Panentheism

[Nick_A]

Nick, Seeds:

Interesting discussion (if you ignore Harbal and F4). May I suggest Return To The One: Plotinus's Guide To God-Realization by Brian Hines?

Thanks for the tip. If you want to enter the discussion by all means feel free to do so. We need all the help we can get to minimize the Harbal F4 influence. The connection between the ONE and Nous can be considered Panentheism with the emanation from the ONE not diminishing the ONE but also within NOUS.

Now I have to reply to Seeds but he deserves more than a superficial effort so my reply will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm bushed

[Nick_A]

Nick:

Why is the idea of the ONE as the God concept quoted earlier which can initiate deductive reason uniting the general with the specific so offensive to you?

I said nothing at all about Plotinus’ concept of the One. What I said is that you do not know what deductive reason means and have not presented a deductive argument. You have simple made claims that you mistakenly call deductive reasoning.

I posted a description of the distinction btween inductive and deductive reason. I suggested Plotinus' description of the ONE as a god concept from which logical deductions can be made. What else can one do?

[Reflex]

Deductive reasoning is top down and you can't get more "top" than the One. What follows is abductive, which starts with an observation (the One in the presence of many and vise versa) then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation.

Plotinus' One and divine simplicity suffer from the same difficulty: how to derive the many from the One while avoiding pantheism. The pleasure I get from contemplating the mystery is second only to the pleasure I get from contemplating and worshipping the One, but I have understanding concepts whose accuracy can never be more than relative to the actual.

I'll get to that in a later post.

[Greta]

No no no. This is how it goes. Do you think this is the first universe? No, it's the billionth, or more. The pnanentheistic deity did not exist in the early universe, which were slow developing, chaotic and largely only succeeded in creating dark matter black holes.

However, over time, matter became more sophisticated and after many billions of prior universes, one species from a life-bearing survived the end of its universe, solving one problem of decrepitude at a time until, by the end of that universe's Stelliferous Era they had achieved de Chardon's Omega Point. They were the first to survive The Great Filter - and all subsequent challenges - over many billions of years to eventually become immortal, immaterial and, while not omnipotent, capable of influencing the physical constants of the next big bang to speed up its progression and ensure fecundity.

So it has been ever since, with each new big bang spawning ever more new species capable of sustainable immateriality (actually material we haven't yet explored - the raw material of information, of form [yay Plato!]). Each evolved and emergent "Omega being" melds with the previous ones, creating the entity that is known as "God" by primitive peoples. The early Omega entities were not wise, temperate or moral. They achieved the Omega Point through simply being good at surviving. Morality developed over time.

The more advanced Omega "deity" today has near-omniscience but not omnipotence, the latter being a long way off - many big bangs away. The Omega being interpenetrates physical reality and, while mystics claim exclusive access, in truth we all access the Omega deity constantly - that's what being conscious is, the expression of the Omega trying to push through into physical reality, past all the "noise" and chaos.

If we are going to all just have a stab at what the nature of reality is, without worrying much about rigour, then we all might as well have a go. That's mine. I have about as much evidence for it as any other [whatever]-theist claim.

[Arising_uk]

This thread is Theology not Metaphysics and probably should be in the Phil of Religion section(although it's not really Phil of Religion either).

[Arising_uk]

...
Modern science and secular education is fixated on evolution for explaining existence. ...

No it's not, the Theory of Evolution is to explain the existence of species not existence.

[Arising_uk]

...
Imagine a large water saturated log floating in a pond. The water is both outside of the log and inside of it. ...

Where'd the log come from?

[Belinda]

Nick wrote:

Panentheism is a God concept which serves as a plausible premise for the relationship of God to the universe. The universe is the body of God for panentheism. God is both outside not limited by time and space and inside of its body.

Imagine a large water saturated log floating in a pond. The water is both outside of the log and inside of it. The same idea is in Christianity:

Do you mean that panentheism is the belief that despite God's being thoroughly mixed up with and necessary for the creation and maintenance of this world of time and transience, God is also outside of (beyond, beneath, above etc.)time and transience?

The problem with you 'panentheism' is as follows: your 'panentheism ' says that God is necessary for this world's creation and maintenance, but you neglect that this world is necessary for God's creation and maintenance.

Nick, your 'panentheism' is a creation of your animosity towards the physical universe and in particular the human body. You are not alone, Nick, as there are many Christians and Muslims who distrust their bodies and look to life of their immortal spirits after death of their vile bodies.

[fooloso4]

Nick:

I posted a description of the distinction btween inductive and deductive reason.

The problem is that you take the wiki description and proceed to make false and misleading claims. You say about inductive arguments:

The idea is that if you put enough details together it will be obvious there is no God. The whole is not more than the sum of its parts since there is no whole.

An inductive argument is not a collection of details. Since inductive arguments move from the particular to the general there is nothing inherent in inductive arguments that preclude the whole of which the particulars are a part. In fact, there are inductive arguments for the existence of God, the most well known being the argument from design.

The implication is that inductive reason is incapable of handling the question of the existence of God and so if we want to talk about God we must use deductive reason. But your argument simply takes not only God as a given but a particular concept of God as a given. So, at best you can present a valid argument (which you have not), but a valid argument is not necessarily true. The question of whether your argument says anything true cannot be answered affirmatively unless you can demonstrate that the premise is true, and you cannot do that by reasoning about what follows from the premise.

With regard to Plotinus it should first be pointed out that his arguments are the reduction of the complex to the simple. In other words, he does not follow the model of top-down of deductive reason. It is, as Reflex said, abductive reasoning, but it does not start at the top with the One, it argues back or down to it.

Let’s take a look at one of Plotinus’ premises: the distinction between matter and form:

… for necessarily this All is made up of contraries: it could not exist if Matter did not. The Nature of this Kosmos is, therefore, a blend; it is blended from the Intellectual-Principle and Necessity: what comes into it from God is good; evil is from the Ancient Kind which, we read, is the underlying Matter not yet brought to order by the Ideal-Form. (Plotinus, Ennead VIII 7)

Matter, according to Plotinus, is eternal. It is the passive substratum or ground of existence that is receptive of form. And so, the claim that:

For Panentheism the process of existence begins with NOUS described in the article and NOUS is the beginning of the universe or the body of God.

Is simply not true of Plotinus. Matter is not the body of God. There is no process of existence that begins in a temporal sense.

Plotinus’ notion that matter is passivity brought to order by Forms is scientifically untenable. Although we have retained the term ‘matter’ from the Latin ‘mater’ or mother, it no longer means something that is purely passive and receptive to Form.

I believe in the future it will provide a quality of reason that will unite science and the essence of religion. This is just a beginning.

This is just a pipe dream that cannot succeed if you begin with an untenable notion of form and matter.

[Nick_A]

Deductive reasoning is top down and you can't get more "top" than the One. What follows is abductive, which starts with an observation (the One in the presence of many and vise versa) then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation.

Plotinus' One and divine simplicity suffer from the same difficulty: how to derive the many from the One while avoiding pantheism. The pleasure I get from contemplating the mystery is second only to the pleasure I get from contemplating and worshipping the One, but I have understanding concepts whose accuracy can never be more than relative to the actual.

I'll get to that in a later post.

For me, the distinction between Pantheism and Panentheism becomes realistic throgh levels of reality or planes of existence. Today is a busy day so I cannot get into this until tonight. However, this site is quite good for explaining Plotinus.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/plotinus/#SH2b

Beginning with "Emanations and "Intelligence it is thought provoking. It is misleading to contemplate this idea of the ONE overflowing since we consider it in three dimensions. However, it is the same as the Eastern idea of the universe continually becoming. How this happens requires for me at least, the recognition of levels of reality or planes of existence and the presence of demiurge within the process.

[Nick_A]

Nick wrote:

Panentheism is a God concept which serves as a plausible premise for the relationship of God to the universe. The universe is the body of God for panentheism. God is both outside not limited by time and space and inside of its body.

Imagine a large water saturated log floating in a pond. The water is both outside of the log and inside of it. The same idea is in Christianity:

Do you mean that panentheism is the belief that despite God's being thoroughly mixed up with and necessary for the creation and maintenance of this world of time and transience, God is also outside of (beyond, beneath, above etc.)time and transience?

The problem with you 'panentheism' is as follows: your 'panentheism ' says that God is necessary for this world's creation and maintenance, but you neglect that this world is necessary for God's creation and maintenance.

Nick, your 'panentheism' is a creation of your animosity towards the physical universe and in particular the human body. You are not alone, Nick, as there are many Christians and Muslims who distrust their bodies and look to life of their immortal spirits after death of their vile bodies.

You're hanging around Greta too much. The universe is a necessity. I AM describes the relationship where AM is the universe or multiverses. Only New Age philosophies consider the universe as imaginary. Also the body is considered the temple of the Holy Spirit. Why would I want to question its value? This is just silly.

[Belinda]

But Nick, God is both the water and the log. And everything else including all your ideas, all my ideas, and all Greta's ideas. The Cave, and the Sun. All the universes and the idea of all the universes.

[Reflex]

The skeptics' reaction to the idea of panentheism is intriguing. First, there are different versions of panentheism (literally "nature in God"). Greta's post following my last post describes a kind of pantheism, not panentheism. Second, to the claim that this thread belongs in the theology and not metaphysics: metaphysics is a branch of philosophy exploring the fundamental nature of reality. According to Wikipedia and many other sources, it seeks to answer two basic questions: Ultimately, what is there? and What is it like? Naturally, there is going to be some overlapping with theology, but this thread is properly placed. And, third, if you listen to F4, you're not allowed to think independently of whatever source you might cite.

It is very difficult to describe atemporal relationships to temporal creatures whether we begin with the One, Divine Simplicity, Tao or Brahman. Temporal creatures such as ourselves are conditioned to think in terms of multiple and sequential, or cause and effect, events. Ultimate Reality, however, just IS. Mind can never hope to grasp the concept of such an Absolute without attempting first to break the unity of such a reality. For in the absence of divergencies, mind finds no basis upon which to attempt to formulate understanding concepts. We are forced to employ the technique of time-space reasoning in order to reach some semblance of understanding. Therefore, the simultaneous events of eternity must be theorized as sequential and multifarious transactions in order to present a picture of what must be in order for what is to be as it is.

[Belinda]

Reflex wrote:

Greta's post following my last post describes a kind of pantheism, not panentheism.

Nick tries to sneak his brand of theism in under the rubric of panentheism. But Nick cannot have it both ways: 1. God is all there is 2. God is more than all there is.

[Reflex]

Reflex wrote:

Greta's post following my last post describes a kind of pantheism, not panentheism.

Nick tries to sneak his brand of theism in under the rubric of panentheism. But Nick cannot have it both ways: 1. God is all there is 2. God is more than all there is.

But Belinda, that is panentheism.

Like I said, the problem is how to derive the many from the One while avoiding pantheism. The One is infinite and eternal, but to deny the possibility of its volitional self-limitation or self-differentiation amounts to a denial of the very concept of its volitional absoluteness. The many that follow in the wake of self-limitation does not subtract from the one's absoluteness.