Panentheism

[seeds]

Belinda, is your own common sense so unreliable that you actually require some kind of formal “evidence” of the fact that rocks, or amoebas, or flies are lower in consciousness than humans?

When I am doing philosophy or science then yes, I do require evidence. My common sense is insufficient for philosophy and science.

I am as aware as you are that rocks and amoebas don't have central nervous systems. Without this evidence we can surmise that rocks and amoebas as not consciously aware...

Then congratulations, Belinda, you have just established the fact that your common sense is indeed sufficient enough to come to the conclusion that rocks and amoebas are “lower in awareness” than humans.

Now if you can just follow that line of reasoning to conclude that amoebas are ever-so-slightly more aware than rocks, and that flies are much more aware than amoebas, and that dogs are vastly more aware than flies, then you should be able to recognize the makings of an ascending ladder of consciousness.

I am speaking of a metaphorical ladder that denotes the existence of greater and greater levels of consciousness and awareness as it moves upward into higher levels of being.

My quarrel is with your metaphors which are loaded with the evaluation of your cosmology.

When it comes to my “cosmology,” I noticed that you made no effort to address my earlier question to you:

...just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think my ultimate cosmology entails?

In other words, based on what you have read of my ideas, please give me a brief synopsis of what you think I am proclaiming about the ultimate potential of the human mind following the death of the body.

If I thought that you truly understood my cosmology, then your quarrels with my metaphors would carry a lot more weight with me.

You must know I think, that "lower" is not only descriptive it's also an evaluation. Your drawings of ladders etc.also describe how you evaluate and fair enough if you admit that is what you are doing. I have no personal objection to preaching, even.

Preaching?

Is it because I insist on the inclusion of a higher level of consciousness and intelligence being involved in the creation of the universe that you feel compelled to call it “preaching”?

Come on now, Belinda, even Greta confessed to the belief in the “possibility” that sometime in the infinite past that consciousness could have reached an “Omega Point,” wherein it somehow gained greater control over the fabric of reality.

Shouldn’t you also be accusing her of “preaching”?

What I do object to is that you seem to confuse evaluation with objective explanation.

Do you mean the kind of “objective explanation” which proposes that the existence of the universe is the result of an alleged explosion of disparate quantum particles that somehow managed – by sheer chance – to magically blend together into a state of order that defies comprehension?

Now you can accuse me of preaching or of making unscientific evaluations, but as I have stated elsewhere...

The girdle of credulity is bursting at the seams trying to contain such a fat load of nonsense.

_______

[Belinda]

Seeds, you have a gift for persuasive language. Nevertheless I think there is no cause or reason for nature. Nature simply is. Just like those who believe in transcendent God say there is no cause of or reason for God; God simply is.

The fact that amoebas don't have nervous systems which are developed like mammalian nervous systems is no accident but is a result of organisms having struggled against hostile environments to live until they could reproduce. Amoebas fitted the environment well enough that they survived long enough to reproduce and adapt through random mutations, when their environments were such that the mutated individuals were better fitted to survive. This process of natural selection is within a backdrop of geological time. There is no need to posit a creator God with intentions to produce humans or any other beings.

We men do tend to value more those animals that we reckon are more like ourselves. Maybe if there really were a personal God he would not think that humans were better than amoebas.

I don't accuse anyone of preaching. I included that bit about preaching to show how broad minded I am.

[Harbal]

I am speaking of a metaphorical ladder that denotes the existence of greater and greater levels of consciousness and awareness as it moves upward into higher levels of being.

What's a "higher level of being" supposed to be? If a rock exists and a person exists they both have the same level of being, the fact that one is conscious and the other isn't has no relevance to their level of being. This is where you are going wrong, you are attaching undue significance to consciousness.

even Greta confessed to the belief in the “possibility” that sometime in the infinite past that consciousness could have reached an “Omega Point,” wherein it somehow gained greater control over the fabric of reality.

Shouldn’t you also be accusing her of “preaching”?

Acknowledging a possibility can be a million miles away from admitting a likelihood of something. I think it's fair to call the dogmatic assertion of what is merely the product of your imagination preaching.

Do you mean the kind of “objective explanation” which proposes that the existence of the universe is the result of an alleged explosion of disparate quantum particles that somehow managed – by sheer chance – to magically blend together into a state of order that defies comprehension?

If there was an "explosion of disparate particles" the situation would inevitably settle down into some kind of balance, and it would probably be beyond your comprehension. Besides, disparaging one theory doesn't give any more credibility to yours.

[Reflex]

Nick and Reflex seem to claim that an awful lot of human abilities including Nick's much vaunted esoteric ability are inherent and absolute not learned and relative.

Relative to what? Saying that something is 'relative' is meaningless unless it is relative to something else. "The car" and "It's relative" are not complete sentences.

[Reflex]

Nick and Reflex seem to claim that an awful lot of human abilities including Nick's much vaunted esoteric ability are inherent and absolute not learned and relative.

Relative to what? Saying that something is 'relative' is meaningless unless it is relative to something else. "The car" and "It's relative" are not complete sentences.

[fooloso4]

Nicky:

Given half a chance F4 will assert that Jesus was a secularist.

Nicky you’ve got it all mixed up. What I said a while back is that if Jesus said something you don’t agree you would accuse him of secular intolerance if you did not know the source.

He knows it to be true because he is the only one who knows how to read the Bible.

Nicky Nicky Nicky. You have told me several times that I do not know how to read the Bible because I do not accept your esoteric beliefs about how it should be read. Just a few posts ago you said:

Yet this is offensive to those like F4 who only recognize subjective reason inadequate for comprehending what the great minds of the past sought to understand.

What I said in response was:

One thing I have learned is that there is not a final definitive interpretation of complex texts.

And:

I allow the text to lead, not my own assumptions, and certainly not the assumption that understanding what is said requires a reliance on questionable distinction about objective and subjective reason.

We do not need to put on a funny hat and play at hermeticism to read Spinoza (we were talking about Spinoza. Remember?) or the Bible (which we were not talking about).

And speaking of Spinoza and your claim about subjective and objective reason I asked:

Does Spinoza say this? Where?

Of course you could not answer because he doesn’t. Nor does he even imply that there are two kinds of reason. And, you still have not provided any evidence at all that he was a panentheist. All that you have provided evidence for is your lack of understanding of Spinoza and what God, or Nature, Deus, sive Natura means.

[Belinda]

Reflex wrote:

Relative to what? Saying that something is 'relative' is meaningless unless it is relative to something else. "The car" and "It's relative" are not complete sentences.

Relative to other truths, other facts, other ideas. An absolute truth is not relative to any other truth, any other idea, any other fact.
E.g.
I might say that this heap of immobile rust and torn upholstery is a motor car. You might with common sense reply "That is relative to what you define as a motor car."

Relative knowledge is learned knowledge. If I said that the heap of rust and torn upholstery is a motor car I would have learned to have that opinion.

Relative opinions are learned opinions. My remark in the post to which you refer, Reflex, was about the learned nature of relative opinions and was not about any particular relative opinion.
Complete sentences are not obligatory. Are you really old and was it long ago that you went to school?

[Reflex]

With materialism dead, there's growing renewed interest is Panpsychism — the view that consciousness is a universal and primordial feature of all things. There is scarcely any difference between panpsychism, pantheism and animism, yet, to many, any of these is preferable to a Reality that at once transcends and upholds the material universe.

Pantheism— the belief that all reality is identical with divinity — embraces the niceties of religion while clinging to materialism and so ends up saying nothing at all that is different from secular relativism. Likewise, the pantheism and animism leave us clinging to our own opinions, values, and preferences for guidance. Often sexed-up with emotional idealism, the best any of them can offer is relativism (the philosophical doctrine that all criteria of judgment are relative to the individuals and situations involved), which lacks any direction apart from personal likes and dislikes. When asked what sin is, then-President-elect Barack Obama summed up moral relativism by saying, “Being out of alignment with my values.” Note that he did not say, “Knowingly doing something wrong,” because relativists don’t believe in universal moral laws but only legitimately varying “values.” Relativism removes the notion that we need to conform to a reality that is bigger than our own opinions, values, and preferences.

There seems to be a genuine fear of the possibility of the resurgence of God and religion no matter how reasonable it may be. The acronym “FOG,” for fear of God, seems most appropriate for the obvious reason that such persons are aimless, lost in a fog of relativism. They take refuge not in Buddhistic notion of not-knowing, but in skepticism's “I don't know,” as though lack of commitment to an ideal greater than themselves is a virtue. “I don't know, but not that” is their modus operandi.

Honest inquiry embraces ideas formulated from observations in process of association and recombination. It doesn't just sit there waiting for evidence and answers to come served on a silver platter. Now, I can provide a long list of phenomena such as non-locality that can be combined with personal experience in such a way that panentheism is certain.

I am proposing, not imposing, an alternative to relativism. But unless someone gives me a positive reason to reject my “absolutist” beliefs, a genuine alternative to those beliefs instead of just criticisms, I have no compelling reason to do so. Tom Morris, a former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and founder of the Morris Institute for Human Values, explains it this way in Philosophy for Dummies:

For any proposition, P: If

1. Taking a certain cognitive stance toward P (for example, believing it, rejecting it, or withholding judgement) would require rejecting or doubting a vast number of your current beliefs,

2. You have no independent positive reason to reject or doubt all those other beliefs, and

3. You have no compelling reason to take up that cognitive stance toward P.

Then it is more rational for you Not to take that cognitive stance toward P.

Morris goes on to say, “In other words, it is most rational, as we modify our beliefs through life and learning, to do the least damage possible to our previous beliefs as we accommodate new discoveries that we are making along the way.” Only rarely does a paradigm shift become necessary. Knowing this, I can forgive the obstinacy of my critics, critics who don't even attempt to proffer an "independent positive reason to reject or doubt all those other beliefs" or an alternative for consideration. They are mere gadflies.

[Reflex]

Relative to other truths, other facts, other ideas. An absolute truth is not relative to any other truth, any other idea, any other fact.

Exactly. The relativism to which you refer, "relative to other truths, other facts, other ideas," is arbitrary and gives you a compass that points to nowhere but yourself. That is why I have always said, and continue to say, that anything said about an absolute is only relatively true, that is, relative to the Actual. The idea is one thing; the ideal-reality it points to is quite another. The idea is indefinite, but the ideal it points to directionalizing and concrete.

Complete sentences are not obligatory.

They are if you want to make any sense and don't want to look like a dummy.

[Nick_A]

Relative to other truths, other facts, other ideas. An absolute truth is not relative to any other truth, any other idea, any other fact.

Exactly. That is why I have always said, and continue to say, that anything said about an absolute is only relatively true, that is, relative to the Actual. The idea is one thing; the ideal-reality it points to is quite another.

Complete sentences are not obligatory.

They are if you want to make any sense and don't want to look like a dummy.

Here is where we reach an impasse. You and I see the Absolute as Isness. The Absolute is immutable or unchanging. In contrast ever changing nature is a process taking place within the Absolute. God as nature is always changing for the pantheist which means God is a perpetual motion machine. How could this ever be acceptable to science which denies perpetual motion machines? For the Panentheist, nature is sustained by the Isness it is within.

[Harbal]

But unless someone gives me a positive reason to reject my “absolutist” beliefs, a genuine alternative to those beliefs instead of just criticisms, I have no compelling reason to do so.

I don't think anyone minds what your beliefs are, you are not being required to reject them just because the more sensible of us do.

[Harbal]

How could this ever be acceptable to science which denies perpetual motion machines?

To be fair, Nick, if science were to abandon the known laws of physics it wouldn't really be science any longer, would it?

[Reflex]

Here is where we reach an impasse. You and I see the Absolute as Isness. The Absolute is immutable or unchanging. In contrast ever changing nature is a process taking place within the Absolute. God as nature is always changing for the pantheist which means God is a perpetual motion machine. How could this ever be acceptable to science which denies perpetual motion machines? For the Panentheist, nature is sustained by the Isness it is within.

There's a saying made famous by President Harry Truman: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." If you can't stand dealing with meaningful ideas, get out of the business of philosophizing. Relativism removes the notion that we need to conform to a reality that is bigger than our own opinions, values, and preferences. It erodes the mortar that builds a society and undermines honest inquiry, leading to irrational and bigoted nonsense like: "It's as if they cannot appreciate the wonder of the universe here and now and so take flight to somewhere above and dig to find something hidden below."

[Reflex]

But unless someone gives me a positive reason to reject my “absolutist” beliefs, a genuine alternative to those beliefs instead of just criticisms, I have no compelling reason to do so.

I don't think anyone minds what your beliefs are, you are not being required to reject them just because the more sensible of us do.

Then give me a viable alternative instead of acting like a troupe of baboons gathered around a snake and screeching at it. "I don't know, but not that" is not a cogent philosophy or meaningful in any way.

[Harbal]

Relativism removes the notion that we need to conform to a reality that is bigger than our own opinions, values, and preferences.

Relativism doesn't necessarily say anything goes, does it? BTW: the fact that you acknowledge that we have our own opinions, values, and preferences exemplifies how impossible it is to avoid relativism, no matter how much you deny its necessity.