Any Advantage to Being a Deist or Pandeist?

Schizophretard wrote:

Paineful,

I agree that Atheism offers the same benefits as Deism but that is only because they are practicing Deism. What I mean is they live like their lives have purpose even though they believe they are an accident. They study science because they want to think god's thoughts after him even though they don't believe he exists. They use their reason to figure out right from wrong even though they don't believe in good and evil. They hold people responsible for their actions even though they believe freewill is an illusion. I don't really know how to explain my point. It just seems to me that they behave as if the universe is a logical rational ordered machine that has a purpose and life should be valued even though the foundation of their believes is that the universe is a chaotic purposeless accidental random explosion.

Schizo

That is an excellent summation of the Atheist/Deist dilemma. May I quote you on another forum where the Atheists are ganging up on me?

Being fair-minded freethinkers, they have even started a new thread to give me and other "theists" the opportunity to explain our rational reasons for believing in an invisible, intangible, inactive, unimaginable God-ghost. I'm afraid I don't have any more debating points other than the same circular arguments that have been going around for millennia.

To me, G*D is an axiom not a syllogism; a tautology, not a rational calculation; an inference, not a deduction.

Aaron,

Wow! It sounds almost like you're at the border between a deist and an atheist. Maybe you're an adeist. It sounds like the only main differences between you and atheists are that you admit that you see chance as divine and existence as miraculous. The fact that they won't admit that is something I don't respect about them. We all believe in some kind of god. Even if that god is blind chance.

Gnomon,

Sure, you can quote me as long as you direct me to the forum and allow me to help you gang up on them.

Atheist arguments are circular also. Like with our fine tuning argument. The universe appears to be finely tuned for life. We would say that it was done by God on purpose and they would say that it was done by chance on accident. We use God as an explanation and they use a multiverse to explain it away. We are both starting with our assumptions and ending at our assumptions. The only difference is that we are using arguments to try to prove God and they are using chance as an explanation without trying to proof chance. They put the burden of proof on us to prove God. Maybe we should put the burden of proof on them to prove chance?

Schizophretard wrote:

Aaron,

Wow! It sounds almost like you're at the border between a deist and an atheist. Maybe you're an adeist. It sounds like the only main differences between you and atheists are that you admit that you see chance as divine and existence as miraculous. The fact that they won't admit that is something I don't respect about them. We all believe in some kind of god. Even if that god is blind chance.

I think any attributes we place on a "creator" or "first cause" like intelligence, will, or purpose are actually manifestations or "creations" if you will. It seems to me that the unmanifest would have to be formless, inclusive of everything and nothing at the same time. The unmanifest is essentially in a zero/infinite state of being.

I believe that finite things like intelligence, will, and purpose do exist within god (the One, the Absolute, etc...) however not in its absolute form, but through its various manifestations of which we are one of many.

I just finished a debate with two theists and an atheist (that sounds like the beginning of a joke: "Two theists and an atheist walk into a bar...") Anyway, in our conversation, I tossed out my trusty old question: If, before God created the universe there was nothing but God, what did God use for building materials?

The point of the question, in case it's not obvious, is that everything in the universe must be composed of...God!

Now, as I said, this is an old tried-and-true gimmick I've used to start debates for a long time. But, this time I realized something. If everything is God, Science will never find God, because there is nothing distinctively different to find! It would be like looking for a snowflake in a snow storm!

Aaron,

Please explain more because I'm schizophretarded and I'm having trouble comprehending the way you view god. It almost sounds like you believe the god I envision is real but is within a bigger god.

Paul,

Maybe it's looking for a snow storm when all you can see is one snow flake?

Paul Anthony wrote:

I just finished a debate with two theists and an atheist (that sounds like the beginning of a joke: "Two theists and an atheist walk into a bar...") Anyway, in our conversation, I tossed out my trusty old question: If, before God created the universe there was nothing but God, what did God use for building materials?

The point of the question, in case it's not obvious, is that everything in the universe must be composed of...God!

Now, as I said, this is an old tried-and-true gimmick I've used to start debates for a long time. But, this time I realized something. If everything is God, Science will never find God, because there is nothing distinctively different to find! It would be like looking for a snowflake in a snow storm!

Thats an interesting idea. I'll have to think about that a while.

Paul Anthony wrote:

Now, as I said, this is an old tried-and-true gimmick I've used to start debates for a long time. But, this time I realized something. If everything is God, Science will never find God, because there is nothing distinctively different to find! It would be like looking for a snowflake in a snow storm!

Exactly.

Schizophretard wrote:

Please explain more because I'm schizophretarded and I'm having trouble comprehending the way you view god. It almost sounds like you believe the god I envision is real but is within a bigger god.

Could be? Although it's probably more like a Pantheist (Pandeist) god within a larger Panendeist god.

Many religious traditions refer to it as "Godhead" or "Brahman" in Vedanta. The "Tao" also works, as well as "the One", "the Absolute", "Spirit", "the Ground of Being", "the All", "the Ultimate", "the Uncaused First Cause", as well as many other descriptions.

All these terms are used and understood in slightly different ways, however I think that they're all pointing to the same basic concept.

Quote :

Paul Anthony wrote:
Now, as I said, this is an old tried-and-true gimmick I've used to start debates for a long time. But, this time I realized something. If everything is God, Science will never find God, because there is nothing distinctively different to find! It would be like looking for a snowflake in a snow storm!

Aaron wrote:
Exactly.

Okay PA, better leave the snow references to your northern compatriots and us Canadians. Each snowflake is different, and you can certainly discern snowflakes in all but the most blizzard like conditions.

So, look I might be willing to concede that all is God except for our sentiences, and I'm not sure that is the right word.

That being the case I would probably be in the camp that views the universe as God but only part of God, and only God in the sense that, yeah, maybe he provided the raw materials.

But the utmost important thing is that while my body may be composed of God material, in fact it is composed of material that has previoiusly spewed out of an early star comprised mainy of hydrogen and/or helium, that my sentience is my own. It's not God's. The decisions that I make are my own. Not God's.

Sentience carries with it a separation from God. So God is not the universe because God is not my sentience. If that were so, that would rob me of my free will, unless, and the one exception that I can think of, is that God knows all possibilities of everything that could possibly happen. That as far as I can reckon' wouldn't rob me of my free will.

Again I like to view these things more as metaphors. And that's my metaphor. God is rootin for sentience to discern the truth.

Helium wrote:

Quote :

Paul Anthony wrote:
Now, as I said, this is an old tried-and-true gimmick I've used to start debates for a long time. But, this time I realized something. If everything is God, Science will never find God, because there is nothing distinctively different to find! It would be like looking for a snowflake in a snow storm!

Aaron wrote:
Exactly.

Okay PA, better leave the snow references to your northern compatriots and us Canadians. Each snowflake is different, and you can certainly discern snowflakes in all but the most blizzard like conditions.

Would you accept "a rain drop in an ocean"?

Quote :

Paul Anthony wrote:
Now, as I said, this is an old tried-and-true gimmick I've used to start debates for a long time. But, this time I realized something. If everything is God, Science will never find God, because there is nothing distinctively different to find! It would be like looking for a snowflake in a snow storm!

Aaron wrote:
Exactly.

Helium wrote:
Okay PA, better leave the snow references to your northern compatriots and us Canadians. Each snowflake is different, and you can certainly discern snowflakes in all but the most blizzard like conditions.

Aaron wrote:
Would you accept "a rain drop in an ocean"?

Okay I see what you mean. Like trying to find a raindrop in the ocean or a snowflake in the snow, so to speak. I see.

I'll mull it over some.

Concerning God being everything and like a snow storm. If God is everything and atheist don't believe in the existence of God then doesn't that mean that atheist don't believe in the existence of anything? In other words does atheist see the snow then come to the conclusion that neither the snow or the snowstorm exists?

Aaron,

I'm still confused! If our universe(pandeist god) is within God(panendeist god) then what is the panendeist god's attributes? Is it kinda like the universe within a multiverse? I'm just having trouble comprehending this because it is hard for me to envision a god without a mind. To me it seems that if it's not a god that is an intelligent being then it isn't a god at all. How did your reasoning come to the conclusion that the nature of God is the way you see it? I mean every argument I've heard proving a god are arguments proving an intelligent being. What are your arguments for God? So far it sounds like you're an atheist that just uses the term God instead of natural random processes.

As I've said before I believe God to be a Divine Mind and that our universe is within his mind. You talked about how you believe the universe to be the manifest form of God and what is outside as the unmanifest form of God. The way I look at it is that both the manifest and unmanifest are within God. God knows every possible way he could of designed this universe. I would consider all those other options as being unmanifest and our universe as manifest. In a sense I believe there is a multiverse but God chooses which ones he wants to become real. So every possible and maybe impossible universe exists within the mind of God but only the ones he chooses become manifest as real. For an example, God knows what it would be like for there to be a Hell. So in God's mind Hell exists in the same way that our universe does. The difference between them is that since a Hell is against his will and our universe is his will then our universe manifestly exists and any Hell unmanifestly exists. So there is an infinite amount of manifest universes and an infinite amount of unmanifest universes. To show you what I mean here's an analogy using an artist. An artist would look at a canvas and think about all the things he could paint. The thing he chooses to paint becomes manifest on the canvas and all the things he chose not to paint are unmanifest in his mind. The only difference is that there is nothing outside of God's mind. So, the only thing that makes our universe manifest is that he chose this one. He would have no reason to make something outside of himself anyways because there is no other god to show his artwork to.

Everybody,

We were talking about predestination and freewill on another topic and it is still bothering me. I'm still not convinced that the argument that if God knows everything we are going to do then we can only choose what he knows we are going to do. It don't make sense to me that God's knowledge can effect anything without an action. Saying we don't have freewill because we don't have the choice to do anything other than what God has foreseen sounds the same as saying we don't have freewill because we can't choose to flap our arms and fly. I just believe that us choosing to do something without God first knowing it is just a choice we don't have the freedom to make just like we can't choose to fly. If God gave us that option then we could choose to do otherwise but we don't have that choice because God hasn't told us what we are going to do. If God said to me," Tomorrow you will drink a Coke instead of a Pepsi." then I would have the choice to change my future now that I know it and drink a Pepsi. Now if God told me that and it somehow forced me to drink a Coke then yes I wouldn't have freewill. Is there something terribly wrong with my logic here because I don't see the paradox between predestination and freewill?

So I don't seem to off topic another advantage of being a deist is that our conversations are more interesting than atheists' because atheists just speculate about the nature of the physical world and we are open minded to speculate above and beyond it.

Schizophretard wrote:

Concerning God being everything and like a snow storm. If God is everything and atheist don't believe in the existence of God then doesn't that mean that atheist don't believe in the existence of anything? In other words does atheist see the snow then come to the conclusion that neither the snow or the snowstorm exists?

Let me see how I can put this... Atheists and pan(en)deists can look at the same thing and see two different things because it's like they're looking at the same thing through two different colored lenses.

Let's say there's a snowball for instance, and a person wearing red colored sun glasses happens to see it. For this person the snowball will have a pink appearance. Now there's another person who sees the same snowball but may not be wearing any glasses at all. For this person the snowball will look white. And then perhaps there's another person who may be wearing x-ray glasses. This person may see something completely different than either one of the first two people.

In this analogy the atheist would be like the person wearing the red sunglasses, and the panendeist would be like the person who's not wearing any glasses at all. The panendeist looks at the snowball and sees white but the atheist is incapable of seeing the same thing without taking off their sunglasses first, which they refuse to do.

BTW, an atheist might argue that the panendeist is in fact the one wearing the sunglasses, which may in fact be true.

The point is, that what you see depends on your perspective. Two or three people can look at the same thing and see many different things. Who's right, and who's wrong? Everyone... no one... all of the above? I don't know, I just have to go where my reason, experience, and observation takes me.

Schizophretard wrote:

I'm still confused! If our universe(pandeist god) is within God(panendeist god) then what is the panendeist god's attributes?

This pandeist god would be within this panendeist god in more of a metaphorical sense than in a spacio-temporal one. Actually according to the model there is no separate pandeist god from the panendeist god. In this model everything is a part of "the One", "the Unmoved Mover", "the Ground", "the Tao", "Śūnyatā", "the Absolute", "the Mystery", etc...

God in it's unmanifest form is without attributes, it's intangible, unfathomable, uncategorizable, formless, and un-analyzable empirically. It's all things and no-thing at the same time.

Schizophretard wrote:

I'm just having trouble comprehending this because it is hard for me to envision a god without a mind.

Thought by definition is a manifestation, it's dualistic, it has an opposite and must exist in time. IMO, an Unmoved Mover would have no opposite and would exist "outside" of time (metaphorically speaking). Of course that doesn't mean that god wouldn't have some sort of intelligence, or mind, just not in it's most grounded form and perhaps not in the way we generally think of things like minds and intelligence.

Schizophretard wrote:

To me it seems that if it's not a god that is an intelligent being then it isn't a god at all.

I believe that god includes things like intelligence and reason but ultimately transcends all such concepts.

Schizophretard wrote:

How did your reasoning come to the conclusion that the nature of God is the way you see it?

I came to this "working theory" though a process of elimination and deep thought. I was influenced by a number of sources within science, philosophy, and religion. This theory is a work in progress and I fully admit that I may be (and probably am) completely off base.

Schizophretard wrote:

I mean every argument I've heard proving a god are arguments proving an intelligent being.

Yes, most western models of god tend to be grounded in a mythic understanding of reality with an anthropomorphic vision of deity, however even a rational (dualistic) understanding of reality would naturally lead one to believe that if god exists it would be a rational (dualistic) being.

My approach is grounded as much in an eastern tradition as it is in a western tradition. With that comes a greater emphasis on wholism and experience as an accompaniment to empiricism and reason. I think western philosophers like Plotinus, Bruno, Spinoza, Hegel, Schelling, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitehead, and Albert Einstein understood this and had a large influence on my world view along with the eastern philosophies that inspired many of them.

Schizophretard wrote:

What are your arguments for God?

I guess my belief is based on a mixture of the Cosmological Argument, the Ontological Argument, the Teleological Argument, Dialectical Monism, and arguments grounded in personal experience.

Schizophretard wrote:

So far it sounds like you're an atheist that just uses the term God instead of natural random processes.

Well, I guess that depends on how one defines god. But it's true, my world view is very similar to many "spiritual" atheists world views. For instance, there are many Taoists, and Buddhists who also consider themselves to be atheists, but the way I view things they would be more accurately described as panendeists rather than atheists.

Wow! That's deep! So, what you're trying to say is that you are an adeist?

Schizophretard wrote:

Wow! That's deep! So, what you're trying to say is that you are an adeist?

Actually, technically I am an A-Theist because I don't believe in a Theist god.

I know me too. It just sounds like you're somewhere in between an atheist and a deist. So, jokingly I'm calling you adeist.