How Theists know about their gods.

Oholah and Oholibah: A Biblical tale with donkey-cocks

The story of Oholah and Oholibah is a genuine honest-to-goodness Bible story, Old Testament wrath of God type stuff. Sure, there are plenty of those, but this one has the added distinction of being one of very few Bible tales to describe swarthy turbaned men with donkey-cocks and horselike semen output splattering a pair of whore-sisters with the stuff. And these are Biblical whore sisters, who not only enjoy a ridiculous quantity of fucking, but who do it not simply for the money, but, as well, out of lust for the cuneiform visages of men from distant tribes whom they had never even seen in person prior to their arrival for the fucking.

Sadly, the sisters come to an end typical of Biblical morality plays -- BibleGod eventually caused them to be cut to pieces, and caused a like fate to befall their little children ('cause there's nothing BibleGod gets a bigger boner over than the killing of the littl'uns). But don't take my word for it -- without further delay, here is the story of that Biblical cum-guzzling siren duo, Oholah and Oholibah (as told by that crazy fucker, Ezekial):

The word of the LORD came to me:

"Son of man," the LORD began, "there were these two women, daughters of the same mother. They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. In that land their breasts were fondled and their virgin bosums caressed. The older was named Oholah, and her sister was Oholibah. They were mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem."

"Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was still mine; and she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them handsome young men, and mounted horsemen. She gave herself as a prostitute to all the elite of the Assyrians and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after. She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust on her."

"Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians, for whom she lusted. They stripped her naked, took away her sons and daughters and killed her with the sword. She became a byword among women, and punishment was inflicted on her."

"Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet in her lust and prostitution she was more depraved than her sister. She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors in full dress, mounted horsemen, all handsome young men. I saw that she too defiled herself; both of them went the same way."

"But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red, with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like Babylonian chariot officers, natives of Chaldea. As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and her pussy got totally moist and she sent messengers to them in Chaldea. Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust. When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt.

There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."

(which means about a cup, for those keeping track, which is more than sixteen times as much a strapping healthy man can usually put out at a time; but then again, they did have donkey-cocks....)

"So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled and your nipples were suckled upon and your loins were stroked and your honeypot was stirred and your hindquarters were entered into from the backside."

(at this point in the telling of the story, the LORD jizzed in his robe and was really redfaced and had to take a few minutes to compose himself before getting to the fire-and-brimstone part)

"Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will stir up your lovers against you, those you turned away from in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side— the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, handsome young men, all of them governors and commanders, chariot officers and men of high rank, all mounted on horses. They will come against you with weapons, chariots and wagons and with a throng of people; they will take up positions against you on every side with large and small shields and with helmets. I will turn you over to them for punishment, and they will punish you according to their standards. I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword."

(at this point, the LORD jizzed in his robe again and was really embarrassed, and hemmed and harrumphed a bit while digging up a clean one, and then he got on with telling the terrible things he would do to the whores....)

"They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire. They will also strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry. So I will put a stop to the lewdness and prostitution you began in Egypt. You will not look on these things with longing or remember Egypt anymore."

"For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to deliver you into the hands of those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you stark naked, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity have brought this on you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand."

This is what the Sovereign LORD says:

"You will drink your sister's cup,
a cup large and deep;
it will bring scorn and derision,
for it holds so much.
You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow,
the cup of ruin and desolation,
the cup of your sister Samaria.
You will drink it and drain it dry
and chew on its pieces—
and you will tear your breasts."

And, after a suitably dramatic pause, "I have spoken," declares the Sovereign LORD. (and why is BibleGod always doing that, speaking and then when he has finished speaking declaring that he has spoken, like people wouldn't realise that speaking was going on.... that wouldn't make sense unless BibleGod really just didn't even exist at all and -- hey, wait a minute!!)

The upside of this tale is that it provides a very easy way to determine the veracity of the Bible, using nothing more than some measuring cups, some Egyptians, and some horse and donkey cocks. Simply use these items to answer the question: do the Egyptians, as the Bible claims, have donkey-cocks and horse-sized ejaculations? Easy enough to find out, just get some Egyptians and put them next to the donkeys and measure their respective cocks. If the Egyptian cocks are the same size as the donkey cocks, the Bible may be true. And, again, with the horse semen. Get the Egyptians to produce some sperm, and get the horses to do the same. If the amount is the same, then the Bible may be true. Now I admit, the latter task may be a hard one to, ahem, pull off. After all, the typical horse ejaculation is about sixteen times as much as the typical human output. But, who knows, maybe the Bible is true and the Egyptians can routinely achieve such a feat.

Masturpraytion

It's the hot new trend that's rocking the nation -- it's masturpraytion!! Straightforwardly enough, masturpraytion is the combining of two of the most profound human activities -- that is, of masturbation with prayer.

Now there are different ways these things can conceptually be unified, and probably most commonly what would arise in the mind would be praying you don't get caught whacking off in a compromising position. As in "doing some serious masturpraytion over cousin Sophie's bikini photos on Facebook, cause God help me if I get caught whacking off to that."

But masturpraytion can be something far more serious and meaningful than that: the paying of an humble homage to our Creator by joyously making use of the self-pleasuring capacity (and equipment) with which thou hast been blessed!! How strange a thing it is that some imagine in the same (non-pleasuring) stroke that there exists a Creator of our Universe which is at the same time omniscient, and yet is especially condemnatory as to the reproductive organ manipulation action of some of the hairless bipeds occupying the surface of a dustspeck planet circling one amongst hundreds of billions of average stars in an average galaxy, in an average galactic cluster, in what for all we know may well be an average Universe. This is not to suppose that such a Creator takes no notice of humankind and other potential beings of comparable (and indeed superior) self-awareness, for that surely makes us interesting to partake of....

But consider again, the very nature of omniscience; for an omniscient being would (as was abundantly mathematically proved by Duke University physicist Robert G. Brown with his Pandeist Theorem) effectively be a one-to-one information map of our entire Universe, and so, would have to actually be (or more aptly contain our Universe); and so would have the full experience of our every moment of pleasure and pain, and indeed our perspective of those every moments. And so, it would be correct to conclude that in every instance of self-gratification, thou art sharing in the exactitudes of that experience with any omniscient Creator which might exist, and it is as such that our masturbation equals giving a handjob to God!!*

And so, what better way could there be to venerate the awesomeness of the entity than to share with it the moments of pleasure which we may most intimately experience for ourselves? Well, except, naturally, by doubling that pleasure in the sharing of those sensations with a partner, for it is also proclaimed that those who "pray" together "stay" together.


----


* ^{(Well naturally a masturbating girl would not be giving a "handjob" unless you use the term broadly to address doing any such job by hand. But the effect is the same.)}

Let us yaw toward a fruitful discussion, for I fell we must reach much the same ground, if only by different paths....

So that we are clear on the fundament of what we are discussing, I will outline the pandeistic theorem from first principles -- we may agree, naturally, that we are thinking, and so thought is going on and the framework for thought must exist, and must have an origin.... having no more probable option than our physical Universe existing as it presents itself to us, we ought to proceed as though either what appears to exist, exists, or there is some reason for it appearing to us to exist, and so ought we to try to figure out why things appear as they do....

Our Universe exhibits order, and not just any sort of order, but order of the type which generates complexity, ie life, and not just complex life, but self accelerating complex life, ie evolving life forms (as Dr. Theobold has just this summer so aptly proved) which inevitably eventually develop the intelligence and use such intelligence to discern the governing dynamics of our Universe and use such knowledge to consciously self-advance-- we, humans, are near that stage, have not reached it yet, and are presently but an absurd fraction of what we might become-- will become if we survive long enough to do so.... and what we stand to evolve into in perhaps a thousand years is something of actual elucidatory use to the Creator of our Universe....

Now, consider, as Scott Adams did, if our Universe demonstrates order of a magnitude which suggests the hand of a Creator in its establishment (and does it not?) then what purpose is served by this Creation? What need on the part of the Creator is fulfilled by the exertion of setting forth what by chance has become us? (though it could have as readily yielded a different reality with different self-advancing intelligent life unrecognisable to our eyes, and perhaps it has done so in other galaxies, and elsewhere in our own).... well it is natural to observe that an entity, alone in its existence, and having such power as is necessary to set forth a Universe such as our own would be lacking in the knowledge of interaction, of facing and possibly overcoming obstacles, or dealing with the failure to overcome them.... it could not know such things as hope or triumph, fear or courage, grief, contentment, and love -- and so it would have to actually become a physical Universe (or as Einstein described it, a very persistent illusion of one) to obtain any of these experiences (that is, for the time that it exists, for ultimately all will fall into black holes, and then the evaporation of Hawking radiation approaching than the rate of c presages a universal perpetual information loss corresponding to the shrinkage of phase space volume, wherein trajectories converge towards singularities, counter-balanced only by the degree to which quantum information is regained, ameliorating root phase space volume; at which point the original Creator-entity would be restored from its experience of existing as our Universe....)

Anyway, the point there is that, yes, every rock and stream and ray of light and burst of radiation in deepest space is an aspect of our Creator, but while those aspects are attuned to existence as a physical energy, Man is on one level of which we are consciously unaware attuned to existence as exactly that, but on another level attuned to our conscious experience of the world, our troubles and toils and foibles.... this alone does not make us 'better' than anything else, but it does make us 'different' from all things which do not experience this and this difference brings a useful diversity to the experience of our Universe.... and though we are far from the 'pinnacle' of Creation, we are on the path for our future transhuman generations to achieve the capacity to set ourselves upon that pinnacle, IFF we may reconnect our conscious contemplation to our connectedness with all that exists beyond our crabbed claim of reality!!

The Astronomers--an inspiration to Pandeism

Astronomy has always had a role to play in theological discourse. From the time of the earliest records of the ancients, it was supposed that the lights in the night sky represented mystical forces. And, once it was understood that there were distinct forms of objects beyond our horizon, elaborate systems were imagined to explain their significance, and their supposed influence on human affairs.

Ptolemy of Alexandria devised a model of the sun and planets which placed the Earth at the center of our Universe, orbited by the Moon, then Mercury and Venus, then the sun and the rest of the known planets: Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All of this, in the Ptolomeic model, was surrounded by a moving sphere of fixed stars. We now know that Ptolomy's model was wrong, but not for any lack of intellect on Ptolomy's part. Instead, it was a well-thought out model that largely accounted for what could be observed in that age, and with the prevailing theological supposition, of our Earth sitting at the center of our Universe.

Nicolaus Copernicus pioneered the next great leap in astronomical knowledge. Copernicus published his heliocentric theory, placing the Sun at the center of our Universe, shortly before his death. This was necessary due to the prevailing religious sentiments of the time. Although we now know the heliocentric model to be true, the monolithic Christianity of the era required the Earth to be at the center of the Universe, and so, truth was suppressed in the name of religion.

Following the work of Copernicus, Galileo Galilei determined, as well, that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the central point for the planets. His work was based on the most practical level of research, improving the design of telescopes and then observing the sun, moon, and planets through them, and reporting his observations. For his discoveries, he was condemned by the Church, which famously declared the theory that the Earth orbits the sun to be "false and contrary to Scripture." But, it is not so widely remembered that he was equally condemned for discovering spots on the sun, craters on the moon, other moons circling other planets, and that the planets themselves were not perfect orbs, as the church required. Under threat of of torture by religious officials, Galileo recanted -- but, naturally, recanting what is a true has never worked to make it untrue.

Johannes Kepler, lived in the same era as Galileo, but in a place less dominated by religious oppression. Working in the observatory of another great astronomer, Tycho Brahe, Kepler sought to solve the riddle of the apparent retrograde motion of Mars -- that is, the tendency of Mars to sometimes appear to move backwards in its orbit. In doing so, Kepler hit upon another great discovery, that the planets did not orbit the Sun at a uniform speed, or in perfect circles, or with the Sun at the exact center, as the religious leaders required. The planets instead orbited in a-centric ellipses, with orbital speed changing in conjunction with the distance from the Sun, which was simply a focal point, and not at the exact center of their orbit.

Sir Isaac Newton's theory of gravity was initially set forth in great measure to explain the means by which bodies in orbit were maintained in that way. It paved the way for the theological theory of deism by demonstrating that the constant hand of the Creator was not at all needed to explain the motions of the planets, but that celestial bodies could instead be maintained in their angular momentum entirely by the clockwork operation of celestial mechanics.

It was astronomers who, centuries later, insured the upending of Newtonian physics when they confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity by observing the predicted gravitational lensing of light passing distant stars. It was astronomers who gave us the key to the age of our Universe. Edwin Hubble discovered that ours was not the only galaxy, and by examining the redshift of other galaxies moving in relation to our own, that the Universe was expanding. It is somewhat remarkable in itself that up until 1925, it was not known that a single other galaxy existed, and after that date, that countless numbers of them did.

Hubble's discovery of universal expansion was disturbing to those who, for both scientific and theological reasons, believed the Universe to have existed forever, in much the same state. Astronomer Fred Hoyle was among those who developed the steady state theory, which proposed that the expansion of our Universe was fueled by a constant infusion of new material from some central point, so that it had always appeared, and would always appear, much as it does today. But this theory was disproved with the discovery of very old quasars and similar very old and very distant structures, which are not found in the neighborhood of younger galaxies which are farther along from the point of the initial expansion. It is somewhat ironic today that the Big Bang proponents were largely religious, championing the theory in part for its assignment of a point of origin to the Universe which accorded with Creation mythology, while the steady state proponents tended to be atheistic.

Once the Big Bang theory was confirmed, this knowledge, refined over time, allowed man to at last pinpoint the age of our Universe to approximately thirteen billion seven hundred and thirty million years. Later astronomers like Carl Sagan, Paul Davies, and Timothy Ferris would continue to do more and more to not only advance our understanding of our Universe, and the continuum of physics governing objects within it, but to profoundly effect the validity of theological models as well, making it impossible to rationally believe in a Creator for whom human beings were at the center of our Universe.

As astronomical discoveries have taken us farther and farther away from our initial imagined posture in the center of our Universe, theological systems have reacted in different ways. Some have simply shifted the vanity and self-centeredness that led us to believe ourselves to be the center of a perfectly ordered Universe away from the astronomical realm, insisting that even as we are seen to occupy an insignificant position in space, we remain the object of adoration for the Creator of that vast space, so richly occupied in places beyond our very imagination. Other theological models have strengthened in their grasp of a theology in line with astronomical reality. Pandeism is one such theory, demanding that any theological explanation must accord with the nature of our observed Universe. And so, the astronomers, in their generations of work advancing our understanding of our place within our Universe, have provided an inspiration to pandeism, and to all theological theories recognizing the grandness of a Universe in which we are so privileged to play even the most minute role.

Inspirations to Pandeism I

Pandeism Fish

So what, exactly, is a Pandeism Fish? I've received that question a fair share of times, one for which I surely ought to answer. And so here, by way of a roundabout essay is the explanation behind the Pandeism Fish....

Symbology:

Symbology is important to any school of thought as it provides an abbreviated way to convey affiliation, as well as in some instances to communicate a shorthand glimpse of the doctrine itself.

One such symbol is the fish. Now this might bring to mind a particular belief system in these particular times, but in fact the use of a sparse, fish-reminiscent pair of curved lines, just touching at one end and surpassing an intersection at the other, dates back over three-thousand years, pre-originating even the assignment of Pisces to the Zodiac.

The Christian adoption of the fish-as-symbol, the icthys, may raise an eyebrow. There was already, after all, the cross. And, though miracles or parables involving fish come as readily in the Bible as in the formative texts of, for example, Buddhism or Hinduism, the fish is not shown in any of these traditions to be a particularly venerated class of creature. And yet.... well, there is something about that shape which makes it especially appropriate as a symbol for Pandeism -- and if the pandeistic model is true, this would even go so far as to explain why members of theistic faiths (including, yes, Christianity) have subconsciously gravitated to a symbol greatly explicatory of Pandeism!!

The Pandeistic Model:

Consider, first, the pandeistic model; the Creator becomes the Creation; in the beginning (before our physical Universe exists, there is one entity, of substantial (but abstract) intellect, and having substantial capacity to control its own unformed energy. It is not infinite, but neither is it necessarily bounded -- one might describe it as "open-ended" in its creative capacity. This entity, for purposes of acquiring certain knowledge incapable of being generated for its current form, transforms itself, compresses all that it is into a singularity and then bursts forth into a new form, an unconscious will supporting the continued existence of a physical Universe, guided by laws of physics set forth in that very moment of Creation, with a grand unknown outcome but with governing dynamics designed to bring about complexity, culminating in the products of self-accelerating intelligent life (which, in turn, is capable of discovering those governing dynamics, those laws of physics and mathematics, and using them to build mightily upon the capacities delivered to it by nature)....

Anyone who has seen the map of the cosmic background radiation will note the rather oval shape assigned to it by the instruments reading it (though this oval is the product of an illusion, the true shape of the Universe likely being more spherical). Another sort of "oval" can be generated by envisioning our Universe is bursting forth from a singularity, and then experiencing a long period of expansion (perhaps hundreds of billions of years), reaching an apogee of sorts, a point of maximum expansion, from which it draws back in much the same way, returning to a point of singularity. Such expansion and contraction need not even occur in the three physical dimensions common to our observation, but may occur at higher dimensions, possessed of a curvature which exceeds our present observational capacity.

The Pandeism Fish:

And so, if we combine these ideas -- the pre-Universe Creator condensing and collapsing itself into a singularity, envisioned as an open-ended triangle pointing towards the moment of Creation; leading into the oval of our Universe as it is, or as it presents itself to us physically, and as it may operate on a larger cosmological sense, we find ourselves presented with a not unfamiliar shape:

______________________________________________________________
|MMMMMMMMWMMMWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM|
|MMMMMMMMMWMMWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM|
|MMMMMMMMMMWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMW*****^O""'`o^****MMMMMMMMMMMMMM|
 ..MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX*** ** *0* * ** * **_****XMMMMMMMMM|
 `..MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMZ* **~**o** ** *`*_**~*** ****~***MMMMM|
` .. @MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX** **--*-* **** - -* **.... ` ` * **~*MM|
 )@ ~@ .w@MMMMMMP*****o* ** ** ** ** * *** * * * * ** ** ***MM|
 `~@ @ ..@`..@%F#.r{}*** *** *~**. .-. .* *** *// *** * ***..#)
` ) ` ) ` ) }+{ ` ` ` ` *` ` ` ` * ` ` ` ` ` ` * *` ` ` * `  }+ ???
 ,@ /@./-@/@#H%..**o-*** * *~*** *.. .. ....** **** *~** * */#)
 / ,? @ @MMMMMMMb** * *O* * * * o**~* *'** *** ** *O* ** * **M|
 @ ~,/@MMMMMMMMMMMM* * ** ** ** ** *o** _** *** ** * * ***MMMM|
, /MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM*o***~// * * * *o * * ** ** * *XMMMMMM|
 /MMMMMMMMWMMMWMMMMMMMMMMX** ** * * * ** * *0 * * *ZMMMMMMMMMM|
|MMMMMWMMMMMMMWMMMMMWMMMMMMMMX* *** * * **// * *MMMMMMMMMMMMMM|
|MMMMMMMMMMMWWWWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX&-x_,-/-XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM|
|MMMMMMWWWWWWWWWWWWMMMMWWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM|
|WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|

Now here's where things get really interesting, conceptually. Recall that pandeism accounts for all theistic phenomena -- from all faiths -- as encounters between the limited human mind and the unconscious experience of our Creator underlying the continued sustenance of our Universe. All revelations received and miracles observed can be so explained, without resort to incongruent beliefs in things such as "evil spirits" being permitted to provide "false" revelations to some, while others are permitted to receive "true" revelations. And this accounts, as well, for the human predilection to grasp blindly towards the underlying metaphysical explanation, dressed up though it may become by human biases, fears and aspirations.

Synthesis:

Consider, again, that this fish-shaped device symbolises no petty miracle or mediocre allegory, but instead models an explanation for all observed reality, an explanation which, should the pandeistic model be true, would resonate in the unconscious mind underlying our continued existence, and through that channel into the subconscious mind of humanity. And so it could be said that the adoption by many faiths of the vague outline of a fish -- of the pandeism fish -- indicates this true underlying nature of our Universe, one which accounts for all the graspings of those very faiths!!

A fly in the Ontological Ointment

The Ontological Argument proposes that if God is "that than which no greater can be conceived," then God must exist, because something that does exist is greater than something that does not, and so existence is necessarily bundled up into "that than which no greater can be conceived." Though Immanuel Kant's refutation, denying existence itself as a quality, goes to the heart of such a claim of existence being tautological, he is applying that, I think, to a purported conception which itself never exists in the first place. For, in fact, it is impossible for something approaching "perfection" in any capacity to actually be conceived.

The Ontological Argument requires us to first conceive something which is perfect, as a step towards requiring the actualisation of this perfection on the basis of existence itself being a higher state of perfection. A simple, devastating blow to this argument can be laid down by a confrontation with the liberties which the first requirement takes with the very nature of conception itself. As the first step in the argument is to define "God" as "that than which no greater can be conceived," we must consider: what exactly is it which we are capable of conceiving?

Picture, for a moment, an infinitely long piece of string. Try and get that image in your head. Well, really, whatever you've thought of, it is a certainty that you are not actually picturing something "infinite" -- perhaps you imagine infinity by picturing that string trailing off into the distance, to the point where we can no longer see it at all, but (we tell ourselves) it continues on forever outside of our view, or ability to picture. Or, you may picture a string running straight across a horizon, your image pulling back from it as your field of view expands by orders of magnitude.

We do these things in place of undertaking the impossible task of picturing such a string as it actually goes on, forever. To contemplate an actualisable infinite string, we would need to spend an infinite amount of time on the thought itself. And so it is this way, in which we imagine perfection, by modeling an actually imperfect mental construct that comes as close to perfection as our minds are able to contemplate, but does not in fact achieve the conceptual step prerequisite to actualisation. Seeking a more abstract conception, consider the greatest or most perfect piece of music composable. The phrase "the greatest piece of music composable" is not, itself, utterly devoid of meaning, as we can imagine that such a thing might be -- but there is no means to conceptualise the actual tune for which that description would be universally true. We can not hum a few bars and know our conceptualisation to be objectively correct.

Simply put, perfection -- being "the greatest conceivable" in any field -- is a form of infinity, a projection that is infinite along the lines of perfectness. And, since we really can't truly conceive of an infinite, no conception actually exists to require this illusory conceived infinite be perfected along some tautological additional dimension of actual existence. Not only can we not conceive the infinite, we are, in fact (indeed, by definition) unable to truly fully conceive of things that are merely incomprehensibly large. For example, we can look at a book's worth of pictures of Jupiter and descriptions of its characteristics, but we can no more construct a fully accurate mental image of the sheer vastness of that planet than we can circumnavigate it by crawling naked for the length of the Jovian equator.

Reflecting upon the limitations of the human mind to do anything more than model limited versions of abstract infinites, we can see the impossibility of actually conceiving "that than which no greater can be conceived." Where David Hume, in the previous node, says the ideal can exist only in the human mind, he has already gone a step too far, for it is only model of the ideal that can therein persist. And, anticipating one remaining possible challenge, if we remove this humanistic consideration, then the Ontological Argument itself ceases to exist, for it is only a construct of human thought. As an absolute premise, the argument requires the human reader giving it consideration to first conceive the perfection suggested -- to suppose that God must exist because God would be able to conceive God is to beg the question.

Noah's Snowball

If the rains described in the story of Noah's Ark had ever really happened, modern meteorology informs us that the result would have been plunging the Earth into a deep freeze -- a Snowball Earth -- from which it would not have recovered for millions of years.... here is the evidence....



"Noah's Snowball -- a PanDeism Channel Presentation"

Conscious energy? Pandeism says yes!!

Can energy unbounded by a "physical form" be conscious? Pandeism says yes!! The physicality of our brains, after all, is merely the illusion of energy bound up and appearing to be solid stuff.

Pandeism explains the stars and galaxies

Pandeism explains the size of the Universe, and the vast number of stars and galaxies....

Pandeism -- the introductory vid

For those who have missed it, this is an overview of the theological theory of pandeism, a combination of pantheism and deism concluding that the Deus (i.e. God) became the Universe in order to experience it.

Confirmatory power of the pandeistic model

There is great misunderstanding about what exactly the pandeistic model is, or why it offers so great a confirmatory power. Simply put, the pandeistic model determines which explanations can possibly account for observed physical and metaphysical phenomena, and then boils them down to the one explanation that requires the fewest assumptions in fulfilling this explanatory need. If a religion were to confirmably present an observation that could not be accounted for by the pandeistic model, but instead required adoption of an additional assumption, logic would indeed demand that this assumption be adopted; but every single observation must be weighed to determine whether it demands the adoption of additional assumptions, and every assumption must be weighed for determination of whether any simpler model accounts for the things it would assume....

Atheists label pandeism as theism, and theists label it as atheism; and yet, pandeism fully accounts for the things atheists believe as well; indeed, it would be folly to exclude atheism from the pandeistic model of examination, for atheism does not actually explain anything so much as assert that the explanation, though unknown, is not or can not be theological -- this is what divides the starkness of atheism from the explanatory power of the pandeistic model.

Pandeism vs Theism: Our Destiny is in the Stars!!

This video explains why it must be so, that our destiny is in the stars!!



As the dawn of the 2010 decade approached, science quietly delivered a message that will build in realization until it reverberates with a boom forever into the future. Mankind's ability to identify planets around distant stars has evolved to a new height, to the point of being able to identify Earth-sized orbs in orbits that would make them amenable to carrying liquid water -- thus imbuing them with the potential to develop life, or at the least to be made habitable for humans. This scientific find gives us hope that we may literally reach for the stars, but it brings profound and awesome religious implications as well.

There are those out there in certain faiths who eagerly await not the day of our expansion into new worlds, but the end of this world. End-timers exist in several religions; in the Abrahamic faiths they tend to believe that the world is around 6,000 years old and, at the same time, that a thousand years is like a day to their God -- all straight from their books. So, doesn't it seem odd that after billions of infinities waiting around and doing nothing, such a God would suddenly up and create the Universe, have the whole thing exist for an eyeblink in the great span of things -- and then just as suddenly have an Armageddon and go back to the humdrum of no Universe for billions of infinities (even if thereafter surrounded by fawning souls bereft of any desire but to fawn)? And yet, these end-timers have been insisting that the end is coming right up on us (although to be fair, they've been insisting that daily and twice on Sundays for thousands of years now)....

With our technological developments and the recent discovery of other possibly habitable worlds with water on them and everything, we're really just starting to get interesting. I mean, if I was the sort of person who believed in piecemeal-purposed creation, I'd have a hard time thinking that any God created habitable planets which, at least according to theoretical physics, we could very much reach and populate, and yet this same God intended to end our days before we did what those worlds are designed to have us do. If we were expected to fail before being able to reach those worlds, such a Creator would know that in advance, and wouldn't bother to create those other habitable worlds -- which we might otherwise get to in a few hundred, at most a few thousand years (another eyeblink to such a being). The whole idea of it is like someone spending a fortune to buy a bunch of toys, to give to their children as a reward for not eating from the plate of candy which was placed in front of them and left unattended.

Now, even if for the sake of argument the scriptural accounts hoisted by the end-timers were true accounts of Creation, it makes no sense that such a Creator would end things now, at a time that would for that being be moments after Creation. That would be like lining up world class marathon runners to run a fifty-millimeter dash. Since physics itself keeps telling us of a Universe that is billions rather than thousands of years old, shouldn't we be looking towards a future that is also billions of years to come, instead of ending in thousands of years, or hundreds, or next Tuesday?

So it must be. We are meant to reach those other habitable worlds out there, just now coming onto our horizon; and because of this, the next few thousand years of human development will be particularly interesting to observe and even be a part of. Even the end-timers should now, finally, acknowledge that those lights in the sky are not angels or lesser gods or holes in a great dome, but are instead stars orbited by (detectable!!) planets, which if deity-made Creation is true, we must be intended to occupy!!

Pandeism, Theism, and Atheism: a simple sort of complexity

The fine-tuned Universe argument supports both pandeism and theism, as opposed to atheism, but the fact that the laws of the Universe are simple enough for intelligent life to manipulate them, and thus surpass their current state, disproves theism and proves only pandeism.

The Burden of Proof as applied to Pandeism

Pandeism fully accounts for all phenomena, physical and spiritual, with the least amount of presumptions required. And so, any system proposing a Creator with additional capacities, such as the ability to create new energy from nothing, or to be infinite in any dimension, bears the burden of first affirmatively disproving pandeism.

Pandeism vs Creationism: Evolution IS Intelligent Design

This video explains that pandeism accepts evolution as true because evolution itself is the ultimate "intelligent design":

Pandeism and the Free Will Paradox

This video explains why the concept of "free will" is inconsistent with the idea of an absolutely omnipotent and absolutely omniscient Creator, but is instead consistent with the pandeistic model of a Creator. In fact the pandeistic Creator would not be at all served by absolute omniscience, for then there would be nothing to learn from the Creation of our Universe, and no reason to create -- and so, we would not be here!!

Pan-Deism....?

(Copied from Everything2 with permission)

Wait a minute, you are surely saying, we already have a fantastic and brilliant node about pandeism -- at pandeism!!@!; what beckons a whole separate node on the same thing but just with a hyphen? Ah, but what a difference a hyphen makes!! In searching upwards from the most ancient sources on the subject to modern day, one finds that at sundry historical points, writers have inclined to use "pan-deism" (or perhaps Pan-Deism, depending on how they feel about capitalisation) to mean something strikingly different from the modern meaning of "pandeism."



Here are the examples (and annotations!!)....



••••

"India worships three hundred millions of divinities. To her, God is everything, and everything is God, and, therefore, everything may be adored. Snakes and monsters are her special divinities. Her pan-deism is a pandemonium."

-- Source: Reverend Henry Grattan Guinness, in Missionary Review, in John Harvey Kellogg's International Health and Temperance Association, The Medical Missionary, 1897, page 126.
(The earliest example, here, could carry either sense!! Hinduism, long one of the prime religions of India, has been observed to have sects espousing pandeistic conceptions.)

••••

"In certain passages of the OT the concept of Babylon emerges into an archetypal figure for the proud, God-defying forces of this world (Isa 13-14; 21.1-10; 47: Jer 50-51). In the NT it is even more clearly a type of pan-deism formed from a synthesis of Christianity and paganism; this is indicated symbolically in the description of the woman riding on the Beast (Rev 17:1 ff.)."

-- Source: Charles F. Pfeiffer, Howard Frederic Vos, and John Rea, in The Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia, 1975, page 190.

(It's been frequently pointed out to me that Christianity has long
since become this synthesis, what with all the pagan celebrations,
practices, even whole doctrines being brought up into it right from its
early centuries, and into modern times.)

••••

"If the Bible is only human lore, and not divine truth, then we have no real answer to those who say, 'Let's pick the best out of all religions and blend it all into Pan-deism - one world religion with one god made out of many.'"

-- Source: J. Sidlow Baxter, Our Bible: The Most Critical Issue, 1991.

(Oh, let's!! There is a sense in which pandeism is said to combine the
most defensible and rational truths that can be reduced out of all
faiths....)

••••

"Should the demigod Pan come to bear, the result will be Pan-deism, the opening of Pandora's Box."

-- Source: John Gee, in The Metaphysicians' Desk Reference 2003, page 164.

(Um.... ok. Not exactly sure what this guy is going for -- something cleverly hidden in the wordplay? Or just alliteration for its own benefit?)

••••

"Perhaps as a response to the years of repression under the old regime, they embraced the pan-deism
of the ancient world, with its numerous gods and lesser deities. They
were proponents of sexual freedom as well, even going so far as to hold
public orgies until halted by the local government."

-- Source: R. J. Leahy, in Tigra‎, 2006, page 54.

(Orgies?
Hey, sure!! Numerous gods? No, not really. But consider Hinduism again,
which presents numerous gods as a mask for one true underlying force.)

••••

"Just as the Pharisee thought he could come before God and present to Him his good works, the knowledge of good and evil literally became the doorway of pan-deism (that is, many ways to God)."

-- Source: Dewayne A. Pattie, in No King But Caesar & The Return of The Melek Tsedek: A Biblical Study on Faith, Religion, and the Antichrist From the Covenant Perspective, September 29, 2009, p. 45.

(And oughtn't there be "many ways" to such an entity as that of which they speak!?)

••••

And so, as a rule, hyphenated pan-deism begs something else, not the
true blue view of "pandeism." But, a rule being laid out we are now
tasked with highlighting the exceptions!!



One occurs where Professor Francis E. Peters, in Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon 1967, page 169, inscribes, "What appeared here, at the center of the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism
(see theion) that is the legacy of the Milesians." And there we know he
speaks of the more familiar pandeism (and how do we know this? Because
it rightly captures the spirit of that ancient Milesian worldview).
Where poet and critic Liam Rector, in The Day I Was Older: on the poetry of Donald Hall‎, 1989, page 69, propounds that it was "Pope's rationalism and pan-deism with which he wrote the greatest mock-epic in English literature" for it reflects Alexander Pope's philosophy, summed up in An Essay on Man: "All are but parts of one stupendous whole / Whose body nature is, and God the soul" (forecasting, mayhap, a later artist's affirmation that "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.")



And again, William Harbutt Dawson, writes in his biographic epistle, Matthew Arnold and His Relation to the Thought of Our Time,
1904, republished 1977, page 256, that "whatever the deity which
satisfied Arnold's personal experience may have been, the religion
which he gives us in Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible is neither Deism nor bare Pan-Deism, but a diluted Positivism."
Now, one might assume, as the editor of the 1977 edition suggests, that
that Dawson may have intended to write "bare Pan-Theism" rather than
"Pan-Deism". If one does not, then we are presented with a direct
comparison with Deism, for Dawson then observes: "As an ethical system
it is in theory admirable, but its positive value is in the highest
degree questionable. Pascal's judgment upon the God who emerged from the philosophical investigations of René Descartes was that He was a God who was unnecessary."


But returning again to the uses that make and not break this rule, now
there are two ways you could think about this; one being that some
folks are none too educated in their collocation of words. Look at the
roots: pan, everything, deism, yes it does descend from the Latin for
"God" -- but it has preceded these quotations by centuries in a long
and greatly expounded distinct meaning all its own, of a particular
kind of faith standing apart from the theism that these folks try to
mash up. The right word would be omnithism.
Might even be that they mean to mislead -- pandeism is indeed as much
subject to misuse abuse as other words relating "off-the-beaten-path"
faiths. Like Moralistic therapeutic deism
(which is in point of fact no kind of "deism"), false usage, possibly
intentionally, demeans and diminishes the dimensions of its domain.



But a greater point is about the true meaning of pandeism, which accounts for and provides a tasty, logic-satisfying underlying explanation for all perceived religious phenomena accorded to all
faiths (visions, revelations, miracles, deep-seated feelings, etc); and
so, if pandeism is true, then this use of "pan-deism" it is true in the
sense that all of the phenomena of all faiths are traceable to the underlying pandeistic nature of our Universe.

The problem of the unevangelised

This video explains why the problem of the unevangelised disproves any theism proposing a loving or omnipotent God, but presents no barrier to pandeism.