Pantheism – Wikipedia

Belief that God and reality are identical

Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time,[1] or that all things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god or goddess and regards the universe as a manifestation of a deity.[2][3] This includes all astronomical objects being viewed as part of a sole deity.

The worship of all gods of every religion is another definition but is more precisely termed Omnism.[4]Pantheist belief does not recognize a distinct personal god,[5] anthropomorphic or otherwise, but instead characterizes a broad range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity.[6] Pantheistic concepts date back thousands of years, and pantheistic elements have been identified in various religious traditions. The term pantheism was coined by mathematician Joseph Raphson in 1697[7][8] and has since been used to describe the beliefs of a variety of people and organizations.

Pantheism was popularized in Western culture as a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, in particular, his book Ethics.[9] A pantheistic stance was also taken in the 16th century by philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno.[10]

Pantheism derives from the Greek word pan (meaning "all, of everything") and theos (meaning "god, divine"). The first known combination of these roots appears in Latin, in Joseph Raphson's 1697 book De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito,[8] where he refers to the "pantheismus" of Spinoza and others.[7]It was subsequently translated into English as "pantheism" in 1702.

There are numerous definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God.[11]:p.8

A doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.

Pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it.[12] Some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe (in the sense of the totality of all existence) and God are identical.[13]

Early traces of pantheist thought can be found within animistic beliefs and tribal religions throughout the world as an expression of unity with the divine, specifically in beliefs that have no central polytheist or monotheist personas. Hellenistic theology makes early recorded reference to pantheism within the ancient Greek religion of Orphism, where pan (the all) is made cognate with the creator God Phanes (symbolizing the universe),[14] and with Zeus, after the swallowing of Phanes.[15]

Pantheistic tendencies existed in a number of Gnostic groups, with pantheistic thought appearing throughout the Middle Ages.[16] These included a section of Johannes Scotus Eriugena's 9th-century work De divisione naturae and the beliefs of mystics such as Amalric of Bena (11th12th centuries) and Eckhart (12th13th).[16]:pp. 620621

The Catholic Church has long regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy.[17][18] Sebastian Franck was considered an early Pantheist.[19] Giordano Bruno, an Italian friar who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, was burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. He has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science.[20][21]

In the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza.[11]:p.7 Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese descent raised in the Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam.[23] He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine, and was effectively excluded from Jewish society at age 23, when the local synagogue issued a herem against him.[24] A number of his books were published posthumously, and shortly thereafter included in the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books. The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work would not be realized for many years as the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment[25] and modern biblical criticism,[26] including modern conceptions of the self and the universe.[27]

In the posthumous Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely."[28] In particular, he opposed Ren Descartes' famous mindbody dualism, the theory that the body and spirit are separate.[29] Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance.[29] This view influenced philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who said, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."[30] Spinoza earned praise as one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy[31] and one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers.[32] Although the term "pantheism" was not coined until after his death, he is regarded as the most celebrated advocate of the concept.[33] Ethics was the major source from which Western pantheism spread.[9]

Heinrich Heine, in his Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (183336), remarked that "I don't remember now where I read that Herder once exploded peevishly at the constant preoccupation with Spinoza, "If Goethe would only for once pick up some other Latin book than Spinoza!" But this applies not only to Goethe; quite a number of his friends, who later became more or less well-known as poets, paid homage to pantheism in their youth, and this doctrine flourished actively in German art before it attained supremacy among us as a philosophic theory."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe rejected Jacobis personal belief in God as the "hollow sentiment of a childs brain" (Goethe 15/1: 446) and, in the "Studie nach Spinoza" (1785/86), proclaimed the identity of existence and wholeness. When Jacobi speaks of Spinozas "fundamentally stupid universe" (Jacobi [31819] 2000: 312), Goethe praises nature as his "idol" (Goethe 14: 535).[34]

In their The Holy Family (1844) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels note, "Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name.... Spinoza's French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system...."

In George Henry Lewes's words (1846), "Pantheism is as old as philosophy. It was taught in the old Greek schools by Plato, by St. Augustine, and by the Jews. Indeed, one may say that Pantheism, under one of its various shapes, is the necessary consequence of all metaphysical inquiry, when pushed to its logical limits; and from this reason do we find it in every age and nation. The dreamy contemplative Indian, the quick versatile Greek, the practical Roman, the quibbling Scholastic, the ardent Italian, the lively Frenchman, and the bold Englishman, have all pronounced it as the final truth of philosophy. Wherein consists Spinoza's originality? what is his merit? are natural questions, when we see him only lead to the same result as others had before proclaimed. His merit and originality consist in the systematic exposition and development of that doctrine in his hands, for the first time, it assumes the aspect of a science. The Greek and Indian Pantheism is a vague fanciful doctrine, carrying with it no scientific conviction; it may be true it looks true but the proof is wanting. But with Spinoza there is no choice: if you understand his terms, admit the possibility of his science, and seize his meaning; you can no more doubt his conclusions than you can doubt Euclid; no mere opinion is possible, conviction only is possible."[35]

S. M. Melamed (1933) noted, "It may be observed, however, that Spinoza was not the first prominent monist and pantheist in modern Europe. A generation before him Bruno conveyed a similar message to humanity. Yet Bruno is merely a beautiful episode in the history of the human mind, while Spinoza is one of its most potent forces. Bruno was a rhapsodist and a poet, who was overwhelmed with artistic emotions; Spinoza, however, was spiritus purus and in his method the prototype of the philosopher."[36]

The first known use of the term "pantheism" was in Latin ("pantheismus" [7]) by the English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito, published in 1697.[8] Raphson begins with a distinction between atheistic "panhylists" (from the Greek roots pan, "all", and hyle, "matter"), who believe everything is matter, and Spinozan "pantheists" who believe in "a certain universal substance, material as well as intelligence, that fashions all things that exist out of its own essence."[37][38] Raphson thought that the universe was immeasurable in respect to a human's capacity of understanding, and believed that humans would never be able to comprehend it.[39] He referred to the pantheism of the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Syrians, Assyrians, Greek, Indians, and Jewish Kabbalists, specifically referring to Spinoza.[40]

The term was first used in English by a translation of Raphson's work in 1702. It was later used and popularized by Irish writer John Toland in his work of 1705 Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist.[41][16]:pp. 617618 Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno, and had read Joseph Raphson's De Spatio Reali, referring to it as "the ingenious Mr. Ralphson's (sic) Book of Real Space".[42] Like Raphson, he used the terms "pantheist" and "Spinozist" interchangeably.[43] In 1720 he wrote the Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society in Latin, envisioning a pantheist society that believed, "All things in the world are one, and one is all in all things ... what is all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish."[44][45] He clarified his idea of pantheism in a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".[16][46][47][48]

In the mid-eighteenth century, the English theologian Daniel Waterland defined pantheism this way: "It supposes God and nature, or God and the whole universe, to be one and the same substanceone universal being; insomuch that men's souls are only modifications of the divine substance."[16][49] In the early nineteenth century, the German theologian Julius Wegscheider defined pantheism as the belief that God and the world established by God are one and the same.[16][50]

Between 178589, a major controversy about Spinoza's philosophy arose between the German philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (a critic) and Moses Mendelssohn (a defender). Known in German as the Pantheismusstreit (pantheism controversy), it helped spread pantheism to many German thinkers.[51] A 1780 conversation with the German dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing led Jacobi to a protracted study of Spinoza's works. Lessing stated that he knew no other philosophy than Spinozism. Jacobi's ber die Lehre des Spinozas (1st ed. 1785, 2nd ed. 1789) expressed his strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the enmity of the Berlin group, led by Mendelssohn. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that pantheism shares more characteristics of theism than of atheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time.[52]

Willi Goetschel argues that Jacobi's publication significantly shaped Spinoza's wide reception for centuries following its publication, obscuring the nuance of Spinoza's philosophic work.[53]

During the beginning of the 19th century, pantheism was the viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in Britain; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Germany; Knut Hamsun in Norway; and Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the United States. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, in 1864 it was formally condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors.[54]

A letter written in 1886 by William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner, was sold at auction for US$30,000 in 2011.[55] In it, Herndon writes of the U.S. President's evolving religious views, which included pantheism.

"Mr. Lincoln's religion is too well known to me to allow of even a shadow of a doubt; he is or was a Theist and a Rationalist, denying all extraordinary supernatural inspiration or revelation. At one time in his life, to say the least, he was an elevated Pantheist, doubting the immortality of the soul as the Christian world understands that term. He believed that the soul lost its identity and was immortal as a force. Subsequent to this he rose to the belief of a God, and this is all the change he ever underwent."[55][56]

The subject is understandably controversial, but the content of the letter is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.[56]

Some 19th-century theologians thought that various pre-Christian religions and philosophies were pantheistic. They thought Pantheism was similar to the ancient Hindu[16]:pp. 618 philosophy of Advaita (non-dualism) to the extent that the 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstcker remarked that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus."[57]

19th-century European theologians also considered Ancient Egyptian religion to contain pantheistic elements and pointed to Egyptian philosophy as a source of Greek Pantheism.[16]:pp. 618620 The latter included some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander.[58] The Stoics were pantheists, beginning with Zeno of Citium and culminating in the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, Stoicism was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism.[59][60] The early Taoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic, although it could be more similar to Panentheism.[46]

Cheondoism, which arose in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, and Won Buddhism are also considered pantheistic. The Realist Society of Canada believes that the consciousness of the self-aware universe is reality, which is an alternative view of Pantheism.[61]

In a letter written to Eduard Bsching (25 October 1929), after Bsching sent Albert Einstein a copy of his book Es gibt keinen Gott ("There is no God"), Einstein wrote, "We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul [Beseeltheit] as it reveals itself in man and animal."[62] According to Einstein, the book only dealt with the concept of a personal god and not the impersonal God of pantheism.[62] In a letter written in 1954 to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein wrote "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses."[63][64] In another letter written in 1954 he wrote "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."[63] In Ideas And Opinions, published a year before his death, Einstein stated his precise conception of the word God:

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).[65]

In the late 20th century, some declared that pantheism was an underlying theology of Neopaganism,[66] and pantheists began forming organizations devoted specifically to pantheism and treating it as a separate religion.[46]

Dorion Sagan, son of scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan, published the 2007 book Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature, co-written with his mother Lynn Margulis. In the chapter "Truth of My Father", Sagan writes that his "father believed in the God of Spinoza and Einstein, God not behind nature, but as nature, equivalent to it."[67]

In 2009, pantheism was mentioned in a Papal encyclical[68] and in a statement on New Year's Day, 2010,[69] criticizing pantheism for denying the superiority of humans over nature and seeing the source of man's salvation in nature.[68]

In 2015 The Paradise Project, an organization "dedicated to celebrating and spreading awareness about pantheism," commissioned Los Angeles muralist Levi Ponce to paint the 75-foot mural in Venice, California near the organization's offices.[70] The mural depicts Albert Einstein, Alan Watts, Baruch Spinoza, Terence McKenna, Carl Jung, Carl Sagan, Emily Dickinson, Nikola Tesla, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rumi, Adi Shankara, and Laozi.[71][72]

There are multiple varieties of pantheism[16][73]:3 and various systems of classifying them relying upon one or more spectra or in discrete categories.

The philosopher Charles Hartshorne used the term Classical Pantheism to describe the deterministic philosophies of Baruch Spinoza, the Stoics, and other like-minded figures.[74] Pantheism (All-is-God) is often associated with monism (All-is-One) and some have suggested that it logically implies determinism (All-is-Now).[29][75][76][77][78] Albert Einstein explained theological determinism by stating,[79] "the past, present, and future are an 'illusion'". This form of pantheism has been referred to as "extreme monism", in which in the words of one commentator "God decides or determines everything, including our supposed decisions."[80] Other examples of determinism-inclined pantheisms include those of Ralph Waldo Emerson,[81] and Hegel.[82]

However, some have argued against treating every meaning of "unity" as an aspect of pantheism,[83] and there exist versions of pantheism that regard determinism as an inaccurate or incomplete view of nature. Examples include the beliefs of John Scotus Eriugena,[84] Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and William James.[85]

It may also be possible to distinguish two types of pantheism, one being more religious and the other being more philosophical. The Columbia Encyclopedia writes of the distinction:

Philosophers and theologians have often suggested that pantheism implies monism.[87] [note 1]

In 1896, J. H. Worman, a theologian, identified seven categories of pantheism: Mechanical or materialistic (God the mechanical unity of existence); Ontological (fundamental unity, Spinoza); Dynamic; Psychical (God is the soul of the world); Ethical (God is the universal moral order, Fichte); Logical (Hegel); and Pure (absorption of God into nature, which Worman equates with atheism).[16]

In 1984, Paul D. Feinberg, professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, also identified seven: Hylozoistic; Immanentistic; Absolutistic monistic; Relativistic monistic; Acosmic; Identity of opposites; and Neoplatonic or emanationistic.[93]

According to censuses of 2011, the UK was the country with the most Pantheists.[94] As of 2011, about 1,000 Canadians identified their religion as "Pantheist", representing 0.003% of the population.[95] In Ireland, Pantheism rose from 202 in 1991,[96] to 1106 in 2002,[96] to 1,691 in 2006,[97] 1,940 in 2011.[98][needs update] In New Zealand, there was exactly one pantheist man in 1901.[99] By 1906, the number of pantheists in New Zealand had septupled to 7 (6 male, 1 female).[100] This number had further risen to 366 by 2006.[101]

In Canada (2011), The age group with the most pantheists was age 55 to 64. The age group with the least pantheists was children and adolescents aged under 15, who were 0.0005% pantheist - 9 times less likely to be pantheist than people aged 55 to 64.[95] In Canada, there was no significant sex difference between men and women.[95] However, in Ireland (2011), Pantheists were more likely to be female (1074 pantheists, 0.046% of women) than male (866 pantheists, 0.038% of men).[98]

(0.0005%)

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Nature worship or nature mysticism is often conflated and confused with pantheism. It is pointed out by at least one expert, Harold Wood, founder of the Universal Pantheist Society, that in pantheist philosophy Spinoza's identification of God with nature is very different from a recent idea of a self identifying pantheist with environmental ethical concerns. His use of the word nature to describe his worldview may be vastly different from the "nature" of modern sciences. He and other nature mystics who also identify as pantheists use "nature" to refer to the limited natural environment (as opposed to man-made built environment). This use of "nature" is different from the broader use from Spinoza and other pantheists describing natural laws and the overall phenomena of the physical world. Nature mysticism may be compatible with pantheism but it may also be compatible with theism and other views.[6] Pantheism has also been involved in animal worship especially in primal religions.[107]

Nontheism is an umbrella term which has been used to refer to a variety of religions not fitting traditional theism, and under which pantheism has been included.[6]

Panentheism (from Greek (pn) "all"; (en) "in"; and (thes) "God"; "all-in-God") was formally coined in Germany in the 19th century in an attempt to offer a philosophical synthesis between traditional theism and pantheism, stating that God is substantially omnipresent in the physical universe but also exists "apart from" or "beyond" it as its Creator and Sustainer.[108]:p.27 Thus panentheism separates itself from pantheism, positing the extra claim that God exists above and beyond the world as we know it. The line between pantheism and panentheism can be blurred depending on varying definitions of God, so there have been disagreements when assigning particular notable figures to pantheism or panentheism.[108]:pp. 7172,8788,105[110]

Pandeism is another word derived from pantheism, and is characterized as a combination of reconcilable elements of pantheism and deism.[111] It assumes a Creator-deity that is at some point distinct from the universe and then transforms into it, resulting in a universe similar to the pantheistic one in present essence, but differing in origin.

Panpsychism is the philosophical view held by many pantheists that consciousness, mind, or soul is a universal feature of all things.[112] Some pantheists also subscribe to the distinct philosophical views hylozoism (or panvitalism), the view that everything is alive, and its close neighbor animism, the view that everything has a soul or spirit.[113]

Many traditional and folk religions including African traditional religions[114] and Native American religions[116] can be seen as pantheistic, or a mixture of pantheism and other doctrines such as polytheism and animism. According to pantheists, there are elements of pantheism in some forms of Christianity.[117][118][119]

Ideas resembling pantheism existed in Eastern religions before the 18th century (notably Sikhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Taoism). Although there is no evidence that these influenced Spinoza's work, there is such evidence regarding other contemporary philosophers, such as Leibniz, and later Voltaire.[120][121] In the case of Hinduism, pantheistic views exist alongside panentheistic, polytheistic, monotheistic, and atheistic ones. In the case of Sikhism, stories attributed to Guru Nanak suggest that he believed God was everywhere in the physical world, and the Sikh tradition typically describes God as the preservative force within the physical world, present in all material forms, each created as a manifestation of God. However, Sikhs view God as the transcendent creator,[125] "immanent in the phenomenal reality of the world in the same way in which an artist can be said to be present in his art".[126] This implies a more panentheistic position.

Pantheism is popular in modern spirituality and new religious movements, such as Neopaganism and Theosophy.[127] Two organizations that specify the word pantheism in their title formed in the last quarter of the 20th century. The Universal Pantheist Society, open to all varieties of pantheists and supportive of environmental causes, was founded in 1975.[128] The World Pantheist Movement is headed by Paul Harrison, an environmentalist, writer and a former vice president of the Universal Pantheist Society, from which he resigned in 1996. The World Pantheist Movement was incorporated in 1999 to focus exclusively on promoting naturalistic pantheism a strict metaphysical naturalistic version of pantheism,[129] considered by some a form of religious naturalism.[130] It has been described as an example of "dark green religion" with a focus on environmental ethics.[131]

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Pantheism - Wikipedia

Religion in India – Wikipedia

Different types of religions in the modern nation of India

Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. The Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions; namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The preamble of Indian constitution states that India is a secular state.[2][3] Throughout India's history, religion has been an important part of the country's culture. Religious diversity and religious tolerance are both established in the country by the law; the Constitution of India has declared the right to freedom of religion to be a fundamental right.[4]

According to the 2011 census, 79.8% of the population of India practices Hinduism, 14.2% adheres to Islam, 2.3% adheres to Christianity, 1.7% adheres to Sikhism, 0.7% adheres to Buddhism and 0.4% adheres to Jainism. Zoroastrianism, Sanamahism and Judaism also have an ancient history in India, and each has several thousands of Indian adherents. India has the largest population of people adhering to Zoroastrianism (i.e. Parsis and Iranis) and Bah' Faith in the world, even though these religions are otherwise largely exclusive to their native Persia.

The Constitution of India, declares India to be a secular state with no state religion.[6] However, at a same time, "the Republic of India privileges Hinduism as state sponsored religion" through constitutionally, legislatively and culturally.[7][8] The original copy of Indian constitution have the illustration of Lord Ram, Sita, and Lakshman in Part III on Fundamental Rights and Lord Rama have been considered as true guardian of people's rights.[9] Article 343 (1) of the Indian Constitution also state that, "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script".[10] Also Article 48 of Indian constitution, prohibits the slaughter of cows or calf (a sacred animal in Hinduism) and is illegal criminal offense in most of the states of India.[11][12] India is a secular state by the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, asserting Preamble to the Constitution of India as secular[13] by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed who was pressured by Indira Gandhi, during the leadup to the Emergency.

However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India had been secular since the formation of the republic on 26 January 1950.[14] Secularism in India is understood to mean not a separation of religion from state, but a state that supports or participates in a neutral manner in the affairs of all religious groups and as well as atheism.[15]

Secularism is defined as a basic structure doctrine of the constitution through the argument of Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala case, that cannot be removed or amended by any means.[16] However, there is no mention of the term Basic Structure anywhere in the Constitution of India. The idea that the Parliament cannot introduce laws that would amend the basic structure of the constitution have been evolved judicially over time and many cases.[17]

The particular provisions regarding secularism and freedom of religion in India in the constitution are:

1. "Article 14": grants equality before the law and equal protection of the laws to all.[18]

2. "Article 15": enlarges the concept of secularism to the widest possible extent by prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.[19]

3. "Article 25": Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of any religion.[20]

4. "Article 26": Freedom to manage religious affairs.[21]

5. "Article 27": Freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion.[22]

6. "Article 28": Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions.[23]

7. "Article 29" and "Article 30": provides cultural and educational rights to the minorities.[24][25]

8. "Article 51A": i.e. Fundamental Duties obliges all the citizens to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood and to value and preserve the heritage of the country's composite diverse culture.[26]

Evidence attesting to prehistoric religion in the Indian "subcontinent" derives from scattered Mesolithic rock paintings depicting dances and rituals.[27] Neolithic pastoralists inhabiting the Indus Valley buried their dead in a manner suggestive of spiritual practices that incorporated notions of an afterlife.[28] Other South Asian Stone Age sites, such as the Bhimbetka rock shelters in central Madhya Pradesh and the Kupgal petroglyphs of eastern Karnataka, contain rock art portraying religious rites and evidence of possible ritualised music.[29]

The Harappan people of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which lasted from 3300 to 1400 BCE and was centered on the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra river valleys, may have worshiped an important mother goddess symbolising fertility.[30] Excavations of Indus Valley Civilisation sites show seals with animals and "firealtars", indicating rituals associated with fire.[31] A Shivlinga of a type similar to that which is now worshiped by Hindus has also been found,[30] however this interpretation has been disputed by Srinivasan [32]

Hinduism is often regarded as the oldest religion in the world,[33] with roots tracing back to prehistoric times, over 5,000 years ago.[34] Hinduism spread through parts of Southeastern Asia, China, and Afghanistan. Hindus worship a single divine entity (paramatma, lit."first-soul") with different forms.[35]

Hinduism's origins include the cultural elements of the Indus Valley Civilisation along with other Indian civilisations.[36] The oldest surviving text of Hinduism is the Rigveda, produced during the Vedic period and dating to 17001100 BCE.[][37] During the Epic and Puranic periods, the earliest versions of the epic poems, in their current form including Ramayana and Mahabharata were written roughly from 500 to 100 BCE,[38] although these were orally transmitted through families for centuries prior to this period.[39]

After 200 BCE, several schools of thought were formally codified in the Indian philosophy, including Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Purva-Mimamsa, and Vedanta.[40] Hinduism, otherwise a highly theistic religion, hosted atheistic schools and atheistic philosophies. Other Indian philosophies generally regarded as orthodox include Samkhya and Mimamsa.[41]

The ramaa tradition includes Jainism,known endonymically as Jain Dharm, and Buddhism[43] known endonymically as Bauddh Dharm, and others such as the jvikas, Ajanas, and others.[44][45]

The historical roots of Jainism in India have been traced to the 9th century BCE with the rise of Parshvanatha, the 23th Tirthankar, and his Jain philosophy, and to Mahavira (599527 BCE), the 24th Jain Tirthankara. Jainism traces its roots further back to the first Tirthankara, Rishabhanatha. Mahavira stressed on the five vows.

Gautama Buddha, who founded Buddhism, was born to the Shakya clan just before Magadha (which lasted from 546 to 324 BCE) rose to power.[citation needed] His family was native to the plains of Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal. Indian Buddhism peaked during the reign of Ashoka the Great of the Mauryan Empire, who patronised Buddhism following his conversion and unified the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BCE.[48] He sent missionaries abroad, allowing Buddhism to spread across Asia.[49] Indian Buddhism declined following the loss of royal patronage offered by the Kushan Empire and such kingdoms as Magadha and Kosala.

The decline of Buddhism in India has been attributed to a variety of factors, which include the resurgence of Hinduism in the 10th and 11th centuries under Sankaracharya, the later Turkish invasion, the Buddhist focus on renunciation as opposed to familial values and private property, Hinduism's own use and appropriation of Buddhist and Jain ideals of renunciation and ahimsa, and others. Although Buddhism virtually disappeared from mainstream India by the 11th century CE, its presence remained and manifested itself through other movements such as the Bhakti tradition, Vaishnavism, and the Bauls of Bengal, who are influenced by the Sahajjyana form of Buddhism that was popular in Bengal during the Pala period.

During the 14th17th centuries, when North India was under Muslim rule, the Bhakti movement swept through Central and Northern India. The Bhakti movement actually started in the eighth century in south India (present-day Tamil Nadu and Kerala), and gradually spread northwards. It was initiated by a loosely associated group of teachers or saints. Dnyaneshwar, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vallabhacharya, Surdas, Meera Bai, Kabir, Tulsidas, Ravidas, Namdeo, Eknath, Ramdas, Tukaram, and other mystics were some of the saints in the North. They taught that people could cast aside the heavy burdens of ritual and caste and the subtle complexities of philosophy, and simply express their overwhelming love for God. This period was also characterized by an abundance of devotional literature in vernacular prose and poetry in the ethnic languages of the various Indian states or provinces. The Bhakti movement gave rise to several different movements throughout India

During the Bhakti movement, many Hindu groups regarded as outside the traditional Hindu caste system followed Bhakti traditions by worshipping/following saints belonging to their respective communities. For example, Guru Ravidas was a Chamar of Uttar Pradesh; Guru Parsuram Ramnami was a Chura[dubious discuss] of Chhattisgarh, and Maharishi Ram Naval was a Bhangi of Rajasthan. In their lifetimes, several of these saints even went to the extent of fighting conversion from foreign missionaries, encouraging only Hinduism within their communities. In Assam for example, tribals were led by Gurudev Kalicharan Bramha of the Brahmo Samaj; in Nagaland by Kacha Naga; and in Central India by Birsa Munda, Hanuman Aaron, Jatra Bhagat, and Budhu Bhagat.

The Kabir Panth is a religious movement based on the teachings of the Indian poet saint Kabir (13981518).[51]

Kabir sermonized a monotheism that appealed clearly to the poor and convinced them of their access to god with no liaison. He denied both Hinduism and Islam, as well as meaningless religious rituals, and condemned double standards.[52] This infuriated the orthodox aristocracy. No one could frighten Kabir who was bold enough to stand up for himself and his beliefs.[53]

The Kabir Panth considers Kabir as its principal guru or even as a divinitytruth incarnate. Kabir's influence is testimony to his massive authority, even for those whose beliefs and practices he condemned so unsparingly. For Sikhs he is a forerunner and converser of Nanak, the originating Sikh Guru (spiritual guide). Muslims place him in Sufi (mystical) lineages, and for Hindus he becomes a Vaishnavite with universalist leanings.[54]

Guru Nanak Dev Ji (14691539) was the founder of Sikhism, known endonymically as Sikh Dharm.[55][56] The Guru Granth Sahib was first compiled by the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev, from the writings of the first five Sikh gurus and others saints who preached the concept of universal brotherhood, including those of the Hindu and Muslim faith. Before the death of Guru Gobind Singh, the Guru Granth Sahib was declared the eternal guru.[57] Sikhism recognises all humans as equal before Waheguru,[58] regardless of colour, caste, or lineage.[59] Sikhism strongly rejects the beliefs of fasting (vrata), superstitions, idol worship,[60][61] and circumcision.[62][63] The Sikhs believe in one eternal god and follow the teachings of the 10 gurus, the 5 K's of Sikhism, the hukums of Guru Gobind Singh, Sikh Rehat Maryada, and Nitnem.

Jews first arrived as traders from Judea in the city of Kochi, Kerala, in 562 BCE.[64] More Jews came as exiles from Israel in the year 70 CE, after the destruction of the Second Temple.[65]

Christianity was introduced to India by Thomas the Apostle (a direct disciple of Jesus Christ),[66] who visited Muziris in Kerala in 52 CE and proselytized natives at large, who are known as Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Syrian Christians or Nasrani) today. India's oldest church, the world's oldest existing church structure and built by Thomas the Apostle in 57 CE, called Thiruvithamcode Arappally or Thomaiyar Kovil as named by the then Chera king Udayancheral, is located at Thiruvithamcode in Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu, India. It is now declared an international St. Thomas pilgrim center.[67] There is a general scholarly consensus that Christianity was rooted in India by the 6th century CE, including some communities who used Syriac liturgically, and it is a possibility that the religion's existence in India extends to as far back as the 1st century.[68][69][70] Christianity in India has different denominations like Syrian Orthodox, Catholicism, Protestantism, Oriental Orthodox and others.

Most Christians reside in South India, particularly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Goa.[71][72] There are also large Christian populations in the North-east Indian states.[73]Christianity in India was expanded in the 16th century by Catholic Portuguese expeditions and by Protestant missionaries in the 18th and 19th centuries.[74]

Islam is the second largest religion in India, with 14.2% of the country's population or roughly 172 million people identifying as adherents of Islam (2011 census).[75][76][77][78][79][80] It makes India the country with the largest Muslim population outside Muslim-majority countries.[81]

Though Islam came to India in the early 7th century with the advent of Arab traders in Malabar coast, Kerala, it started to become a major religion during the Muslim rule in the Indian subcontinent.[82] The Cheraman Juma Mosque is the first mosque in India located in Methala, Kodungallur Taluk, Thrissur District in Kerala.[83] A legend claims that it was built in 629 CE, which makes it the oldest mosque in the Indian subcontinent which is still in use.[83] It was built by Malik Deenar, Persian companion of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, on the orders of the successor of Cheraman Perumal, the Chera King of modern-day Kerala.[84] Islam's spread in India mostly took place under the Delhi Sultanate (12061526) and the Mughal Empire (15261858), greatly aided by the mystic Sufi tradition.[85]

Hindu

Muslim

Christian

Sikh

Buddhist

Other

There are six religions in India which have been awarded "National minority" statusMuslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians (Parsis).[87][88]

The following is a breakdown of India's religious communities:

Note: When compared with 2001, India's population rose by 17.7% in 2011 with an average sex ratio of 943 and a literacy rate of 74.4%. The average work participation stood at 39.79%.

Religion in India (1947)[96][97]

others (0.6%)

India just after independence and partition in 1947 had over 330 million inhabitants.[98] According to statistics, just after the partition of the nation, India had an overwhelming Hindu majority of 85% with a significant minority of 9.1% of Muslims scattered throughout the nation, and other religious minorities such as the followers of Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and animist religions, together constituting 5.9% of the country's population.[99][100]

India had a population of 330 million in 1947.[102]

Hinduism is an ancient religion with the largest religious grouping in India, with around 966 million adherents as of 2011, composing 79.8% of the population.[89] Hinduism is diverse, with monotheism, henotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, monism, atheism, animism, agnosticism, and gnosticism being represented.[103][104][105][106][107] The term Hindu, originally a geographical description, derives from the Sanskrit, Sindhu, (the historical appellation for the Indus River), and refers to a person from the land of the river Sindhu.[108] Hindus following the traditional religion call it Sanatana Dharma (or "Eternal Way").[109] The adherents of Sanatana Dharma call themselves as "Sanatani", the original word for the adherents of Sanatana Dharma. Hindu reformist Sects such as the Arya samaj do not use the term Sanatani.

Islam is a monotheistic religion centered on the belief in one God and following the example of Muhammad; it is the largest minority religion in India. About 14.2% of the country's population or approx. 172.2 million people identify as adherents of Islam (2011 census).[86][110][111][112] Out of 172.2 million Muslims in India as per 2011 census, it was found that more than 100 million of them are from low caste converts specially Dalits.[113][114] The Islamic Invasion during Medieval Era has obtained the religion a significant population of adherents. The religion is regarded as "Minority religion" and the adherents are given "Special privileges".[citation needed][clarification needed] It makes India the country with the largest Muslim population outside Muslim-majority countries. Muslims are a majority in states Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep,[115] and live in high concentrations in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, and Kerala.[115][116] There has been no particular census conducted in India with regards to sects, but sources suggest the largest denomination is Sunni Islam[117] with a substantial minority of Shia Muslims and Ahmadiyya Muslims. Indian sources like Times of India and DNA reported the Indian Shiite population in mid-20052006 to be between 25% and 31% of entire Muslim population of India, which accounts them in numbers between 40 and 50 million.[118][119][117][120]

Christianity is a monotheistic religion centred on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in the New Testament. It is the third largest religion of India, making up 2.3% of the population. St. Thomas is credited with introduction of Christianity in India. He arrived on the Malabar Coast in 52 CE.[121][122][123] The tradition of origin among Saint Thomas Christians relates to the arrival of Saint Thomas, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus at the ancient seaport Muziris on the Kerala coast in 52 CE. The families Sankaramangalam, Pakalomattam, Kalli, and Kaliyankal were considered particularly preeminent, and historically the most aristocratic Syriac Christian families tended to claim descent from these families.

It is also possible for Aramaic-speaking Jews from Galilee to make a trip to Kerala in the 1st century. The Cochin Jews are known to have existed in Kerala around that time. The earliest known source connecting the apostle to India is the Acts of Thomas, likely written in the early 3rd century, perhaps in Edessa.

Marth Mariam Syro-Malabar Catholic Forane Church, Arakuzha was founded in 999

The text describes Thomas' adventures in bringing Christianity to India, a tradition later expanded upon in early Indian sources such as the "Thomma Parvam" ("Song of Thomas"). Generally he is described as arriving in or around Maliankara and founding Seven Churches and half churches, or Ezharapallikal: Kodungallur, Kollam, Niranam, Nilackal (Chayal), Kokkamangalam, Kottakkavu, Palayoor, Thiruvithamcode Arappalli and Aruvithura church (half church). A number of 3rd- and 4th-century Roman writers also mention Thomas' trip to India, including Ambrose of Milan, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, and Ephrem the Syrian, while Eusebius of Caesarea records that his teacher Pantaenus visited a Christian community in India in the 2nd century. There came into existence a Christian community who were mainly merchants.

Christianity expanded in the rest of India during the period of British colonial rule. Christians comprise the majority of natives of Nagaland and Mizoram as well as of Meghalaya and have significant populations in Manipur, Goa, Kerala and Mumbai.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion began in fifteenth-century Punjab with the teachings of Guru Nanak and nine successive Sikh gurus. As of 2011, there were 20.8 million Sikhs in India. Punjab is the spiritual home of Sikhs, and is the only state in India where Sikhs form a majority. There are also significant populations of Sikhs in neighboring Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and Haryana. These areas were historically a part of Greater Punjab. However, there is no data for specific number of Nanak followers (Nanakpanthis) in India, but they are believed to be in crores somewhere around 14 crores.[124][125][126] Karnail Singh Panjoli, member, Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, says that there are several communities within the term Nanakpanthis too. There are groups like Sikhligarh, Vanjaarey, Nirmaley, Lubaney, Johri, Satnamiye, Udaasiyas etc. who call themselves Nanakpanthis. They follow guru Nanak and Sri Guru Granth Sahib.[127][128]

Buddhism is an Indian, transtheistic religion and philosophy. Around 8.5 million Buddhists live in India, about 0.7% of the total population.[129] Buddhism as a religion is practised mainly in the foothills of the Himalayas and is a significant religion in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Darjeeling in West Bengal, and the Lahaul and Spiti districts of Himachal Pradesh. Besides, a significant number of Buddhists reside in Maharashtra. They are the Buddhists or Navayana Buddhists who, under the influence of B. R. Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in order to escape the casteist practices within Hinduism. Ambedkar is a crucial figure, along with Anagarika Dharmapala of Sri Lanka and Kripasaran Mahasthavira of Chittagong behind the revival of Buddhism in India in the 19th and 20th centuries. The escape of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzing Gyatso to India fleeing Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959 and the setting up of the Tibetan Government in Exile at Dharamshala in Mcleodganj in Himachal Pradesh has also accelerated the resurgence of Buddhism in India. The effective religion in Sikkim, which joined the Indian Union in 1975 (making it India's 22nd state) remains Vajrayana Buddhism, and Padmasambhava or Guru Ugyen is a revered presence there.

Jainism is a non-theistic Indian religion and philosophical system originating in Iron Age India. Jains compose 0.4% (around 4.45 million) of India's population, and are concentrated in the states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan.[115]

Also present in India, Judaism is a monotheistic religion from the Levant. There is today a very small community of Indian Jews. There were more Jews in India historically, including the Cochin Jews of Kerala, the Bene Israel of Maharashtra, and the Baghdadi Jews near Mumbai. Since Indian independence, two primarily proselyte Indian Jewish communities have developed in India: the Bnei Menashe of Mizoram and Manipur, and the Bene Ephraim, also called Telugu Jews. Of the approximately 95,000 Jews of Indian extraction, fewer than 20,000 remain in India. Some parts of India are especially popular with Israelis, swelling local Jewish populations seasonally.[citation needed]

As of the census of 2001, Parsis (followers of Zoroastrianism in India) represent approximately 0.006% of the total population of India,[130] with relatively high concentrations in and around the city of Mumbai. Parsis number around 61,000 in India.[131] There are several tribal religions in India, such as Donyi-Polo. Santhal is also one of the many tribal religions followed by the Santhal people who number around 4 million but only around 23,645 follow the religion.[citation needed]

It is difficult to establish the exact numbers of Bahs in India. The religion came to India from Iran in about 1850 and gained some converts from the Muslim population of India. The first Sikh and Hindu converts came by 1910, and in 1960 there were fewer than 1,000 Bahs in all of India. Beginning in 1961, large numbers from scheduled castes became Bahs, and by 1993 Bahs reported about 2.2 million members, though later sources have claimed 2 million, or "more than 1 million".

Around 2.9 million people in India did not state their religion in the 2001 census and were counted in the category, "religion not stated". They were 0.24% of India's population. Their number have significantly increased 4 times from 0.7 million in 2001 census at an average annual rate of 15%.[134] K. Veeramani, a Dravidar Kazhagam leader, said that he believed that the number of atheists in India was actually higher as many people don't reveal their atheism out of fear.[135]

According to the 2012 WIN-Gallup Global Index of Religion and Atheism report, 81% of Indians were religious, 13% were non-religious, 3% were convinced atheists, and 3% were unsure or did not respond.[136]

The preamble to the Constitution of India proclaims India a "sovereign socialist secular democratic republic". The word secular was inserted into the Preamble by the Forty-second Amendment Act of 1976. It mandates equal treatment and tolerance of all religions. India does not have an official state religion; it enshrines the right to practice, preach, and propagate any religion. No religious instruction is imparted in government-supported schools. In S. R. Bommai v. Union of India, the Supreme Court of India held that secularism was an integral tenet of the Constitution and that there was separation of state and religion.[137]

Freedom of religion is a fundamental right according to the Indian Constitution. The Constitution also suggests a uniform civil code for its citizens as a Directive Principle.[138] This has not been implemented until now as Directive Principles are Constitutionally unenforceable. The Supreme Court has further held that the enactment of a uniform civil code all at once may be counter-productive to the unity of the nation, and only a gradual progressive change should be brought about (Pannalal Bansilal v State of Andhra Pradesh, 1996).[139] In Maharishi Avadesh v Union of India (1994) the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking a writ of mandamus against the government to introduce a common civil code, and thus laid the responsibility of its introduction on the legislature.[140]

Major religious communities not based in India continue to be governed by their own personal laws. Whilst Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews have personal laws exclusive to themselves; Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs are governed by a single personal law known as Hindu personal law. Article 25 (2)(b) of the Constitution of India states that references to Hindus include "persons professing the Sikh, Jain, or Buddhist religion".[141] Furthermore, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 defines the legal status of Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs as legal Hindus but not "Hindus by religion".[142] Supreme Court in 2005 gave verdict that Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhist are part of broader Hindu fold, as they are Indic religions and interconnected to each other, though they are distinct religions.[143]

Religion plays a major role in the Indian way of life.[144] Rituals, worship, and other religious activities are very prominent in an individual's daily life; it is also a principal organizer of social life. The degree of religiosity varies amongst individuals; in recent decades, religious orthodoxy and observances have become less common in Indian society, particularly amongst young urban-dwellers.[citation needed]

The vast majority of Indians engage in religious rituals daily.[145] Most Hindus observe religious rituals at home.[146] Observation of rituals vary greatly amongst regions, villages, and individuals. Devout Hindus perform daily chores such as worshiping puja, fire sacrifice called Yajna[citation needed] at the dawn after bathing (usually at a family shrine, and typically includes lighting a lamp and offering foods before the images of deities), recitation from religious scripts like Vedas, and Puranas singing hymns in praise of gods.[146]

A notable feature in religious ritual is the division between purity and pollution. Religious acts presuppose some degree of impurity, or defilement for the practitioner, which must be overcome or neutralized, before or during ritual procedures. Purification, usually with water, is thus a typical feature of most religious action.[146] Other characteristics include a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice and concept of merit, gained through the performance of charity or good works, that will accumulate over time and reduce sufferings in the next world.[146]

Muslims offer five daily prayers at specific times of the day, indicated by adhan (call to prayer) from the local mosques. Before offering prayers, they must ritually clean themselves by performing wudu, which involves washing parts of the body that are generally exposed to dirt or dust. A recent study by the Sachar Committee found that 34% of Muslim children study in madrasas (Islamic schools).[147]

Dietary habits in India are significantly influenced by religion. According to a survey, 31% of Indian population claims to be vegetarian,and mainly practice lacto-vegetarianism.[148][149][150] Vegetarianism is less common among Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Bah's, Parsis, and Jews.Despite the majority of population having no objection to meat consumption, globally India has the lowest meat consumption per capita.[151] Non-vegetarian Indians mostly prefer poultry, fish, other seafood, goat, and sheep as their sources of meat.[152] Hinduism forbids beef whilst islam forbids pork. The smaller populations of christians, tribals, and some dalit communities have no objection to eating either beef or pork.[153] Jainism requires followers, from all its sects and traditions, to be vegetarian. Furthermore, the religion also forbids Jains from eating any vegetable that involves digging it from the ground. This rule, therefore, excludes all Root vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, ginger, carrots, garlic, radishes, etc. from a Jain diet.

Occasions like birth, marriage, and death involve what are often elaborate sets of religious customs. In Hinduism, major life-cycle rituals include annaprashan (a baby's first intake of solid food), upanayanam ("sacred thread ceremony" undergone by boys belonging to some upper-castes such as Brahmin and Kshatriya only), and shraadh (paying homage to a deceased individual).[154][155] According to the findings of a 1995 national research paper, for most people in India, a betrothal of a young couple placing an expectation upon an exact date and time of a future wedding was a matter decided by the parents in consultation with astrologers.[154] A significant reduction in the proportion of arranged marriages has however taken place since 1995, reflecting an incremental change.[citation needed]

Muslims practice a series of life-cycle rituals that differ from those of Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists.[156] Several rituals mark the first days of lifeincluding the whispering call to prayer, first bath, and shaving of the head. Religious instruction begins early. Male circumcision usually takes place after birth; in some families, it may be delayed until after the onset of puberty.[156]

Marriage requires a payment by the husband to the wife, called Meher, and the solemnization of a marital contract in a social gathering.[156] After the burial of the dead, friends and relatives gather to console the bereaved, read and recite the Quran, and pray for the soul of the deceased.[156] Indian Islam is distinguished by the emphasis it places on shrines commemorating great Sufi saints.[156]

Many Hindu families have their own family patron deity or the kuladevata. This deity is common to a lineage or a clan of several families who are connected to each other through a common ancestor. The Khandoba of Jejuri is an example of a Kuladevata of some Maharashtrian families; he is a common Kuladevata to several castes ranging from Brahmins to Dalits. The practice of worshipping local or territorial deities as Kuladevata began in the period of the Yadava dynasty. Other family deities of the people of Maharashtra are Bhavani of Tuljapur, Mahalaxmi of Kolhapur, Renuka of Mahur, and Balaji of Tirupati.

India hosts numerous pilgrimage sites belonging to many religions. Hindus worldwide recognise several Indian holy cities, including Allahabad (officially known as Prayagraj), Haridwar, Varanasi, Ujjain, Rameshwaram, and Vrindavan. Notable temple cities include Puri, which hosts a major Jagannath temple and Rath Yatra celebration; Tirumala - Tirupati, home to the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple; and Katra, home to the Vaishno Devi temple.

Badrinath, Puri, Dwarka, and Rameswaram compose the main pilgrimage circuit of Char Dham (four abodes) hosting the four holiest Hindu temples: Badrinath Temple, Jagannath Temple, Dwarkadheesh Temple and Ramanathaswamy Temple, respectively. The Himalayan towns of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri compose the smaller Chota Char Dham (mini four abodes) pilgrimage circuit. The Kumbh Mela (the "pitcher festival") is one of the holiest of Hindu pilgrimages that is held every four years; the location is rotated amongst Allahabad (Prayagraj), Haridwar, Nashik, and Ujjain. The Thalaimaippathi at Swamithope is the leading pilgrim center for the Ayyavazhis.

Seven of the Eight Great Places of Buddhism are in India. Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, and Kushinagar are the places where important events in the life of Gautama Buddha took place. Sanchi hosts a Buddhist stupa erected by the emperor Ashoka. Many Buddhist monasteries dot the Himalayan foothills of India, where Buddhism remains a major presence. These include the Rumtek Monastery, Enchey Monastery, and Pemayangtse Monastery in Sikkim, the Tawang Monastery in Arunachal Pradesh, the Kye Monastery and Tabo Monastery in Spiti, the Ghum Monastery in Darjeeling, and Durpin Dara Monastery in Kalimpong, the Thikse Monastery in Leh, the Namgyal Monastery in Dharamshala, among many others.

For Sunni Muslims, the Dargah Shareef of Khwaza Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer is a major pilgrimage site.[162] Other Islamic pilgrimages include those to the Tomb of Sheikh Salim Chishti in Fatehpur Sikri, Jama Masjid in Delhi, and to Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai. Dilwara Temples in Mount Abu, Palitana, Pavapuri, Girnar, and Shravanabelagola are notable pilgrimage sites (tirtha) in Jainism.

The Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar is the most sacred gurdwara of Sikhism.[163]

Relatively new pilgrimage sites include the samadhi of Meher Baba in Meherabad, which is visited by his followers from around the world[164] and the Saibaba temple in Shirdi.[165]

Hinduism contains many different sub-cultures just like most other religions. The major aspects outlined above hold true for the majority of the Hindu population, but not all. Just as each state is home to an individual language, Hinduism harbors various sub-cultures whose traditions may or may not be shared by other Indians. A sect from Gujarat called the Prajapatis for example, holds water as the sacred ornament to every meal. Before and after a meal, an individual is expected to pour water in the palms of their right hand and sip the water three times.[166] This is often seen as a purification gesture: food is regarded as being holy and every individual must purify themselves before touching their food.

Other minor sects in India carry no specific name, but they are uniquely identified by the last names of each family. This convention is used more frequently in South India than in North India. For example, a relatively prominent sect in southern India prohibits making important decisions, commencing new tasks, and doing other intellectually or spiritually engaged actions after sunset. Historians believe that this tradition was derived from the concept of Rahukaalam, in which Hindus believe that a specific period of the day is inauspicious. Stringent family beliefs are thought to have led to the development of a more constrained religious hierarchy.[167] Over time, this belief was extended to discourage taking major actions and even staying awake for long periods after sunset. Examples of families which follow this tradition include Gudivada, Padalapalli, Pantham, and Kashyap.[166]

Religiosity among Indians (2012 Survey)[136]

Not stated (3%)

India has a population of 123 crore per a 2012 demographic survey by Indian government.[168] According to the 2012 WIN-Gallup Global Index of Religion and Atheism report, 81% of Indians were religious, 13% were non-religious, 3% were convinced atheists, and 3% were unsure or did not respond.[136]

Cambridge University Press in 2004 demographic study, have found that there are 102.87 million atheists and agnostics living in India, thus constituting 9.1% of the total population, out of total 1.1296 billion people respectively.[169][170]

Religious politics, particularly that expressed by the Hindutva movement, has strongly influenced Indian politics in the last quarter of the 20th century. Many of the elements underlying India's casteism and communalism originated during the colonial era, when the colonial government frequently politicized religion in an attempt to stave off increasing nationalistic sentiments in India.[171] The Indian Councils Act 1909 (widely known as the Morley-Minto Reforms Act), which established separate Hindu and Muslim electorates for the Imperial Legislature and provincial councils, was particularly divisive, increasing tensions between the two communities.[172]

Due to the high degree of oppression faced by the lower castes, the Constitution of India included provisions for affirmative action for certain sections of Indian society. Many states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced laws that made conversion more difficult; they assert that such conversions are often forced or allured.[173] The BJP, a national political party, also gained widespread media attention after its leaders associated themselves with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and other prominent religious issues.[174]

A well-known accusation that Indian political parties make for their rivals is that they play vote bank politics, meaning give political support to issues for the sole purpose of gaining the votes of members of a particular community. Both the Congress Party and the BJP have been accused of exploiting the people by indulging in vote bank politics. The Shah Bano case, a divorce lawsuit, generated much controversy when the Congress was accused of appeasing the Muslim orthodoxy by bringing in a parliamentary amendment to negate the Supreme Court's decision. After the 2002 Gujarat violence, there were allegations of political parties indulging in vote bank politics.[175]

Caste-based politics is also important in India; caste-based discrimination and the reservation system continue to be major issues that are hotly debated.[176][177]

Political parties have been accused of using their political power to manipulate educational content in a revisionist manner. The BJP-led NDA government was accused of teaching history from a Hindutva outlook in public schools by the opposition parties.[178] The next government, formed by the UPA and led by the Congress Party, pledged to undo this and reinstate the secular form of thought in the Indian educational system.[179] Hindu groups allege that the UPA promote Marxist theories in school curricula.[180][181]

Communalism has played a key role in shaping the religious history of modern India. After Indian independence in 1947, India was partitioned along religious lines into two statesthe Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan (comprising what is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh) and the Hindu-majority Union of India (later the Republic of India). The partition led to rioting amongst Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in Punjab, Bengal, Delhi, and other parts of India; 500,000 died as a result of the violence. The twelve million refugees that moved between the newly founded nations of India and Pakistan composed one of the largest mass migrations in modern history.[][182] Since its independence, India has periodically witnessed large-scale violence sparked by underlying tensions between sections of its majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities. The Republic of India is secular; the Indian government recognizes no official religion.

Communal conflicts have periodically plagued India since it became independent in 1947.[185] The roots of such strife lie largely in the underlying tensions between sections of its majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities, which emerged under the Raj and during the bloody Partition of India. Such conflict also stems from the competing ideologies of Hindu nationalism versus Islamic fundamentalism; both are prevalent in parts of the Hindu and Muslim populations. This issue has plagued India since before independence. The lack of education among the masses and the ease with which corrupt politicians can take advantage of the same has been attributed as the major reason for religious conflicts in India. Even though Freedom of religion is an integral part of the India constitution, the inability to hold a communal mob accountable for its collectove actions has limited the exercise of religious freedom in India.

Alongside other major Indian independence leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and his Shanti sainiks ("peace soldiers") worked to quell early outbreaks of religious conflict in Bengal, including riots in Calcutta (now in West Bengal) and Noakhali District (in modern-day Bangladesh) that accompanied Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Direct Action Day, which was launched on 16 August 1946. These conflicts, waged largely with rocks and knives and accompanied by widespread looting and arson, were crude affairs. Explosives and firearms, which are rarely found in India, were far less likely to be used.[186]

Major post-independence communal conflicts include the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots, which followed Operation Blue Star by the Indian Army; heavy artillery, tanks, and helicopters were employed against the Sikh partisans inside the Harmandir Sahib, causing heavy damage to Sikhism's holiest Gurdwara. According to the Indian government estimates, the assault caused the deaths of up to 100 soldiers, 250 militants, and hundreds of civilians.[187]

This triggered Indira Gandhi's assassination by her outraged Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984, which set off a four-day period during which Sikhs were massacred; The Government of India reported 2,700 Sikh deaths however human rights organizations and newspapers report the death toll to be 10,00017,000. In the aftermath of the riot, the Government of India reported 20,000 had fled the city, however the PUCL reported "at least" 50,000 displaced persons.[188]

The most affected regions were neighbourhoods in Delhi. Human rights organisations and the newspapers believe the massacre was organised.[189] The collusion of political officials in the massacres and the failure to prosecute any killers alienated normal Sikhs and increased support for the Khalistan movement. The Akal Takht, the governing religious body of Sikhism, considers the killings to be a genocide.[190]

Other incidents include the 1992 Bombay riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Mosque as a result of the Ayodhya debate, and the 2002 Gujarat violence where 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed and which was preceded by the Godhra Train Burning.[191] Lesser incidents plague many towns and villages; the representative was the killing of five people in Mau, Uttar Pradesh during Hindu-Muslim rioting, which was triggered by the proposed celebration of a Hindu festival.[191]

Many Right Wing Hindu organisations have demanded that India should be declared a "Hindu nation" by constitution.[192][193][194] As far citizens concerned, only 3/10th Indian hindus are in the favour of making India as Hindu Rashtra.[195]

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Religion in India - Wikipedia

Pantheism | Definition, Beliefs, History, & Facts | Britannica

Summary

pantheism, the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being.

Both pantheism and panentheism are terms of recent origin, coined to describe certain views of the relationship between God and the world that are different from that of traditional theism. As reflected in the prefix pan- (Greek pas, all), both of the terms stress the all-embracing inclusiveness of God, as compared with his separateness as emphasized in many versions of theism. On the other hand, pantheism and panentheism, since they stress the theme of immanencei.e., of the indwelling presence of Godare themselves versions of theism conceived in its broadest meaning. Pantheism stresses the identity between God and the world, panentheism (Greek en, in) that the world is included in God but that God is more than the world.

The adjective pantheist was introduced by the Irish Deist John Toland in the book Socinianism Truly Stated (1705). The noun pantheism was first used in 1709 by one of Tolands opponents. The term panentheism appeared much later, in 1828. Although the terms are recent, they have been applied retrospectively to alternative views of the divine being as found in the entire philosophical traditions of both East and West.

Pantheism and panentheism can be explored by means of a three-way comparison with traditional or classical theism viewed from eight different standpointsi.e., from those of immanence or transcendence; of monism, dualism, or pluralism; of time or eternity; of the world as sentient or insentient; of God as absolute or relative; of the world as real or illusory; of freedom or determinism; and of sacramentalism or secularism.

The poetic sense of the divine within and around human beings, which is widely expressed in religious life, is frequently treated in literature. It is present in the Platonic Romanticism of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Expressions of the divine as intimate rather than as alien, as indwelling and near dwelling rather than remote, characterize pantheism and panentheism as contrasted with classical theism. Such immanence encourages the human sense of individual participation in the divine life without the necessity of mediation by any institution. On the other hand, it may also encourage a formless enthusiasm, without the moderating influence of institutional forms. In addition, some theorists have seen an unseemliness about a point of view that allows the divine to be easily confronted and appropriated. Classical theism has, in consequence, held to the transcendence of God, his existence over and beyond the universe. Recognizing, however, that if the separation between God and the world becomes too extreme, humanity risks the loss of communication with the divine, panentheismunlike pantheism, which holds to the divine immanencemaintains that the divine can be both transcendent and immanent at the same time.

Philosophies are monistic if they show a strong sense of the unity of the world, dualistic if they stress its twoness, and pluralistic if they stress its manyness. Pantheism is typically monistic, finding in the worlds unity a sense of the divine, sometimes related to the mystical intuition of personal union with God; classical theism is dualistic in conceiving God as separated from the world and mind from body; and panentheism is typically monistic in holding to the unity of God and the world, dualistic in urging the separateness of Gods essence from the world, and pluralistic in taking seriously the multiplicity of the kinds of beings and events making up the world. One form of pantheism, present in the early stages of Greek philosophy, held that the divine is one of the elements in the world whose function is to animate the other elements that constitute the world. This point of view, called Hylozoistic (Greek hyl, matter, and z, life) pantheism, is not monistic, as are most other forms of pantheism, but pluralistic.

Most, but not all, forms of pantheism understand the eternal God to be in intimate juxtaposition with the world, thus minimizing time or making it illusory. Classical theism holds that eternity is in God and time is in the world but believes that, since Gods eternity includes all of time, the temporal process now going on in the world has already been completed in God. Panentheism, on the other hand, espouses a temporaleternal God who stands in juxtaposition with a temporal world; thus, in panentheism, the temporality of the world is not cancelled out, and time retains its reality.

Every philosophy must take a stand somewhere on a spectrum running from a concept of things as unfeeling matter to one of things as psychic or sentient. Materialism holds to the former extreme, and Panpsychism to the latter. Panpsychism offers a vision of reality in which to exist is to be in some measure sentient and to sustain social relations with other entities. Dualism, holding that reality consists of two fundamentally different kinds of entity, stands again between two extremes. A few of the simpler forms of pantheism support materialism. Panentheism and most forms of pantheism, on the other hand, tend toward Panpsychism. But there are differences of degree, and though classical theism tends toward dualism, even there the insentient often has a tinge of panpsychism.

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Pantheism | Definition, Beliefs, History, & Facts | Britannica

Ethics (Spinoza book) – Wikipedia

Philosophical treatise written by Spinoza

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Latin: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata), usually known as the Ethics, is a philosophical treatise written in Latin by Baruch Spinoza (Benedictus de Spinoza). It was written between 1661 and 1675[1] and was first published posthumously in 1677.

The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it",[2] "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death",[3] and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal."[4]

The first part of the book addresses the relationship between God and the universe. Spinoza was engaging with a tradition that held: God exists outside of the universe; God created the universe for a reason; and God could have created a different universe according to his will. Spinoza denies each point. According to Spinoza, God is the natural world. Spinoza concludes the following: God is the substance comprising the universe, with God existing in itself, not somehow outside of the universe; and the universe exists as it does from necessity, not because of a divine theological reason or will.

Spinoza argues through propositions. He holds their conclusion is merely the necessary logical conclusion from combining the provided Definitions and Axioms. He starts with the proposition that "there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute."[5] He follows this by arguing that objects and events must not merely be caused if they occur, but be prevented if they do not. By a logical contradiction, if something is non-contradictory, there is no reason that it should not exist. Spinoza builds from these starting ideas. If substance exists it must be infinite,[6] because if not infinite another finite substance would have to exist to take up the remaining parts of its finite attributes, something which is impossible according to an earlier proposition. Spinoza then uses the Ontological Argument as justification for the existence of God and argues that God (which should be read as "nature", rather than traditional deity) must possess all attributes infinitely. Since no two things can share attributes, "besides God no substance can be granted or conceived."[7]

As with many of Spinoza's claims, what this means is a matter of dispute. Spinoza claims that the things that make up the universe, including human beings, are God's "modes". This means that everything is, in some sense, dependent upon God. The nature of this dependence is disputed. Some scholars say that the modes are properties of God in the traditional sense. Others say that modes are effects of God. Either way, the modes are also logically dependent on God's essence, in this sense: everything that happens follows from the nature of God, just like how it follows from the nature of a triangle that its angles are equal to two right angles. Since God had to exist with the nature he has, nothing that has happened could have been avoided, and if God has fixed a particular fate for a particular mode, there is no escaping it. As Spinoza puts it, "A thing which has been determined by God to produce an effect cannot render itself undetermined."

The second part focuses on the human mind and body. Spinoza attacks several Cartesian positions: (1) that the mind and body are distinct substances that can affect one another; (2) that we know our minds better than we know our bodies; (3) that our senses may be trusted; (4) that despite being created by God we can make mistakes, namely, when we affirm, of our own free will, an idea that is not clear and distinct. Spinoza denies each of Descartes's points. Regarding (1), Spinoza argues that the mind and the body are a single thing that is being thought of in two different ways. The whole of nature can be fully described in terms of thoughts or in terms of bodies. However, we cannot mix these two ways of describing things, as Descartes does, and say that the mind affects the body or vice versa. Moreover, the mind's self-knowledge is not fundamental: it cannot know its own thoughts better than it knows the ways in which its body is acted upon by other bodies.

Further, there is no difference between contemplating an idea and thinking that it is true, and there is no freedom of the will at all. Sensory perception, which Spinoza calls "knowledge of the first kind", is entirely inaccurate, since it reflects how our own bodies work more than how things really are. We can also have a kind of accurate knowledge called "knowledge of the second kind", or "reason". This encompasses knowledge of the features common to all things, and includes principles of physics and geometry. We can also have "knowledge of the third kind", or "intuitive knowledge". This is a sort of knowledge that, somehow, relates particular things to the nature of God.

In the third part of the Ethics, Spinoza argues that all things, including human beings, strive to persevere their perfection of power in being unaffected.[8] Spinoza states that virtue is equal to power (i.e., self-control).[9]

Spinoza explains how this desire ("conatus") underlies the movement and complexity of our emotions and passions (i.e., joy and sadness that are building blocks for all other emotions).[10] Our mind is in certain cases active, and in certain cases passive. In so far as it has adequate ideas it is necessarily active, and in so far as it has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive.

(+) refers to pleasure [...] (-) refers to pain [...] (f) and (i) refer respectively, to feeling and imagining [...]

Proposition 19 would translate:

He who imagines that the loved object (+) is being destroyed (-) feels pain (-). If the loved object (+) is preserved (+), he will feel pleasure (+). Symbolically, this reduces to two equations:

1) [(+) (i)] (-) = [(f) (-)];

2) [(+) (i)] (+) = [(f) (+)].[11]

Ian S. Miller

The fourth part analyzes human passions, which Spinoza sees as aspects of the mind that direct us outwards to seek what gives pleasure and shun what gives pain. The "bondage" he refers to is domination by these passions or "affects" as he calls them. Spinoza considers how the affects, ungoverned, can torment people and make it impossible for mankind to live in harmony with one another.

The fifth part argues that reason can govern the affects in the pursuit of virtue, which for Spinoza is self-preservation: only with the aid of reason can humans distinguish the passions that truly aid virtue from those that are ultimately harmful. By reason, we can see things as they truly are, sub specie aeternitatis, "under the aspect of eternity," and because Spinoza treats God and nature as indistinguishable, by knowing things as they are we improve our knowledge of God. Seeing that all things are determined by nature to be as they are, we can achieve the rational tranquility that best promotes our happiness, and liberate ourselves from being driven by our passions.

According to Spinoza, God is Nature and Nature is God (Deus sive Natura). This is his pantheism. In his previous book, Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza discussed the inconsistencies that result when God is assumed to have human characteristics. In the third chapter of that book, he stated that the word "God" means the same as the word "Nature". He wrote: "Whether we say... that all things happen according to the laws of nature, or are ordered by the decree and direction of God, we say the same thing." He later qualified this statement in his letter to Oldenburg[12] by abjuring materialism.[13] Nature, to Spinoza, is a metaphysical substance, not physical matter.[14] In this posthumously published book Ethics, he equated God with nature by writing "God or Nature" four times.[15] "For Spinoza, God or Naturebeing one and the same thingis the whole, infinite, eternal, necessarily existing, active system of the universe within which absolutely everything exists. This is the fundamental principle of the Ethics...."[16]

Spinoza holds that everything that exists is part of nature, and everything in nature follows the same basic laws. In this perspective, human beings are part of nature, and hence they can be explained and understood in the same way as everything else in nature. This aspect of Spinoza's philosophy his naturalism was radical for its time, and perhaps even for today. In the preface to Part III of Ethics (relating to emotions), he writes:

Most writers on the emotions and on human conduct seem to be treating rather of matters outside nature than of natural phenomena following nature's general laws. They appear to conceive man to be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom: for they believe that he disturbs rather than follows nature's order, that he has absolute control over his actions, and that he is determined solely by himself. However, my argument is this. Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action; that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules.

Therefore, Spinoza affirms that the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, "follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything else". Humans are not different in kind from the rest of the natural world; they are part of it.[17]

Spinoza's naturalism can be seen as deriving from his firm commitment to the principle of sufficient reason (psr), which is the thesis that everything has an explanation. He articulates the psr in a strong fashion, as he applies it not only to everything that is, but also to everything that is not:

Of everything whatsoever a cause or reason must be assigned, either for its existence, or for its non-existence e.g. if a triangle exists, a reason or cause must be granted for its existence; if, on the contrary, it does not exist, a cause must also be granted, which prevents it from existing, or annuls its existence.

And to continue with Spinoza's triangle example, here is one claim he makes about God:

From God's supreme power, or infinite nature, an infinite number of things that is, all things have necessarily flowed forth in an infinite number of ways, or always flow from the same necessity; in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows from eternity and for eternity, that its three interior angles are equal to two right angles.

Spinoza rejected the idea of an external Creator suddenly, and apparently capriciously, creating the world at one particular time rather than another, and creating it out of nothing. The solution appeared to him more perplexing than the problem, and rather unscientific in spirit as involving a break in continuity. He preferred to think of the entire system of reality as its own ground. This view was simpler; it avoided the impossible conception of creation out of nothing; and it was religiously more satisfying by bringing God and man into closer relationship. Instead of Nature, on the one hand, and a supernatural God, on the other, he posited one world of reality, at once Nature and God, and leaving no room for the supernatural. This so-called naturalism of Spinoza is only distorted if one starts with a crude materialistic idea of Nature and supposes that Spinoza degraded God. The truth is that he raised Nature to the rank of God by conceiving Nature as the fulness of reality, as the One and All. He rejected the specious simplicity obtainable by denying the reality of Matter, or of Mind, or of God. The cosmic system comprehends them all. In fact, God and Nature become identical when each is conceived as the Perfect Self-Existent. This constitutes Spinoza's Pantheism.[17][18]

According to Spinoza, God has "attributes". One attribute is 'extension', another attribute is 'thought', and there are infinitely many such attributes. Since Spinoza holds that to exist is to act, some readers take 'extension' to refer to an activity characteristic of bodies (for example, the active process of taking up space, exercising physical power, or resisting a change of place or shape). They take 'thought' to refer to the activity that is characteristic of minds, namely thinking, the exercise of mental power. Each attribute has modes. All bodies are modes of extension, and all ideas are modes of thought.[18]

Spinoza's ideas relating to the character and structure of reality are expressed by him in terms of substance, attributes, and modes. These terms are very old and familiar, but not in the sense in which Spinoza employs them. To understand Spinoza, it is necessary to lay aside all preconceptions[19] about them, and follow Spinoza closely.[18][20] Spinoza found it impossible to understand the finite, dependent, transient objects and events of experience without assuming some reality not dependent on anything else but self-existent, not produced by anything else but eternal, not restricted or limited by anything else but infinite. Such an uncaused, self-sustaining reality he called substance. So, for instance, he could not understand the reality of material objects and physical events without assuming the reality of a self-existing, infinite and eternal physical force which expresses itself in all the movements and changes which occur, as we say, in space.

This physical force he called extension, and described it, at first, as a substance, in the sense just explained. Similarly, he could not understand the various dependent, transient mental experiences with which we are familiar without assuming the reality of a self-existing, infinite and eternal consciousness, mental force, or mind-energy, which expresses itself in all these finite experiences of perceiving and understanding, of feeling and striving. This consciousness or mind-energy he called thought, and described it also, at first, as a substance.[21] Each of these "substances" he regarded as infinite of its kind (that is, as exhaustive of all the events of its own kind), and as irreducible to the other, or any other, substance. But in view of the intimate way in which Extension and Thought express themselves conjointly in the life of man, Spinoza considered it necessary to conceive of Extension and Thought not as detached realities, but as constituting one organic whole or system. And in order to express this idea, he then described Extension and Thought as attributes, reserving the term Substance for the system which they constitute between them. This change of description was not intended to deny that Extension and Thought are substances in the sense of being self-existent, etc. It was only intended to express their coherence in one system. The system of course would be more than any one attribute. For each attribute is only infinite of its kind; the system of all attributes is absolutely infinite, that is, exhausts the whole of reality. Spinoza, accordingly, now restricted the term "substance" to the complete system, though he occasionally continued to use the phrase "substance or attribute", or described Extension as a substance.[21]

As commonly used, especially since the time of Locke, the term substance is contrasted with its attributes or qualities as their substratum or bearer. But this meaning must not be read into Spinoza. For Spinoza, Substance is not the support or bearer of the Attributes, but the system of Attributes he actually uses the expression "Substance or the Attributes."[18] If there is any difference at all between "Substance" and "the Attributes", as Spinoza uses these terms, it is only the difference between the Attributes conceived as an organic system and the Attributes conceived (but not by Spinoza) as a mere sum of detached forces. Something is still necessary to complete the account of Spinoza's conception of Substance. So far only the two Attributes have been considered, namely, Extension and Thought. Spinoza, however, realised that there may be other Attributes, unknown to man. If so, they are part of the one Substance or cosmic system. And using the term "infinite" in the sense of "complete" or "exhaustive", he ascribed to Substance an infinity of Attributes, that is, all the attributes there are, whether known to man or not.[18][21]

Now reality, for Spinoza, is activity. Substance is incessantly active, each Attribute exercising its kind of energy in all possible ways. Thus the various objects and events of the material world come into being as modes (modifications or states) of the attribute Extension; and the various minds and mental experiences come into being as modes of the attribute Thought (or Consciousness). These modes are not external creations of the Attributes, but immanent results they are not "thrown off" by the Attributes, but are states (or modifications) of them, as air-waves are states of the air. Each Attribute, however, expresses itself in its finite modes not immediately (or directly) but mediately (or indirectly), at least in the sense to be explained now. Galilean physics tended to regard the whole world of physical phenomena as the result of differences of motion or momentum. And, though erroneously conceived, the Cartesian conception of a constant quantity of motion in the world led Spinoza to conceive of all physical phenomena as so many varying expressions of that store of motion (or motion and rest).

Spinoza might, of course, have identified Extension with energy of motion. But, with his usual caution, he appears to have suspected that motion may be only one of several types of physical energy. So he described motion simply as a mode of Extension, but as an infinite mode (because complete or exhaustive of all finite modes of motion) and as an immediate mode (as a direct expression of Extension). Again, the physical world (or "the face of the world as a whole", as Spinoza calls it)[21] retains a certain sameness in spite of the innumerable changes in detail that are going on. Accordingly, Spinoza described also the physical world as a whole as an infinite mode of extension ("infinite" because exhaustive of all facts and events that can be reduced to motion), but as a mediate (or indirect) mode, because he regarded it as the outcome of the conservation of motion (itself a mode, though an immediate mode). The physical things and events of ordinary experience are finite modes. In essence each of them is part of the Attribute Extension, which is active in each of them. But the finiteness of each of them is due to the fact that it is restrained or hedged in, so to say, by other finite modes. This limitation or determination is negation in the sense that each finite mode is not the whole attribute Extension; it is not the other finite modes. But each mode is positively real and ultimate as part of the Attribute.[18][21]

In the same kind of way the Attribute Thought exercises its activity in various mental processes, and in such systems of mental process as are called minds or souls. But in this case, as in the case of Extension, Spinoza conceives of the finite modes of Thought as mediated by infinite modes. The immediate infinite mode of Thought he describes as "the idea of God"; the mediate infinite mode he calls "the infinite idea" or "the idea of all things". The other Attributes (if any) must be conceived in an analogous manner. And the whole Universe or Substance is conceived as one dynamic system of which the various Attributes are the several world-lines along which it expresses itself in all the infinite variety of events.[18][22]

Given the persistent misinterpretation of Spinozism it is worth emphasizing the dynamic character of reality as Spinoza conceived it. The cosmic system is certainly a logical or rational system, according to Spinoza, for Thought is a constitutive part of it; but it is not merely a logical system it is dynamic as well as logical. His frequent use of geometrical illustrations affords no evidence at all in support of a purely logico-mathematical interpretation of his philosophy; for Spinoza regarded geometrical figures, not in a Platonic or static manner, but as things traced out by moving particles or lines, etc., that is, dynamically.[21][23]

Without intelligence there is not rational life: and things are only good, in so far as they aid man in his enjoyment of the intellectual life, which is defined by intelligence. Contrariwise, whatsoever things hinder man's perfecting of his reason, and capability to enjoy the rational life, are alone called evil.

For Spinoza, reality means activity, and the reality of anything expresses itself in a tendency to self-preservation to exist is to persist. In the lowest kinds of things, in so-called inanimate matter, this tendency shows itself as a "will to live". Regarded physiologically the effort is called appetite; when we are conscious of it, it is called desire. The moral categories, good and evil, are intimately connected with desire, though not in the way commonly supposed. Man does not desire a thing because he thinks it is good, or shun it because he considers it bad; rather he considers anything good if he desires it, and regards it as bad if he has an aversion for it. Now whatever is felt to heighten vital activity gives pleasure; whatever is felt to lower such activity causes pain. Pleasure coupled with a consciousness of its external cause is called love, and pain coupled with a consciousness of its external cause is called hate "love" and "hate" being used in the wide sense of "like" and "dislike". All human feelings are derived from pleasure, pain and desire. Their great variety is due to the differences in the kinds of external objects which give rise to them, and to the differences in the inner conditions of the individual experiencing them.[18]

Spinoza gives a detailed analysis of the whole gamut of human feelings, and his account is one of the classics of psychology.[24] For the present purpose the most important distinction is that between "active" feelings and "passive" feelings (or "passions"). Man, according to Spinoza, is active or free in so far as any experience is the outcome solely of his own nature; he is passive, or a bondsman, in so far as any experience is due to other causes besides his own nature. The active feelings are all of them forms of self-realisation, of heightened activity, of strength of mind, and are therefore always pleasurable. It is the passive feelings (or "passions") which are responsible for all the ills of life, for they are induced largely by things outside us and frequently cause that lowered vitality which means pain. Spinoza next links up his ethics with his theory of knowledge, and correlates the moral progress of man with his intellectual progress. At the lowest stage of knowledge, that of "opinion", man is under the dominant influence of things outside himself, and so is in the bondage of the passions. At the next stage, the stage of "reason", the characteristic feature of the human mind, its intelligence, asserts itself, and helps to emancipate him from his bondage to the senses and external allurements. The insight gained into the nature of the passions helps to free man from their domination. A better understanding of his own place in the cosmic system and of the place of all the objects of his likes and dislikes, and his insight into the necessity which rules all things, tend to cure him of his resentments, regrets and disappointments. He grows reconciled to things, and wins peace of mind. In this way reason teaches acquiescence in the universal order, and elevates the mind above the turmoil of passion. At the highest stage of knowledge, that of "intuitive knowledge", the mind apprehends all things as expressions of the eternal cosmos. It sees all things in God, and God in all things. It feels itself as part of the eternal order, identifying its thoughts with cosmic thought and its interests with cosmic interests. Thereby it becomes eternal as one of the eternal ideas in which the Attribute Thought expresses itself, and attains to that "blessedness" which "is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself", that is, the perfect joy which characterises perfect self-activity. This is not an easy or a common achievement. "But", says Spinoza, "everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare."[18][25][26]

Shortly after his death in 1677, Spinoza's works were placed on the Catholic Church's Index of Banned Books. Condemnations soon appeared, such as Aubert de Vers's L'impie convaincu (1685). According to its subtitle, in this work "the foundations of [Spinoza's] atheism are refuted". In June 1678 just over a year after Spinoza's deaththe States of Holland banned his entire works, since they contain very many profane, blasphemous and atheistic propositions. The prohibition included the owning, reading, distribution, copying, and restating of Spinoza's books, and even the reworking of his fundamental ideas.[27]

For the next hundred years, if European philosophers read this so-called heretic, they did so almost entirely in secret. How much forbidden Spinozism they were sneaking into their diets remains a subject of continual intrigue. Locke, Hume, Leibniz and Kant all stand accused by later scholars of indulging in periods of closeted Spinozism.[28] At the close of the 18th century, a controversy centering on the Ethics scandalized the German philosophy scene.

The first known translation of the Ethics into English was completed in 1856 by the novelist George Eliot, though not published until much later. The book next appeared in English in 1883, by the hand of the novelist Hale White. Spinoza rose clearly into view for anglophone metaphysicians in the late nineteenth century, during the British craze for Hegel. In his admiration for Spinoza, Hegel was joined in this period by his countrymen Schelling, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, the ghost of Spinoza continued to show itself, for example in the writings of Russell, Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Deleuze. Among writers of fiction and poetry, the influential thinkers inspired by Spinoza include Coleridge, George Eliot, Melville, Borges, and Malamud.

The first published Dutch translations were by the poet Herman Gorter (1895)[29] and by Willem Meyer (1896).[30]

Spinoza's contemporary, Simon de Vries, raised the objection that Spinoza fails to prove that substances may possess multiple attributes, but that if substances have only a single attribute, "where there are two different attributes, there are also different substances".[31] This is a serious weakness in Spinoza's logic, which has yet to be conclusively resolved. Some have attempted to resolve this conflict, such as Linda Trompetter, who writes that "attributes are singly essential properties, which together constitute the one essence of a substance",[32] but this interpretation is not universal, and Spinoza did not clarify the issue in his response to de Vries.[33] On the other hand, Stanley Martens states that "an attribute of a substance is that substance; it is that substance insofar as it has a certain nature"[34] in an analysis of Spinoza's ideas of attributes.

Schopenhauer claimed that Spinoza misused words. "Thus he calls 'God' that which is everywhere called 'the world'; 'justice' that which is everywhere called 'power'; and 'will' that which is everywhere called 'judgement'."[35] Also, "that concept of substance...with the definition of which Spinoza accordingly begins...appears on close and honest investigation to be a higher yet unjustified abstraction of the concept matter."[36] In spite of his repeated objections and critical remarks, Schopenhauer incorporated some of Spinoza's fundamental concepts into his system, especially concerning the theory of emotions; there was also a striking similarity between Schopenhauer's will and Spinoza's substance.[37]

In fact, within the German philosophical sphere, Spinoza's influence on German idealism was remarkable.[38] He was both a challenge and inspiration for the three major figures of this movement: Hegel, Schelling and Fichte who all sought to define their own philosophical positions in relation to his. Schopenhauer, who detested these three philosophers to varying degrees of intensity,[39] also had a similarly ambivalent relation to the Dutch philosopher. How Spinoza came to influence Schopenhauer is not clear, but one might speculate: it could have come from his exposure to Fichte's lectures, from his conversations with Goethe or simply from being caught up in the post-Kantian attempt to rethink the critical philosophy. Still, his engagement with Spinozism is evident throughout his writings and attentive readers of his chief work may indeed note his ambivalence toward Spinoza's philosophy. He sees in Spinoza an ally against the feverish culture of the West. For example, in the context of a rather favourable account of "the standpoint of affirmation" he notes that "[T]he philosophy of Bruno and that of Spinoza might also bring to this standpoint the person whose conviction was not shaken or weakened by their errors and imperfections".[40] Moreover, in discussing Spinoza and Giordano Bruno, Schopenhauer also affirms that:

They do not belong either to their age or to their part of the globe, which rewarded the one with death, and the other with persecution and ignominy. Their miserable existence and death in this Western world are like that of a tropical plant in Europe. The banks of the Ganges were their spiritual home; there they would have led a peaceful and honoured life among men of like mind.

Given Schopenhauer's respect for Hindu philosophy, comments like these indicate that he too felt intellectual kinship with Spinoza. Elsewhere, Schopenhauer points to more fundamental affinities, but he also criticizes Spinoza. These criticisms deal with fundamental disagreements about the ultimate nature of reality and whether it is to be affirmed or denied.[41]

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Ethics (Spinoza book) - Wikipedia

Back to school: dogs, AP classes and alarm clocks. What Colorado students are looking forward to this school year and what they want changed -…

Jean Carlos is playing in Denvers City Park with his little black dog the size of a tea cup, I swear. Hes wayyyy more interested in his dog than an interview about the beginning of his academic career so today, hes a man of few words and prefers to interview in his native Spanish language. First, how old is the first grader?

Cinco.

Five. What does he do in school?

Escribir y leer.

Write and read. What does he like best about school?

Jugar con mis amigos Jess y Aarn.

Playing with his friends Jess and Aarn. Whats missing from school?

Cuidar perros.

Taking care of dogs I think we can all agree on that. Like Jean Carlos, students across Colorado are all back in school this week, with Denver Public Schools being the last major district to open its doors.

Many students seem happy to be back, especially after two and a half years of disruptions. Others not so much. Students across the state are eager to share what they like to learn about and what could be better about K-12 schools.

While Jean Carlos is just starting his scholastic journey, Amaryana is launching her senior year. The 17-year-old is excited about the classes at her Denver school, DSST Montview, and excited for her last year of playing volleyball. When asked if she has played all four years of high school, she answers with a polite, Yes, maam.

Amaryana said she likes the team bonding on the volleyball squad its like a family. On the team shes learned the nuances of good communication and knows that will help her in life. Shes also looking forward to her advanced placement classes this year. She doesnt really like reading but said the heavy reading and writing load gets her ready for college.

Im being prepared for that, she said.

What she and her friends dont like about school is the dress code. She said it's too strict, particularly for females. Jeans cant have rips. Shorts and tops cant be too short.

What they dont get is that a lot of us are trying to embrace ourselves, she said. If were told to cover up, were not really confident in ourselves anymore. Being able to wear what you want to wear helps us have that self-confidence in our bodies and our image.

One change students pressed for and Amaryana got to take advantage of is a personal finance class. She said shes grateful. She learned about things like taxes, loans, credit scores and savings.

I know when I first started working and I saw that theyre taxing me I was like, Why am I getting taxed for all these things? And so being able to have that class, they explained why and how theyre using (taxation). It really explained how money works in real life.

As a senior, Amaryana is thinking about whats next in real life. Shes thought about being a police officer, or perhaps a real estate agent.

Jobs where I can get enough money to be stable in my life, she said. Im still thinking about it.

Mason, 12, and his friend Anthem, 11, roam around gigantic slabs of marble at a tiny music festival in Marble during one of the last gasps of summer in Western Slopes Gunnison County.

I feel like summer wasnt long enough, said Mason, taking a break in a patch of grass. It also feels like its been forever since Ive been back in school.

Its that double-edged sword kind of thing. Mason is looking forward to seeing his friends again and "getting back to how it usually is." But he confesses:

I dont really like school.

He said a lot of kids would rather be doing other things. School feels too fill-in-the-box for him and kids dont like being told what to do.

His friend Anthem wants to be a car designer so he knows school is important. If he gets behind in math and science, he said his grandmother is on standby to keep him on top of things.

I definitely like learning, but if its with the wrong teacher, I hate it, he said. For me its just like their teaching strategy, whether its fun or strict. Anthem prefers fun. He also dislikes that some teachers didnt intervene last year when he was being bullied, he said.

Last year I left this school because of how I was being treated by kids, he said.

Mason switched to an online school but that didnt work out so hes going back to the first school.

Im a little bit nervous, he paused, as the music stopped playing, .. I dont know, Im just hoping it will be a better year than last year.

15-year-old Tanner initially had a hard time with other kids in school, too. But then he switched to a little school in Marble and now goes to an alternative high school that he loves Yampa Mountain High School in Glenwood Springs.

It gives me a lot of freedom to pick and choose what I want to learn, he said.

Hes jazzed to be back. He reads a lot on his own, does well in all subjects, but is excited to learn more about the humanities history, art, sociology.

Theres no right or wrong answers or less so than there is in math and stuff - theres more freedom to come to my own conclusions and come up with my own ideas.

Tanner is particularly interested in theology. He grew up Presbyterian but, Id say I have a more nuanced view of religion as a whole Im definitely not an atheist, but I definitely have a more pantheistic view.

A sophomore talking about pantheism on a hot summer day in the middle of Marble. Kids are amazing! He likes studying the commonalities in the worlds faith traditions.

They all have some of the same driving goals, theres fear of death, want of community, explaining moral codes, explaining natural phenomenon they all go back to the same things.

At his current pace, Tanner could theoretically graduate in his junior year. But he'd like to stay in high school so he can take college courses for free even graduate high school with an associates degree in tow. Tanner loves school and is quick to tell you why some kids dont like school its the reason he didnt like his old school.

A lot of regimentation, forcing kids to learn things, saying memorize this, not telling them why they need to learn it and not telling them the context in what theyre learning it. just saying memorize it and spit it out on a piece of paper. I think thats what turns a lot of kids off.

The more you talk to kids the more you understand when you can tap into their creativity, imagination and interests, the more they love learning. Interviewing kids, I learn a lot about their persistence too. Exiting a Target store one summer weekend, I bump into Esmeralda, 10, in a pink flowing dress. Shes entering fourth grade in a school in Aurora. Her favorite subjects are art and P.E.

I like art. I know how to paint, like galaxies and animals are things that I paint.

What she wants to get better at this year is math. Esmeralda has a complex relationship with math.

Because I like math but Im, like, not good. But I know math.

Her mom interjects and tells me Esmeralda was born prematurely at seven months. Learning has been a real struggle. But shes doing so much better now. Esmeralda said string stories are the hardest part of school, where students build complex stories. Esmeralda has big dreams. She wants to be a doctor, because I like to help people.

If theres one thing she could change about school its the start time. She wants it to be 9 a.m. instead of 7:50 a.m.

Because Im like a zombie when I wake up.because, like, Im sleeping still(I want to be) like a lot wake up, not just half of wake up, she laughed.

Two sisters in Grand Junction Olivia, 7, and her sister Juniper, 10 - dont have to worry about getting up late. Their elementary school is right across the street from their home. Commute time?

Usually like one minute! exclaimed Juniper.

Olive is excited to learn how to write better this year, especially perfecting her handwriting.

My teachers really, really nice and I like her and we got a student teacher which is really nice too, she said. I just love school.

Her older sisters goal this year is to learn and memorize prime numbers. Juniper also hopes to get a lot of reading in, like from the Harry Potter series her favorites so far are the second one or the fifth one.

Alongside participating in the great American ideals of public education creating a literate and productive citizenry the two sisters are getting to experience what public education perhaps does best: the chance to learn from and appreciate students who are different from themselves.

I like all the people in my class, said Juniper. I have somebody in my class and he has autism and hes really fun to play and talk toautism is where you see the world differently. Hes good at math and reading.hes really good at reading and I like having him in my class.

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Back to school: dogs, AP classes and alarm clocks. What Colorado students are looking forward to this school year and what they want changed -...

Basic beliefs of Scientific Pantheism World Pantheism

The World Pantheist Movements basic orienting beliefs (known as Scientific Pantheism) are set out in the WPM belief statement. This is not a creed in the religious sense. It is not something we recite, or that we are obliged to learn and accept every word of. It is a guide to what the WPM is about, a notice on our door that says, if you like this, come in.It is the set of beliefs that the WPM seeks to make widely available as a spiritual option to as many people as possible.They are not so much beliefs as a set of feeling and values about what, thanks to science and our senses, we know to exist.

The central viewpoint is that the Universe and Nature should be regarded with the deepest reverence and wonder, and Nature should be treated with the deepest love and respect and care. Similar views are shared by many people who use other terms, such as religious humanist, religious naturalist, religious atheist, and many other combinations. The WPM is a natural home for those who have this same orientation, whatever terms they use to call themselves.

When we say WE REVERE THE EARTH, we mean it with just as much commitment and reverence as believers speaking about their invisible god or gods. But we are not talking about supernatural powers or beings.

We are saying this: We are at home in Nature and in our bodies. This is where we belong. Nature made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed into Nature and recycled.Nature is our mother, our home, our security, our peace, our past and our future. We are part of Nature. Nature is an interdependent community of living beings, lands, oceans, winds. We should treat natural things and habitats as sacred to be revered and preserved in their intricate and fragile beauty.Earth is the only place where we can find and make our paradise, not some imaginary realm on the other side of the grave. We are living at a critical time where Nature is under unprecedented threat from human-created global warning.More than ever we need to be aware of our individual obligation to live sustainably with Nature, as well as to work in our families and communities so that everyone can do so.

When we say WE REVERE THE UNIVERSE we are not talking about a supernatural being, because we do not believe in supernatural beings. We are talking about the way our senses and our emotions force us to respond to the overwhelming mystery, power and beauty that surrounds us.

The Universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. Our earth was created from the Universe and will one day be reabsorbed into the Universe. The Universe is an interdependent collective of all that exists. We are part of the Universe. We are made of the same matter and energy as the Universe.

The Universe is deep and old beyond our ability to reach with our senses. It is beautiful beyond our ability to describe in words. Through science we have glimpses into the depth and complexity of the Universe, yet it retains its mystery.

This wonder is everywhere inside you and outside you and you can never be separated from it. Wherever you are, its there with you. Wherever you go, it goes with you. Whatever happens to you, it remains with you.

If you are interested in joining please check out the benefits and subscriptions page or click the Join button on any page.

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Basic beliefs of Scientific Pantheism World Pantheism

BANGLADESH Rising number of baptised among tribal people in Rajshahi – AsiaNews

A few days ago, another 47 ethnic Santal received the sacrament of Christian initiation in the parish of Bhutahara Quasi. We have been visiting these villages for over seven years, said Fr Swapon Purification.More than 70 people will receive the baptism this Wednesday. In the past I worshipped nature and trees, one of the newly baptised said. Now I turn to Jesus in my prayers.

Naogaon (AsiaNews) A group of 47 adults were baptised last Wednesday in Korbala, a village in Bhutahara Quasi parish, Diocese of Rajshahi, northern Bangladesh. PIME missionaries founded the parish in 2005, which now has more than 2,500 members.

For years the missionaries worked among ethnic Santal and Oraon, tribal peoples indigenous to the area, who traditionally practise a form of pantheism closely linked to nature worship and the veneration of ancestral spirits.

We have been visiting these villages for over seven years, explained Fr Swapon Purification, speaking to AsiasNews.

We brought the Bible and the Word of God, celebrated Masses and proposed catechetical courses. The result has been surprising: 47 adults from 15 families received the baptism in Korbala. In another village in our parish, more than 70 people will receive the baptism this Wednesday.

Fr Swapon praised the catechists who, through their work, managed to enter the hearts of the new believers.

It seems to me that catechists have played a significant role and their commitment has been exemplary; they have continuously visited these remote areas that can only be reached after long hours of walking.

On each trip they stopped in the village for three to seven days to bring the word of God. The rest of the work was done by us priests together with the sisters.

Bernabas Hasda played a leading role in the new baptisms. An ethnic Santal, the 66-year-old catechist has been engaged in this precious task for 40 years.

For him, "There are huge opportunities to enter into people's hearts and bring Bangladeshs tribal community closer to Christianity. PIME missionaries have been at the forefront in this region of the country for years. We are following the path traced by them.

One of the newly baptised is Durga Joachim Basra, a 40-year-old farmer who shared his joy after receiving the sacrament.

In the past I worshipped nature and trees and practised, together with the tribe, rituals related to natures fruitfulness. I didn't have a specific God. Now I turn to Jesus in my prayers. I believe that thanks to him I will obtain salvation. I am very happy to have received baptism.

Another new believer, Buddhinath Hembrom, also expressed his joy. I thank the priests, nuns and catechists for bringing me closer to Jesus and for giving me the joy of baptism, he said.

Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country. Christians constitute less than 1 per cent of the population.

Thanks to the work of priests, nuns and catechists, especially in remote villages and regions, the number of Bangladeshi Catholics is rising despite ongoing tensions with majority Muslims, which often lead to violence against Christians.

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BANGLADESH Rising number of baptised among tribal people in Rajshahi - AsiaNews

What Is This ‘QAnon’ Thing They’re Talking About? – Calbuzz

Recent focus on the deranged views voiced by U.S. Rep Marjorie Taylor (Marge) Greene has elevated QAnon to a household word.

Attempting to understand precisely what QAnon is, however, represents a slippery and elusive task, because this shadowy, nut-case umbrella term has no universally accepted description.

The best nuts and bolts description, in a grueling Calbuzz internets investigation, comes from the global crowd source scholars of Wikipedia, who write in part:

QAnon[a](/kjunn/) is a disproven and discreditedfar-rightconspiracy theory[1]alleging that a secretcabalofSatan-worshipping,cannibalistic[2][3][4]pedophilesis running a global childsex-traffickingring and plotted against former U.S. presidentDonald Trumpwhile he was in office.[5]According to U.S. prosecutors, QAnon is commonly called acult.[6]

the conspiracy theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymousimageboard4chanby Q (or QAnon), who was presumably an American individual;[22]it is now more likely that Q has become a group of people acting under the same name.[23][24]

Astylometricanalysis of Q posts claims to have uncovered that at least two people wrote as Q in different periods.[25][26]Q claimed to be a high-level government official withQ clearance, who has access to classified information involving theTrump administrationand its opponents in the United States.[27]

Fair enough, but thats a lot to process, and yet barely scratches the surface in terms of the wakadoodle ideas that QAnon adherents believe to be true. Consider just one of those ideas known as, um, Frazzledrip as outlined by Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times:

The lurid fantasy of Frazzledrip refers to an imaginary video said to show Hillary Clinton and her former aide, Huma Abedin, assaulting and disfiguring a young girl and drinking her blood. It holds that several cops saw the video and Clinton had them killed.

Because: of course.

Digging deeper. Here are several other descriptions that a variety of credible writers have employed in bids to wresle the nature, scope and meaning of QAnon to the ground:

At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media: QAnon: What is it and where did it come from? BBC News Mike Wendling

Named after Q, who posts anonymously on the online bulletin board 4chan, QAnon alleges that President Donald Trump and military officials are working to expose a deep state pedophile ring with links to Hollywood, the media and the Democratic Party: QAnon: The alternative religion thats coming to your church (religionnews.com) Katelyn Beaty

baseless belief an anonymous person called Q was revealing secrets about a child trafficking ring orchestrated by Democrats and global elites: (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon conspiracy promoter, rose with support from key Republicans, The Washington Post Michael Kranish, Reis Thebault and Sephanie McCrummen

a wild conspiracy theory that alleges a massive global pedophile cabal: ( Tucker Carlson stands up for QAnon supporters, The Washington Post Aaron Blake

QAnon is the umbrella term for a set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles: What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory? - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Kevin Roose

Key, but mostly unspoken, point: QAnon is not an organization, like the Republican Party, the John Birch Society, Students for Democratic Society, the Catholic Church or the Black Panther Party, or others which the MSM has described at various times as extremist.

Rather, its an uncertain, inconstant and shifting collection of conspiracy theories: One doesnt belong to QAnon. Theres no sign-up sheet, list of members, leadership structure or regular meetings.

Saying someone associates with QAnon is like saying someone associates with pantheism: the belief thatrealityis identical withdivinity,[1]or thatall-thingscompose an all-encompassing,immanentgod.[2].

Delusion goes mainstream. To be sure, there always have been tinfoil-hat and survivalist weirdos who believe Elvis is still alive, the Moon landing was faked or that the Holocaust never happened. But inevitably they were fringe people, widely regarded as delusional, out-of-the-mainstream wackos to whom nobody paid much attention.

Now, however, significant portions of the Republican Party have defended and spread ideas common among QAnon theorists like the belief that the Clintons and George Soros killed JFK or that the Sandy Hill School shootings were a false flag operation by anti-Second Amendment haters.

Or as Marge Greene who holds a seat in the United States House of Representatives (and let that sink in) famously retweeted, that Jewish space lasers set off the wildfires in California. Because: of course

In short, delusion has gone mainstream, the culmination of the Death of Truth trend in politics and culture of which we are among the first to write more than a decade ago.

Of course, the Delusionist in Chief, Donald Trump, played a pivotal role in spreading ideas like this and others, including denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election or that Hydroxychloroquine prevents Coronavirus.

When the Commander in Chief, the Leader of the Free World the elected president of the United States holds, spreads and spins an entire alternative reality, the effect is like aggressive cancer consuming the country.

The bottom line change. For decades, crazy thinking, virulent racism, corrosive xenophobia and crushing misogynism all were part of the American political landscape. But all the flying monkeys, biting insects and snarling monsters were tamped down and stuffed into a box by mainstream politics, media and social decency.

Then along came Donald Trump, who not only unlocked forever our American Pandoras Box, but who endorsed, cheered and promoted virtually every one of the most dangerous and disgusting creatures and ideas that common sense had marginalized.

Now Qanon has become the unified theory of all the false and slanderous conspiracy stories. Which at least for the moment is being debunked, repudiated and de-legitimatized under the Biden-Harris administration.

That crazy uncle has been sent back to the basement. Whether or not he stays there is an open question.

Excerpt from:

What Is This 'QAnon' Thing They're Talking About? - Calbuzz

Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop – Los Angeles Review of Books -…

FEBRUARY 7, 2021

FOR 15 YEARS Dana Gioia held down a day job as an executive at General Foods, successfully managing Jell-O and Kool-Aid. Meanwhile, he established a growing reputation as a poet that he concealed from his corporate colleagues. He was Catholic, like his working-class Mexican/Sicilian parents, and he had studied poetry at Harvard with (among others) the illustrious Elizabeth Bishop. Recently, this former director of the National Endowment for the Arts and founder of The Big Read, this poet laureate emeritus of the state of California, has published two new volumes of admirably finished essays, the first on his religious identity and some authors who share it, and the second on his early personal acquaintance with great poets and writers. In The Catholic Writer Today, Gioia does not turn to the contemporary church to find a renewal of arts and culture, instead looking to a rosary of Catholic writers who keep stepping into the center of the western tradition. In Studying with Miss Bishop, Gioia reflects, heymishly, often hilariously, on his coming of age as a poet in the company of poets.

These are not Gioias first major works of nonfiction. His essay Can Poetry Matter? made the cover of the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic, making it impossible for him to hide his writing life from his fellow execs. He opens that essay with the following assessment: American poetry now belongs to a subculture [] Like priests in a town of agnostics, [poets] still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists they are almost invisible. This paradigm-shifting homily, delivered with the logic of a 13th-century Scholastic, marked Gioia as a meaning-maker on the national stage, a position he continues to occupy. Gioias most recent essays land far from the precinct of Limbo that coterie poetry and its criticism have come to inhabit. These memoirs especially endow otherwise mundane experiences with numinous significance. As he says in the poem The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves, Another world / Reveals itself behind the ordinary.

Dana Gioia has become increasingly a spiritual writer. The Catholic Writer Today describes close encounters with Catholicism both lived and represented:

Catholicism currently enjoys almost no positive presence in the American fine arts [Though] Roman Catholicism now ranks overwhelmingly as the largest religious denomination in the United States with more that 68 million members. (By contrast, the second largest group, southern Baptists, has 16 million members.) [] To visualize the American Catholic arts today, dont imagine Florence or Rome. Think Newark, New Jersey.

Yet, as Gioia continues, there is more to contemporary Catholicism than sociopolitics. By Catholic, for example, he means not only the immigrant peasant religion that many of us in Gioias generation inherited, but an assumption that there is a sharable language that transcends words. In Gioias work, small manifestations of higher meaning sunder time, like a breaking and entering of the divine into the earthly, like a blade of lightning / harvesting the sky (Prayer). In the essay Poetry as Enchantment, he explains that, in the creative realm, Catholicism foregrounds the larger human purposes of the art which is to awaken, amplify, and refine the sense of being alive.

My favorite essay in the book is Singing Aquinas in L.A., which begins, When I was a child in parochial school, we began each morning with daily Mass. [] The Mass, which was conducted entirely in Latin, meant little to me. I endured it respectfully as a mandatory exercise. As for the singing, he writes, Here is the hymn [in Latin]. If you dont know what the words mean, dont worry; neither did I. Nor do I intend to translate them now. That is the point of the essay. He means that the power of poetry transcends the words on the page, or, as he puts it in the poem Words, Words, Words, Words are the cards, not why the game is played.

The Catholic Writer Today seeks, above all, to acknowledge the continuity between the living and the dead, and advocates for a common redemption through literature without pedantry or the crotchets of the fanatic. The table of contents lists essays on St. Paul, Elizabeth Jennings, Brother Antoninus, Dunstan Thompson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and John Donne.

At 12 years old, Donne attended Hart Hall, Oxford (today Hertford College) as a Roman Catholic because they had no chapel and he could avoid common worship. His mothers great-uncle was St. Thomas More. When Donne was 21, his younger brother, Henry Donne, died of a fever in prison, where he had been sent for harboring a proscribed Catholic priest. His two maternal uncles, both Jesuits, were forced into exile. After these things, John Donne opened a massive division within himself, and became Anglican. Upon this matter, Gioia comments:

The Catholic cult of martyrdom troubled Donne as a sort of theologically assisted suicide. In his family the topic had been much pondered. His mother took pride in the familys legacy of martyrs. He had also begun to dislike and distrust Jesuit intrigues against Elizabeth I and the Anglican Church that so often occasioned the arrests and executions.

This, I think, underemphasizes the anguish Donne must have experienced in leaving the Catholic Church in whose defense his close relatives had suffered and died. Gioias commentary on Donnes anti-saccharine deployment of the English sonnet, however, is remarkable. Gioia never doubts, furthermore, Donnes familiarity with sin and its attractions, and highlights the consciousness of sin in his work. Gioia says, Donne took the song-like form of the Renaissance English lyric and gave it a quality of symphonic development. Donnes interior torment, especially as he faces death, gives rise to a baroque conversation between violence and salvation. Yet, as in Holy Sonnet 14, he never submits entirely to God I, like an usurpd town to another due, / Labor to admit you the constricted opening of a sinful soul cannot contain the divine.

Donne was a convert to the church which made him famous; the same is true of Gerard Manley Hopkins (184489), the other major poet included in this volume. Hopkins sacrificed much for example, a career at Oxford by converting to Roman Catholicism when he was an undergraduate. Catholics could not receive degrees at Oxford until 1911, a lively reminder of the survival of English anti-Catholicism. His parents disowned him. He abandoned hope of a major Oxford professorship to teach the equivalent of parochial middle school. He tried to give up writing; even after he began, under obedience, to write poetry again, he published nothing. His friends and religious superiors hated his work. Gioias essay on Hopkins acknowledges his eventual status as one of the most frequently reprinted poets in English. Gioia also recognizes his holiness:

If modern Christian poetry has a saint, it is Gerard Manley Hopkins. No other poet, at least in English, occupies such a lofty position in terms of both literary achievement and spiritual authority. [] His reputation transcends questions of purely literary merit. He is venerated as a figure of sanctity, redemptive suffering, and heroic virtue.

Its probable that Roman Catholicism taught Hopkins who was raised as a High Anglican amid luxury and learning more about being a devisor of major art than did private drawing lessons, prep school, or Oxford. His celebration of the nature he observed approaches but skirts the pantheism of his Romantic forebears. The preeminent detail about both Hopkins and his extraordinary body of writing is surely that he foregrounded theological considerations. For him, a world without a living God would have been unthinkable. Gioias essay put this into clear focus. This clarity of focus and of exposition are the chief merits and pleasures of every chapter in The Catholic Writer Today.

In My First Acquaintance with Poets (1823), William Hazlitt details his meetings with Romantic poets, especially Coleridge, and so reveals a great deal about his youthful self: My heart, shut up in the prison house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. So too does Dana Gioia assign credit to his early literary influences in his newest and fantastically charming collection of essays, Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writers Life.

Gioia introduces the volume with an acknowledgment of six people whose examples helped me become a writer. He also makes clear that literary life is strange and that, given everything we will learn about the author in his first chapter, Lonely Impulse of Delight, the course his adult life took was unlikely. He quotes Goethe, who says that to be lucky at the beginning is everything. Growing up in a large, crowded apartment in Hawthorne, California, constantly surrounded by his extended family, Gioia had a lucky beginning because he inherited an enormous eclectic library from his late uncle, the proletarian intellectual Ted Ortiz. One observation from this chapter expresses Goias quiet pride in his background: Italians, he writes, admire any highly developed special skill carpentry, cooking, gardening, singing, even reading. The best skills helped one make a living. The others helped one enjoy living. And with the same practical humility, he reveals the origins of his autodidactic impulses: Kids had time on their hands. We had to entertain ourselves, which meant exploring every possible means of amusement our circumscribed lives afforded. I paged through every book on every shelf.

By the time we reach the title essay, Gioia, the first in his family to attend college, has reached the academic pinnacle of advanced study Harvard graduate school and has enrolled in a tiny seminar with one of the major American poets of the 20th century, Elizabeth Bishop:

Im not a very good teacher, Miss Bishop began. So to make sure you learn something in this class I am going to ask each of you to memorize at least ten lines a week from one of the poets we are reading. Had she announced that we were all required to attend class in sackcloth and ashes, the undergraduates could not have looked more horrified.

Since that moment, Gioia has famously memorized thousands of lines of poetry and can recite them with the skill of a Shakespearean actor (check out his son Michael Gioias project, Blank Verse Films, for a selection of Gioias recitations). Thus we glean one solid piece of advice for any young poet.

The essay Studying with Miss Bishop was first published in The New Yorker on September 15, 1986. To what greater Olympus could a young man of letters aspire? Some readers at that time, including me, had also studied at Harvard under Miss Bishop in the 1970s, and the essay struck us as so spot-on that it took our breath away. Gioias subject emerges as self-effacing, and in representing her so astutely, he effaces his own ego as well. She is a reluctant teacher, a shy performer, quietly meticulous. She is dizzy with relief when the semester finally ends and she need teach no longer in that drab subterranean seminar room in Kirkland House.

Gioia describes Miss Bishop as his favorite teacher at Harvard, and also writes that Robert Fitzgerald the acclaimed translator of classical poetry was his favorite. Gioias essay on Fitzgerald is the masterpiece of the collection. Fitzgeralds History of English Versification has proved so influential on certain young writers and through them on current poetrythat it merits description, Gioia begins, following up with his own mini-seminar. He also took Fitzgeralds Comparative Literature 201: Narrative Poetry, about which he comments:

Fitzgerald slowed down our reading not only by compelling us to take careful notes but also by forcing us to differentiate Ktesippos, Agelaos, Amphimedon, Antinoos, and Eurymakhos from one another figures we would otherwise have lumped together indiscriminately as Penelopes suitors.

The essay contains numerous extended punctilios (by the time Fitzgerald dismissed us with several handouts to scan, a hundred pages of Saintsbury to read, and two verse exercises [three stanzas in strict Sapphics and fourteen lines of Catullan hendecasyllabics], the class had become less crowded) and I wondered if Gioia had fully measured how very, very much he had himself been formed by the great Boylston Professor. Toward the end of the chapter, he delivers a wise and beautiful analysis of how Fitzgeralds teaching had driven home the immense difficulty of mastering the humane arts: They require a life of constant application. Also, Forty years later [] the extent of Fitzgeralds influence appears a verifiable fact of literary history. Also, He was the only professor I had in eight years of college and graduate school who was a practicing Catholic.

This, Gioias latest book also proves his most self-revelatory. In it, one of our countrys best literary personages takes pains to position himself on the shoulders of such unexpected giants as his Uncle Ted Ortiz, merchant marine, killed in a plane crash in his 20s. He pays a characteristically Catholic obeisance of not just reverence but also homely affection to the process and people who helped him arrive at himself.

Peggy Ellsberg is a poet and scholar who teaches English at Barnard College. She is the author of Created to Praise: The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press, 1987) and The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selections from His Poems, Letters, Journals, and Spiritual Writings (Plough, 2017).

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Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia's The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop - Los Angeles Review of Books -...

Did Einstein Say He Believed in the Pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza? – Snopes.com

Throughout the course of his life, physicist Albert Einstein, the publisher of the theory of relativity, affirmed his belief in pantheism, a theological doctrine based on the work of 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

When asked by the prominent American Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein if Einstein believed in God in a telegram dated April 25, 1929, he responded that he followed a different doctrine.

I believe in Spinozas God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind, Einstein replied.

Generally speaking, pantheism identifies God with the universe or regards the universe as a manifestation of God. The worship is founded on the belief that everything is one and, in essence, admits and tolerates all gods.

Just like the cells in our bodies, working together as a whole, everything is part of one infinite being. This eternal, single existence is The Living Universe, states the Living Universe Church, which abides by the doctrine of pantheism, on its official website.

Einsteins association with Spinoza and the pantheism went viral in December 2018 when the famed auction house Christies listed The God Letter as open for bidding on Dec. 4 and subsequently sold it for nearly $2.9 million. The celebrated letter was addressed to German Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind in response to his third book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt, which is described by the auction house as having presented the Bible as a call to arms and argued that Judaism and Israel as incorruptible.

In the letter, written in 1954 shortly before Einsteins death the following year, the physicist outlined his thoughts on religion, his Jewish identity, and his own search for meaning in life, according to the auction page. In an abridged version of the letter, Einstein referenced Spinoza but did not refer to pantheism by name. He wrote:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilized interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me, the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise, I cannot see anything chosen about them.

In general, I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls, we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Einstein was known to contemplate the many facets of religion and the concept of God, sometimes as critically as he did science. In a commentary published on Nov. 9, 1940, in the journal Natureaptly titled Science and Religion, the man of Jewish descent posited that he could not easily define the concept of religion, but noted fundamental similarities and differences between it and science.

If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions, then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary, he wrote.

Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action; it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.

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Walking Toward God | Notre Dame Magazine | University of Notre Dame – ND Newswire

Above my home in Boise, Idaho, a steep trail called Rock Garden rises hundreds of feet through boulders left behind when a prehistoric lake collapsed and rushed off to the Pacific two million years ago. Its many-colored rocks, lichen and moss, waterworn shapes and sparse desert vegetation are, for me, an everfascinating sculpture garden. Ive climbed it nearly every day while otherwise sheltering in place.

North of the trail lies one of the largest wildernesses in the Lower 48, stretching 300 miles with but a single intervening road. Together with the Teton Range near where I grew up, this mighty landscape formed my family, formed me and is still thrilling. Now, however, instead of grand adventure at altitude or in rivers, I walk trails slowly, taking it all in, remembering.

I seem to have reverted to childhood on cue. On my bedroom dresser is arrayed the abandoned nest of a tiny bird; a little ball of fur and bones that an owl left behind after eating a mouse; and an old spike from the quarry where prisoners chiseled out rock to build their own prison, which now sits empty below the trail. I collect rocks, like the one next to me as I write this, covered in four colors of lichen, and Im still disappointed when rocks bright in last weeks rain are dull when dried, just as when I brought them home to my mother 75 years ago.

Arriving at Notre Dame in 1954, I fully expected to be a middling student, coming as I had from an empty state and modest schools, but for freshman composition I drew Richard Sullivan 30, an acclaimed novelist and a kind man. For him I wrote of my life outdoors back home: skiing in deep powder; sinking into soft cold soil on early October mornings when schools closed and every child was turned out to pick spuds; of simply looking as summer clouds rolled above our apple trees. I wrote of bringing irrigation water down from a canal built by my great-grandfather; of plugging the gopher holes along the way; of how killdeer faked broken wings to distract us from their nests.

Sullivan liked all that, encouraged me and sent me on my way. I think of him as I walk the trail.

I also remember John Kirsch.

During the Great Depression, Kirsch was one of those teenagers from back east who was rescued by the Civilian Conservation Corps and sent into the woods out west, never to return. After a wartime spent in India, he took up ranching near Cody and Bozeman, then got a masters degree in wildlife management before joining the Montana Department of Fish and Game.

At 50, Kirsch became a Catholic priest. While a professor and chaplain at Montana State University and Carroll College he created a course called Eco-Theo to explore a subject with deep but contentious roots in Christianity: the relationship between creation and the divine, nature and spirituality. He was teaching not only theology but also ecology and direct experience from nature.

To help visitors Find the Spirit in Nature, Kirsch also founded the Living Water Contemplative Center in West Yellowstone, Montana, just north of my hometown. Thats why, 20 years ago, I was in Yellowstone National Park with him looking at a single, large rock for what seemed a very long time. Just looking. What do you experience, he asked after many minutes passed. What is sacred here? Can you experience Spirit?

I could not. Maybe water, but rock?

For Kirsch, rock, water and wood were not only a reminder, an inspiration or even a path to God. They were holy in themselves. Everything is holy. All matter is divine.

I was charmed by Kirsch but the whiff of pantheism was more than my conventional Christianity could accept. I was not going to choose the Church of the Great Outdoors over the real thing. Yet two decades later I cannot get enough of rocks. And I have moved toward his spirituality.

Kirsch died in 2002, an obscure follower of St. Francis of Assisi. Today, however, he would be among those reviving a Christian theology critical to mankinds future: a love for the natural world so clear and fierce as to save mankind from slow suicide.

Kirschs Theo would be consistent with that of the priest-paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, with Thomas Berry, another priest published by the Sierra Club, and with all those reviving Celtic spirituality, like the late, dear John ODonohue or John Philip Newell of the Church of Scotland.

Beginning in the fifth century, Patrick and those who followed him in Ireland, Scotland and Wales built a fully Christian theology on the foundation of druidic paganism, in which women were among the spiritual leaders. Irish Christians looked on creation as a second scripture, akin to and of equal merit with the Gospel. For them, God was immanent and near, not removed and elsewhere just as Native Americans would tell us today. The Celts brought this spirituality to Europe for a few centuries before being diminished by Rome.

Five years ago, in Laudato Si, Pope Francis tried to rouse the world into action over climate change, particularly on behalf of the poor who will suffer even more in the future than they suffer today most severely from the pandemic. Tragically, the popes message was not taken seriously, if what has come from Idaho pulpits is any example, yet he carries on, pleading most recently for protection of the Amazon.

As he soldiers on, I grieve for him. In a way, he walks with me on Rock Garden Trail and I with him.

So, again, how might I consider the rocks on my trail? Have I become a pantheist?

Ive run through a lot of books in the last 20 years as my grip on the faith I grew up with has come and gone and come. My constant handhold on this slippery rock has been Father Richard Rohr, the Franciscan founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is considered heretical by some. In his latest book, The Universal Christ, Rohr writes that Christ is not Jesuss last name. Instead Christ denotes Gods first gift the first Bible, the first incarnation which is the universe itself, and the Love of which it is made.

The word Rohr chose for this indwelling of God is panentheism. God is the soul of the universe, extended beyond space and time, yet present, pervading and interpenetrating everything Every Thing including my rocks.

Wildly incomplete as it is, thats quite enough Eco-Theo for today. Im going to take a hike.

JerryBradywas publisher of the Idaho Falls Post Register for 25 years and twice was the Democratic candidate for governor of Idaho. In the summer of 1958, he accompanied Father Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, on a two-month trip through Africa.

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Do Not Offend the Gods: 8 SFF Books Featuring Deities – tor.com

When I was growing up, my world was neatly divided into monotheism and pantheism. On the monotheism side there was the god of Abraham and on the pantheism side there were the GreeksZeus, Hera, Athena, etc. Youre probably noticing some signs of a very limited world view. I had been told that the Romans had gods just like the Greeks only with new names like Jupiter and Juno. I knew there were other religions, and I was at least passingly familiar with the Norse gods. My fifth-grade social studies textbook made sure I knew a little about the Sumer and Ur and the Egyptians, but their gods? Their gods just didnt show up very often back then and there were so many other gods to whom Id never even been introduced.

When I wrote my first novel The Thief, I knew I wanted to set it in the landscape of Ancient Greece with a Byzantine level of technology and pantheistic religion, but I didnt want to co-opt the Olympian gods or the Titans for my story. In so many textbooks over the years, the Greek pantheon has been reduced to one dimensional versions of their former selves. I wanted three dimensional characters and I was afraid there would be too much dissonance between my gods and their schoolbook definitions.

By then, Id read and loved Diana Wynne Joness Dalemark books in which she created, particularly in Drowned Ammet, gods and goddesses so real that you thought they must be based on some religion you just hadnt yet learned about. I wanted to make up gods that felt that real. My gods are a mix of very human traits and the unknowable. They meddle in human affairs and the mortals must make the best of it. Im going to take it as a win that a disturbing number of reviewers refer to them as Greek gods and dont seem to realize that they arent.

And now, I think Im living in a golden age, with so many fabulous writers bringing us stories of gods and goddesses drawn from cultures all over the world or invented from whole cloth. Here are some of my favorites. Some of the gods are very down to earth while others are far from it. They are sometimes kind and sometimes cruel. Some seem like mortals writ large and some are ineffable. The one thing they all have in common? Just like the god Eugenides in Return of the Thiefyou want to stay on their good sideif you can.

Apollo took from them the day of their return.

The Iliad is an excellent example of just how much misery that gods can inflict on humanity, but that story begins with the wrath of Achilleswhen the events that led to the war on Troy are long over. With The Odyssey, we get a front row seat as Odysseus slays the Cyclops and makes a lifelong enemy of his father, Poseidon. We see his men eat the cattle of Apollo and then we get a ten year long lesson in why you shouldnt offend the gods.

I was in my twenties when I read this book. Id only ever read one book by Jones, Dogsbody. I had no idea she had written anything else. Her books werent on a shelf in any library Id visited and this was long before you could look up an author on the internet. The best we had was an out of date collection of Books in Print. I hope it seems bizarre to at least some of my readers, that this may have been the first time I read a story with gods and goddesses that werent either Greek or Celtic. It was Athena and Artemis and Zeus or it was Arawn and Cernunnosthose had been my only options. Sure, there was The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien stripped much of the identifying features out of his source material. Jones was writing about Thor and Odin and Loki and I was delighted.

David, a perfectly ordinary British school boy is home from school for a miserable holiday with his miserable family, distant relatives who are his guardians and who make it clear his presence is deeply unwelcome. In the back garden, venting his misery, David shouts out nonsense syllables that just happen to be the words that will release Loki from an underground prison where hes been holding up a bowl to catch the poison dripping on him from a venomous snake. Loki appears a boy, just Davids age, charming and little odd and up for some fun, like, setting a whole department stores on fire, for example.

When the other gods show up looking for escaped Loki, David has to decide whose side hes on. Its a shame you cant help out one god without pissing off a bunch of others.

Mortals believe gods to be omnipotent and ever-knowing. The truth is more slippery

The Lord of Xibalba has had his head cut off by his twin brother and his bones have spent 50 years in a trunk before Casiopea discovers them. When a single bone shard pierces her skin, the Mayan god of death is reconstituted. He draws life from her, but with that nourishment comes Casiopeas humanity, changing the nature of the god even as they work together to reinstate him on the throne of Xibalba. While Casiopea is tied to Hun-Kam, her unpleasant cousin Martin, works for the new Lord of Xibalba, Hun-Kams brother. Mortal, gods, witches, demonsall have to take sides and hope their side wins.

Trail of Lightning is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Dinetah has become an independent nation with a wall around to keep the that have flooded the outside world. Maggie Hoskie is a monster slayer. She didnt offend Neizghani, her immortal teacher so much she disappointed him. She was his apprentice until he left her behind without warning or explanation. With no other choice, she carries on, on her own.

I love everything about Roanhorses work, but particularly the fact that it is set in the future. In this story, perhaps the gods should have been more careful they didnt offend Maggie Hoskie.

Jemisins Broken Earth trilogy won her well-deserved Hugos, but its The Inheritance Trilogy that I love. She fuses gods and science together, and in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, she makes creating gods look easy.

Yeine Darr is summoned to the capital city, Sky, by her grandfather to be a pawn in a terrifying competition to be heir to his throne. Her only possible allies are the gods bound to serve her family. On the one hand, they are very powerful, on the other, theres nothing to make a god dangerously angry like being trapped and enslaved in a mortal body.

What happens when the gods are not merely capricious they are all out monsters?

Lazlo Strange is an orphan who grows up dreaming of a city that so offended its gods that its name was wiped from everyones memory and replaced with the word Weep. When the hero of Weep, the man who slayed its gods, comes to the librarians of Zosma, seeking help for his city, Lazlo seizes the chance to see Weep for himself.

Lainis writing so vivid, so confident that there is no limit to the poetry she brings to her prose. Her gods are truly horrifying and just as truly captivating.

You have the four cardinal godsthe Dragon, the Tiger, the Tortoise, and the Phoenix. Then you have local household gods, village guardian gods, animal gods, gods of rivers, gods of mountains

Rin is an orphan, fortunate enough to have a marriage arranged with a local inspector who will accept her as a wife in exchange for looking other way while her adoptive parents run their opium business. Rejecting that future, Rin sits for the Keju, the Empire wide test that selects candidates for Sinegard, an elite military school.

In the scene quoted above she is arguing for the common viewpoint of the gods in her experiencethey are cultural references, metaphors, personifications of emotions or significant events. As in the world of The Thief, people give lip service to the gods. They never expect them to appear.

Who is Adam Black, also known as Ablahka? His librarians used to be children. What are they now? Caroline doesnt know. After being locked away in an infinite library, trained by an adoptive father who might be God, and dying a few times in the process, shes not really all there anymore. When her Father, Adam Black, Ablahka, disappears, perhaps murdered by any one of the other terrifyingly powerful gods the Duke, Barry OShea or the mysterious Q-33 North, no one on Earth knows what happens next.

New York Timesbestselling author Megan Whalen Turner is the award-winning author of six novels set in the world of the Queens Thief. These epic novels of intrigue and adventure can be read in any order, but were published as follows: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, Thick as Thieves, and Return of the Thief. Megan Whalen Turner has been awarded a Newbery Honor and a Horn BookBoston Globe Honor, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Young Adult Literature. She has won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Childrens Literature and was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award. She worked as a bookseller for seven years before she started writing. Her first book was a collection of short stories called Instead of Three Wishes.

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Belief in the time of Covid The Manila Times – The Manila Times

I HAVE been trying to figure out what makes the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) worth all the sacrifice we have had to let the nation bear: an economy well on the way to recession, lockdowns and restrictions on movement, the unparalleled labors of first responders, etc.

When statistics tell us that Covid kills far less than other diseases do. One report kept the number of deaths because of Covid daily in the Philippines at .79 percent. I hesitate to use the modifier only because every death is painful; almost unbearable for the members of the bereaved family. But, statistically, it seems that we should be more worried about the other causes of death with higher mortality rates than we should about Covid-19.

My theory is that the disease pushes the panic button because unlike pneumonia, hypertension, diabetes and other national killers, the chances of mortality for one who gets infected are really high, frighteningly high. We have lost dedicated health workers to Covid and the nation is impoverished by their demise. Only recently, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, beloved by the people who knew him well, died because of Covid, although he had long been ill.

How does one believe? What is there to believe in? Where is God in all of this? It certainly seems insulting to intelligence to insist on God as a filler of gaps because there is a gaping hole in humanity now that needs to be filled and no filler seems to be forthcoming. But loaded questions have to be disambiguated and the question where is God in this pandemic? supposes that if God were around, if there were God, then he would stop the pandemic. Perhaps, the pandemic would have never even occurred in the first place. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, if there were God, there would never be any pain, disappointment, hurt, evil or death.

But that would be Paradise, would it not be, not the world in which tremendous discoveries are made, profound insights are reached and persons exhibit truly inspiring, edifying acts of charity, compassion and care. I remember having written in my masters thesis on pessimism: This world was not made as some gilded cage for Gods favored pets. It is, as the very persuasive John Hick puts it, a vale of soul-making.

The trouble is everything that has traditionally been peddled about Gods power. It is, for Hartshorne, the fallacy of omnipotence. By omnipotence, we have traditionally understood the Divine power to do anything he pleases, which quite expectedly,triggered silly questions like whether he can cause his own annihilation or create a square hole. Sometime at the beginning of the modern period, we were offered an alternate way of thinking about God. Baruch Spinoza did us this service. But like any pioneer, his lot was by no means felicitous. He was expelled from the synagogue to which he belonged, and fellow Jews were warned against associating with him either in this life or in the next (!) lest they be contaminated by his heresy. But if we apologize to Spinoza for our rashness and take one more hard look at his proposal, he might have something to say to us in this period of Covid, although we might have to tweak his thoughts here and there.

The trouble with thinking that God can stop Covid in its tracks if he wanted to is the postulation of two realities the reality of our world (our universe, that sphere of reality of which we are part), and the reality of God. Put that way, of course, the problem has always been to prove convincingly that such an other reality does exist. And in an epoch that is enamored of what is palpable and experienceable,postulating another dimension that is beyond ordinary verification is not an attractive proposition. It is a different story when with Spinoza you insist on the singularity of substance, which we might translate today as the singularity of reality. The denial of reality is of course self-contradictory, and therefore the traditional problems adjunct to the affirmation of an other reality do not arise at all.

But God, being part of our reality, is that still talking about the same God to which theists render homage and pay tribute? Of course it can be, as long as one is willing to tear himself apart from concepts of God that have proven more troublesome than helpful. For Spinoza, God is a being absolutely infinite, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence. And if, by substance, he means what is in itself and is conceived through itself (which, by the way, were sufficiently acceptable Scholastic definitions except perhaps the understanding of attribute), then the conclusion was inevitable that God was everything, and that whatever existed, did so in God. In with one label pantheism philosophy and theology forever banished him from decent conversation! Spinozas notion of the singularity of reality was certainly perspicacious, and if we borrow Anselms that greater than which none can be thought, then certainly Reality, taken as all that exists, is that greater than which none can be thought and must, by force of logic, include us and God.

Given this, it will be more helpful to think of God as part of reality not in the same sense that we are, but in a superior, eminent, directive sense, without however diminishing the fact that God, being part of Reality, must content with Reality and work with and in it. This means that without God, reality would not be what it is. In fact, it would not be reality at all. Without Reality, God would not be, considering that he is part of reality. If we accept these premises, then we must be ready to accept that there is a certain indeterminateness that on higher levels of existence we call freedom to reality that is not completely determined by God. God is he who envisages all possibility of newness. God is he who orders possibilities so that the fertilization of human sperm and human egg brings forth a baby, not a bunny. But God cannot control and direct the multiplication and development of cells because these have a reality of their own, which is why congenital defects and cancer can develop. In our case, God offers us the possibility of excellence, nobility, compassion and human-heartedness, and he leads us to these values. But we retain our freedom and turn into the brutes and savages we sometimes are.

Not then God is the problem but our concept of God, and if traditional theists think that this God is not good enough because he is not omnipotent, then it must be asked what you need an Omnipotent God for, if we already have a God who, at work in the universe, with tender compassion and patience, leads all of reality to the full realization of value, without trampling the basic indeterminateness or freedom that underlies the ongoing activity of the universe?

So, where is God in the midst of this pandemic and of frightened humanity? At work in the world, sharing in our fright, sharing in our aspirations, sharing in our disappointments, sharing in our hope. It is he who attracts scientists with the possibility of a cure. It is because there is a Divine element in the universe that we think of ways of alleviating the hardship of the hard-pressed, despite the mishandling of ayuda and the malfeasance at PhilHealth. It is he because of whom we can devise ways of carrying on with life despite Covid. But he will not determine things for us. He will offer us the possibilities, open the vast array of values to us, and leave us to be human, to choose and to decide. He cannot stop the virus, because he does not control the minutiae of the universe, but he can open to us a horizon beyond Covid if we allow ourselves to be drawn by his lure!

In so many ways, Spinoza was right. St. Spinoza, pray for us.

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.phrannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.phrannie_aquino@outlook.com

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Belief in the time of Covid The Manila Times - The Manila Times

An In-Depth Guide to the Microphones – bandcamp.com

LISTS An In-Depth Guide to the Microphones By Grayson Haver Currin August 07, 2020 Original artwork by Phil Elverum

For the last 25 years, across more than 60 releasesfirst as the Microphones and then as Mount EeriePhil Elverum has used the humdrum details of his daily life as fodder for experimental folk, indie rock, and even heavy metal. He has articulated his search for validation and truth in a world that can seem designed to prove how little you matter. That sentiment stretches cleanly from 2001s The Glow Pt. 2, Elverums boundless examination of young adult heartache, to 2017s A Crow Looked at Me, his heartrending document of life as a widower and single father after his wife, Genevive Castre, died.

When it comes to namesof projects and even his ownone could reckon Elverum to be obsessed.

At the start of 2003, just as albums like The Glow Pt. 2 began to make the Microphones an indie rock commodity, he dropped that moniker for Mount Eerie, the name of the last proper Microphones LP and a reference to the mountain perched over his hometown of Anacortes, WA. The songwriter soon supplemented his surname, Elvrum, with a second e, matching that of a small Norwegian city when he spent a winter in the far north of the country.

But for Elverum, none of that actually matters too much. Names are window dressings, he suggests: superficial marketing tactics that distract from what an artist has to say about life and the quest for meaning. That is the premise of Microphones in 2020, his astounding first album as the Microphones in 17 years. On its single, 45-minute track, Elverum, now 42, revisits his arts origins, trying to locate and reignite the unifying impulse that guided him as an artist in his early twenties. The names, sounds, and circumstances may have changed, but his desires remain the same: this luxurious privilege to sit around frowning and wondering what it means, he sings, playing with words and trying to prove that names mean nothing.

There is no easy distinction between the Microphones and Mount Eerie. When Elverum started the Microphones, he was a young audio enthusiast, a kid thrilled by the process of discovery that recording entailed. He worked with a ragtag cast of collaborators, so his equipmentlike, microphonesbecame his bandmate. As he learned more about recording and began to codify an aesthetic, he started to focus more on language, refining the poetry that best expressed his feelings. Such is the essence of Mount Eerie.

At least until now: Microphones in 2020 may be the most compelling, exacting, and poignant writing of his career. I hope this record is the end of all names, but I know thats probably not possible, says Elverum from home, laughing.

We sorted through six highlights of what Elverum has called the Microphones: an overwhelming catalog, without even considering Mount Eerie. We asked him how he feels about those records now, after spending so much time pondering what the Microphones have meant in his life.

By the time Phil Elverum began making his first masterpiece, The Glow Pt. 2, in the spring of 2000, he was more than four years deep into his recording obsession. On a series of tapes conceived in the rear of an Anacortes record store, hed plundered almost every sound he could imagine, turning drones, drums, and acoustic guitars into miniature composites. Now in Olympia, hed thrown himself into the capital citys scene wholesale. He lived in the legendary Track House for $175 a month and volunteered at the food co-op for cheap groceries. He spent his free time across the street at Dub Narcotic Studio, trawling Calvin Johnsons massive trove of aging equipment.

The Glow Pt. 2 captured the collision of Elverums youthful energy and budding experience, the exact moment his understanding of recording and the rawness of his nerves dovetailed. An unflinching, 20-song document of heartache that feels like an extinction-level event, it tells us everything: how he thought he understood love and permanence, how he sulks and even stalks, how he wants to disappear. But the world of sound Elverum conjures here, a homespun backdrop of unrest and intrigue, keeps the songs churning. It is a complicated portrait of a young person learning how to lose, the quality that makes it perennially poignant.

K Records released The Glow Pt. 2 on September 11, 2001. It feels now like it did thena headlong escape into someone elses woe, a place where the grief and worry were so immersive that you had no choice but to step away from your fear for a while. The Glow repeatedly flirts with abject despair, with the prospect of just giving up. But after an hour, Elverum sits cold and alone in the dark, surrounded only by the insects who know his red blood is still warm. That is, things suckbut at least hes still here to tell the tale.

I always think Im making something thats the best I can possibly do, says Elverum. Usually I am wrong, but I always have that feeling. Mirah had been with me on tour while I was writing some of The Glow Pt. 2, and she had been coming in and out of Dub Narcotic, overhearing what I was working on. And I remember her saying, Wow, Phil, Im really excited. This record is going to be something special. I like it now. But legacy is so baffling. Its almost arbitrary, the things that get put on pedestals, but Im lucky to have benefited from that arbitrariness.

For a decade, St. Ives epitomized the record label as a community art project. On early and very limited editions from the likes of Animal Collective, Man Forever, and Fruit Bats, bands would paint recycled record covers themselves, alternately rendering ornate designs and slapdash expressionist pastiche. The Indiana label seemed especially suited to an early-20s Elverum, a prolific painter and photographer who constantly doodled in notebooks. His debut on St. Ives2001s discursive Blood, limited to 300 copieswas the labels first release aside from a compilation of Hoosier favorites.

When St. Ives asked Elverum for a follow-up, he strolled into Dub Narcotic on February 2, 2002. He set up a single microphone, a pump organ, and a piano, then pressed Record at 2 p.m. After 40 minutes, Elverum had finished Little Bird Flies Into a Big Black Cloud, an extemporaneous vocal rendition of a recently released chapbook. You can hear him shuffling the pages after Three Steps, a stepwise spoken-word guide to considering mortality and the endlessness of your imagination, and witness him faltering as he tries to find a note during I Got Stabbed, a meditation on prying apart your feelings for art. It is as personal as the hand-painted covers for this edition of 400, now a pricey collectors item.

His use of language herebeautiful lines that are somehow both spare and florid, triangulating the sensations of his feelingsrepresents a crucial development. Hed been listening to Will Oldham and Little Wings, trying to learn how he could mirror the sonic care of the Microphones with words. He maps his feelings to trees, flowers, oceans, and soil, shaping a personal pantheism of frailty and strength, beauty and decay. Youre a warming wind from a distant sun, he croons during one fraught moment. Im an iceberg and Ill melt and out Ill run.

Phil Elverum doesnt see Little Bird Flies Into A Big Black Cloud so much as a record as an exercise in anti-production, a counterpoint to his developed sound experiments. Were only talking about it because the Internet came around and leveled out the accessibility of everything, he says. It now has the same size thumbnail as all the other albums. But I like to have things available and not seem exploitative of cultivated scarcity. I still think this record is only worth 400 copies, but I also like saying, Heres everything. You get to decide how many copies its worth.'

Early in the decade, Elverum was driving between New England tour stops when he found himself with a day off in New Hampshire. Passing through the states iconic White Mountains, he decided to climb, despite encroaching winter weather. Partway up Mount Jefferson, the snow began to drift down as Elverum passed signs demanding that hikers turn back during worsening conditions. He pressed ahead, eventually staring out across a tremendous, cloud-shrouded gorge: I imagined going to the brink and looking beyond this life, he remembers, to the other side of death.

Elverum also missed his hometown of Anacortes, two hours up Washingtons puzzle-piece coastline from Olympia. He pined for the sight of the towns own Mount Erie, a stubby tree-covered mountain with a dramatically exposed rock face. Inspired by the 9th century Buddhist poet Han-shan who wrote his poetry on the rocks of mountains, Elverum decided to bind his songs to Anacortes little peak forever with an album that used it as a symbol of lifes arduous journey and eventual end. That is the premise of Mount Eerie, Elverums last full LP as the Microphones for nearly 20 years.

Mount Eerie is Elverums most elemental but complex album. It is the archetypal story of birth and death and afterlife, cast in an extended metaphor about ascending a peak and peering out into the canyon of life below. But its five seamless movements shift between harsh noise and plaintive folk, between throbbing dance music and ghoulishly chanted harmonies. A Greek chorus even narrates Elverums climb up the mountain, toward his end. The culmination of years spent experimenting with sound, examining the uncertainty of existence, and expressing those ideas through increasingly sylvan images, the operatic Mount Eerie offered an aptly climactic finale for the Microphones.

Mount Eerie is a concept-story album, but I wanted it to flow directly out of The Glow Pt. 2, says Elverum. I started it with the same sound The Glow ends with; that thing is common through everything I make, a thread that ties it together. I like forefront-ing the connections, but its almost all for me. I intentionally dont think about what fans will notice, or if anyone is even going to listen at all.

In 2002, Elverum asked the fans on K Records website for an outlandish favor: he wanted to spend a winter in Northern Norway, writing and thinking in Arctic seclusion. A fan in Bod, a mid-sized city ringed by rugged peaks and the Norwegian Sea, offered him a show and eventually pointed him toward a cabin two hours away. Elverum, who is of Scandinavian descent himself, spent months therebattling the relentless cold, confronting the turmoil of a recent breakup, and writing lots. His diaries from that time became the 134-page Dawn: Winter Journal, while his songs, which cut to the quick of living in solitary sadness, became a gripping Mount Eerie LP, also titled Dawn.

Mid-winter, Elverum briefly left his cabin for a long journey to Shibuya, stepping into the streets in snow pants and a heavy coat. He was there to play several shows with Calvin Johnson, Little Wings, and Japanese indie rock band The Moools. Elverum had already decided to drop the Microphones moniker for Mount Eerie, but he kept it for these sets for whatever name recognition it may confer. Its in quotation marks on this subsequent live albums coverin Elverums mind, he was already something new.

The enduring power of Live in Japan is the sense that a hermit is being let out of its hut, that the beast with feelings is emerging from a cave to share. Elverum is alternately playful and tortured, finding joy in relationships while painfully recognizing they have limits. During the gripping We Squirm, Elverum offers a late Microphones and early Mount Eerie cri de cur: I say let feelings hold you/ I say embrace your captors/ I say get to know them deep, he sings at the end of the songs breathless single verse, his voice crashing against the rocks of his heavy strums.

I dont like live albums that much, but I decided to release this one because so many of the songs were documents of something that would never happen again, Elverum says of the record. All the other Microphones things I repress from time to time, but Im not going to let this one fade away. Its weird, super raw, hard to listen to. I had been in this cabin in Norway, going head-to-head with my demons. All of a sudden, Im in Japan, performing this raw stuff to strangers that maybe didnt even understand the language. Its a document of being mid-exorcism.

By early 2007, Elverum had taken several tentative steps as Mount Eerie, releasing one full album and a bevy of singles and conceptual experiments. He was still on the eve of the recordsnotably 2008s Dawn and Lost Wisdomthat would codify the projects stark sound and frank core. He realized, however, that two new songs wouldnt fit Mount Eeries increasingly confessional aesthetic: Dont Smoke and Get Off the Internet, released in 2007 as a 7 attributed to the Microphones. Wouldnt the name just make these punk tunes stranger?

They are indeed outliers in Elverums oeuvre, preachy imperatives that tell listeners what to do rather than reframe what he has done himself. Slyly written to the tune of We Are the World and traced by spectral harmonies and sighing guitars, Get Off the Internet foretold the FOMO and exhaustion of our digital futures, a preemptive warning that a world of wonder and meaning exists beyond browser windows. Dont Smoke may grate when heard as a puritanical straight-edge plea; considered more broadly, its an enduring anthem for solidarity and self-reliance, for letting the nasty habits of the past die at last. We are the ones/ We have to do it, he urges in a rare moment of motivational earnestness. No more parents or gods.

As Elverum tells it, When I made those songs, it was me being a little snot, wanting to fuck with people. I was telling people what the rules are. And I wanted to poke with whatever preciousness existed around the name the Microphones. The songs seemed like their own thing, too. They were overtly political and definitely written with the audience in mind, though I normally try to ignore the fact that people will listen.

Early last summer, Elverum surprised his most ardent fans with a most unexpected twist: he would play one set as the Microphones in July, 16 years since his last album under that name. It was a reunionthough not really, since the band had always been an amorphous collective, anyway. Instead, Elverum had reunited with old friends to resurrect What the Heck Fest, the low-key, homecoming-style fte hed helped anchor in Anacortes in the early 00s. For Elverum, it felt fitting to dust off the mothballed name hed used for those early days, but he didnt want to settle for old favorites.

That feeling spawned a 20-minute metatextual saga Elverum premiered at the 2019 festival. He wondered aloud how hed shaped the Microphones, how it had shaped him, and what reviving the name said about the art hed always made. What were the threads that tied the melancholy teenager whod started this project in Anacortes because he loved recording, to the 41-year-old widower and acclaimed songwriter whod returned? The finished song, Microphones in 2020, is arguably the third Microphones masterpiece and a definitive framework for Elverums entire career.

This uninterrupted 45-minute tone poem rises around a tiny choir of acoustic guitars, shimmering like a moon glow on an endless ocean horizon. Elverum zooms in and out on his life, using seemingly small moments as chances to ask very big questions about why making art matters. He remembers playing alone in the garden as a toddler and wonders if thats why hes clung to mountains and oceans, fog and rain as a writer. He recounts a transformative experience watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a film that pushed him to express truths greater than mere romantic disappointment. He borrows from Mayhem as well as himself, quoting and alluding to his past work as he examines how the pieces of his life cohere.

Midway through the track, Elverum sings of his early days, I was already who I am. Not 20 minutes later, he appears to contradict himself, singing, I am older now, and I no longer feel the same way that I did even 5 seconds ago, his voice cracking as he squeezes in the syllables. This miraculous paradox is central to his creative lifethe idea of growing where youre rooted. Microphones in 2020 feels like a roadmap for pursuing new ideas, vividly illustrated with a renewed understanding that doing just that has been your lifes work.

Its not a good feeling to get dangerously close to self-indulgent nostalgia, Elverum says. Its distasteful to me. I made this as an antidote, and playing this felt weird and new and challenging. Thats where I want to be as an artist. I dont want to indulge in the comfort of repeating something I know works. I want to be moving forward, and Ive always been that way. Fingers crossed that Im done making albums about the baggage of the past for a little while.

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An In-Depth Guide to the Microphones - bandcamp.com

Pantheism | Britannica

Pantheism, the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being.

Both pantheism and panentheism are terms of recent origin, coined to describe certain views of the relationship between God and the world that are different from that of traditional theism. As reflected in the prefix pan- (Greek pas, all), both of the terms stress the all-embracing inclusiveness of God, as compared with his separateness as emphasized in many versions of theism. On the other hand, pantheism and panentheism, since they stress the theme of immanencei.e., of the indwelling presence of Godare themselves versions of theism conceived in its broadest meaning. Pantheism stresses the identity between God and the world, panentheism (Greek en, in) that the world is included in God but that God is more than the world.

The adjective pantheist was introduced by the Irish Deist John Toland in the book Socinianism Truly Stated (1705). The noun pantheism was first used in 1709 by one of Tolands opponents. The term panentheism appeared much later, in 1828. Although the terms are recent, they have been applied retrospectively to alternative views of the divine being as found in the entire philosophical traditions of both East and West.

Pantheism and panentheism can be explored by means of a three-way comparison with traditional or classical theism viewed from eight different standpointsi.e., from those of immanence or transcendence; of monism, dualism, or pluralism; of time or eternity; of the world as sentient or insentient; of God as absolute or relative; of the world as real or illusory; of freedom or determinism; and of sacramentalism or secularism.

The poetic sense of the divine within and around human beings, which is widely expressed in religious life, is frequently treated in literature. It is present in the Platonic Romanticism of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Expressions of the divine as intimate rather than as alien, as indwelling and near dwelling rather than remote, characterize pantheism and panentheism as contrasted with classical theism. Such immanence encourages the human sense of individual participation in the divine life without the necessity of mediation by any institution. On the other hand, it may also encourage a formless enthusiasm, without the moderating influence of institutional forms. In addition, some theorists have seen an unseemliness about a point of view that allows the divine to be easily confronted and appropriated. Classical theism has, in consequence, held to the transcendence of God, his existence over and beyond the universe. Recognizing, however, that if the separation between God and the world becomes too extreme, humanity risks the loss of communication with the divine, panentheismunlike pantheism, which holds to the divine immanencemaintains that the divine can be both transcendent and immanent at the same time.

Philosophies are monistic if they show a strong sense of the unity of the world, dualistic if they stress its twoness, and pluralistic if they stress its manyness. Pantheism is typically monistic, finding in the worlds unity a sense of the divine, sometimes related to the mystical intuition of personal union with God; classical theism is dualistic in conceiving God as separated from the world and mind from body; and panentheism is typically monistic in holding to the unity of God and the world, dualistic in urging the separateness of Gods essence from the world, and pluralistic in taking seriously the multiplicity of the kinds of beings and events making up the world. One form of pantheism, present in the early stages of Greek philosophy, held that the divine is one of the elements in the world whose function is to animate the other elements that constitute the world. This point of view, called Hylozoistic (Greek hyl, matter, and z, life) pantheism, is not monistic, as are most other forms of pantheism, but pluralistic.

Most, but not all, forms of pantheism understand the eternal God to be in intimate juxtaposition with the world, thus minimizing time or making it illusory. Classical theism holds that eternity is in God and time is in the world but believes that, since Gods eternity includes all of time, the temporal process now going on in the world has already been completed in God. Panentheism, on the other hand, espouses a temporaleternal God who stands in juxtaposition with a temporal world; thus, in panentheism, the temporality of the world is not cancelled out, and time retains its reality.

Every philosophy must take a stand somewhere on a spectrum running from a concept of things as unfeeling matter to one of things as psychic or sentient. Materialism holds to the former extreme, and Panpsychism to the latter. Panpsychism offers a vision of reality in which to exist is to be in some measure sentient and to sustain social relations with other entities. Dualism, holding that reality consists of two fundamentally different kinds of entity, stands again between two extremes. A few of the simpler forms of pantheism support materialism. Panentheism and most forms of pantheism, on the other hand, tend toward Panpsychism. But there are differences of degree, and though classical theism tends toward dualism, even there the insentient often has a tinge of panpsychism.

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Pantheism | Britannica

What Is Pantheism and Why Does Christianity Refute It?

Pantheism (pronouncedPAN thee izm) is the belief that God consists of everyone and everything. For example, a tree is God, a mountain is God, the universe is God, all people are God.

Pantheism is found in many "nature" religions and New Age religions. The belief is held by most Hindus and many Buddhists.It is also the worldview of Unity, Christian Science, and Scientology.

The term comes from two Greek words meaning "all (pan) is God (theos)." In pantheism, there is no difference between deity and reality. People who believe in pantheism think God is the world around them and that God and the universe are identical.

According to pantheism, God permeates all things, contains all things, connects to all things, and is found in all things. Nothing exists isolated from God, and everything is in some way identified with God. The world is God, and God is the world. All is God, and God is all.

Both in the East and West, Pantheism has a long history. Different types of pantheism have developed, each identifying and uniting God with the world in a unique way.

Christian theology opposes the ideas of pantheism. Christianity says that God created everything, not that he is everything or that everything is God:

Christianity teaches that God is omnipresent, or exists everywhere, separating the Creator from his creations:

In Christian theology, God is everywhere present with His whole being at all times. His omnipresence does not mean that he is diffused throughout the universe or penetrates the universe.

Pantheists who give credence to the idea that the universe is real, agree that the universe was created "ex deo" or "out of God." Christian theism teaches that the universe was created "ex nihilo," or "out of nothing."

A fundamental teaching of absolute pantheism is that humans must master their ignorance and recognize that they are God. Christianity teaches that God alone is the Highest God:

Pantheism implies that miracles are impossible. A miracle requires God to intervene on behalf of something or someone outside of himself. Thus, pantheism rules out miracles because "all is God and God is all." Christianity believes in a God who loves and cares about people and intervenes miraculously and regularly in their lives.

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What Is Pantheism and Why Does Christianity Refute It?

Panentheism – Wikipedia

Belief that the divine pervades all of space and time and extends beyond it

Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Greek pn, "all", en, "in" and Thes, "God")[1] is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (17751854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza.[1] Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical,[2] panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.

The religious beliefs of Neoplatonism can be regarded as panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God ("the One", to En, ) of which subsequent realities were emanations. From "the One" emanates the Divine Mind (Nous, ) and the Cosmic Soul (Psyche, ). In Neoplatonism the world itself is God (according to Plato's Timaeus 37). This concept of divinity is associated with that of the Logos (), which had originated centuries earlier with Heraclitus (c. 535475 BC). The Logos pervades the cosmos, whereby all thoughts and all things originate, or as Heraclitus said: "He who hears not me but the Logos will say: All is one." Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus attempted to reconcile this perspective by adding another hypostasis above the original monad of force or Dunamis (). This new all-pervasive monad encompassed all creation and its original uncreated emanations.

Baruch Spinoza later claimed that "Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived."[5] "Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner."[6] Though Spinoza has been called the "prophet"[7] and "prince"[8] of pantheism, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg Spinoza states that: "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken".[9] For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world.

According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) Spinoza did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.[10] Furthermore, Martial Guroult suggested the term "panentheism", rather than "pantheism" to describe Spinoza's view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Yet, American philosopher and self-described panentheist Charles Hartshorne referred to Spinoza's philosophy as "classical pantheism" and distinguished Spinoza's philosophy from panentheism.[11]

In 1828, the German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (17811832) seeking to reconcile monotheism and pantheism, coined the term panentheism (from the Ancient Greek expression , pn en the, literally "all in god"). This conception of God influenced New England transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The term was popularized by Charles Hartshorne in his development of process theology and has also been closely identified with the New Thought.[12] The formalization of this term in the West in the 19th century was not new; philosophical treatises had been written on it in the context of Hinduism for millennia.[13]

Philosophers who embraced panentheism have included Thomas Hill Green (18391882), James Ward (18431925), Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (18561931) and Samuel Alexander (18591938).[14] Beginning in the 1940s, Hartshorne examined numerous conceptions of God. He reviewed and discarded pantheism, deism, and pandeism in favor of panentheism, finding that such a "doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations". Hartshorne formulated God as a being who could become "more perfect": He has absolute perfection in categories for which absolute perfection is possible, and relative perfection (i.e., is superior to all others) in categories for which perfection cannot be precisely determined.[15]

The earliest reference to panentheistic thought in Hindu philosophy is in a creation myth contained in the later section of Rig Veda called the Purusha Sukta,[16] which was compiled before 1100 BCE.[17] The Purusha Sukta gives a description of the spiritual unity of the cosmos. It presents the nature of Purusha or the cosmic being as both immanent in the manifested world and yet transcendent to it.[18] From this being the sukta holds, the original creative will proceeds, by which this vast universe is projected in space and time.[19]

The most influential[20] and dominant[21] school of Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta, rejects theism and dualism by insisting that "Brahman [ultimate reality] is without parts or attributes...one without a second."[22] Since Brahman has no properties, contains no internal diversity and is identical with the whole reality it cannot be understood as an anthropomorphic personal God.[23] The relationship between Brahman and the creation is often thought to be panentheistic.[24]

Panentheism is also expressed in the Bhagavad Gita.[24] In verse IX.4, Krishna states:

By Me all this universe is pervaded through My unmanifested form.All beings abide in Me but I do not abide in them.

Many schools of Hindu thought espouse monistic theism, which is thought to be similar to a panentheistic viewpoint. Nimbarka's school of differential monism (Dvaitadvaita), Ramanuja's school of qualified monism (Vishistadvaita) and Saiva Siddhanta and Kashmir Shaivism are all considered to be panentheistic.[25] Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's Gaudiya Vaishnavism, which elucidates the doctrine of Achintya Bheda Abheda (inconceivable oneness and difference), is also thought to be panentheistic.[26] In Kashmir Shaivism, all things are believed to be a manifestation of Universal Consciousness (Cit or Brahman).[27] So from the point of view of this school, the phenomenal world (akti) is real, and it exists and has its being in Consciousness (Cit).[28] Thus, Kashmir Shaivism is also propounding of theistic monism or panentheism.[29]

Shaktism, or Tantra, is regarded as an Indian prototype of Panentheism.[30] Shakti is considered to be the cosmos itself she is the embodiment of energy and dynamism, and the motivating force behind all action and existence in the material universe. Shiva is her transcendent masculine aspect, providing the divine ground of all being. "There is no Shiva without Shakti, or Shakti without Shiva. The two ... in themselves are One."[31] Thus, it is She who becomes the time and space, the cosmos, it is She who becomes the five elements, and thus all animate life and inanimate forms. She is the primordial energy that holds all creation and destruction, all cycles of birth and death, all laws of cause and effect within Herself, and yet is greater than the sum total of all these. She is transcendent, but becomes immanent as the cosmos (Mula Prakriti). She, the Primordial Energy, directly becomes Matter.

Taoism says that all is part of the eternal tao, and that all interact through qi. Chapter 6 of the Tao Te Ching describes the Tao thus: "The heart of Tao is immortal, the mysterious fertile mother of us all, of heaven and earth, of every thing and not-thing."[32]

Panentheism is also a feature of some Christian philosophical theologies and resonates strongly within the theological tradition of the Orthodox Church.[33] It also appears in process theology. Process theological thinkers are generally regarded in the Christian West as unorthodox. Furthermore, process philosophical thought is widely believed to have paved the way for open theism, a movement that tends to associate itself primarily with the Evangelical branch of Protestantism, but is also generally considered unorthodox by most Evangelicals.

In Christianity, creation is not considered a literal "part of" God, and divinity is essentially distinct from creation (i.e., transcendent). There is, in other words, an irradicable difference between the uncreated (i.e., God) and the created (i.e., everything else). This does not mean, however, that the creation is wholly separated from God, because the creation exists in and from the divine energies. In Eastern Orthodoxy, these energies or operations are the natural activity of God and are in some sense identifiable with God, but at the same time the creation is wholly distinct from the divine essence.[citation needed] God creates the universe by His will and from His energies. It is, however, not an imprint or emanation of God's own essence (ousia), the essence He shares pre-eternally with His Word and Holy Spirit. Neither is it a directly literal outworking or effulgence of the divine, nor any other process which implies that creation is essentially God or a necessary part of God. The use of the term "panentheism" to describe the divine concept in Orthodox Christian theology is problematic for those who would insist that panentheism requires creation to be "part of" God.

God is not merely Creator of the universe, as His dynamic presence is necessary to sustain the existence of every created thing, small and great, visible and invisible.[34] That is, God's energies maintain the existence of the created order and all created beings, even if those agencies have explicitly rejected him. His love for creation is such that He will not withdraw His presence, which would be the ultimate form of annihilation, not merely imposing death, but ending existence altogether. By this token, the entirety of creation is fundamentally "good" in its very being, and is not innately evil either in whole or in part. This does not deny the existence of spiritual or moral evil in a fallen universe, only the claim that it is an intrinsic property of creation. Sin results from the essential freedom of creatures to operate outside the divine order, not as a necessary consequence of having inherited human nature.

Many Christians who believe in universalism mainly expressed in the Universalist Church of America, originating, as a fusion of Pietist and Anabaptist influences, from the American colonies of the 18th century hold panentheistic views of God in conjunction with their belief in apocatastasis, also called universal reconciliation.[citation needed] Panentheistic Christian Universalists often believe that all creation's subsistence in God renders untenable the notion of final and permanent alienation from Him, citing Scriptural passages such as Ephesians 4:6 ("[God] is over all and through all and in all") and Romans 11:36 ("from [God] and through him and to him are all things") to justify both panentheism and universalism.[citation needed] Panentheism was also a major force in the Unitarian church for a long time, based in part on Ralph Waldo Emerson's concept of the Over-soul (from the synonymous essay of 1841).[citation needed]

Panentheistic conceptions of God occur amongst some modern theologians. Process theology and Creation Spirituality, two recent developments in Christian theology, contain panentheistic ideas. Charles Hartshorne (18972000), who conjoined process theology with panentheism, maintained a lifelong membership in the Methodist church but was also a Unitarian. In later years he joined the Austin, Texas, Unitarian Universalist congregation and was an active participant in that church.[35] Referring to the ideas such as Thomas Oord's theocosmocentrism (2010), the soft panentheism of open theism, Keith Ward's comparative theology and John Polkinghorne's critical realism (2009), Raymond Potgieter observes distinctions such as dipolar and bipolar:

The former suggests two poles separated such as God influencing creation and it in turn its creator (Bangert 2006:168), whereas bipolarity completes Gods being implying interdependence between temporal and eternal poles. (Marbaniang 2011:133), in dealing with Whiteheads approach, does not make this distinction. I use the term bipolar as a generic term to include suggestions of the structural definition of Gods transcendence and immanence; to for instance accommodate a present and future reality into which deity must reasonably fit and function, and yet maintain separation from this world and evil whilst remaining within it.[36]

Some argue that panentheism should also include the notion that God has always been related to some world or another, which denies the idea of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Nazarene Methodist theologian Thomas Jay Oord (*1965) advocates panentheism, but he uses the word "theocosmocentrism" to highlight the notion that God and some world or another are the primary conceptual starting blocks for eminently fruitful theology. This form of panentheism helps in overcoming the problem of evil and in proposing that God's love for the world is essential to who God is.[37]

The Christian Church International also holds to a panentheist doctrine. The Latter Day Saint movement teaches that the Light of Christ "proceeds from God through Christ and gives life and light to all things."[38]

"Gnosticism" is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems prevalent in the first and second century AD. The teachings of the various gnostic groups were very diverse. In his Dictionary of Gnosticism, Andrew Phillip Smith has written that some branches of Gnosticism taught a panentheistic view of reality,[39] and held to the belief that God exists in the visible world only as sparks of spiritual "light". The goal of human existence is to know the sparks within oneself in order to return to God, who is in the Fullness (or Pleroma).

Gnosticism was panentheistic, believing that the true God is simultaneously both separate from the physical universe and present within it.[citation needed] As Jesus states in the Gospel of Thomas, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all ... . Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."[40] This seemingly contradictory interpretation of gnostic theology is not without controversy, since one interpretation of dualistic theology holds that a perfect God of pure spirit would not manifest himself through the fallen world of matter.

Manichaeism, being another gnostic sect, preached a very different doctrine in positioning the true Manichaean God against matter as well as other deities, that it described as enmeshed with the world, namely the gods of Jews, Christians and pagans.[41] Nevertheless, this dualistic teaching included an elaborate cosmological myth that narrates the defeat of primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light.[42]

Valentinian Gnosticism taught that matter came about through emanations of the supreme being, even if to some this event is held to be more accidental than intentional.[43] To other gnostics, these emanations were akin to the Sephirot of the Kabbalists and deliberate manifestations of a transcendent God through a complex system of intermediaries.[44]

While mainstream Rabbinic Judaism is classically monotheistic, and follows in the footsteps of Maimonides (c. 11351204), the panentheistic conception of God can be found among certain mystical Jewish traditions. A leading scholar of Kabbalah, Moshe Idel[45] ascribes this doctrine to the kabbalistic system of Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (15221570) and in the eighteenth century to the Baal Shem Tov (c. 17001760), founder of the Hasidic movement, as well as his contemporaries, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch (died 1772), and Menahem Mendel, the Maggid of Bar. This may be said of many, if not most, subsequent Hasidic masters. There is some debate as to whether Isaac Luria (15341572) and Lurianic Kabbalah, with its doctrine of tzimtzum, can be regarded as panentheistic.

According to Hasidism, the infinite Ein Sof is incorporeal and exists in a state that is both transcendent and immanent. This appears to be the view of non-Hasidic Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, as well. Hasidic Judaism merges the elite ideal of nullification to a transcendent God, via the intellectual articulation of inner dimensions through Kabbalah and with emphasis on the panentheistic divine immanence in everything.[46]

Many scholars would argue that "panentheism" is the best single-word description of the philosophical theology of Baruch Spinoza.[47] It is therefore no surprise, that aspects of panentheism are also evident in the theology of Reconstructionist Judaism as presented in the writings of Mordecai Kaplan (18811983), who was strongly influenced by Spinoza.[48]

Several Sufi saints and thinkers, primarily Ibn Arabi, held beliefs that have been considered panentheistic.[49] These notions later took shape in the theory of wahdat ul-wujud (the Unity of All Things). Some Sufi Orders, notably the Bektashis[50] and the Universal Sufi movement, continue to espouse panentheistic beliefs. Nizari Ismaili follow panentheism according to Ismaili doctrine. Nevertheless, some Shia Muslims also do believe in different degrees of Panentheism.

Al-Qayyuum is a Name of God in the Qur'an which translates to "The Self-Existing by Whom all subsist". In Islam the universe can not exist if Allah doesn't exist, and it is only by His power which encompasses everything and which is everywhere that the universe can exist. In Aya al-Kursii God's throne is described as "extending over the heavens and the earth" and "He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them". This does not mean though that the universe is God, or that a creature (like a tree or an animal) is God, because those would be respectively pantheism, which is a heresy in traditional Islam, and the worst heresy in Islam, shirk (polytheism). God is separated by His creation but His creation can not survive without Him.

The Mesoamerican empires of the Mayas, Aztecs as well as the South American Incas (Tahuatinsuyu) have typically been characterized as polytheistic, with strong male and female deities.[51] According to Charles C. Mann's history book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, only the lower classes of Aztec society were polytheistic. Philosopher James Maffie has argued that Aztec metaphysics was pantheistic rather than panentheistic, since Teotl was considered by Aztec philosophers to be the ultimate all-encompassing yet all-transcending force defined by its inherit duality.[52]

Native American beliefs in North America have been characterized as panentheistic in that there is an emphasis on a single, unified divine spirit that is manifest in each individual entity.[53] (North American Native writers have also translated the word for God as the Great Mystery[54] or as the Sacred Other[55]) This concept is referred to by many as the Great Spirit. Philosopher J. Baird Callicott has described Lakota theology as panentheistic, in that the divine both transcends and is immanent in everything.[56]

One exception can be modern Cherokee who are predominantly monotheistic but apparently not panentheistic;[57] yet in older Cherokee traditions many observe both aspects of pantheism and panentheism, and are often not beholden to exclusivity, encompassing other spiritual traditions without contradiction, a common trait among some tribes in the Americas. In the stories of Keetoowah storytellers Sequoyah Guess and Dennis Sixkiller, God is known as , commonly pronounced "unehlanv," and visited earth in prehistoric times, but then left earth and her people to rely on themselves. This shows a parallel to Vaishnava cosmology.

The Sikh gurus have described God in numerous ways in their hymns included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of Sikhism, but the oneness of the deity is consistently emphasized throughout. God is described in the Mool Mantar, the first passage in the Guru Granth Sahib, and the basic formula of the faith is:

(Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1) in Punjabi

Punjabi in Latin script

Ik Oankar Satnaam KartaaPurakh Nirbhau Nirvair AkaalMoorat Ajooni Saibhan GurPrasad

English translation

One primal being who made the sound (oan) that expanded and created the world. Truth is the name. Creative being personified. Without fear, without hate. Image of the undying. Beyond birth, self existent. By Guru's grace~

Guru Arjan, the fifth guru of Sikhs, says, "God is beyond colour and form, yet His/Her presence is clearly visible" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 74), and "Nanak's Lord transcends the world as well as the scriptures of the east and the west, and yet He/She is clearly manifest" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 397).

Knowledge of the ultimate Reality is not a matter for reason; it comes by revelation of the ultimate reality through nadar (grace) and by anubhava (mystical experience). Says Guru Nanak; "budhi pathi na paiai bahu chaturaiai bhai milai mani bhane." This translates to "He/She is not accessible through intellect, or through mere scholarship or cleverness at argument; He/She is met, when He/She pleases, through devotion" (GG, 436).

Guru Nanak prefixed the numeral one (ik) to it, making it Ik Oankar or Ek Oankar to stress God's oneness. God is named and known only through his Own immanent nature. The only name which can be said to truly fit God's transcendent state is SatNam ( Sat Sanskrit, Truth), the changeless and timeless Reality. God is transcendent and all-pervasive at the same time. Transcendence and immanence are two aspects of the same single Supreme Reality. The Reality is immanent in the entire creation, but the creation as a whole fails to contain God fully. As says Guru Tegh Bahadur, Nanak IX, "He has himself spread out His/Her Own maya (worldly illusion) which He oversees; many different forms He assumes in many colours, yet He stays independent of all" (GG, 537).

In the Bah' Faith, God is described as a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. The connection between God and the world is that of the creator to his creation.[58] God is understood to be independent of his creation, and that creation is dependent and contingent on God. Accordingly, the Bah' Faith is much more closely aligned with traditions of monotheism than panentheism. God is not seen to be part of creation as he cannot be divided and does not descend to the condition of his creatures. Instead, in the Bah' understanding, the world of creation emanates from God, in that all things have been realized by him and have attained to existence.[59] Creation is seen as the expression of God's will in the contingent world,[60] and every created thing is seen as a sign of God's sovereignty, and leading to knowledge of him; the signs of God are most particularly revealed in human beings.[58]

In Konkky, God is named Tenchi Kane no Kami-Sama which can mean Golden spirit of the universe. Kami (God) is also seen as infinitely loving and powerful.

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Panentheism - Wikipedia

World Pantheism Revering the Universe, Caring for Nature …

Do you feel a deep sense of peace, belonging, gratitude and wonder in Nature or under a clear night sky? Then you may be a scientific pantheist.Scientific pantheism focuses on saving the planet rather than saving souls. It respects the rights of humans, and also of all living beings. It encourages you to make the most and best of your one life here.It values reason and the scientific method over adherence to ancient scriptures. Take our popular quiz to find out if it suits you:-Are you Atheist, Agnostic, Pagan, Deist, Pantheist or What?

We relate closely to some of the central challenges of our era. At a time when the balance of our Earth is under unprecedented threat, scientific pantheism is one of the few forms of spirituality in which Nature plays a central part. For us, Nature is a source of peace and beauty, as well as the focus for our care and vigilance. Nature was not created for us to use or abuse. Nature created us, we are an inseparable part of her. We have a duty to live sustainably, to care for Nature and to halt and reverse the harm that humans have done to her.

Scientific pantheism is the only form of spirituality we know of which fully embraces science as part of the human exploration of Earth and Cosmos. We wonder at the picture of a vast, creative and often violent Universerevealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. We regard stargazing as a spiritual practice. We oppose climate change denial and evolution denial, especially in education.

Scientific pantheism has a joyous affirmative approach to life. It has a healthy and positive attitude to sex and life in the body. We wont tell you what you should be smoking or doing in the bedroom. We fully accept diverse gender choices, and we oppose all forms of discrimination.

Scientific pantheism moves beyond God and defines itself by positives.Atheism and Agnosticism both define themselves negatively, in relation to a God that they deny or doubt. These are useful starting points but they dont take us very far. Most people also need positive beliefs and feelings about their place in Nature and the wider Universe. We take Nature and the Universe as our start and finish point, not some preconceived idea of God. We do not believe in a supernatural creator god who watches or judges us. Most of us avoid god-language or religious words like church, worship, divinity and so on. We regard them as misleading. Some of us do like these words, but they use them metaphorically, in a similar way to how Einstein used the word.

Get the Scientific Pantheism handbook.

Our beliefs and values are summarized in our Pantheist Statement of Principles.The statement was drawn up by fallible humans. It is not required dogma it is simply a notice on our door, to show what we are about so people can decide if it suits them or if they want to learn more.These are the key elements:

Many people feel the need to belong to a religious community. Research shows that such groups provide mutual support and friends and are good for physical and mental health. Theres no good reason why groups of like-minded non-theistic folk should not enjoy similar benefits.

In the WPM we are spiritual but not religious. We dont have churches, priests, or prescribed dogma and rituals. But we do aim to provide a home base for people who love Nature and the Universe and do not believe in supernatural entities.

Two of the major benefits our members and friends say they value are gaining new like-minded friends and finding a place where they can share their enthusiasms without fear of being ostracized or feeling isolated. There have been many local meetings of members across the USA and in other parts of the world, where people have found a rare level of fellowship and stimulation.

The WPMs short term goals are to:

In the longer term, as resources permit, we hope to:

If you would like to help promote these goals, please consider becoming a WPM member. Volunteering is another great way of supporting the WPM.

All who agree with our principles are encouraged to join our Facebook page (with more than 160,000 fans), or join our Facebook discussion groupwith more than 10,000 members.

We use the name pantheism because the term encompasses a long and venerable history dating back to Heraclitus and Marcus Aurelius and extending to Einstein, D. H. Lawrence and beyond.

Our beliefs (see the Statement of Principles) are entirely compatible with atheism, humanism, agnosticism, universalism, and symbolic paganism (viewing magic, gods and spirits as symbols rather than objective realities). We offer a home to all forms of naturalistic spirituality however you may choose to label it. Other paths that approximate include philosophical Taoism, modern Stoicism, Western forms of Buddhism that celebrate Nature and daily life without supernatural beliefs, and Unitarian Universalists who do not believe in supernatural beings.

You are free to adopt the terms and practices you prefer and draw on other traditions for inspiration or celebration. Some call this a religion (a positive one), while others call it a philosophy, a way of life, or a form of general spirituality. Its up to you.

Please explore our pages. If you have any questions, please contact us.

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World Pantheism Revering the Universe, Caring for Nature ...

Hassan-e Sabbah, the Grand Master of Islamic Assassins – The Great Courses Daily News

By Richard B. Spence, Ph.D., University of Idaho Hassan-e Sabbah was an Ismaili Shia. (Image: Original: Ishvara7; Vector: Smasongarrison/CC BY-SA 4.0/Public domain) Where did Hassan-e Sabbah Come From?

Hassan-e Sabbah was born into a Shia family in the city of Ray, Iran. When he went to school, he was friends with two future prominent figures in the history of Iran; Omar Khayyam, the poet, and Nizam al-Mulk, who became a Seljuk vizier. These three schoolboys had a pact that any one of them who was the first to succeed would have to help the other two to become successful and wealthy. Nizam was the first to succeed, and contrary to their pact, he only helped Khayyam and not Sabbah. Presumably, this became Sabbahs motivation to assassinate Nizam as a Seljuk vizier in the future.

He went to Cairo and was trained in a school belonging to a secret organization called Majlis al-Hakima, Society of Wisdom. It was originally a public library opened by Al-Hakim, a Fatimid Caliph, who secretly opened the school under cover of this library. Both men and women were allowed in this school which was uncommon in Islam.

The initiates had to go through a complicated nine-degree initiation process. This process is described by Al-Makrisi, an Egyptian Sunni historian, who was interested in Sabbah and his faithful men. The process of initiation consisted of brainwashing and psychological manipulation.

Learn more about Secret Societies: The Never Ending Story.

The first degree consisted of shattering all the faith that the pupil had. The teacher created doubt in the minds of the pupils through devaluing everything, even the Holy Koran and Prophet Mohammad. The pupil had to have absolute faith in his teacher and obey him blindly. In the second stage, they learned about the mystery of numbers and the seven prophets Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Ismail. These lawgivers were accompanied by seven helpers or silent prophets.

This is a transcript from the video series Secret Societies. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

The training proceeded to the sixth grade where the pupils learned about Aristotle and Plato. The analytical and destructive arguments were taught at this stage to support or reject any proposition through logic. The pupils were told that Islam and its rites and rituals were nothing but pointless hogwash. Also, at this stage, based on pre-Islamic Persian mythology, a mysterious deity called the Lord of Time was introduced to them.

In the seventh degree, they learned about pantheism, the idea that holds all humanity and all creation are one. Therefore, all seemingly opposing forces like good and evil, creation and destruction, are all one. There is no distinction between them, and any distinction of this kind is just an illusion.

The eighth degree, which aimed to prepare the pupils for the final revelation, gave the true God a nameless identity that is unpredictable and cannot be worshiped.

And the final degree revealed that nothing is true, and everything is permitted. Everything was denied, including God, heaven, hell, and even the truth. Action was at the center of everything, and the head of the sect was the only person who validated an action to be carried out.

These principles were in line with those of antinomianism. According to antinomianism, which could be considered a form of nihilism, there are no rules whatsoever regarding morality or any other realm. Assassins had a major difference in principles with antinomianism: it wasnt true that they didnt believe in anything. They believed in one thing: that they were right; to the pure, all things are pure.

Learn more about Secret Societies: The Underworld of History.

After finishing all these grades, Sabbah returned to Persia as a dai, or missionary to follow his secret mission. Manipulating the minds of others was his special ability. It is best manifested in a sea voyage when a storm hit. Panic-stricken, the passengers were praying to God to save them. But Sabbah refused to pray and claimed that the storm was created by his magical powers. Confident that the storm would stop based on his calculations, he convinced them if they prayed to him, the storm would stop. The passengers desperately prayed to him and saw that the storm subsided and thought they were saved by Sabbah. Naturally, they turned into firm believers of this mysterious savior with magical powers.

He had a special way of attracting followers. Instead of telling imaginary tales about things like paradise, he helped them see one in person. He would create a paradise based on the descriptions they had heard from religious teachings. Then, he drugged them and made them wake up in that false heaven. After letting them enjoy for several days, they were drugged again and returned to real life. With this sample taste of heaven, Sabbah promised them to have this heaven eternally after their death.

Alamut Castle was the first castle occupied by Hassan-e Sabbah, the grand master of Islamic Assassins. It was located in northern Persia in Alborz Mountains.

The Islamic Assassins was a real secret society with Hassan-e Sabbah as its grand master. They were ordered in hierarchies based on their professions and missions.

Antinomianism is a system of thinking similar to nihilism. It holds that there are no rules, moral or otherwise.

Continued here:

Hassan-e Sabbah, the Grand Master of Islamic Assassins - The Great Courses Daily News

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pantheism

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(From Greek pan, all; theos, god).

The view according to which God and the world are one. The name pantheist was introduced by John Toland (1670-1722) in his "Socinianism truly Stated" (1705), while pantheism was first used by his opponent Fay in "Defensio Religionis" (1709). Toland published his "Pantheisticon" in 1732. The doctrine itself goes back to the early Indian philosophy; it appears during the course of history in a great variety of forms, and it enters into or draws support from so many other systems that, as Professor Flint says ("Antitheistic Theories", 334), "there is probably no pure pantheism". Taken in the strictest sense, i.e. as identifying God and the world, Pantheism is simply Atheism. In any of its forms it involves Monism, but the latter is not necessarily pantheistic. Emanationism may easily take on a pantheistic meaning and as pointed out in the Encyclical "Pascendi dominici gregis", the same is true of the modern doctrine of immanence.

These agree in the fundamental doctrine that beneath the apparent diversity and multiplicity of things in the universe there is one only being absolutely necessary, eternal, and infinite. Two questions then arise: What is the nature of this being? How are the manifold appearances to be explained? The principal answers are incorporated in such different earlier systems as Brahminism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism, and in the later systems of Scotus Eriugena and Giordano Bruno.

Spinoza's pantheism was realistic: the one being of the world had an objective character. But the systems that developed during the nineteenth century went to the extreme of idealism. They are properly grouped under the designation of "transcendental pantheism", as their starting-point is found in Kant's critical philosophy. Kant had distinguished in knowledge the matter which comes through sensation from the outer world, and the forms, which are purely subjective and yet are the more important factors. Furthermore, he had declared that we know the appearances (phenomena) of things but not the things-in-themselves (noumena). And he had made the ideas of the soul, the world, and God merely immanent, so that any attempt to demonstrate their objective value must end in contradiction. This subjectivism paved the way for the pantheistic theories of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

Fichte set back into the mind all the elements of knowledge, i.e. matter as well as form; phenomena and indeed the whole of reality are products of the thinking Ego-not the individual mind but the absolute or universal self-consciousness. Through the three-fold process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, the Ego posits the non-Ego not only theoretically but also for practical purposes, i.e. for effort and struggle which are necessary in order to attain the highest good. In the same way the Ego, free in itself, posits other free agents by whose existence its own freedom is limited. Hence the law of right and all morality; but hence also the Divine being. The living, active moral order of the world, says Fichte, is itself God, we need no other God, and can conceive of no other. The idea of God as a distinct substance is impossible and contradictory. Such, at any rate, is the earlier form of his doctrine, though in his later theorizing he emphasizes more and more the concepts of the Absolute as embracing all individuals within itself.

According to Schelling, the Absolute is the "identity of all differences"-object and subject, nature and mind, the real order and the ideal; and the knowledge of this identity is obtained by an intellectual intuition which, abstracting from every individual thinker and every possible object of thought, contemplates the absolute reason. Out of this original unity all things evolve in opposite directions: nature as the negative pole, mind or spirit as the positive pole of a vast magnet, the universe. Within this totality each thing, like the particle of a magnet, has its nature or form determined according as it manifests subjectivity or objectivity in greater degree. History is but the gradual self-revelation of the Absolute; when its final period will come to pass we know not; but when it does come, then God will be.

The system of Hegel has been called "logical pantheism", as it is constructed on the "dialectical" method; and "panlogismus", since it describes the entire world-process as the evolution of the Idea. Starting from the most abstract of notions, i.e. pure being, the Absolute develops first the various categories; then it externalizes itself, and Nature is the result; finally it returns upon itself, regains unity and self-consciousness, becomes the individual spirit of man. The Absolute, therefore, is Mind; but it attains its fulness only by a process of evolution or "becoming", the stages of which form the history of the universe.

These idealistic constructions were followed by a reaction due largely to the development of the natural sciences. But these in turn offer, apparently, new support to the central positions of pantheism, or at any rate they point, it is claimed, to that very unity and that gradual unfolding which pantheism has all along asserted. The principle of the conservation of energy through ceaseless transformations, and the doctrine of evolution applied to all things and all phenomena, are readily interpreted by the pantheist in favour of his own system. Even where the ultimate reality is said to be unknowable as in Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy", it is still one and the same being that manifests itself alike in evolving matter and in the consciousness that evolves out of lower material forms. Nor is it surprising that some writers should see in pantheism the final outcome of all speculation and the definitive expression which the human mind has found for the totality of things.

This statement, in fact, may well serve as a summary of the pantheistic doctrine:

The Church has repeatedly condemned the errors of pantheism. Among the propositions censured in the Syllabus of Pius IX is that which declares: "There is no supreme, all-wise and all-provident Divine Being distinct from the universe; God is one with nature and therefore subject to change; He becomes God in man and the world; all things are God and have His substance; God is identical with the world, spirit with matter, necessity with freedom, truth with falsity, good with evil, justice with injustice" (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Ench.", 1701). And the Vatican Council anathematizes those who assert that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same, or that all things evolve from God's essence (ibid., 1803 sqq.).

To our perception the world presents a multitude of beings each of which has qualities activities, and existence of its own, each is an individual thing. Radical differences mark off living things from those that are lifeless; the conscious from the unconscious human thought and volition from the activities of lower animals. And among human beings each personality appears as a self, which cannot by any effort become completely one with other selves. On the other hand, any adequate account of the world other than downright materialism includes the concept of some original Being which, whether it be called First Cause, or Absolute, or God, is in its nature and existence really distinct from the world. Only such a Being can satisfy the demands of human thought, either as the source of the moral order or as the object of religious worship. If, then, pantheism not only merges the separate existences of the world in one existence, but also identifies this one with the Divine Being, some cogent reason or motive must be alleged in justification of such a procedure. Pantheists indeed bring forward various arguments in support of their several positions, and in reply to criticism aimed at the details of their system; but what lies back of their reasoning and what has prompted the construction of all pantheistic theories, both old and new, is the craving for unity. The mind, they insist, cannot accept dualism or pluralism as the final account of reality. By an irresistible tendency, it seeks to substitute for the apparent multiplicity and diversity of things a unitary ground or source, and, once this is determined, to explain all things as somehow derived though not really separated from it.

That such is in fact the ideal of many philosophers cannot be denied; nor is it needful to challenge the statement that reason does aim at unification on some basis or other. But this very aim and all endeavours in view of it must likewise be kept within reasonable bounds: a theoretical unity obtained at too great a sacrifice is no unity at all, but merely an abstraction that quickly falls to pieces. Hence for an estimate of pantheism two questions must be considered:

It has often been claimed that pantheism by teaching us to see God in everything gives us an exalted idea of His wisdom, goodness, and power, while it imparts to the visible world a deeper meaning. In point of fact, however, it makes void the attributes which belong essentially to the Divine nature For the pantheist God is not a personal Being. He is not an intelligent Cause of the world, designing, creating and governing it in accordance with the free determination of His wisdom. If consciousness is ascribed to Him as the one Substance, extension is also said to be His attribute (Spinoza), or He attains to self-consciousness only through a process of evolution (Hegel). But this very process implies that God is not from eternity perfect: He is forever changing, advancing from one degree of perfection to another, and helpless to determine in what direction the advance shall take place. Indeed, there is no warrant for saying that He "advances" or becomes more "perfect"; at most we can say that He, or rather It, is constantly passing into other forms. Thus God is not only impersonal, but also changeable and finite-which is equivalent to saying that He is not God.

It is true that some pantheists, such as Paulsen, while frankly denying the personality of God, pretend to exalt His being by asserting that He is "supra-personal." If this means that God in Himself is infinitely beyond any idea that we can form of Him, the statement is correct; but if it means that our idea of Him is radically false and not merely inadequate, that consequently we have no right to speak of infinite intelligence and will, the statement is simply a makeshift which pantheism borrows from agnosticism Even then the term "supra-personal" is not consistently applied to what Paulsen calls the All-One; for this, if at all related to personality, should be described as infra-personal.

Once the Divine personality is removed, it is evidently a misnomer to speak of God as just or holy, or in any sense a moral Being. Since God, in the pantheistic view, acts out of sheer necessity--that is, cannot act otherwise--His action is no more good than it is evil. To say, with Fichte, that God is the moral order, is an open contradiction; no such order exists where nothing is free, nor could God, a non-moral Being, have established a moral order either for Himself or for other beings. If, on the other hand, it be maintained that the moral order does exist, that it is postulated by our human judgments, the plight of pantheism is no better; for in that case all the actions of men, their crimes as well as their good deeds, must be imputed to God. Thus the Divine Being not only loses the attribute of absolute holiness, but even falls below the level of those men in whom moral goodness triumphs over evil.

No such claim, however, can be made in behalf of the moral order by a consistent pantheist. For him, human personality is a mere illusion: what we call the individual man is only one of the countless fragments that make up the Divine Being; and since the All is impersonal no single part of it can validly claim personality. Futhermore, since each human action is inevitably determined, the consciousness of freedom is simply another illusion, due, as Spinoza says, to our ignorance of the causes that compel us to act. Hence our ideas of what "ought to be" are purely subjective, and our concept of a moral order, with its distinctions of right and wrong, has no foundation in reality. The so-called "dictates of conscience" are doubtless interesting phenomena of mind which the psychologist may investigate and explain, but they have no binding force whatever; they are just as illusory as the ideas of virtue and duty, of injustice to the fellow-man and of sin against God. But again, since these dictates, like all our ideas, are produced in us by God, it follows that He is the source of our illusions regarding morality a consequence which certainly does not enhance His holiness or His knowledge.

It is not, however, clear that the term illusion is justified; for this supposes a distinction between truth and error-a distinction which has no meaning for the genuine pantheist; all our judgments being the utterance of the One that thinks in us, it is impossible to discriminate the true from the false. He who rejects pantheism is no further from the truth than he who defends it; each but expresses a thought of the Absolute whose large tolerance harbours all contradictions. Logically, too, it would follow that no heed should be taken as to veracity of statement, since all statements are equally warranted. The pantheist who is careful to speak in accordance with his thought simply refrains from putting his philosophy into practice. But it is none the less significant that Spinoza's chief work was his "Ethics", and that, according to one modern view, ethics has only to describe what men do, not to prescribe what they ought to do.

In forming its conception of God, pantheism eliminates every characteristic that religion presupposes. An impersonal being, whatever attributes it may have, cannot be an object of worship. An infinite substance or a self-evolving energy may excite fear but it repels faith and love. Even the beneficent forms of its manifestation call forth no gratitude, since these result from it by a rigorous necessity. For the same reason, prayer of any sort is useless, atonement is vain and merit impossible. The supernatural of course disappears entirely when God and the world are identified.

Recent advocates of pantheism have sought to obviate these difficulties and to show that, apart from particular dogmas, the religious life and spirit are safeguarded in their theory. But in this attempt they divest religion of its essentials, reducing it to mere feeling. Not action, they allege, but humility and trustfulness constitute religion. This, however is an arbitrary procedure; by the same method it could be shown that religion is nothing more than existing or breathing. The pantheist quite overlooks the fact that religion means obedience to Divine law; and of this obedience there can be no question in a system which denies the freedom of man's will. According to pantheism there is just as little "rational service" in the so-called religious life as there is in the behaviour of any physical agent. And if men still distinguish between actions that are religious and those that are not, the distinction is but another illusion.

Belief in a future life is not only an incentive to effort and a source of encouragement; for the Christian at least it implies a sanction of Divine law, a prospect of retribution. But this sanction is of no meaning or efficacy unless the soul survive as an individual. If, as pantheism teaches, immortality is absorption into the being of God, it can matter little what sort of life one leads here. There is no ground for discriminating between the lot of the righteous and that of the wicked, when all alike are merged in the Absolute. And if by some further process of evolution such a discrimination should come to pass, it can signify nothing, either as reward or as punishment, once personal consciousness has ceased. That perfect union with God which pantheism seems to promise, is no powerful inspiration to right living when one considers how far from holy must be a God who continually takes up into Himself the worst of humanity along with the best--if indeed one may continue to think in terms that involve a distinction between evil and good.

It is therefore quite plain that in endeavouring to unify all things, pantheism sacrifices too much. If God, freedom, morality and religion must all be reduced to the One and its inevitable processes, there arises the question whether the craving for unity may not be the source of illusions more fatal than any of those which pantheism claims to dispel. But in fact no such unification is attained. The pantheist uses his power of abstraction to set aside all differences, and then declares that the differences are not really there. Yet even for him they seem to be there, and so from the very outset he is dealing with appearance and reality; and these two he never fuses into one. He simply hurries on to assert that the reality is Divine and that all the apparent things are manifestations of the infinite, but he does not explain why each manifestation should be finite or why the various manifestations should be interpreted in so many different and conflicting ways by human minds, each of which is a part of one and the same God. He makes the Absolute pass onward from unconsciousness to consciousness but does not show why there should be these two stages in evolution, or why evolution, which certainly means becoming "other", should take place at all.

It might be noted, too, that pantheism fails to unify subject and object, and that in spite of its efforts the world of existence remains distinct from the world of thought. But such objections have little weight with the thorough-going pantheist who follows Hegel, and is willing for the sake of "unity" to declare that Being and Nothing are identical.

There is nevertheless a fundamental unity which Christian philosophy has always recognized, and which has God for its centre. Not as the universal being, nor as the formal constituent principle of things, but as their efficient cause operating in and through each, and as the final cause for which things exist, God in a very true sense is the source of all thought and reality (see St. Thomas, "Contra Gentes", I). His omnipresence and action, far from eliminating secondary causes, preserve each in the natural order of its efficiency-physical agents under the determination of physical law and human personality in the exercise of intelligence and freedom. the foundation of the moral order. The straining after unity in the pantheistic sense is without warrant, the only intelligible unity is that which God himself has established, a unity of purpose which is manifest alike in the processes of the material universe and in the free volition of man, and which moves on to its fulfilment in the union of the created spirit with the infinite Person, the author of the moral order and the object of religious worship.

APA citation. Pace, E. (1911). Pantheism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447b.htm

MLA citation. Pace, Edward. "Pantheism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Tomas Hancil.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pantheism