Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God. Pantheists do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god.
The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compels this belief...So one understands that an antithesis to pantheism is attempted here: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal" also compels a faith in the "eternal recurrence." Question: does morality make impossible this pantheistic affirmation of all things, too? At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to conceive a god "beyond good and evil"? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible?" [31]
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Baruch (de) Spinoza, also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin. A forerunner of the Age of Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Ibn Tufayl, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.
Monism attributes oneness or singleness to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
Pantheism is the philosophical and religious belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to divinity or a supreme entity. The physical universe is thus understood as an immanent deity, still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time. The term pantheist designates one who holds both that everything constitutes a unity and that this unity is divine, consisting of an all-encompassing, manifested god or goddess. All astronomical objects are thence viewed as parts of a sole deity.
Panentheism is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. In common parlance, or when contrasted with deism, the term often describes the philosophical conception of God that is found in classical theism—or the conception found in monotheism—or gods found in polytheistic religions—or a belief in God or gods without the rejection of revelation, as is characteristic of deism.
Classical Pantheism, as defined by Charles Hartshorne in 1953, is the theological deterministic philosophies of pantheists such as Baruch Spinoza and the Stoics. Hartshorne sought to distinguish panentheism, which rejects determinism, from deterministic pantheism.
Naturalistic pantheism, also known as scientific pantheism, is a form of pantheism. It has been used in various ways such as to relate God or divinity with concrete things, determinism, or the substance of the universe. From these perspectives, God is seen as the aggregate of all unified natural phenomena. The phrase has often been associated with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, although academics differ on how it is used. Natural pantheists believe that God is the entirety of the universe and that God speaks through the scientific process.
Jakob Böhme was a German philosopher, Christian mystic, and Lutheran Protestant theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme ; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.
"God is dead" is a statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first instance of this statement in Nietzsche's writings is in his 1882 The Gay Science, where it appears three times. The phrase also appears at the beginning of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Atheism is the rejection of an assertion that a deity exists. In a narrower sense, hard atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities, effectively taking the stance of a positive claim in regards to the existence of any goddess or god. The English term 'atheist' was used at least as early as the sixteenth century and atheistic ideas and their influence have a longer history.
In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". Belief in the existence of at least one god is called theism.
John Andrew Leslie is a Canadian philosopher and writer.
The pantheism controversy, also known as Spinozismusstreit or Spinozastreit, refers to the 1780s debates in German intellectual life that discussed the merits of Spinoza's "pantheistic" conception of God. What became a wider cultural debate in German society started as a personal disagreement between Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn over their understanding of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Spinozist beliefs. The difference of opinion became a wider public controversy when, in 1785, Jacobi published his correspondence with Mendelssohn. This started a series of public discussions on the matter.
In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Traditionally, Judaism holds that Yahweh—that is, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites—delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah. Jews traditionally believe in a monotheistic conception of God, characterized by both transcendence and immanence.
Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood. Albert Einstein stated "I believe in Spinoza's God". He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified, however, that, "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a "religious nonbeliever." In other interviews, he stated that he thought that there is a "lawgiver" who sets the laws of the universe. Einstein also stated he did not believe in life after death, adding "one life is enough for me." He was closely involved in his lifetime with several humanist groups. Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.
Pandeism, or pan-deism, is a theological doctrine that combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism. Unlike classical deism, which holds that the creator deity does not interfere with the universe after its creation, pandeism holds that such an entity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate entity. Pandeism purports to explain why God would create a universe and then appear to abandon it, and pandeism seeks to explain the origin and purpose of the universe.
The belief that God became the Universe is a theological doctrine that has been developed several times historically, and holds that the creator of the universe actually became the universe. Historically, for versions of this theory where God has ceased to exist or to act as a separate and conscious entity, some have used the term pandeism, which combines aspects of pantheism and deism, to refer to such a theology. A similar concept is panentheism, which has the creator become the universe only in part, but remain in some other part transcendent to it, as well. Hindu texts like the Mandukya Upanishad speak of the undivided one which became the universe.
Syntheism is a new religious movement that is focused on how atheists and pantheists can achieve the same feelings of community and awe experienced in traditional theistic religions. The Syntheist Movement sees itself as the practical realisation of a philosophical ambition for a new religion dating back as far as Baruch Spinoza's pantheism in the 17th century and, most directly, British-American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's pioneering work towards a process theology in his books Religion in the Making in 1926 and Process and Reality in 1929.
A number of Christian writers have examined the concept of pandeism, and these have generally found it to be inconsistent with core principles of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, condemned the Periphyseon of John Scotus Eriugena, later identified by physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein as presenting a pandeistic theology, as appearing to obscure the separation of God and creation. The Church similarly condemned elements of the thought of Giordano Bruno which Weinstein and others determined to be pandeistic.
By equating god with nature, Heraclitus could be regarded as a pantheist — everything is god.
The idealistic element in Böhme lies in a particular understanding of the relationship between the infinite and the finite, the divinity and the world, that is the very opposite of what Schlegel proposed in the Jena period. Paradoxically, this relationship is also the point at which Böhme tends towards pantheism. […] It seems reasonable to assume that Schlegel recognized a similarity between the model that explains the world as emanation from the divine perfection and Böhme's account of a creation driven by desire for self-manifestation and made out of God's very substance.
Goethe was as little a deist as Fichte; for he was a pantheist.
Beethoven loved the natural world, but as a pantheist who worships nature rather than the Creator. "Beethoven was not the man to bow to anyone — even God!" said David Ewen.
To begin with, Beethoven was strongly individualistic and, in a sense, harshly antisocial. He realized the stature of his own genius. In Nature only did he recognize his equal and for that reason he was a pantheist of the most ardent order.
He believed his talent came from nature—God's nature, to be sure.
His name is still a classic in the literature of his science and he was in his time a man of high international repute. In regard to religion he was, like Goeth, a pantheist, as he shows particularly in his Aanden i Naturen (2 vols. 1849).
But pantheism and repudiation of dogma had two adverse effects: it made some of her writing diffuse to the point of unintelligibility and some spiritually unacceptable to her editors.
I left school at Easter, 1832, a normal product of our state system of education; a Pantheist, and if not a Republican, at least with the persuasion that the Republic was the most rational form of government….
Haeckel's revival of Pantheism is a neat and attractive trick which portrays man as ascending from the swamp, rather than descending from the heavens. But God was already in the swamp, as he is in us.
There is another thread that tied Felix Klein to Wilhelm von Humboldt: his belief in a preestablished harmony. With Klein and his fellow mathematicians, the Leibnizian preestablished harmony became more specific. It became a preestablished harmony between physics and mathematics and the foundation of their pantheistic faith.
His pantheistic beliefs made him see the manifestations of God's will everywhere, and sensed its 'miracles and secrets ... and contemplated them with the deep respect and touching astonishment of a child'.
He made a pantheistic profession of faith: I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, ... and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. ... To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! ... that is what I call prayer.
Korczak's God is a pantheistic one, embracing the entire world.
Rabi is deeply religious. Eschewing religious practices, and an anthropomorphic concept of God, Rabi has what Einstein referred to as a "cosmic religious feeling" — a religious sense that transcends dogma and institutions.
'My father was a pantheist, if anything,' his daughter Paula said.
I feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God.
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.
My father believed in the God of Spinoza and Einstein, God not behind nature but as nature, equivalent to it.
Commandant Facundo tells about the life of Jose 'Pepe' Mujica and his exceptional path: from playful and working child, to revolted and in love young, from fighter and political militant to pantheist, earth-lover farmer." (Original Spanish: "Comandante Facundo narra la vida de José Pepe Mujica y su trayectoria excepcional: de niño travieso y trabajador, a joven rebelde y enamorado; de combatiente y militante político, a panteísta cultivador amante de la tierra.)
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value (help)Vega is similarly ambivalent. He alludes to the "miraculous" nature of his career with Suicide and fateful meeting with Rev, begging the question – does he believe in a higher power? "I distrust the name 'God' but, yes, I do believe in a higher power," he says. He adds that he shares the rationalist stance of Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher and "pantheist theologian". "God is in all of us," he says, before deciding: "There is an immense power. There has to be."
I didn't become a Tibetan Buddhist; I remained a pantheist.
One god is a personal god, the god that you pray to, the god that smites the Philistines, the god that walks on water. That's the first god. But there's another god, and that's the god of Spinoza. That's the god of beauty, harmony, simplicity.
I don't pray in the conventional sense any more, but try to replace my lack of prayer with a sense of awe in God and that Spirit all around us, trying to be receptive to God in everything.
I see God in nature. Nature is God. It gives me inspiration. It gives me power … As long as it survives, I survive.
I believe in a higher power, yes. I don′t know … he, she, it … whatever … I see it everywhere. It is everything to me.
'As Einstein would say, "I believe in the God of Spinoza,"' he said, referencing Einstein's belief 'in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings'.
They drink wine, and Gaahl talks about pantheistic stuff like the God in nature and the God within.
Gaahl extrapolated on the importance of pantheism, and how one's love of nature is an important—and mostly overlooked—facet of the ideology that informs and empowers Black Metal.