It’s strange how an old discussion can be resumed after an 14 month hiatus. You have to love the internet.
I feel inclined to mention something here, after reading back over this thread. Firstly, I don’t see a reason why atheism and naturalistic pantheism cannot be compatible. Atheism is the belief that there are no supernatural deities controlling or creating this reality, and it sounds as though a naturalistic pantheist shares that view. While the NP might consider nature, or the force that bind this reality together a kind of “god”, it’s a loose definition that wouldn’t ruffle an atheist’s feathers. So long as you’re not talking about a conscious being who watches and responds to our actions on a personal level, then you aren’t talking about a deity.
However, I think there’s a little confusion here. See, people love to use the terms “natural” and “supernatural” as though any sign of the latter must be a whole different ballgame to our understanding of the former. But I just don’t see this distinction. If there is a universal force that controls physical reality and holds everything together according to a consistent set of laws, then wouldn’t that force be part of nature? Just because we can’t detect it with our human sensors, nor can we build a machine that can see it, doesn’t mean it exists in a separate realm, or implies some kind of supernatural activity. Anything and everything that exists, physical or spiritual, is all nature to me.
I actually quite like the NP attitude, even if I think it’s essentially no different from an atheistic point of view. There’s no reason why people can’t be spiritually fulfilled just because they don’t believe in a conscious deity. I love the universe, and the possibilities it presents to us. I don’t feel a need for a higher being to watch and judge me all the time. I deeply respect this physical realm, and I feel at peace when I consider my own existence as an emergent property of complex physical laws. There’s undoubtedly more to the universe than we can see, but whatever it is, it’s only helping to maintain this reality that we live in–not to hide an entirely different one from us until we die.
Lately I’ve also been thinking about the idea of a spiritual atheist. Like I said a few posts ago I think that if I were to call myself a pantheist, even if it is perfectly compatible or even indistinguishable with atheism, that would still tend to invite confusion (which I already get a lot of from my religious friends). But to call myself spiritual fits in with my beliefs (or un-beliefs) nicely. Even though words like ‘spiritual’ are tossed around a lot today, especially within New Age circles and things like that, I think it would be more accurate. After all the word spirit comes from the Latin word for breath, so I think the different connotations that the word ‘spiritual’ carries are more numerous and diverse than what you get with pantheism.
There are a few quotes from Carl Sagan that sum up how I feel since starting this thread:
“Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others — for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein — considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.”
But Sagan continued elsewhere, “But if by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
So, rather than call the universe God, I just call it The Universe (with a capital U).
Im with Atheist on the compatibility of the two, no dogma to deal with, no worship just a slightly different world view that is almost trivial. Also? is that Agent 47 as your avatar?
[mod]Yes, that’s 47 in my avatar. Glad to see a few people recognize him. [/mod]
Same, i for one reject any notion of there being some sort of higher purpose for human beings and believe that there is no “meaning of life” or anything like it, however in contrast to a great many others who hold this belief and then be depressed on it i find it to be a simple fact of life and get on with loving it.
For me any sort of “spiritual” (man that word has become loose in definition eh?) comes from Objectivism, Rands view of the heroic human producing and discovering has been an inspiration for me and will be all i need to philosiphically deal with spirituality (well maybe not all)
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