Reading the link, it seems pantheism might be more aptly called pan-deism.

But I guess that sounds too much like the worship of bamboo-eating godless killing machines. And that's probably just too big of a cognitive dissonance.

Well, actually, it looks like someone has already beat me to it by a century or so.

Nuts, forgot to put any personal info in the previous "pan-deism" comment.

To give this post some actual content, there doesn't appear to be any mention of "pandeism" (or "pan-deism" or "pan deism") anywhere in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Oh well, it's still something to read at work when I should be working.

It only looks unfair because of the way religiously inclined people have traditionally played the "disprove God" game. Religion relies and is allowed to rely on linguistic sleight-of-hand and inherently defective word usages. Dawkins may use theologically terms unconventionally, but my sense is that generally he's using them carefully and consistently. Think of this as a debate about "the supernatural." To Dawkins a ubiquity of non-intervening "God" or "divine stuff" implies there's nothing supernatural and so no God. You can call it "God" if you like--and Einstein did like to do so. But so what if you do?

Pantheism and atheism are PROFOUNDLY similar.
Both hold that the universe is all there is.

In pantheism, the universe and god are one.
In atheism, the universe is the only category.

Theism is PROFOUNDLY different.

theism holds that the universe is here for a personal purpose, because there is a personal agent responsible for it. This is something science is SILENT on.

Atheism/Pantheism is NOT some conclusion drawn from science - such a claim is as ill-founded as denying foundations under the room because we cant see them inside the room - it's simply out of the ontological scope of science. Despite all Dawkinsesque vehemency, atheism is a worldview we may or may not BRING TO our science.

Hawking: "it would be perfectly consistent with all we know to say that there was a being who was responsible for the laws of physics"

Stephen Jay Gould: "To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth million time: science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists"

Why should anybody care if there exists a "God" under the constraints that Gould and Hawking talk about. In effect what they assert says "religion loses." That's what makes it such beautiful diplomacy. Science is inherently atheist, because a scientist believes every phenomenon has a natural, and not a supernatural cause, and so natural causes are the only kind he or she ever hypothesizes or infers. "No God" is implicitly the first principle of scientific inquiry, and probably no principle in the history of civilization has anything like the quality and weight of evidence to support it--or has prevailed through so many challenges, or has been forced to respond to such hollow and frivolous suit.

This Pandeism is a challenging research topic to bite into.

Seems that all the citations to be found point to Pandeism having a weird sort of pedigree -- the word was used about 180 years ago to describe a cult, which had nothing to do with either Pantheism or Deism, and everything to do with a variety of historic figures lumped together by a sort of conspiracy-theory religionist because their names were things like Pandu, Pandavas, and Pandion (hence Pande-ism).

Pandeism as a reference to a variation of Pantheism or Deism was made (in a sort of speculative comment) by a pair of German philosophers in the 1850s, and by others here and there in the early 1900s, but it was never quite clear what mix of the concepts these users had in mind.

Charles Harteshorne, in the 1960s, was the first person to really define "Pandeism," essentially as Pantheism without the theos, i.e. without the idea of a God that was in some way active.

Use of the word, "Pandeism" to explicitly describe a god who fits both the old-fashioned Pantheistic "the Universe is God" model and the old fashioned Deistic "God created a clockwork Universe and then abandoned it" model seems to date from the early 1990s, although a smattering of the earlier uses (including Harteshorne's) are consistent with that definition, even if they're not embracing it and carrying off with it.

MT - please excuse the slight delay - I've not had the internet for a while. I'd be interested to see what you think. Basic response: this opens up cognitive space to consider claims we would never have considered otherwise(if you'd like to know which, say but it's beyond this post)

You, like Dawkins & so many others, fail to see the limits of science. Scientific explanation does not exhaust explanation. I am a scientist. I am not anti-science.

If like Dawkins (& like many american christians naively seem to) the only "God" you can conceive of is one who is part of the process, you are effectively treading on the toes of science, offering gods-in-the-gaps, which are basically just very bad scientific explanations. You do not accept that there can be any other role for God, and so you say "who cares if there is a god like Gould & Hawking speak of?" but this shows you have not considered what Gould & Hawking are saying - namely that there is someone not filling some unexplained gap in the process, but responsible for the whole process.

example:
explain why you are reading this.

here's a potted process: different pixel configurations on your screen are reflecting different wavelengths of light through the air and into your retina, synapses & impulses fire in your brain, and you see a configuration on the screen. You recognise the semantics in the configuration you see and thus you read it.

here's a responsibility explanation.
I want you to read this, and you want to read what I've said.

This lies behind the whole process.

As Professor Richard Swineburne explains, there are at least two kinds of causal explanation, personal agency & scientific process.

even if we had a complete understanding of the processes, that STILL wouldnt exclude the fact that a personal agency could be responsible.

You may hold to a materialist worldview, which commits you FROM THE START, a priori, to a purposeless existence. That's fine, as long as you recognise this is not a scientifically established position but a philosophical startpoint. There are questions that science cannot and does not speak about. Hence AJ Ayer's eventual retraction that his positivism was all wrong. Unless you see this, you will always find Jay Gould, Stephen conway Morris, Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne, Michael Ruse, Richard Swineburne, Stephen Hawking, Denis Alexander, Rodney Holder, Bob White, etc...an utter enigma.

Dawkins response is either to simply ignore them or to dismiss them as crazy, irresponsible scientists (read the book), comparable to Chamberlain's appeasement to the Nazis. This is an outrageous ad hominem fallacy, and clearly is given simply because he cannot conceive that his materialist paradigm might not be the only paradigm you can bring to science.

correction: Gould & others do not say "there IS someone..." I ought to have said "there MAY be someone" - in other words atheism is not warranted by science, but is one wordlview compatible with the scientific method. There are others, which have wider and greater explanatory power. The choice of worldview is not a scientific choice. That is Gould's point.

I skimmed. You can define God as able to have his cake and eat it too, but then you've defined something nonsensical, like a square circle. Real things exist in the universe and interact with it. For such a "God" I see no evidence. Meanwhile, nobody knows what "before" the universe even means. I concede there's plenty science hasn't discovered yet, but nothing discovered scientifically can be supernatural, and neither will it be accepted as disproving anything supernatural.

I don't think these things are mutually exclusive! There could be a 'God', i.e. an entity that is so powerful we would have not other word to reasonably capture a description of its power, that did design and create the universe, and yet is also compatible with a scientific explanation.

Consider the state of matter that existed in the moment before the Big Bang, when conventional theory holds that all the matter/energy of the Universe was compressed into a singularity. What if matter in that state was capable of thought, self direction even? What if that singularity was capable of designing the universe, and even of wanting to become the universe in accordance with a certain design? This seems to coincide to some degree with the above-linked description of "Pandeism".

What if those sentences make no sense? What evidence suggests they do?

Sir, you and I are capable of thought, and yet our brains are just lumps of matter conveying various electrical charges. The computer which allows you to read this response is also a lump of matter conveying a different set of electrical charges, but we have little doubt that eventually we'll be building computers that mimic thought. I merely propose to extend this to one more possible arrangement of matter and energy capable of thought. Not a metaphysical being occupying a spiritual plane, but a tangible, physical God in the form of matter possessed of thought and power to manipulate itself on a massive scale.

Propose away. Analogize away. Analogies aren't evidence, and what's there to explain with this proposal? That said, ever considered a career in science fiction?

MT: Thank you for your response. Again, apologies for delay - depending on internet cafe.

what does "before" the universe even mean?
I agree. This is a meaningless statement, if the universe is a bounded spacetime (suggested by current scientific theory). What is interesting is (as I & otherse have pointed out elsewhere) that spacetime meaningfully & claeraly has a beginnning. It is timelike bounded. It does not enjoy a necessary existence. It is not self-existent. But this is not our topic.

However, to compare possible existence of a real being who is not by nature necessarily accessible (not contingent on spacetime for his existence) with the logical nonsense of a square circle, shows a hidden premise fallacy. It is only comparable if you define REAL from the start as to exclude the possibility of God. I have not got a problem with your definition unless you claim it to be exhaustive.

"real things are things in the universe that you can interact with"

You state some positivism/empiricism - it may be both. You have decided from the start, a priori, to rule out the possibility of a God who is not in the universe but who might make himself known in it. (Ultimately my contention is that the person and work of Jesus in real history is inexplicable without this paradigm - otherwise I too would have remained a pragmatic agnostic...but we are a long way off that - we are debating whether there is logical space available to even consider that thought)

2 questions & 2 examples.
what about the rational intelligibility of the universe? Or the laws of logic? Do you see "evidence" for these? What kind of evidence? Can you argue someone into these?

It is often felt that in religion you have faith; in science you have fact, and that no faith is involved in science. That is patently false. All science depends and proceeds on the basis of believing that the universe is rationally intelligible, you wouldn't do science if you didn't believe that. But science itself cannot give it to you. As John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physicist of Cambridge put it, "Physics is powerless to establish the rational intelligibility of the universe".

Wigner saw this - and said that it's utterly mysterious! Here am I a pure mathematician, and I think up something in my head, and then I look at the universe, and I discover that it works like that! How can there be any connection between the processes going on in my brain producing this theory, and what happens out there? How are they connected? And for Wigner this is an absolute mystery, we'll see why in a moment, but it's enough to notice that it's an article of faith. Every scientist has a credo, and number one item in the credo is: "I BELIEVE THAT THE UNIVERSE IS RATIONALLY INTELLIGIBLE". But the question we can ask it, on what basis do you believe that?

Wigner, of course, coming from a materialistic point of view, has every reason to say that "it's a mysterious thing that the universe is rationally intelligible". Indeed JBS Haldane put it this way - "on the materialistic view, if my mental processes are determined solely by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. In particular I have no reason to believe that my brain is composed of atoms!" And CS Lewis described this as the intellectual activity of 'sawing off the branch on which you sit'. It's important to ask ourselves, on which hypothesis (the materialist or theistic) does the scientific activity itself make more sense? And I would submit to you that the intelligibility of the universe makes perfect sense if there is a creator, who was responsible for the universe, and for the human mind, that investigates the universe. As the historian of science Sir Alfred Whitehead, said "men became scientific - why? Because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver."

So with things like the laws of logic & intelligibility, I agree we interact with them, but in a very different way - they are things we have to assume and by that assumption we can make sense of a lot of other things. Along the old saying that "you cannot look at the sun but by it you see everything else". This is how the language of Paradigms comes in - Einsteinian is better than Newtonian because more is explained under the new paradigm than CAN be explained under the old. Eventually the bible writers contend that that the unreachable God has showed upo within our sphere & we can interact with him through the historical person of Jesus. I dont expect or wish to debate that here & now, but say so to show why it matters whether there is space to consider such a claim as reasonable & worthy of honest consideration.

This has been my longest post yet, so I'd love to hear your responses on why you believe in logic & intelligibility.

MT: Thank you for your response. Again, apologies for delay - depending on internet cafe.

what does "before" the universe even mean?
I agree. This is a meaningless statement, if the universe is a bounded spacetime (suggested by current scientific theory). What is interesting is (as I & otherse have pointed out elsewhere) that spacetime meaningfully & claeraly has a beginnning. It is timelike bounded. It does not enjoy a necessary existence. It is not self-existent. But this is not our topic.

However, to compare possible existence of a real being who is not by nature necessarily accessible (not contingent on spacetime for his existence) with the logical nonsense of a square circle, shows a hidden premise fallacy. It is only comparable if you define REAL from the start as to exclude the possibility of God. I have not got a problem with your definition unless you claim it to be exhaustive.

"real things are things in the universe that you can interact with"

You state some positivism/empiricism - it may be both. You have decided from the start, a priori, to rule out the possibility of a God who is not in the universe but who might make himself known in it. (Ultimately my contention is that the person and work of Jesus in real history is inexplicable without this paradigm - otherwise I too would have remained a pragmatic agnostic...but we are a long way off that - we are debating whether there is logical space available to even consider that thought)

2 questions & 2 examples.
outside the scope of your definition
what about the laws of logic, or the rational intelligibility of the universe? Do you see "evidence" for these? What kind of evidence? Can you argue someone into these?

within your definition
What about ascribing personal agency? Is this something you scientifically establish? That is, behind natural processes like you ascribe deliberate communication from a person?

With things like the laws of logic & intelligibility, I agree we interact with them, but in a very different way - they are things we have to assume and by that assumption we can make sense of a lot of other things. Along the old saying that "you cannot look at the sun but by it you see everything else". This is how the language of Paradigms comes in - Einsteinian is better than Newtonian because more is explained under the new paradigm than CAN be explained under the old. Eventually the bible writers contend that that the unreachable God has showed upo within our sphere & we can interact with him through the historical person of Jesus. I dont expect or wish to debate that here & now, but say so to show why it matters whether there is space to consider such a claim as reasonable & worthy of honest consideration.

You have decided from the start, a priori, to rule out the possibility of a God who is not in the universe but who might make himself known in it.

No: A posteriori I judge such an hypothesis to have no merit and make no sense. You seem to have decided that expressability implies plausibility (square circles) and that the mind entertains even what it does not define ("God").

what about the laws of logic, or the rational intelligibility of the universe?

You mean our math and our theories and what wonders we can accomplish with definitions and a little discipline? All that's very nice. Mostly very handy too, though clearly there's a bug or two to work out before declaring the whole universe or the whole of thought "intelligibile" (e.g. dark energy on the one hand, Goedel's theorem on the other). I don't see how to connect the challenge you've articulated to an actual problem. Do you mean why is the universe how it is? Well, why shouldn't it be like this? Any real thing real has to be some real thing.

If our thoughts endow God with limitless power there is no less logic in his being extra-universal but creating it, than being intra-universal and consisting of it. Sending Jesus to represent him is compatible with either view.
As to his existence, Casper Yost in the Quest of
God wrote "...there is unmistakable evidence of design in the symmetry and beauty and utility of the universe", just as we know upon visiting a magnificent cathedral that "...Thought created this building, that it is, in fact, the material production of an immaterial force." ie. it could not be "by accident". Since both the within and without the universe concepts are worthy of consideration one would better choose the "without", since the contemplation of God self amassing, and self assembling, then eventually blowing himself up by the power of thought to become the universal elements of manisfestation is almost too silly and undignified to entertain.

Harvey Warren

"[T]he contemplation of God self amassing, and self assembling, then eventually blowing himself up by the power of thought to become the universal elements of manisfestation is almost too silly and undignified to entertain"...

Well it is if you frame it as an argument that God blew himself up like a redneck in the woods with a few sticks of dynamite, obliterating and annihilating itself for all time.

But it is not silly at all if you frame it as all the energy in the universe initially being within something that could completely control that energy (God) choosing to spread out that energy across the expanse of what we know see as the universe, and using the force of a massive explosion to do it, in order to determine what would result from this. The latter view simply makes God the ultimate scientist, conducting the ultimate experiment, using the materials it has at hand to carry it out.

"[T]he contemplation of God self amassing, and self assembling, then eventually blowing himself up by the power of thought to become the universal elements of manisfestation is almost too silly and undignified to entertain"...

Well it is if you frame it as an argument that God blew himself up like a redneck in the woods with a few sticks of dynamite, obliterating and annihilating itself for all time.

But it is not silly at all if you frame it as all the energy in the universe initially being within something that could completely control that energy (God) choosing to spread out that energy across the expanse of what we know see as the universe, and using the force of a massive explosion to do it, in order to determine what would result from this. The latter view simply makes God the ultimate scientist, conducting the ultimate experiment, using the materials it has at hand to carry it out.

"too silly and undignified to entertain"...

Well it is if you frame it as an argument that God blew himself up like a redneck in the woods with a few sticks of dynamite, obliterating and annihilating itself for all time.

But it is not silly at all if you frame it as all the energy in the universe initially being within something that could completely control that energy (God) choosing to spread out that energy across the expanse of what we know see as the universe, and using the force of a massive explosion to do it, in order to determine what would result from this. The latter view simply makes God the ultimate scientist, conducting the ultimate experiment, using the materials it has at hand to carry it out.

If our thoughts endow God with limitless power there is no less logic in his being extra-universal but creating it....

Sure, if we define "God" as "limitless in power" and we allow "limitless in power" to include even the impossible, then indeed God may be an impossible extra-universal thing, but so is Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is better in that He is Intelligible. All the quoted sentence really does is define. It does not specify, and so does not refer to anything verifiably real. That's why "religion" is so sensibly synonymous with "faith." Square circles don't deserve hypothesizing let alone an expectation of real existence. That's obvious because the adjective "square" and noun "circle" have specific definitions. The same would be obvious about God-talk if its catch phrases were similarly defined, but because they aren't, religions literally get away with murder.

If our thoughts endow God with limitless power there is no less logic in his being extra-universal but creating it....

Sure, if we define "God" as "limitless in power" and we allow "limitless in power" to include even the impossible, then indeed God may be an impossible extra-universal thing, but so is Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is better in that He is Intelligible. All the quoted sentence really does is define. It does not specify, and so does not refer to anything verifiably real. That's why "religion" is so sensibly synonymous with "faith." Square circles don't deserve hypothesizing let alone an expectation of real existence. That's obvious because the adjective "square" and noun "circle" have specific definitions. The same would be obvious about God-talk if its catch phrases were similarly defined, but because they aren't, religions literally get away with murder.

If our thoughts endow God with limitless power there is no less logic in his being extra-universal but creating it....

Sure, if we define "God" as "limitless in power" and we allow "limitless in power" to include even the impossible, then indeed God may be an impossible extra-universal thing, but so is Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is better in that He is Intelligible. All the quoted sentence really does is define. It does not specify, and so does not refer to anything verifiably real. That's why "religion" is so sensibly synonymous with "faith." Square circles don't deserve hypothesizing let alone an expectation of real existence. That's obvious because the adjective "square" and noun "circle" have specific definitions. The same would be obvious about God-talk if its catch phrases were similarly defined, but because they aren't, religions literally get away with murder.

Arg! Sorry for the multipost! I keep getting error messages submitting through Firefox. This one is through Internet Explorer...

Same problem

Same problem here.

To conclude the above, it seems that Pandeism really only identifies God with the Universe (like the Pantheism that theists have derided as a weak atheism) while adding the element of intelligence behind the design of the Universe.

Yost's point (ref. post 12/5/06)was that the universe appears to be a product of thought which has power to materialize. Man is not capable of developing much more of that thesis without inserting himself into it. There is no way to know if God is the universe and perhaps merely an apprentice of gods without, or he is himself a god without who may have created multiple universes. Regardless, God's concern for mankind and morality seems highly unmanifest and unlikely. Biblical miracles and Jesus, himself, are more logically ascribable to alien space invaders than to a supreme spirit.