{"id":3481,"date":"2015-03-12T21:40:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T04:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/?p=3481"},"modified":"2015-09-01T19:47:43","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T02:47:43","slug":"against-pantheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/against-pantheism\/","title":{"rendered":"Against Pantheism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the comment mines I suggested, off-handedly, three possible metaphysical explanations for consciousness<\/a>, without endorsing any of them.<\/p>\n

A reader John responds to one of these suggestions:<\/p>\n

To my primitive mind, this seems to be the most valid argument:<\/p>\n

3. In fact, it is not possible to explain consciousness from nonconscious entities. Therefore, the most fundamental thing in existence is a mind, and we are parts of that mind. Matter is just a delusion which this mind believes in for some unknown reason. (I don’t find this view plausible at all, but that’s not the point.)<\/p>\n

This is a longstanding view from oriental philosophy, and it intrigues me why you don’t find it plausible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks for your comment.\u00a0 My main reason for finding this type of Pantheistic\/Idealistic view implausible are these:<\/p>\n

1. Matter sure seems<\/em> like something with a real, consistent, and objective nature, quite unlike a dream.\u00a0 For example, when I wake up my furniture and stuff is always in more or less the same place.\u00a0 There are trees by the road whether or not I care for them to be there.\u00a0 As a physicist I can make precise models of how matter will behave under certain circumstances, and in fact it does those things.\u00a0 It does not consult my wishes except when I act on it using my body, and even then things do not always go according to plan.<\/p>\n

Matter is a very parsimonious explanation of practically every experience I have.\u00a0 So considering it a delusion seems unjustified.\u00a0 And even if matter were<\/em> a illusion, it must still exist as<\/em> an illusion; if I hallucinate a blue tiger, there may not be a real tiger in the room but there is still a real image in my mind.\u00a0 So saying matter is an illusion doesn’t actually reduce the number of entities which need to be explained!\u00a0 Actually it makes things worse, because I cannot think of any reason why God would have the type of schizophrenia required to think he is multiple persons living in a common environment.\u00a0 Nor can in turn be an illusion that I suffer from illusions, since that would be a logical contradiction.<\/p>\n

(Speaking very broadly\u2014since there are many varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism\u2014a lot of these oriental philosophies don’t really believe in logic in the first place, or only use it to argue for contradictions, so that we give up our dualistic forms of logic.\u00a0 But I could never accept that perspective on logic in a million years—there is literally nothing more illogical than denying the validity of logic!\u00a0 I refuse to be insane.)<\/p>\n

2. If we define God as the ultimate explanation for the Universe, which cannot itself be explained, then to say that everything is God is to say that nothing at all can be explained.\u00a0 But if a view explains nothing, it is less good than a view which explains, well, anything!\u00a0 I touched on this point in my discussion of Pantheism<\/a> in my series on Fundamental Reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. The actual Creator of the universe has spoken to me both in the Bible and in personal conversation, and he does not seem to regard other people as as part of himself in the requisite fashion.\u00a0 To Moses, he says “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:16<\/a>), not “I am who you are”.\u00a0 In fact he seems to disapprove of a number of specific things which human beings do\u2014we Christians call these things “sin”.\u00a0 And as I have argued<\/a>, if God is good and we are not, then it follows that we are not God.\u00a0 To think that we are parts of God might be gratifying to our pride, but it is more wholesome to realize we are not God, and instead accept that we are created beings loved by him.\u00a0 As St. Chesterton said:<\/p>\n

I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I.\u00a0 I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one’s self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different.\u00a0 If souls are separate love is possible.\u00a0 If souls are united love is obviously impossible.\u00a0 A man may be said loosely to love himself, but he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must be a monotonous courtship.\u00a0 If the world is full of real selves, they can be really unselfish selves. (Orthodoxy<\/a>, “The Romance of Orthodoxy”)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only in the case of one human being did God identify himself so fully with him, as to allow him to share completely in his divine titles and identity.\u00a0 And Jesus was no ordinary human, what with being the Word of God, who pre-existed with him from the beginning!\u00a0 If we were divine beings, we would know it.<\/p>\n

True, by receiving the gift of Jesus’s Spirit, we do become by grace<\/em> “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4<\/a>).\u00a0 But this is not the same as being the unique and uncreated Son of God.\u00a0 To be commune with God is not the same as to be<\/em> God.<\/p>\n

So it’s important for the distinction between the Creator and created to be sharply distinguished from the beginning.\u00a0 Once that’s 100% clear, we can allow the mystics the liberty to speak the “language of love” concerning the intimate union between themselves and God, without fear of being misunderstood.\u00a0 I could say to my wife that I am part of her and she is part of me, without either of us thinking that we must be the same person in a literal sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the comment mines I suggested, off-handedly, three possible metaphysical explanations for consciousness, without endorsing any of them. A reader John responds to one of these suggestions: To my primitive mind, this seems to be the most valid argument: 3. In fact, it is not possible to explain consciousness from nonconscious entities. Therefore, the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphysics","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4047,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions\/4047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}