Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni
Titolo: Oggi su it.cultura.filosofia.moderato:2 messaggi,uno alle 9:05,uno alle 10:19

What is Pantheism?
Pantheism seems to be a sort of very strange faith.
Primitive people used to believe in "The deity of the thunder", "The deity
of the wind" and so on.
After that, they began to believe in "The deity of the Earth". The Earth
were a deity.
They thought that the Sky and the Earth were the father and the mother.
And the sky could spread the Earth(the rain).
We have at least two kind of Pantheism, the first one is a sort of faith
about a deity that created our universe and that deity is nature itself. The
universe is the manifestation of a deity.
This kind of Pantheism come from India and was accepted by Neo-Platonism.
The second kind of Pantheism is a sort of Atheistic Pantheism .
This one was accepted by Stoicism and considered the Deity as a sort of
force, or energy, a sort of energy inside the matter.
The term Pantheism was introduced by J. Fay in his "Defensio Religionis"
published in (1709).
But we can find Pantheism in some doctrines of Christians
thinker(philosophers) as Dionigi Eeropagita, John Scoto Eriugena, Meister
Eckhart , Niccolò from Cusa and so on(till a certain Vincenzo Gioberti: an
Italian priest).
But a sort of Naturalistic Pantheism was the doctrine of Patrizi, Cesalpino,
and Giordano Bruno elaborated the relationship between God(the God of Bible)
with his universe, his creation.
But Spinoza settled all that in a new doctrine. He unified the
Neo-Platonism, Qabbalah(he was a Jewish), Naturalism and Deism(do not
confuse Deism with Theism).
According to Spinoza our universe is The God's substance and the world are
the same thing.
We had a lot of doctrines about Pantheism, but them are the same or similar
to Spinoza's doctrine.
So Fichte, or Schelling, or Hegel. Hegel was the last very important
philosopher that (although  he rejected that term)  represented a
pantheistic doctrine.
Hegel thought that finite and infinite coincide, are the same. Hegel thought
that God(the God of the Bible) and world coincide, are the same thing, but
he used a very strange language to say that, and he talked about dialectic
of finite and infinite, God and world and so on.
After Hegel, Pantheism was not an interesting subject anymore, unless for
some Monistic doctrines  of late eighteenth century.
Pantheism is a very crazy idea, a very crazy doctrine. Pantheists  believe
that God exists, and he is nature. They call our nature, our universe, our
Earth, ourselves, God.
Everybody is God.  Pantheists  see God everywhere.
A theist believe that God created our universe, a pantheist believe that God
is our universe!!
A theist usually do not need to "see" his deity. A pantheist "need" to see
his God, so he/her think that God is Nature.
That is a very crazy idea, and that is worse than theism.
Atheism and Pantheism are the opposite. An atheist think that a deity does
not exist. A pantheist think that everything is God!!
I wonder if pantheists understand that God must be conscious, must have a
sort of consciousness. What is the difference among a natural phenomenon and
God?
God has got a sort of consciousness and natural phenomenon has not
consciousness. Stones, molecules have NOT consciousness.
But pantheists think that everything is God, so stones and molecules should
have a sort of consciousness.
Most of them use to say that there is no consciousness. But they still
continue in believing in pantheism. So if there is no consciousness: where
is God?
What it the difference between a natural phenomenon and God?
Why pantheists need to call our nature, our universe using the term God?
They are like children, that need to believe in something called "God" and
that's that.
A think that pantheism is very dangerous, because while you can see that
there are not any evidence of a personal deity, pantheists use to say that
order and our universe exist, and you can "see" it!!
So, order would be the evidence that God exist, because God is Nature, God
is our universe.
That's a very dangerous idea. And we need to explain people that Pantheism
is a nonsensical expression. They call "God" what atheists call Cosmos,
Universe, Nature.
The difference between an atheist and a pantheist is that an atheist call
Nature using the term nature, universe using the term universe, cosmos using
the term  cosmos. A pantheist is like a child, and need to call nature using
the term "God"!!
Franco

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