science eventually verify it? I believe it will enough to make the usual blind secular ridicule seem ridiculous.

[Nick_A]

From the link on the ONE

.................the One cannot be known through the process of discursive reasoning (Ennead VI.9.4). Knowledge of the One is achieved through the experience of its 'power' (dunamis) and its nature, which is to provide a 'foundation' (arkhe) and location (topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). The 'power' of the One is not a power in the sense of physical or even mental action; the power of the One, as Plotinus speaks of it, is to be understood as the only adequate description of the 'manifestation' of a supreme principle that, by its very nature, transcends all predication and discursive understanding. This 'power,' then, is capable of being experienced, or known, only through contemplation (theoria), or the purely intellectual 'vision' of the source of all things.

Einstein wrote

1. Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
2. The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
3. There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

It seems to me that only some have the humility to allow themselves to be open to what the greats have contemplated which is the reality of and our relationship to an ineffable source that indicates Panentheim. The majority prefer to argue about abortion rights. It's just the way it is.

[davidm]

Albert Einstein: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes its creatures, or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death."

[fooloso4]

Nick:

There is no way science can logically accept pantheism since if God is nature then God is a thing, a creature. So what created the creature?

I will wait for Belinda to respond and say only that you do not understand Spinoza.

It seems to me that only some have the humility to allow themselves to be open to what the greats have contemplated which is the reality of and our relationship to an ineffable source that indicates Panentheim.

What you ignore is that Einstein rejected panentheism, he rejects the claim of a transcendent God. Without the element of transcendence you are left with pantheism. And Einstein was hesitant to affirm pantheism, but not because it God is for pantheism a thing or creature.

[Nick_A]

Albert Einstein: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes its creatures, or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death."

Simone Weil wrote:

"There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties."

So There has always been this minority like Einstein and Simone who recognize the ineffable source but do not believe in a personal god. The trouble is that those like you are incapable of distinguishing the difference so just exhibit blind denial as an expression of habit.

[davidm]

Albert Einstein: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes its creatures, or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death."

Simone Weil wrote:

"There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties."

So There has always been this minority like Einstein and Simone who recognize the ineffable source but do not believe in a personal god. The trouble is that those like you are incapable of distinguishing the difference so just exhibit blind denial as an expression of habit.

The trouble with you is that you have no clue what Einstein was talking about. As it happens, I completely agree with Einstein. You don't, but just think you do.

[seeds]

Not caring too much about organized religion has nothing whatsoever to do with possessing a “hope” that life does not end for us when our bodies expire. ...

Except that it is a faith for many not a hope.

I think that faith and hope are somewhat synonymous.

However, so what?

Nor would a healthier and happier life here on earth erase the questions upon which religions are founded to answer, which is what you seemed to imply. ...

I think we'd be a lot more sanguine about it.

Sanguine about what?

I’m not sure you understand the irony of your argument, for it seems that the more poverty and misery there is within the human condition, the more it convinces some humans that God does not exist, because he’s not doing anything about it.

Whereas if we were experiencing some kind of utopian paradise here on earth, it may have the opposite affect on us.

I don’t understand your question. ...

Because you don't live a life of miserable poverty and in an ostensibly liberal democratic society you have had the opportunity to turn faith to a 'hope' and can also not follow what your religious leaders say.

I don’t have any religious “leaders.”

Please stop painting all metaphysical thinkers with your wide brush.

Old paradigm priests (be they Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Buddhist, Hindu, etc., etc.) would be appalled at what I am attempting to accomplish, which is basically my own little feeble effort to put them out of business. ...

Personally I think they wouldn't give a toss as you aren't their audience.

Then I guess it’s their “audience” that I’m after.

Clearly, you atheists are far too ham-handed and tactless about it, what with your ultimate selling point being eternal darkness and oblivion – something of which you haven’t the slightest knowledge of whether it is true or not.

Clearly you don't understand atheists as unlike you we aren't selling anything.

Sure you are.

Indeed, if you are a hardcore materialist/atheist who absolutely denies the possibility of the existence of a higher intelligence being responsible for the creation of the universe, then you are selling an “unspoken” nihilistic ideology that implies that not only is the universe the result of serendipitous processes, but that life is a “fluke” and has no ultimate long term purpose for us as individuals.

What I can't figure out is why in the world are you so dead-set against me trying to “sell” the idea that every human who has ever awakened into life since the beginning of humanity itself (which includes you), has been given a (“no strings attached”) gift that is so amazing that in must be kept hidden from us until death?...

...(again, “new” paradigm here).

If I am right and the atheists are wrong, then the truth will be “born out” in time (pun intended) and we’ll all have a good laugh about it, because we’ll all still be alive and capable of laughter.

On the other hand, if the atheists are right and I am wrong, then we’ll all just drift off into eternal oblivion and none of this will have mattered.

Come on now Auk, it should be obvious that I am not trying to “sell” the same old nonsense that has already been rejected by atheists...

...(at the very least, it’s some new nonsense).
_______

[seeds]

Albert Einstein: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes its creatures, or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death."

Albert Einstein: “The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who–in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’– cannot hear the music of the spheres.”
_______