I first came across him in the 1980’s when I first began reading books about the philosophy of science. The Selfish Gene is a brilliant book, popular science writing at its very best, explaining complex ideas with ease. It was the New York Times who classed it as ‘the sort of popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius.’

I have mixed feelings about Dawkins. He is clearly a top level scientist and a great writer. He is however a lousy philosopher and a lousy metaphysician. His anti religious rants are not derivable from his scientific evidence, rather they are merely piggybacked on his science and the impression is given that the one follows from the other. It does not. Since The Selfish Gene Dawkins has produced a number of other great books, but seemingly with each step has moved further away from the popular science genre and increasingly taken on the role of waging all out war against Religion. The great writer of popular science has become a savage anti-religious polemicist – preaching rather than arguing his case. In some senses he has become what he detests most.

Now I wouldn’t wish you to think that I am here to mount a knock down argument in the defence of religion. I am not. Much of what Dawkins argues – even at his worst – I can quite happily agree with. I probably agree with 99.9% of everything he writes. But at the core I am deeply unhappy with the fundamentals for which Dawkins argues. The case against God has not been proven. The case for scientific materialism has not been successful. Dawkins embraces everything he says with a materialist spin as if that is how evolution needs to be presented. It doesn’t. And the offensive part of Dawkins words is not the evolution but that materialist spin.

My second gripe with Dawkins is with his proposal for what we should do with the concept of God. He wishes to banish it from speech altogether so as not to give succour to those who he despises. He argues that scientists should cease giving acknowledgement to the God of Spinoza and of Einstein – The Rational God – because the ordinary reader confuses this Pantheist version with the Theist one. This is somewhat backward thinking. If scientists believe the concept is a valid one to have then they should not be browbeaten into naming it something else. Spinoza’s God is a clearly defined, internally consistent concept and can give us deep insights into the ultimate nature of existence.

In conclusion I would like to point out that Dawkins anti-religious views are not something which can be proven false by some scientific evidence. Yet neither are they self evident from the scientific facts as Dawkins generally assumes. The philosophical positions that Dawkins imports into his belief system are not the easiest to defend, and in the case of materialism are generally considered to be false by everyone. There are philosophical positions different to those of Richard Dawkins which can represent the scientific facts in an equally adequate way. For Dawkins to represent his philosophical viewpoint as scientific fact is disingenuous at best and anti scientific at worst.

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We see two apparently different strands making efforts to explain the universe. There is the scientific and the religious. Mainstream opinion tends to hold the view that science is the serious approach whilst religion just offers us an outdated idea dreamed up by superstitious and ignorant ancients.

Whilst agreeing the best route to an understanding of the world is a scientific one I am not so ready to dismiss ideas of the ancients as superstition or ignorance. As long as we are discussing human beings then we can be sure that those who left us ancient writings had every capability that we have in terms of rational thought. Also, with less distraction than modern life and I suspect a lot more time on their hands it could be argued that the ancients had plenty of opportunity to engage in philosophical speculation.

We can see great intellectual achievement in ancient history, the pyramids in Egypt or the plays, architecture and academic works of the Greeks. All of this was from a pre-Christian world the world of the Pagans. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were Pagans and great thinkers too, yet for two thousand years the term ‘pagan’ has been used as an insult.

The time when Paganism was eradicated coincides with the time Christianity rose. The early years of Christianity were a time of terror. In the 3rd century AD. Roman Emperor Constantin decreed that Europe was to be unified under one religion and that religion was to be Christianity. Those who failed to practice the new religion were persecuted and most likely killed.

There was also great division within the new church between those who considered the ancient texts to be literally true and those who considered them to be metaphorically true. More killing ensued as the literalists wiped out all opposition to their views.

Since then those same texts have been subject to re-writing, translation and reinterpreting. It should be no surprise that such influential documents have also been subject to being rewritten and re-interpreted with political objectives in mind.

The first original God was a pantheist one. God and the universe were considered to be the same thing. Human beings on that scheme are a part of God. It is not difficult to speak of this God in a metaphoric way and claim that he is all powerful. All things, all power is God. If God and the universe are the same thing then God is clearly everywhere and in all things. If human beings are a part of God then God is all knowing… at least in the sense that all things that are known are by default God’s knowledge.

This pantheist description of reality was never intended to be an excuse for inventing some super powerful being. Rather it was a metaphoric aid for truly understanding the nature of our universe. Using a pantheist model is a perfectly rational explanation of the world.

The political class in the days of early Christianity used the ancient beliefs for their own ends and objectives. They took the metaphorical aids and used them in a literal way creating a theist God who could be used as a political tool. If God was all powerful He could do as He wished. If God was everywhere, He could watch what you were doing at all times. If He was all knowing He could even know what you were thinking. The Theist God was used to watch over the population, to monitor their thoughts and to dish out cruel punishments for all eternity to those who failed to follow the government line.

Charlatans and fraudsters still use veiled threats and promises of eternal joy in the afterlife to persuade others to engage in actions and to give up money. The Theist God still has its uses for those seeking social and political control or who are trying to get rich on the donations of others.

But people tend to need some spiritual comfort. Science presents a world to us which is cold, random, here by chance and which in some interpretations is cruel. We are told that we are little more than a bag of chemicals which give off blips of thought and after three score and ten years we go back to nothingness from where we, by chance, appeared. This is a poor representation of the facts. The materialist doctrine has long been discarded and its replacement physicalism, is vacuous as a philosophy and says nothing at all about the world. See Materialism and Physicalism for more details

The Rational God then is a scientific and philosophical book. It is wholly rational and it is about the idea of God. Further, it is a book which describes reality and all of science in one easy to understand basic scheme, placing our scientific knowledge into context.

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Materialism philosophy comes in too different brands. There is metaphysical materialism which is concerned with the nature of things that exist. There is also political materialism which is concerned with human behaviour and social organisation. This article is concerned only with the former type of philosophical materialism.

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From a purely rational perspective it seems that we are forced to accept that there is only one thing that exists in the universe. What it is we should consider that thing to be is a very difficult problem to present a conclusion to. Materialism and monism are presented together as the roots of all explanation, but can materialism and monism stand up to scrutiny? In short, monism can but materialism cannot.

About a hundred years ago materialism was discarded as a philosophical theory, not that many scientists or philosophers seem too keen to point that fact out. The philosophical materialism of the nineteenth century was replaced by the new idea of physicalism. They seem very similar and are expected to perform the same task in understanding the world we inhabit, but physicalism does not play the same role that materialism once did. I shall make a post to explain this more clearly later. For now we shall look at the shortcomings of materialism of itself.

Remember that materialism states that all that exists is matter, extended in three dimensions and all that exists can be explained by a reduction to that three dimensional matter. I shall discuss two different objections. The first takes a little consideration but the second, in my opinion, is a fatal blow to materialist philosophy.

The first objection asks you to consider a world in which explanation has reached the end. We have discovered the means by which matter and ideas are related and there are scientists who are capable of looking at different molecular structures and telling us which idea they represent. So imagine now that you are watching a film. A scientist has access to your brain and is able to monitor the molecular changes occurring in your brain. He can see your brain states changing and because he is a highly skilled and knowledgeable scientist he can work out which film you are watching and even whether you are enjoying the film or not.

The gap between matter and mind states, even on this intimate level is still too broad for us to claim that the gap has been closed. Even a scientist seeing such molecular detail is only seeing an arrangement of atoms and molecules. You watching the film on the other hand are experiencing a range of emotions and feelings which are nothing like the molecules that the scientist is observing. The experience and the physical arrangement of molecules are two completely different things. No amount of knowledge of molecular arrangement is ever going to make experience reducible to matter.

The second objection to a theory of materialism as monism is to consider our knowledge and what knowledge is. Imagine that there are two people with two conflicting ideas. The two ideas contradict each other so only one person or one idea can be true, the other must be false.

In a materialist philosophy we can state that each of these two ideas is reducible to a physical system of matter. Each idea represents a specific arrangement of molecules, one idea is true and the other is false. But what can it possibly mean to claim that a physical arrangement of molecules is false? An arrangement of molecules is a factual arrangement of molecules; it is a fact and cannot be false.

On a materialist conception of the world all ideas become reducible to molecular arrangements. Any molecular arrangement is a real part of the world and to call it false seems rather odd.

When discussing materialism and monism it is taken for granted that the two go together and are true. Monism is probably true and materialism is not. Materialism, as I have stated, has long since been discarded. Materialism was dropped by scientists because it could not fit the scientific facts. I shall deal with the shortcomings of its replacement theory, physicalism, in a later post.

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During my surfing hours the other day I came across what to me is a little known organisation called Christian Science which was founded by Mary Baker Eddy towards the end of the 19th century. She wrote an article called Christian Science and Pantheism which was aimed at damning pantheism and promoting Christian Science.

What is Christian Science? Well it has a sufficient following to warrant an entry in Webster’s. I am not fond of definitions from dictionaries. The definition of a word is always dependent on the context of the sentence in which it is used, and it is this context and usage which leads to the definition in a dictionary. Too many people run to the dictionary for the definition as if it is somehow the dictionary compilers who have invented the words and thus is how any word must be used. Dictionary definitions change as the usage of a word changes, not the other way round. To understand the meaning of a word we need to know how it was intended to be used by the speaker or writer of that word. However, in this article, I shall use the Webster’s definition because it is the first entry on the Christian Science webpage. In this case the context is perfect.

Christian Science is ”a religion and a system of healing founded by Mary Baker Eddy c. 1866, based on an interpretation of the Scriptures asserting that disease, sin, and death may be overcome by understanding and applying the divine principles of Christian teachings.”

Now clearly, even on Mary Bakers own terms her religious beliefs have proved to be a failure. I may be wrong. Maybe Mary Baker is alive and well and has managed to overcome death by the application of Christian teaching. However, I am sure that I would be aware of her continued existence if it were the case that she is still alive. Having not heard to the contrary I can only assume that her teachings proved false.

The second point of interest in the quote concerning the Webster definition is the one which references “interpretation.” Mary’s beliefs were based on an “interpretation” of the scriptures. This admission is particularly fascinating to me because I am forever complaining about biblical literalists. They are the real problem in the theism atheism debate. The literalists are clearly a bunch of fruitcakes so eating them for breakfast or with afternoon tea never interferes with my hunger to consume more serious philosophical debate. Yet literalists are often held to be hardcore believers, the true upholders of scripture and the real defenders of faith. But someone like Mary, who “interprets” the scripture to suit her own beliefs is still accepted as “one of us.” She may be frowned upon a little by the staunch literalist, but she is accepted into the fold of the Christian church because she uses the scripture as the source of her beliefs.

Now I ask, what would have been Mary’s fate and standing in the community if she had promoted the same doctrine and belief system, yet proclaimed that her beliefs were based on something other than the bible. What if she had said that she had come to realise, from rational reflection that the universe was a self healing entity; if only we could learn how to harness the universal energy that is all around us? If she had promoted the same beliefs based on universal consciousness she would have faced life living as a heretic. If she had expressed those beliefs, and further added that she thought that scripture was a nonsense she would have been run out of town and maybe even lynched.

The point that I am getting to is that the belief system that you profess is not the arbiter of your goodness or badness according to the religious. Rather it is what you identify as the ultimate source of your professed belief. Try it. The next time you find yourself in conversation with a member of the devout, give them a long, made up fictional account of your “beliefs” and then identify your interpretation of scripture as your source for that belief. You will probably be invited for tea and may even end up being offered the daughters hand in marriage. On another occasion that you find yourself among the devout, tell the exact same story again, but at the end merely mention that your beliefs have come to you through the heart or through rational enquiry and that you reject all that is written in scripture as false. The response will be very different. The source of your belief system is far more important than the belief itself.

Now as you may have noticed I tend to favour a pantheist account of existence. This article is not the place to go too deeply into the nature of pantheism but there are a few points which are relevant to this piece. First of all, much of scripture can be interpreted in a pantheist way. It is very easy; pantheism can be substituted for all that is written in the bible claiming to be a reflection of theism. I do not think that this is a coincidence. Pantheism is older than theism. I would make the claim that much of what we know as scripture was written about a pantheist god. It was only later; with the advent of Christianity that the god of theism was invoked and then used as a tool of oppression. A pantheist god is benign and harmless. It is only the god of theism that can punish for all eternity and who can strike you down at any moment. The pantheist god has no such power. If you were a political power, charged with the task of rewriting and reinterpreting scripture, which god would you use to help maintain public discipline and hence your own power?

The bible has been written in many different styles and literary genres. The symbolic, legendary, confessional, mythic, poetic, devotional and the historic are all examples of biblical genre. None of it was ever intended to be taken literally and none of it was ever written as a scientific document. Yet all of it can be expressed as a pantheist doctrine. Science and pantheism make very good bedfellows. Pantheism can be developed quite readily from an ‘interpretation’ of scripture. Einstein was forever invoking the pantheist god; there are very good reasons to do so.

The overthrow of theism will not come about by opposing theists head on. The reduction of theism to the history of ideas will come about by replacing it with something that is compatible with peoples need for spiritual sustenance. Pantheism fills that need, both from a rational and scientific perspective and by an appeal to an interpretation of scripture.

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When understanding Spinoza we discover that the most profound conclusion from his philosophy is to be found in Part I, Proposition XXIX.

‘In the nature of things nothing contingent is admitted, but all things are determined by the necessity of divine nature to exist and act in a certain way.’

There are a number of ideas and concepts wrapped up in this sentence and Spinoza’s philosophy is probably best explained by understanding what this one proposition entails. The first point to note is that Spinoza wants to make the assumption that all things are caused by other things. Basically there is a causal explanation for anything that exists. The one exception to this is the universe itself, which can only be self caused. There can only be one existing thing that is self caused, as was argued in the part 2 of Understanding Spinoza..

Now to say that a thing is determined is to say that the existence of a thing is caused by something else. In the case of inanimate objects such a position is without doubt. A table is caused by outside agents crafting the design; the table’s existence is fully determined by causes external to that table. With living and thinking creatures the certainty that all is externally caused is less obvious. We can say that I am determined by my parent’s acquaintance for example. My ideas and habits are caused by my past life experience. The events that have caused me to be how I am currently are outside of me. But can I then claim that I am free to make my own choices? Surely there is a case to state that my ability to be truly free depends on my past experience and that my education and training will determine my capability for truly free thinking.

But then we are accepting that freedom is again determined on past experience and that any free thinking is caused by agents outside of the thinker.

One way to fashion the question ‘whether I am free’ is to ask if I could have done some past act in a different way. Could I really have acted differently in identical circumstances? I made a choice given my assessment of those circumstances and acted accordingly. Just what would have caused me to behave in a different way given identical circumstances? Spinoza is clear in his view on this point:

‘In the nature of things nothing contingent is admitted, but all things are determined by the necessity of divine nature to exist and act in a certain way.’

Spinoza argues that nothing at all could be different than how things actually are. He even applies this idea to God or nature which he concluded are the same.

The one true existing free entity for Spinoza is God. But we have to be careful when we interpret exactly what Spinoza means by the term ‘free.’ For Spinoza, free in this context is to be free from being determined by outside agents. God or nature is not caused or determined by other things; rather God is self caused. God is not limited by outside agents; God is limited only by His own nature.

This is the most important difference between the pantheist God and the Theist God. The Theist God is assumed to have some kind of supernatural magic power which enables a magician like capability. The pantheist God has no such power. The pantheist God is restricted in His power by His own nature. He is not restricted by anything else, just Himself. The pantheist God is how He is because that is how He must be, determined by His own nature and by nothing else.

But a God who is determined by His own nature is a God with no will and no desire. God is how He is because it is in His nature to exist in that way. As Spinoza points out this is manifested in the way the universe is and how everything in the universe must be. Things are as they are because they could not exist in any other way.

If we consider Spinoza’s position we see that his claim is that there is one thing that exists. That one thing is God. Everything else is a part of, or an attribute of God. The universe and all things in it are God, or nature. Now atheists always state at this point in the discussion, why bother calling the universe God? Why not just call the universe the universe?

The fundamental reason for Spinoza is that if things could be no other way, then the universe has to exist in the way that it does. If the universe could not exist in any other way and is here as a result of self creation followed by a causal chain of events, then our existence is intimately wrapped up in the first cause itself. The universe at its core or essence necessarily contains thinking things (us) and has to contain thinking things because that is how the universe is. Spinoza was so convinced that this was the true nature of the universe that he argued any resistance to the idea was based on a refusal to think clearly or an unwillingness to attend to the necessary definitions.

For me, the idea of God and the universe being the same is a strong and valid metaphor. Any enquiry into understanding the world in which we live will require using ideas with which we are familiar in order to explain more complex ideas. Using the metaphor of God helps to emphasise the necessary nature of our existence and the intimate conjunction with the universe that we have. These ideas are some of the oldest explanations of existence that there are and predate theism by many centuries.

The concepts and definitions which can be applied to the pantheist God are the same as those used with the theist God, but are coherent and consistent. For example, to claim that God is omnipotent is to state that all power (think all energy) belongs to God. All things that exist are attributes of God. There is no thing outside of God. Similarly omnipresence; God is everywhere because all things are attributes of God. The concepts that theists wish to apply to their God but cannot, because they fall into contradiction, can be quite readily applied to the pantheist metaphor without contradiction. But of course the theist God evolved as a political tool. An all seeing, all knowing, eager to punish God of Big Brother Theism has been utilised for political control rather than as a means to knowledge and understanding. In understanding Spinoza we note that the pantheist God has existed only as a conclusion of rational enquiry.

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This post is to develop further towards understanding Spinoza’s metaphysics and to look at the crucial ideas he raises. Spinoza’s main work, The Ethics, in effect introduces a set of definitions and elucidations of each of the fundamental notions of substance, cause, attribute, freedom and necessity, explaining each in terms of the others. When Spinoza has defined these logically connected notions he defines what it is he means by God or nature.

An important point is that Spinoza does not present his definitions as one arbitrary set of alternative possible definitions. Rather he insists that to conceive the world in any other way than this is to be involved in contradiction, or to be using words without any clear meaning attached to them. It is the interconnectedness of Spinoza’s definitions that gives force to his position.

In understanding the universe the notion of substance is a good place to start. What actually exists? The story of understanding the world can be viewed as one which is attempting to answer this one question. In answering the ‘what exists?’ challenge we have to unravel the world into those things that exist by necessity and those things that exist as modifications or attributes of necessity. In stripping substance down to its fundamental and necessary components we can get a true understanding of reality. Those things that exist but are not fundamental are attributes of substance.

Descartes explained this very well with his lump of wax. He asked ‘what are the fundamental characteristics of the wax?’ and he decided that it was essentially the fact that it existed in three dimensions – or had extension. Wax, as a solid lump is white and solid. In moving the wax towards a heat source we notice that the wax turns into a liquid and becomes transparent. The essential characteristic of the wax, that it exists in three dimensions, remains. The attributes of the wax, its colour and solidity however change.

When Spinoza applied the idea of substance to the world as a whole he realised that there are some definite ideas we are forced to conclude. For example, any substance has to be the cause of itself. If a substance were caused by some other substance then the two substances would have characteristics which were the same. There would be something more fundamental underpinning the two different things. Anything we identify as a fundamental substance therefore must be explainable only through reference to itself and to no other thing. If there are two substances, then neither can be the cause of the other, each must cause itself and they must not contain any attributes which are the same. Two different substances have to be independent from each other, have nothing in common and not be the cause of each other.

Now any rational understanding of the universe is undertaken by an examination of causation. Rational explanation is explaining those causes. To abandon an investigation of causes is to abandon all hope of knowledge. If there are two substances which co-exist and which are completely independent of each other we would have to ask just how can two independent things coexist that are separate. Both substances would have to be causes of themselves and to have two such substances would be impossible. There can be only one self caused entity and that entity gives rise to all else that exists.

Now we can apply the consequences of this argument in a few different ways. First of all how we interpret the ontology (what things exist?) of the universe and secondly how we view the notion of God as a creator.

Theists argue that God and the universe are two separate entities. But if the universe is a consequence of God’s necessary existence, ie: if God created the universe then the universe and God must have some characteristics in common. The universe must be an attribute of God’s existence. God and the universe could not be made of two distinct substances. If God causes the universe then they must have some attributes in common. This is a denial of theism as defined because God and the universe cannot be two separate things. A Deist account or a pantheist account can sidestep this argument but a theist account cannot.

Spinoza drove home this position very strongly by describing how theists approach their discussions and descriptions of God. He had a clear and logical description which associated the idea of nature precisely with God or the one true substance. He argued that it is the association of anthropomorphic and personal imagery which obstructs reason in the logical necessity of this identification. When we dissociate the word “God” from all of these figurative descriptions and no longer picture the deity as a person, then mere logic forces us to recognize that God and nature are precisely the same.

As Theists have insisted on making a distinction between God the creator and His creation, so they are constantly forced into contradiction. Imagining God as some super-person, with a will and purpose can only lead to logical difficulty. The perennial contradictions and controversies eg: the problem of evil, of God’s freedom of choice and His reasons for choosing the actual world in preference to other possible worlds.

There are more clear logical arguments which seriously refute the theist position. In having a creator God and a separate creation the all powerful nature of God is contradicted. God’s eternal existence is also demolished if He set the universe up and then stood back.

There are however some very important consequences and surprising conclusions if we accept Spinoza’s arguments. Toward the aim of understanding Spinoza further I shall deal with these in the next post.

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If you are ever going to get more than a brief understanding of pantheism then it is vital to get to grips with understanding Spinoza. Spinoza was not the first pantheist, but he is probably the most influential pantheist since the time of the enlightenment. The decline of theism and the rise of alternative beliefs can be traced back directly and indirectly to Spinoza. He was not only a chief architect in the rise and success of science; he was also a fundamental force behind the gradual decline of theological authority. Understanding Spinoza is not easy, but the difficulties involved in grasping his ideas are no less worthy of making the effort.

If you were to take a random page and quote form Spinoza’s main work, the ethics, you will no doubt find a sentence in which you understand all of the individual words. Yet I am reasonably sure that you would also find a sentence which is seemingly incomprehensible too. For example: The first axiom that Spinoza presents is “Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.”

An axiom is something that is assumed to be self evidently true, so Spinoza must have presented this axiom as something which he believed to be one of nature’s ultimate and self evident truths. The whole of Spinoza’s philosophy is set out in this way. He begins with a set of definitions, which he then uses to write his axioms. He then moves to working out how the universe must be given his definitions and on the assumption that his axioms are in fact true. To that extent his work is a work in logic, similar to a Euclidean system. It is probably the case that if you were to agree and accept just one of his axioms then you are logically committed to accepting his other axioms which follow rationally and necessarily from each other. In doing this Spinoza creates a set of principles and consequently a metaphysical system which he considers to be how the universe must be.

To take the first step towards understanding Spinoza it is necessary to put into context the time in which he wrote. He lived in the mid seventeenth century and wrote in response to the work of Descartes. Descartes had proposed that the world consisted of two types of thing, matter and the mind, and his system was designed to show that the world of the material was comprehensible to the mind. Spinoza picked up on the inconsistencies in Descartes writings and determined that he would make them right. In doing so he demoted God form the realm of theistic interpretation and placed God on a par with the universe or nature. Descartes had worked around the theistic belief that society insisted upon, and came up with what was an inconsistent philosophy. Spinoza ignored the requirements of the church and wrote as he saw the truth to be. He stood by the world of rationalism and followed rationality to wherever it took him. He knew that his views would not be acceptable to the church so his work was not published until after his death. Such were the circumstances that thinkers had to live under before men like Spinoza had changed how society viewed rational enquiry.

Prior to Descartes and Spinoza, there was no belief that the world was understandable. Part of the programme that they instigated was the idea that human beings had the capability of investigating and understanding the world around them. The church had always claimed that knowledge was something that could only be found in scripture. That all knowledge was in the bible and thus mankind had no other means of understanding the universe. Descartes and Spinoza amongst others challenged and ultimately changed all of that. Not only did they show that the world was understandable, they demonstrated that a rational enquiry was the best route to knowledge.

When it comes to understanding Spinoza there are two very different but equally important sides to his story. The first is his philosophy. His philosophy has been picked up and held high by many notables in the past 350 years. He has influenced the metaphysical poets; Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley for example. He influenced the philosophy of Hegel and Kant. In the twentieth century he was also a source of much inspiration for Godel and probably most notably Einstein who was never short of a reference to the God of Spinoza. Most impressively his philosophy still stands as one of the greatest metaphysical systems that has ever been produced and is still as impressive despite mans great strides in knowledge over the past three centuries. Spinoza’s metaphysics has endured throughout the last three hundred years in which countless other ideas have been and gone.

This longevity is down to the thoroughness that Spinoza put into his philosophy. He grasped fundamental principles and he squeezed them until he had understood the logical consequences of all that followed from those principles. He didn’t shy away from the conclusions that he was forced to make based on rationality. He developed a system which was free from inconsistency and which rationally he felt obliged to accept. For me one of the greatest achievements of Spinoza was his insistence to have faith in the tools that God endowed him with. God gave him his rational faculty and Spinoza chose to use that God given gift to the end. He relied on it over and above the theocratic powers that persecuted those who spoke against them. In understanding Spinoza, one of the most important aspects to remember is that he followed God more closely and dutifully than any of those who would accuse him of being a heretic.

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Pantheism is one of the oldest belief systems there is which purports to offer an overall view about the nature of the universe. It is a metaphysical scheme that is robust to criticism more than most and a worldview which is often supported by intellectuals and scientists. How we define pantheism can allow for a very broad range of beliefs under the pantheism umbrella; it allows for a material interpretation as well as spiritual interpretations and dualist accounts. Before investigating the precise nature of pantheism, we should first offer an account of how to define pantheism.

When we define pantheism we have a long history of belief to work from. We also have many different varieties that we can use as a resource. Pantheist groups have existed within all the major religions, independently from organised religion and sometimes even atheist groups have claimed to hold a pantheist system of how to understand the universe. So how can we define pantheism to accommodate such a wide range of beliefs?

The Most Interesting Worldview

Pantheism, in its most simple expression, is the belief that God and the universe is the same thing. For most people the implications of such a statement are not immediately obvious, the common response is often a “so what.” Richard Dawkins accuses pantheism of being no more than sexed up atheism, which is a very simplistic philosophical view whilst Einstein, Carl Sagan, Kurt Godel amongst others were often heard to be speaking of God with the implication that it was the Pantheist God to which they were referring.

So how can we tease out the important characteristics of the position when we define pantheism as God and the universe being the same thing? The fundamental points at issue are based around questions of necessity and of mental phenomena. Spinoza was the one who placed these points into the most acute and rational scheme. He argued from first principles concerning the nature of existence and what must be the case.

The first principle that Spinoza grappled with was that ultimately there could only be one kind of ‘thing’ that existed. All other ‘things’ were created or caused by this primary source and so could be considered to be attributes of the one true existing thing. Now this makes perfect logical sense, because if there were two things that existed, then they would have to exist independently of each other and could not interact. If they could interact then they would share characteristics and therefore would be of the same type. The principle also fits in with the idea that all events or all entities that exist have a cause. Though there has to be one thing that does not have an external cause but instead is the cause of itself.

Something From Nothing? Then Something Must be self-Caused!

This principle is not lost on theists or on atheists. Theists claim that God is the one truly self caused entity and that He then created or caused the universe. Atheists on the other hand miss out the God step and claim that it is the universe itself which is self caused and that all things that exist are a consequence of the natural existence of the universe. The pantheist amalgamates the two together and says that God and the universe is the same thing. That is a strong disagreement with theism because the pantheist disputes the claim that God and the universe are two separate things. Atheists tend to wish that pantheists would stop using the term God. So when we define pantheism, how is the idea distinct from atheism?

One way to approach the difference is through analogy. Consider the oak tree and the acorn from which the oak grows. The information or the potential for the oak tree is contained in the acorn prior to the oak existing. We know how the tree will eventually look, because the tree is determined by the acorn. (The acorn needs to have nutrients from the soil; water and sunlight need to be added which is a negative part of the analogy. The acorn does have to order these things however so the analogy is fairly tight.) The question we need to ask with regard to a self causing universe is “What is the universes acorn?”

The oak tree does not develop its leaves through any random process. The causal chain can be traced back to the acorn and we can state quite clearly that the existence of the leaves is caused by the acorn itself. The leaves do not appear randomly, they are determined by the acorn. In our self causing universe we are faced with the question of “why are mental things here?” The existence of human thinking things can be traced back through a causal chain which ends at the universes acorn. The universes acorn had within it the potential for thinking things to evolve.

Necessarily More than Just Matter

There are those of a material persuasion who would claim that the material world is caused by the universes acorn, that the physical world is self caused, and then it just so happens that mental phenomenon have miraculously evolved out of this physical realm quite by accident. This is like claiming that the oaks acorn only has the inherent genetic structure to cause a trunk and branches. Then leaves just happen to be able to grow from twigs on these branches. The leaves, in this case, are a random consequence of the trees ability to grow wooden parts. The point is that the potential for mental things to exist had to be present in the initial “acorn” which gave rise to the universes existence. Pantheism acknowledges this point and declares that the universe is as much a mental thing as it is a physical thing.

The crucial point is that if an object is self caused, then it must be self caused because it is in the nature of that object to cause itself. Self causation has to be derived from the very structure of the thing being caused. Included in this idea is the fatalistic notion that a self causing object could not exist in any other way. That, for instance, if a universe is to create itself then there is only one way that it can do so and therefore this universe is the one and only universe that could exist. This universe is wholly necessary and could not be any other way.

Is Mental Stuff Necessary

The principle of necessity leads to the second part of pantheism which is that mental phenomena are a necessary part of the universe. That from the beginning of time it was inevitable that the universe would contain thinking things, because the universe could not exist in any other way than the way it does exist. Or, given that God and the universe are the same, God’s necessary existence manifests itself in the creation of a universe in which humanity exists.

Different pantheists will express their pantheism in slightly different ways, though fundamentally they will see the universe as a one; a complete whole in which all things are intimately connected. So a physical pantheist may believe that the true nature of the universe is physical, but that emergent mental occurrences are a real and connected part of the universe and thus the universe has evolved to think about itself. A spiritual pantheist on the other hand would probably view the mental realm as a fundamental part of the universe. That it is the drive of creation to manifest spirit and that the physical is a mere means to the universe becoming a thinking universe. A dualist may argue that thinking and physical stuff are both fundamental and that neither is a priority nor a lesser part of the universe and they are both equally important to the ultimate structure of reality.

When we define pantheism we are probably looking at a few subtle philosophical ideas that underpin the main body of pantheist doctrine. A simple principle is that the universe can be considered as a unity. A single thing in which all things that exist are attributes of that one thing. There is a streak of necessity which permeates pantheism and produces the idea that the universe could not have been any other way than the way it is. That all things are how they are because that is the way that the universe must be.

Ultimately, pantheism emphasises not merely necessity and the mental realm but most importantly the connectedness between all existing things. All is one may sound like a glib phrase but it is an idea that is difficult to stray away from. We are all of a piece with the universe from which we have arisen. Whether we are investigating the physical world or the mental world we are always looking at some attribute of the universe. Whatever we say we are usually talking about some feature of the one universe. And whatever we do we are impinging or acting on the one universe. No feature of the universe can be considered or explained without reference to the universe as a whole entity. To gain full understanding of anything we have to place any knowledge we have into the context of the universe as a whole. In that respect, real knowledge can only come when we fully comprehend the universe.

Revere Reality, not its Metaphor

To define pantheism then is not to make a trivial association between God and the universe. Pantheism invokes a natural reverence for the universe and for all parts of it, be they the physical or mental attributes of the universe. Pantheism places nature at the centre of our focus for what should be revered and considered sacred. The universe as a whole becomes the sacred, whether that is the physical universe or the mental universe. This is in strong contrast to theism.

It could be claimed that theism has taken the pantheist metaphor of God and nature being the same thing and turned it into an act of metaphor worship. God as a metaphor for the universe has become the object of worship rather than the real object, the universe itself. Theists have turned away from the creation of a heaven on earth and instead seek to live life so that they can secure a seat in some alleged heaven in the after life. Pantheism addresses the here and now by its reverence of nature. Pantheism has an ecological foundation because it embraces the physical world as sacred. Theism misses the whole point of reverence by turning its spotlight on the metaphor rather than the world itself. When we define pantheism it should be conceived that this reverence for the universe in the here and now is a fundamental part of what pantheism entails. Pantheism revering God is an ecologically sound foundation for humanity, in stark contrast to the worship of a metaphor which is the demand of theism.

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The process of science is undertaken through two similar but distinct paths; verification and falsification. The two, though different, have more similarities than they have differences. Verification and falsification are based on two strands of knowing something; these are empirical data and rationality.

Empirical knowledge is basically that knowledge which is presented to our senses. Direct empirical knowledge is generally considered reliable and so is a route to knowledge. If I can report that there is a white thing in front of me that appears to have the characteristics of a wall, then it is reasonable to assume that I am standing in front of a wall.
Taking a step away from this direct knowledge does lead us away from certainty. For example, if I was to claim that yesterday I had a wall experience then I am adding another category of explanation to my wall experience, that of memory. A remembered experience is not as reliable as a current experience. But a current sensory experience is one of the best and most reliable chunks of knowledge that we can have.

The Logic of Science

Rational knowledge tends to depend on things that are logically true and which could be no other way. One plus one equals two is a logical truth. The law of excluded middle, “All objects of a certain type have attribute x, or all objects of a certain type do not have attribute x.” is a logical truth.

For example ‘all pigs have four legs’ is either true or not true. If we find a pig that does not have four legs then the statement is false. But we can be sure that all pigs either have four legs or do not have four legs, because if they do then they do, and if they don’t then they don’t. Either way; they do have four legs or they do not have four legs; there is no middle ground.

Two sides of the Same Coin

Verification and falsification are each based on empirical data and rational argument though each places a different emphasis on one side of this equation over the other. Verification demands that any scientific hypothesis be confirmable through the senses. So important is the idea of verification that any statement which cannot be examined via the senses is dismissed as nonsensical. The scientific verificationist would therefore go out into the world, make an observation and then construct a theory based on that observation.

The falsificationist would take an approach which could be considered to be the reverse of this. Falsification requires that an idea be put into a theoretical postulate which is assumed to be a candidate for truth. The postulate has to be capable of being falsified. The process then necessitates the scientist designing an experiment which is capable of disproving the hypothesis. If the hypothesis stands up against the experiment it is not considered to be true, merely a candidate for truth.

The more experiments the hypothesis defeats the more that hypothesis is considered to be a candidate for truth. It will never reach the status of being thought of as a truth. With falsification nothing advances past the idea of being a theory, though something could be highly rated as a good theory.

Simply put then, in verification the observation comes first and the theory develops out of the observation. In falsification the theory comes first and our observations are manufactured in an attempt to disprove our theory.

Two complimentary Approaches

Which should we prefer between verification and falsification? Science can provide examples from history where both have proven to be successful routes to knowledge. Often the methodology used was more a matter of luck or circumstance rather than something that was considered beforehand. If someone has a good theoretical idea then he will design an experiment to test that theory. This would make him a practitioner of falsification. But through experiment the scientist spots an anomaly in his theory and adjusts that theory because of what he observed. He is now verifying his observation.
Another scientist might have noticed something in nature and designed a theory around that observation. The point is it is often only after the science has been completed that we are in a position to claim that the road to truth was through the process of verification or the process of falsification.

How God Can Be Scientific!

So how does this impinge on the theme of this blog? This blog, being concerned with the ideas of atheism, pantheism and theism, and the universe as a whole, seeks to place the theories of each under the scrutiny of verification and falsification.

The verificationist would view theism and say that it was meaningless. There is no empirical data for the scientist to work on so the notion of God is no more than a meaningless construct of the human mind.
The falsification approach would be a little less condemnatory. It would accept the hypothesis of a God as a theory but then would insist that the theory be expressed in a form that is falsifiable. The God theory then needs to be put into a hypothesis which the scientist can attempt to falsify. If the hypothesis cannot be formulated as a falsifiable proposition then it doesn’t rank as a valid scientific hypothesis.

The theist therefore needs to present his best idea of what God is; describe His nature, His attributes how He works and then it is up to the scientists to attempt to disprove the hypothesis. The theist unfortunately seldom presents a satisfactory description of what God is. When a hypothesis is presented it often collapses through its own internal inconsistency. The theistic god never manages to pass any test of logical consistency. The atheist has therefore a very strong case for her position that theism is false.

The pantheist on the other hand can describe a God that is internally consistent. Pantheism is a very strong, often scientifically based idea which roots the god hypothesis into the idea of nature or the universe as a whole. The pantheist god is capable of being expressed in both verifiable and falsifiable terms. It can even be considered to be a metaphoric interpretation of the theist god. As is one theme in these posts, the theists of the world have a very serious and insurmountable position if they which to interpret their doctrines literally. Their ancient texts are only of any meaning in the light of the interpretation of those texts being metaphorical.

What we can assume however is that our rational and sensory faculties do give us a route to knowledge. Standing testimony to this fact are the scientific achievements over the last four hundred years. Whether we wish to point to skyscrapers, bridges, washing machines, computers or landing on the moon, we can be sure that the knowledge we have is knowledge that comes with a high degree of certainty. And that certainty has its roots in the soil of our sensory experience and rational capabilities. We have every reason to be trusting in those faculties.

Gifts From God

If God does exist then, we can thank him for these two wonderful gifts. What else could we consider to be greater gifts than sensory experience and the ability to reason? They are truly remarkable gifts. Further if it is the case that these are marvellous gifts then it is incumbent on us to use those gifts in a way that does justice to them. It is not for us to pick and choose where and when we use them. They are there for us to use to their full capability at all times. It is the gifts of rationality and sensory experience that truly enables us to interact with God’s creation in an intelligent way. It is not for us to decide to ignore that ability.

The argument then is clear. God has given us sensory and rational abilities. They are the method by which we can gain the greatest understanding of God’s kingdom. By failing to use our God given faculties we allow ourselves to be led astray from the path of truth. By failing to use our God given faculties we permit the possibility that charlatans and fraudsters will deceive us.

If God does exist, He will be discovered through rational and empirical endeavours. No rational god would create us with such precious faculties and then ask us not to use them to uncover ultimate truths. Verification and falsification are the two proven methods of uncovering reality. There may be a place for faith and in the life of humans, but they have no place in understanding or in knowledge.

The hypothesis of a pantheist God and the metaphoric description are two of the themes that are examined in TheRationalGod. The Rational God is a complete scientific description of the universe and expands in greater detail on the themes in this blog.

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