Record traffic on Wikipedia's Pandeism page, redux

Some three years ago I blogged about record traffic on Wikipedia's Pandeism page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism -- observing then that the page had hit an all-time high in daily page views at 1,227 (part of a pattern in which several of the highest-viewed days were scattered over a surrounding period of weeks). That spike was a mystery, the previous record of 901 views having been attributable to Pandeism being mentioned in an article in Scientific American.

Well, all that is now water under the bridge insofar as record page view days go.

For on February 26, 2023, a new page views record of 2,231 nearly doubled the old record, and was followed by a day of 1,483 views (itself exceeding the record set in 2020), followed by a day of 1,162 (with this whole run being preceded by a day of 906 views).

Well it seems that all of this is because of cartoonist Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays on Twitter) making news (in a very negative way, unfortunately).

You see, one of Adams' more archaic claims to fame is having written the book God's Debris (actually a quite incisive work which I still put forth as recommend reading) describing a school of Pandeism as its worldview. Interestingly, a key point of Pandeism -- that we are all equally fragments of our Creator, and how we treat our fellows is how we contribute to creating the experience of our Creator -- ought to strongly motivate seeking to help all humans to overcome whatever barriers separate us, for the  common achievement of greater joy in our lives.

Now then, I wouldn't especially want the hundreds-of-years-old theological theory of Pandeism to be drawing attention solely due to an association with a person who's in the news for all the wrong reasons. But.... if even a handful of Wikipedia visitors are enlightened by it, well, you know the old saw, The Universe Works in Mysterious Ways. Perhaps one of those mysterious ways is to make a current celebrity act in such a way that they unintentionally draw attention to a theory they espoused in the past perhaps much more beautiful than what they espouse in the present.

Pandeism has steadily been gaining renewed interest for the past decade, so anything which informs people that the idea exists is doing them a service, perhaps offering a light to come out of shadowy events.

"Beyond Physicalism" from Scientific American

On December 9, Scientific American magazine published a most remarkable article, "Beyond Physicalism: Philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch defends the idea that consciousness pervades the cosmos." Mørch, a philosopher and associate professor at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, was interviewed for this piece by science journalist John Horgan, who asks whether God fits into her philosophical propositions, Mørch answers:

Not really. But there is a religious view I find interesting, which is pandeism: the view that God used to exist, and be the only thing that existed, and then transformed himself into the universe, and so no longer exists. The reason God did this was basically for fun, or to see what happened. And maybe at some point the universe will transform itself back into God—that would be like nirvana or heaven. But then eventually God would get bored again and start the cycle over. As I understand it, this is close to some parts of Hindu cosmology.

Horgan's response? "I like that! I think I’m a pandeist!"

Mørch goes on to explain that the tendency of life to alternate between true pain and the essential pain of pleasure extended to the point of boredom "is also partly why the pandeistic view I just described appeals to me."

Interestingly, in the days following the publication of this Scientific American magazine article, the Wikipedia Pandeism page experienced an indisputable upsurge in viewership -- going from an average of about 175 views per day over the preceding weeks to over 1,600 views over the following three days, with a peak of over 900 views in a single day, an all-time viewership record for that page!!

This more than anything demonstrates the power of conveying information about a rising mode of thought to people, even when buried deep within a scholarly piece of journalism.

Quantum beer

The concept of quantum foam has bubbled up in scientific circles for over half a century, ever since physicist John Wheeler figured that quantum mechanics, at the really really small scale, would yield a Universe where nothing was ever static, and instead bits of matter (or, at least, the fundamental particles constructing them) popped in and out of existence all the time. And this foamy sort of science has long inspired all sorts of ideas as to what sorts of things might arise in a Universe so made.

But the thing which seems to be overlooked in this examination is the question of what all that foam is topping off. Now there are many kinds of foam out there in the world -- foam from shampoo, the foam in foam rubber, sea foam, and what used to be called shaving foam (but for some inexplicable reason is now more popularly called shaving cream). But come now, everybody knows the best, most satisfying kind of foam there is, is the foam that rises atop a perfectly poured down the side at an angle glass of beer. The kind of foam which tickles your nose as you drink that first draught, the kind of foam which is crisp and sweet and slow to settle.

Beer is one of man's first inventions. The ancient Egyptian pyramid-builders were paid in beer. Beer is liquid gold, and liquid bread (and bread baked with beer has a most wondrous foaminess to it, too). Beer even figures into physics -- physicist Donald A. Glaser, for his Nobel Prize-winning invention of the bubble chamber, used beer to fill early proptotypes of the chamber (though he denied that beer inspired the invention).

An old quote floating about which has been attributed to Werner Heisenberg (apparently wrongfully), tells us that "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you." Now this has been interpreted to mean a lot of things ranging from "the more fully understood our Universe is, the more intricately designed it appears" to "you start seeing fantastic things once you get drunk enough." But if the glass is of the quantum beer from which the quantum foam fizzes forth, then surely it must mean, once you get down to the bottom of things, you find that there's something beneath the bottom, and that it's that we're all connected, all manifestations arising from a single oneness. Perhaps even like the oneness described in the evolutionary theological theory of Pandeism (pantheistic Deism). And an amber-hued, rich, tasty, all-loving oneness, at that!!

Quantum beer probably looks something like this....

Pandeism and Pangaea

Early in 2016, an interesting confluence occurred. As I was kicking around Kickstarter, I happened wholly by chance to come across a newly initiated effort for a collection of fictional pieces: Pangaea II. The "II" signifies the status of being a sequel to a previous similarly themed collection. And "Pangaea" because it is set in a fictional alternate reality -- one with a fascinating premise wherein Earth's landmasses are not dispersed, but where instead all human history occurs on a continuing single supercontinent. But the thing which to me was mindblowing about this is that this Pangaea Anthology was coincidentally proceeding on Kickstarter at precisely the same time as the (ultimately equally successful) Kickstarter was plugging away for Pandeism: An Anthology.

The conceptual connection between Pandeism and Pangaea goes beyond this moment of coincidence, and beyond the fact that their names raise similar visions -- "Pan" in both meaning all; "Deism" and "Gaia" both channeling religion-laden words from ancient languages. When mankind first discovered the contours of the multiple continents, the assumption instantly arose that these were indelible features, markers of the state of the Earth from the time of its creation onward. Mountains were fixed and unchangeable. Seas might ebb and flow, but only within unchanging boundaries with reliable shorelines. But then, as the work of geologists uncovered scientific proof that the continents had drifted from different positions over millions of years, had stretched and bent and changed in shape, have been governed by tectonic features and eons of weathering, the first instinct of the religionists was to reject this geomorphic evolution. It was inconceivable to them that these land masses could possibly have come from a single great landmass with an holistic shape different from any of the modern ones, but encompassing all of them. This was Pangaea.

In much the same way, the concept of Pandeism challenges previous orthodoxies by presenting as a possibility a single underlying theological ideation whose ancient contours are not immediately apparent to those who examine the theological map of the world through the lens of later social conditioning. But, like the geomorphic principles hinting at different earthly constructions, these may be found by rational examination to be fully explanatory as to how the later, more familiar peaks and valleys of theistic doctrine arose. Both are relatively recent discoveries, in the scheme of there fields -- after thousands of years of theology and geology, Pandeism was named in 1787, and Pangaea in 1920. One might quibble that the theories of the ancients about the nature of the grand features of the physical world wasn't really 'geology' -- but then, might one not suppose the same thing about ancient theology? The going belief a thousand or twelve hundred years ago was that the Earth had edges off which one might fall. Might one fall off the edges of equally old theological models?

And might one, in discovering the spherical nature of the Earth and the mobility of its once-joined continents, envision a notion of the divine of mathematical elegance equal to a sphere, and historical power equal to continents gliding over the face of the world?

Alan Watts Sums Up Pandeism In One Minute

"Every living being is a manifestation of everything that there is.... Crazy!! But the thing is that what we do is to try and prevent people from realizing that this is so.... by pointing out to them in the most subtle ways their limitations. And seeing if we can phase them. Make them uncertain, make them unsteady. It's like all sorts of games you can play where if a person wavers, he loses. But people play that with each other all the time. And the reason they do it is not the reason they think. It is that if everybody were perfectly clear that they were a manifestation of the divine being, nothing very much would happen!!" ~~Alan Watts

Technovedanta 2.0 -- a review

Technically, this book is titled “Transcendental Metaphysics of Pancomputational Panpsychism,” but the top lip of the cover reads “Technovedanta 2.0.”

Firstly, I note that, after my own heart, author Antonin Tuynman suffuses his work with poetry -- I have especially fallen in love with one titled “The Quagmire of ontological disambiguation” -- this is a poem I intend to pursue, even!!

But moving to the heart of the work, the fundamental thought underlying this rich volume is the possible nature of our Universe as a sort of self-aware cosmic computer -- in a way that scientifically (if not strictly technologically) completes the circle of Vedic thought. The savvy reader might well wonder, by the way, why I am beginning with what is actually the second book in a series. This is Kismet. Pure chance. An arbitrary function of this title happening to appeal to me (as a pandeistic thinker) before I saw any others.

The author speaks with an expansive and lively vocabulary and conceptual fluency of thoughts that reflect what has rattled around in my own mind for some while -- of philosophizing, of mastery arising from the will to become a master, of the remarkable premise that Consciousness itself arises from a self-sustaining feedback loop. He gamely coins the term Infinityism to frame the conceptual boundaries of the inconceivable, preferring to refer to God as “transfinite,” a term which he notes was yet undefined when the religions were casting their conceptions of the Divine. He identifies the many (and growing) routes by which we are ever-increasingly bound by expressions of a collective subconscious, which is itself but one aspect of an all-encompassing underlying consciousness. To those familiar with the post-Enlightenment idea of Pandeism, I need not spell out the significance of this line of thought to that theory.

Tuynman draws from a diverse array of philosophical forbears, from Hegel to Alfred North Whitehead to Buckminster Fuller to Terrance McKenna -- not all of whom are recognized as philosophers (he titles Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, for example, as "contemporary technoprophets"), but all of whom can be recognized as such when their observations are set in Tuynman's grand context. His analysis of the autopoietic is auto-poetic (just as his poetry is profoundly analytic). It feels as if he is consistently pulling the covers of reality back to reveal intuitively realized mechanisms of our Universe from the most modern concepts of science, and then tying these back, again and again, to some of the most ancient philosophical ideas. He does not blur the lines between these frames of thought; he demonstrates that the lines are an illusion, a construct dissolved simply by turning to observe from a different angle.

Like the courses of an excellent meal, getting deeper and deeper into this book makes you feel fuller and fuller of useful information, and yet it is tasty enough that though you finish feeling satisfied, yet knowing you could have another plate of the same again tomorrow.

Pandeism: An Anthology, page 63....

Pandeism: An Anthology, page 63, from "The Idealist Interpretation of Pandeism" by rising star of philosophy Bernardo Kastrup.

A Pandeist responds to PB

PB writes:

I agree with pandeistic thought when it posits that both an infinite or all-encompassing Being and a plurality of beings cannot exist simultaneously. There cannot be an all-encompassing Being + beings. The existence of beings obliterates the all-encompassing nature of a hypothetical original Being. Thus, there is either an all-encompassing Being or beings, but not both simultaneously, as each negates the possibility of the existence of the other. We know that beings exist but do not whether an original singular all-encompassing being ever existed. If it did, it transformed from a singular being (the One) into the plurality of beings (the Many). This mechanics of this transformation are inherently problematic because an all-encompassing being would be incapable of consciousness, and therefore experience. An all-encompassing being would be categorically unconscious. Therefore, the question remains as to the cause of the transition from singular to multitudinous being. It could not be any intention or conscious motivation, as an all-encompassing being is devoid of consciousness.

An infinite, all-encompassing, or singularly existing conscious being is a self-negating contradiction. If a being is all-that-exists, it will experience absolutely nothing. Experience is predicated upon at least an operative distinction between an experient and some content of experience, i.e, knower and known. Without perception there is no experience. Perception cannot arise without some form of distinction: a point-of-perspective, for lack of a better phrase. If consciousness is continuous and distributed evenly throughout all being, the net result is, paradoxically, the loss of consciousness. The distinction required for the arising of consciousness, and any distinction at all, would be absent in an all-encompassing being. Consciousness must somehow be separate in order for experience to exist. 

In short, perspectival limitation is required for the existence of consciousness and experience (incidentally, consciousness and experience are always coexisting, if not synonymous). Perspectival limitation also explains the existence of suffering and what we have historically termed "evil". These, contrary to the speculations of pandeism, are not purposed as part of God's experience of not-God. Rather, "evil"/suffering are the inevitable and ineliminable consequence of the limitation required for the existence of consciousness. Suffering is, quite simply, a byproduct of being conscious. There is no conscious experience without suffering or its immediate possibility. As such, there is no state or form of existence free of pain and suffering. Existence is not progressing towards any manner of "heaven". The real distinction is not between a painful existence and a heavenly one, but between being (with its concomitant misery) or nothingness. There is no other alternative. 

Explained as a sequence: 

• The phenomena of experience is dependent upon the phenomena of consciousness.

• Consciousness arises through localization, or perspective.

• Perspective necessitates differentiation (i.e., individuation). 

• Individuation equates to limitation. 

• Limitation necessarily entails vulnerability.

• Vulnerability invariably leads to suffering and what humanity has identified as "evil"(i.e., outcomes that are neither advantageous nor experientially pleasant to a subjective sentient being).

These observations have led to some interesting realizations: (1) the ultimate and original nature of Being does not include consciousness but the nothingness of unconsciousness, (2) the arising of consciousness is necessitated by perspectival distinction (limitation), and (3) that what we designate with the term "evil" and the resultant experiential suffering is, in fact, eternal. Suffering is an ineliminable by-product of experiential being.  To experientially exist is to suffer, in some form and degree or another.

----

I am delighted to receive such a thorough comment to address.

Firstly, let us discuss the experiential nature of existing as an all-encompassing being in a pre-Universal state. Naturally, such a being does not experience actual distinctions, as none have yet come into being for it to distinguish. But this does not mean that it would be impossible for such a being to hypothesize potential distinctions. At the least, if it is aware that it exists at all, it might surmise that an alternative position -- non-existence -- is possible as well. If it is aware of its all-encompassing nature, it might similarly be aware that a less-than all-encompassing nature is likewise an alternate possibility. Both of these positions presuppose awareness, which is itself a precondition to any action which is not purely instinctual (and it is hard to conceive of purely instinctual action leading to so productive thing as our life-bearing Universe.

But, of especial interest, in this context, Pandeism has never been a philosophy which requires absolutes and infinitudes. In the sense raised by noted process philosopher Charles Hartshorne, one may envision the Creator being relatively all-encompassing -- being all-encompassing as to all that actually is, even if not all that can conceptually be, and even if all that is is itself imperfect. Such a being would be inconceivably great, but not infinitely or absolutely so. It would be, perhaps, closer to perfection than anything else we may be able to model or conceive, but would not be an example of perfection itself. (And, indeed, there may be no such thing as "perfection" to be achieved.)

And indeed, the existence of our Universe, if created, is an indisputable indication that our Creator was motivated to effect a change in its situation -- and not just motivated to contemplate a change or plan a change and consider whether to implement it, but as a putatively all-encompassing being absolutely and irresistibly motivated to change. I have written in the past that the compulsion for the Creator to become the Creation and so to obtain existential experience and experiential existence must be a powerful one, perhaps irresistible, like a hunger so intense that it compels the body to digest itself to feed that hunger. And that would indeed be characterizable as a state of suffering.

Now whether we class this suffering as an "evil" seems to be a matter of interpretation.

DeismTV#14 - One Deist's Concept of God

I find this vid to be brilliant and wholly agreeable, except for the point that Pandeism does not require that God blew itself up -- there is one school of thought in Pandeism which proposes such, but Pandeism encompasses all theological models wherein God becomes our Universe, in such a way that it is not able to miraculously intervene in the goings-on of our Universe.

Pandeism in Asian Philosophy

Some weeks ago I posted the current state of Wikipedia's Pandeism page. Since then, a bunch of newly added material has popped up, focusing on Pandeism in Asian philsophy, especially as to India, China, and Japan. And here is Wiki's continuing story:

As has been noted, Max Bernhard Weinstein asserted the presence of of pandeism in China,^[14] including in Lao-Tze's Taoism,^[15] and in India.^[16] Weinstein likewise found the views of 17th century Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher Yamazaki Ansai, who espoused a cosmology of universal mutual interconnectedness, to be especially consonant with pandeism as well.^[25] Other philosophers have also pointed to pandeism as having a presence in those cultures. In 1833, religionist Godfrey Higgins theorized in his Anacalypsis that "Pandeism was a doctrine, which had been received both by Buddhists and Brahmins."^[42] In 1896, historian Gustavo Uzielli described the world's population as influenced "by a superhuman idealism in Christianity, by an anti-human nihilism in Buddhism, and by an incipient but growing pandeism in Indian Brahmanism."^[43] But the following year, the Reverend Henry Grattan Guinness wrote critically that in India, "God is everything, and everything is God, and, therefore, everything may be adored. ... Her pan-deism is a pandemonium."^[44] Likewise, twenty years earlier, in 1877, Peruvian scholar and historian Carlos Wiesse Portocarrero had written in an essay titled Philosophical Systems of India that in that country, "Metaphysics is pandeistic and degenerates into idealism."^[45]

Pandeism (in Chinese, 泛自然神论)^[46] was described by Wen Chi, in a Peking University lecture, as embodying "a major feature of Chinese philosophical thought," in that "there is a harmony between man and the divine, and they are equal."^[47] Zhang Dao Kui (张道葵) of the China Three Gorges University proposed that the art of China's Three Gorges area is influenced by "a representation of the romantic essence that is created when integrating rugged simplicity with the natural beauty spoken about by pandeism."^[48] Literary critic Wang Junkang (王俊康) has written that, in Chinese folk religion as conveyed in the early novels of noted folk writer Ye Mei (叶梅),^[49] "the romantic spirit of Pandeism can be seen everywhere."^[50] Wang Junkang additionally writes of Ye Mei's descriptions of "the worship of reproduction under Pandeism, as demonstrated in romantic songs sung by village people to show the strong impulse of vitality and humanity and the beauty of wildness."^[51]

Pandeism and the Arts

Artistic expression most certainly seems to be essential to the human condition -- be it in images, objects, sounds or words, every culture of capital-'M'-Man celebrates some enterprise wherein creation is engaged in for the sake of the creative act itself. And it is natural that a major focus of artistic expression involves veneration of religious beliefs, with the earliest known cave paintingsexpressing the essentially religious sympathetic magic inherent in the idea that the drawing of the target of the hunt would empower the hunter to capture it. Much of more recent artwork reflects more recent religions, for men are usually conditioned from their earliest ages to feel impassioned and unquestioning devotion to the religion of their parents, or at least for any religion into which they convert. This, despite the fact that past theocrats less approving of creativity may have ensconced into the doctrines of a given religion limitations or prohibitions on the permissible breadth of articles creativity -- a phenomenon not uncommon amongst theistic faiths which might claim scriptural language banning certain sorts of depictions or descriptions of things.

There is a good reason for the occasional theocratic condemnation of the free mind of the artist. Given enough time artistic expression inevitably tends towards liberating minds, moving that away from the oppression of 'organized' religious belief, for it allows us to envision things both as they are claimed (though not seen) to be, and as they have never been claimed to be-- not even in theological circles. So it ought not be any wonder that even in societies where pandeistic thought has never been imagined, Pandeism (despite its seeming relegation to the ethereal realm of philosophical discourse) has influenced a number of artists in their expression. And indeed, this is appropriate, for a simple painting or poem can unleash the floodgates of the imagination into an entirely new world-- not simply for the author of that artwork, but for all who see it and are inspired by it. And if, as Pandeism proposes, our world exists to provide experiences to a Creator which has become it, then it follows that these 'other worlds' created through art are of equally expansive value to our Creator. And so it ought to be unsurprising that some creative minds -- painters, poets, sculptors, music makers -- have returned the favor, indeed taking their inspiration from Pandeism.

Among the poets, probably the most famous to have a determinedly pandeistic bent was Alfred Tennyson, who explicitly expressed this view in his final days. But it was William Wordsworth who wrote in his Intimations of Immortality:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

A century later, Jack Kerouac would write in his novel, Desolation Angels

And you have been forever,
and will be forever,
and all the worrisome smashings of your foot
on innocent cupboard doors
it was only the Void
pretending to be a man
pretending not to know the Void.

Another self-described Pandeist was Brazilian poet Carlos Nejar, whose beliefs informed and inspired his poetical works. Nejar was undoubtedly influenced by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who wrote under the pen-name Alberto Caeiros, and of whom it was written:

Caeiro unterläuft die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Schein und dem, was etwa "Denkerge-danken" hinter ihm ausmachen wollen. Die Dinge, wie er sie sieht, sind als was sie scheinen. Sein Pan-Deismus basiert auf einer Ding-Metaphysik, die in der modernen Dichtung des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts noch Schule machen sollte.
(Caeiros interposes the distinction between the light and what "philosopher thoughts" want to constitute behind him. The things, as he sees them, are as they seem. His Pandeism is based on a metaphysical thing, which should still become a school of thought under the modern seal of the twentieth century.)

-- Von Martin Lüdke, "Ein moderner Hüter der Dinge; Die Entdeckung des großen Portugiesen geht weiter: Fernando Pessoa hat in der Poesie Alberto Caeiros seinen Meister gesehen", ("A modern guardian of things; The discovery of the great Portuguese continues: Fernando Pessoa saw its master in the poetry of Alberto Caeiros"), Frankfurter Rundschau, August 18 2004.

The playwright José Antonio Rial had an exchange in Bolívar; Arcadio, wherein he wrote:

:WAGNER (irónico): Pandeísmo. En total, Dios.
:FAUSTO (suspicaz): Llámale Dios.
:WAGNER: Se ha llamado Dios a muchas cosas distintas.
:FAUSTO (señalándolo, como haciéndole ver que tiene razón): Se ha llamado Dios al rayo oa un cocodrilo.

:WAGNER (ironically): Pandeism. In all, God.
:FAUSTO (suspicious): Call it God.
:WAGNER: God has been called many different things.
:FAUSTO (pointing, making him see that he is right) It has been called God, the lightning or a crocodile.

And insofar as musicians can truly be called melodic poets, no less of a luminary than John Lennon declared:

"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong."

and additionally,

"We're all God. I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine - and potentially evil We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it."

An excerpt from a discussion of a painting by Spanish artist Orlando Cordero offers a conceptual distinction between Pantheism and Pandeism ("pandeísta" and "pandeísmo" in the Spanish version, were translated by the same author into "pandeist" and "pandeism", respectively). The comparison suggests that pandeism is a system with a cold, impersonal God, while pantheism presents a warm and experiential God:

His vision is pandeist, and it had to be pantheist. In order to get a pantheist painting, it is necessary to have Christ as pennant, footpath, and lighthouse. Pandeism is impersonal like in the present canvas, in which man, nature and word integrate themselves; whereas pantheism is a personal Christ-like experience of every day. Here there is signal-like materiality for the making of other paintings.

Camille Delarosa’s 19th Solo Exhibit at The Big Room of Art Informal Gallery, a show titled "Dominion," explores Biblical themes, and notes of one piece that "The polarity between theism and atheism is clarified and resolved in "Pandeism." (Though, I confess, the painting titled "Pandeism" is not what would've come to my mind.) Naetheless, it is gratifying to observe the extent to which, in a world where theistic notions have for so long so stronghandedly governing what might be called 'religious' art, Pandeism has been and is is being expressed artistically, as is appropriate. TVTropes has a somewhat broader listing of works of film and literature to which some inspiration of Pandeism is accredited. And lastly, I confess that I have sought, however meanly, to contribute to this, my Pandeism-inspired artwork being viewable at  DeviantArt, my Pandeism-inspired musical efforts likewise being hearable at SoundCloud (a great resource to pick up all sorts of freely distributed beat-experiments as well).

The destiny of the unevangelized, and the incompetently evangelized

One of the strongest objections to any faith system claiming Universality is the destiny of the unevangelized -- simply put, it is troubling to claim that only those who hold a certain belief will reap an afterlife reward -- and those who do not hold such belief will instead be punished with an afterlife of suffering -- where it is demonstrable that some number of people will have lived and died without ever even hearing of the belief. This, indeed, presents one of the major divides within individual religions, with believers fervently arguing for one position on the issue or the other, to the point of schism and bloody internecine religious war.

Perhaps more troubling still, there is the gray area of those who heard some snippet or other of this claimed 'one true' belief, but were presented it incompletely or incompetently, so that they were in no position to form a reasoned judgment about the relative logic of it while they lived. Indeed, where decisions are made based on imperfect information, it must become a very delicate art indeed to assert that one person over another has information perfect enough to make a decision upon.

The idea of admission to the positive afterlife based on "works" at least disposes of the problem of the unevangelised (and the less-discussed corollary of the incompetently evangelised), as one of the major failings of theistic faiths. But, such an idea disposes as well of the notion that one must have the correct belief, and so undermines the notion of one religion especially being the truth. Perhaps more devastatingly, as religious edifices go, it undermines the argument for funding and empowering a lavishly appointed priest-class.

And as to those who hear some piece of evangelism, it is quite possible that more people come to altogether reject the idea of a given "God," or of any especial iteration thereof, due to the offensive showing made by various theistic adherents, than due to any inherent objection which might be made against the idea itself. And just as clearly, there are at least some theists much prefer to experience the smug self-satisfaction of thinking they've won an argument via some fine point of theological wordplay than to experience something like actually helping the needy. So, if there was a God who punished anyone, it ought to first be thought to punish its own errant followers for setting such a shameful and repulsive example that their brutish conceit drives the multitude away from their professed deity.

The problem of the offensive missionary:

Picture this: a young missionary of one of the claimedly universal faiths (and I cite no especial example of a faith -- though I certainly could cite many out of personal experience) steps off the boat and onto a remote South Pacific island, one never before subject to any sort of evangelism. Previous visitors to the isle had only stopped to trade and survey, never to spread any faith, and so the natives are completely unaware that any religion exists other than their own local traditions, most likely some mix of reverence for nature and veneration of ancestors, passed down to them for thousands of generations. The people of this island speak no English; the missionary counts on miraculous intervention to supplement his communications, and so has learned but a few sentences in a language spoken by the next nearest islanders, presumed to have a common root. This missionary immediately takes to berating the natives for their failure to conform to his own moral preferences. Perhaps, based on his own errant religious instruction, he insists that the the natives will be condemned to eternal punishment because they wear nothing above the waist, or because they engage in work on a certain day of the week, or fail to engage in prayer on another. Perhaps this missionary declares that all of the marriages on the island are illegitimate because none, before his arrival, have conformed with his understanding of the appropriate ceremony. But shortly, he has given an absurd impression to the natives, who politely shoo him off their island at the next opportunity, resolved that the belief system peddled by this unprepared interloper is nonsensical, and thusly declining further missionary visitations.

Are these natives now to be deemed well-enough versed in the religion so poorly evangelized to them to be liable for eternal damnation, should they reject it? Are their children so liable, if the previous generation opts not to bother sharing the story? And, would it be at all fair for a deity to punish the nonbelieving native, and yet not punish the missionary whose conduct caused this affirmative state of nonbelief? And this problem is not limited to the isolated islands, for even in the hearts of the populations of crowded continents, there are countless preachers of countless faiths and sects and interpretations establishing a cacophony of assurances and accusations, threats and finger-pointing, enough to propel any sane man to tune out the claims of religion altogether (even those claims which might, on quiet reflection, be reasonable and defensible).

The problem of the isolated planet:

And beyond this, it stands to reason that if it's expectable for a deity to create some people (isolated tribes, etc) who never hear the true word, then it could create an entire planet of people who never hear the true word. And yet, it has been our experience in finally encountering those long-isolated tribes that they tended to have independently developed a theological model all their own, perhaps an animistic or polytheistic one, perhaps one with pantheistic or pandeistic or purely deistic overtones. And, naturally, just maybe, though extremely rarely in practice, it may be one with all the trimmings of monotheism. And so there might be another planet out there where some intelligent life has come to the fore and set forth a civilization with a level of knowledge and technology and sophistication of social institutions to rival our own. And, indeed, such a civilization, though not privy to any of the thousands of 'true' faiths professed on Earth could easily have as many 'true' faiths, as many doctrines and debates and deicides. And adherents to any faith on this alien world might be every bit as assured, every bit as fervent in their beliefs, as any Earthbound believer.

But here's the catch.

If it is possible that a 'true' deity may have revealed itself once, to one group, without bothering to provide for isolated groups to learn the truth encapsulated in its revelation, then perhaps we are as a planet such an isolated group. For one cannot reasonably postulate a deity capable of allowing an entire planet to wallow in ignorance and false faith without confessing that ours might be that planet. And in the same stroke, one ought to admit that, if there is a "one true faith" that all people are intended to discover, then all theistic faiths claiming universality are proved false by those who have lived and died without hearing of such faiths. Instead, what can be called true must be what can be discerned from a logical examination of our world, even by those who have never heard a word of any scripture.

Pandeism and Atheism

The relationship between Pandeism and Atheism as deeply-held philosophies is, by turns, complementary and contentious, curious and quizzical. There are different models of Atheism, but the ideology generally either actively proposes the absence of a 'God' or at least passively denies that there is any reason to believe such a thing exists. Much of Atheist discourse is directed towards theistic arguments and the fairly universal inconsistencies and absurdities of scriptural documents. This attention is symptomatic of how many indefensible theological models do exist -- as Bernard Haisch wrote in The God Theory, "I freely grant that even reductionism is preferable to a belief that slaughter and destruction in the name of a vengeful God will result in immediate passage to heaven."1

And so it can be no wonder that the Atheist, confronted repeatedly with deeply and visibly flawed theological models, with models of arbitrarily directed hatefulness and irrationality, long cloaked in a deadly aversion to being questioned, becomes convinced no such model can be true. And this inculcation becomes set, most often, before ever learning in any depth of deistic models generally, or of Pandeism especially. And so, by the time the atheist is exposed to the deistic or the pandeistic model, his experiences with less rational models have got him fixed against any proposition that would have ours be an intentionally and intelligently created Universe -- even if these models are even more effective at dismissing notions of a vain, violent, or 'jealous' Universe-creating entity, even if these models rationally demonstrate that the most logical Creator would carry none of the arbitrary and dangerous negative projections of human bias so deeply set in theistic mythologies. The atheistic reactionary revulsion to metaphysical accounts too readily may metastasize into an absolute and unwaivering reductionist dogmatism against any explanation existing at all.

And therein lies the master problem. Atheism is essentially a rejection of a class of explanations, but it is not itself an explanation of anything. Consider: if you were to walk into a friend's office, and you saw a large collection of stamps on his desk, you would intuitively know that the most likely explanation of how that pile got there would be that somebody placed them there; that's the how, that is perhaps not so controversial. But suppose you asked why they were there -- if your friend responded "well, I am not a stamp collector," that would would be a refutation of one possible explanation, but it wouldn't then become an explanation in and of itself. And if the response to every such why-is-it-so type of proposition was to deny the truth of it, or dismiss it as unproveable, then at the end of the day we are left with an apparent prohibition on having a why to account for what is observed.

This problem plays out most pointedly in the examination of that most singular of events, the beginning of our Universe. It is important to remember that this was not a theoretical or hypothetical event, but is instead an historical event, an historical fact. Our Universe gives every appearance of existing; we are in it, as observers, to attest to this fact. Our Universe has several measurable indicators of expansion from an initial point, on this point atheists agree with many theists. And so, at some past point, our Universe began. The how of this is the province of theoretical physicists, who now best guess that our Universe's existence is an expression of quantum mechanics. But this how is not a why. And it is possible, undoubtedly, that there is no why, that it simply is. But the position of atheism, or at least of the most committed variations of that philosophy is that you can not ask why, perhaps that you must not ask why. And the rationale for this prohibition is generally given in the untestability or unprovability of any why-is-it-so proposition relating to so mysteriously distant of an historical event. At its worst, this tendency descends to calling such explanations 'pseudoscience' or 'woo-woo,' seeking to degrade them to the point where the critic is insulated from any need to contemplate the implications of there being any explanation at all.

As might be predicted from the initial problem, an examination of the literature of Atheism reveals a strong tendency towards focused arguments against theistic beliefs. Deism, Pantheism, and their family of philosophies are generally not addressed, or only glancingly so. The inconsistencies in theistic texts are attacked. The murderous histories of theistic adherents are laid out (and often met with accusations of the same coming from atheist-governed regimes). The theistic deity is called out for allowing all manner of evil and suffering to flourish, up to and including the death by starvation of small children, despite ostensibly having the power to prevent it. It is unsurprising, then, that confronted with a theological model which lacks such flesh hooks into which Atheism can sink its teeth, Atheists tend nonetheless to act as if these nontheistic ideas can be attacked with theistic contentions. Indeed, it sometimes takes quite a bit of patient explaining to get an Atheist to stop using antiscriptural and antitheistic arguments against theological theories which have no scripture, which do not posit infinite or active deities, and which are indeed divorced from the elements of theism.

Pandeism, on the other hand, has no outward quarrel with Atheism. Being at core an exercise in probabilistic logic, Pandeism is fundamentally agnostic, acknowledging at the outset that it is entirely possible that the atheistic view is correct, insofar as there may be no why in which case all why explanations are indeed properly rejected. It can never truly be known, Pandeism concedes, whether ours is a created Universe; it can only be determined what are the absolutely necessary characteristics of a Universe-Creator, and what are the implications of an entity having those characteristics. And so, Pandeists tend not to engage Atheists with the proposition that Atheists are wrong to hold that position, but simply to defend the proposition (when set upon by the Atheist critique) that neither is Pandeism an irrational position to hold. And so I would simply tell Atheists: we'll continue standing up for the right of science to ask 'how?' and we hope you'll not stand against the right of Pandeists to ask 'why?'

----

1. Haisch, Bernard, PhD, The God Theory (2006), page 25.

Pandeism and the world of Sherlock Holmes

What can the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes possibly have to do with the theological theory of Pandeism? Well, really the question is, is this world consistent with Pandeism, and the answer: why wouldn't it be?


Unlike the magical world of Harry Potter and the alien-filled science fiction realms of Star Wars and of Star Trek, the world of Sherlock Holmes is utterly mundane. Like the earlier Scooby-Doomysteries, every mystery has as its resolution purely human activity -- and, indeed, even those cases brought to Holmes under the pretense of supernatural activity -- ghosts, curses, demonic possession -- are inevitably shown up as man-made manipulations of mind and matter. And so, to speak of the theological model underlying that world is to speak of a world with no especial metaphysical activity ongoing. We might just as well be speaking, then, of any such mundane world, of that of adventurers like Tom Sawyer, actioners like James Bond or Jason Bourne, the mundane mysteries of CSI and Law & Order, or any other sort of media in which things simply happen, without second thought, in accordance with the laws of physics and without any appearance of divine intervention or other metaphysical causation (or, at least, without any such appearance not ultimately debunked as being of human manufacture).


This is not to suggest that these sorts of media are absent of displays of religiosity, for they depict the real and present world, and naturally people in this world have religious beliefs, all sorts of them.

Religion, as she is depicted in the stories of Sherlock Holmes:


In the course of the Sherlock Holmes stories, there are references to Jews and Gypsies, Muslims, Hindus, and various denominations of Christians. Perhaps the most famous treatment of religion in the Sherlock Holmes canon is to be found in A Study in Scarlet, one of only four full-length Sherlock Holmes novels (the remainder of the literary contributions being short stories). It is eventually uncovered in the story that the mysterious deaths being investigated are of Mormons against whom the killer was taking revenge, for years before their community had kidnapped his love and murdered her father, forcing her into a marriage which resulted in her own death a short time later (the story attributes the girl's death to a broken heart, but implies that she was ill-treated by her forced husband, who ultimately seemed more interested in inheriting what had previously been her father's land). The treatment of Mormonism generally is of a dangerous cult which exercises rigid control over its members and condones lawlessness against outsiders, who are distrusted. Author Arthur Conan Doyle is claimed to have later privately apologized for this depiction, though this report is itself somewhat dubious.


But the general treatment afforded to religion by Sherlock Holmes and his compatriots is apathy. In one story, Holmes dismissed knowledge of astronomy as useless to his work; doubtless he would have so opined on theological questions. Holmes occasionally uses idioms incorporating religious terminology (as in, "my God" and "for God's sake," or suggesting that a doomed man is bound "to meet his maker"), and one story mentions Holmes as being on his way to a chapel (for reasons not specified). But on no occasion is Holmes shown to attend a purely religious service, utter a prayer, or explicitly voice a belief in any higher power. Indeed, in one of the earliest stories -- The Sign of the Four -- Holmes commends to compatriot John Watson a book titled The Martyrdom of Man by one Winwood Reade, which as it happens incorporates a secularist and materialist antireligious examination of world history, especially in depicting Jesus as delusional. And yet, Holmes calls this work "one of the most remarkable ever penned," which would in that day be tantamount to endorsing atheism, as much as if somebody modernly were to declare Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion to be amongst the finest books ever written.

Sherlock Holmes contemplates the meaning of life:


But even Holmes waxes morosely philosophical from time to time, as depicted in the 1892 story, The Cardboard Box:

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

Similarly in The Retired Colourman, Holmes decries, "But is not all life pathetic and futile? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow -- misery." And in The Veiled Lodger Holmes declares, "The ways of Fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter then the world is a cruel jest." Such contemplations suggests at the same time a wish to find a larger purpose to our Universe, even while rejecting all the explanations which have been considered up to that time. Holmes is equally dismissive of supernatural explanations for mundane crimes, refusing to contemplate for example the proposition that The Hound of the Baskervilles is anything but a flesh-and-blood beast, rejecting the possibility of unearthly agency again in The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, and commenting in the late-written story, The Sussex Vampire, "But are we to give serious attention to such things? This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. This world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."


The television and film adaptations of Holmes' stories have tended to remain faithful to general irreligiosity of the character, or more likely to have ignored theological questions altogether. In the first Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes film, Holmes dismisses, and later disproves, an apparent miraculous resurrection from death; in Young Sherlock Holmes mystical explanations are similarly disproved as Holmes discovers hallucinogenic drugs to be responsible for seemingly supernatural experiences (and the villains are attempting to perform an ancient Egyptian ritual to boot); in the modernly-set BBC reimagining Sherlock, the character is if anything more scornful of religious beliefs and explanations.


Could the world of Sherlock Holmes occupy a Pandeistic Universe?


But all of this relates to what Holmes believes, perhaps to what Arthur Conan Doyle believes -- which is, in the larger scheme of no matter. Were Holmes depicted as a devout Christian or a devout Muslim, or a Jew or a Sikh, such depiction would not work to make real the religion believed. There may be a billion devout Christians in the world (Christians will claim there are more, but that requires some sleight of hand with who they would call 'devout') but that has never operated to convince Hindus, Jews, or Mormons of the truth of Christianity; and the same can be claimed of the comparable number of Muslims, or of Hindus, or most any denomination. That it is believed simply proves that it is believed, not even that it is rationally believable, much less true. So, whatever the religion of Sherlock Holmes or James Bond or any other figure existing in a nonsupernatural world, from Robin Hood to Rocky Balboa, the question remains whether the world which they inhabit isconsistent with a pandeistic Universe.


And the answer in all of these cases is indeed that it is. For, although Pandeism fully accounts for miracles and other apparently metaphysical or supernatural events, and so would account for the magic of Harry Potter's world, the Jedi powers exhibited in the world of Star Wars, and the superpowered and telepathic aliens often encountered in Star Trek, none of these sorts of things arerequired in Pandeism. They are simply accounted for, if they exist.


It is entirely possible to conceive of a world -- indeed, of this world -- where no miracles, no telepaths, no supernatural events of any sort exist, where all reports ever made of such are theconsequence of coincidence, mistake, hallucination, imagination, or deception, and yet where the fundamental explanation for the existence of our Universe, at all, is pandeistic Creation. Even if all other religions are disqualified in such a world, where all of their reported miracles and wonders and fancies are by default simply false, Pandeism may yet be true.


In the final analysis (and in the world of Sherlock Holmes, there always is a final analysis), it is even somewhat surprising that Sherlock Holmes, to whatever degree he speculates on religious questions, has not come to contemplate at least Deism (which was well known in his day), if not the more obscure Pandeism, or some comparable variation of Pantheism. But, then, if the orbits of the planets are of no matter to Holmes, perhaps these even greater orbits would be of even less interest.

Work being done in Pandeism

I realize I ought to be blogging more on Pandeism, as there is so, so much to discuss about it!!  I tend to slowly wend my way through big pieces, but I'm going to try to keep up more here on a day-to-day basis.

Today I'd like to shout out to other Pandeists, and others who, whether themselves Pandeist or no, have made interesting strides in the study of Pandeism.  First up, Nick Tafacory has consistently posted interesting ideas on Pandeism on his own (better kept-up) blog, Conflicting Thoughts.  These include, to be specific:

• Beginning Work(s) on Pandeism
• Pandeism Revisited
• Pandeism Once More
• More Notes on Pandeism

The last one of those happens to contain links to scans of seven pages of handwritten notes -- I've been promising to provide my thoughts on those, especially with respect to many questions raised which are deserving of answers, and will have them!!

I have, as well, been privileged to meet Personified Music, a new YouTube friend (naturally through the Official YouTube PanDeism Channel.   Personified Music wrote to me (and has kindly permitted me to reproduce) the following:

Hi fellow pandeist!
Hello!
I've been seeking someone who had the same beliefs as me! At last someone who understands the true nature! Since you seem to have a great grasp of logic, I'd like for you to examine my argument in favor of this belief.
1) The universe has a creator
- Premise 1: The universe is finite
Considering that the Big Bang is considered to be the beginning of time, this universe is finite
- Premise 2: All finite things have a beginning and an end
Basic definitions:
Infinite means without beginning or end. Finite is the opposite of that.
- Premise 3: Finite things must be created
To begin, one must have a cause, and that cause must be initiated by something.
- CONCLUSION 1: The universe was created
2) To create the universe, one must be omnipotent.
- Premise 1: All things that exist must be perceivable in space
If not perceived, one cannot be comprised of matter. If not comprised of matter, one cannot exist.
- Premise 2: Through premise 1, we discover that the universe and all its contents is everything, as it is the only thing perceivable in space and time,
- Premise 3: To create everything, one most be able to do everything.
Explains itself
- CONCLUSION 2: That creator is omnipotent
3) To be omnipotent, one must be omnipresent.
- Premise A1: To be omnipotent, one must be able to execute every action
- Premise A2: Instantaneosity (to do something instantly) is an action
- Premise A3: To execute something instantaneously, one must be the action in itself, as being next to something, or even its immediate vicinity would require a given amount of time
- Premise B1: Matter occupies space
- Premise B2: To be omnipresent, one must occupy all space.
- CONCLUSION 3: To be omnipresent, one must be the matter
Summary:
- CONCLUSION 1: The universe was created
- CONCLUSION 2: That creator must be omnipotent
- CONCLUSION 3A: To be omnipotent, one must be omnipresent
- CONCLUSION 3B: To be omnipresent, one must be matter.
FINAL CONCLUSION: God is the universe

This is an interesting and fruitful series of propositions.  I would be cautious to discern relative omnipotence (the ability to do anything which can be done) from the absolute omnipotence proposed by some theists (the ability to do anything, including logically impossible things). But, indeed, the comment relating omnipotence and omnipresence brings to my mind the proposition of Duke University PhD Physicist Robert G. Brown in A Theorem Concerning God, and especially in the core of that work, The Pandeist Theorem -- recommended reading for all!!

Blessings!!

Gödel's incompleteness theorem and "God"

There is one proposition which no deity possessed of godlike powers would ever be able to know the truth of, and that is whether it itself is simply a construct within an even greater reality beyond its perception. This may sound odd and impossible, but let us think this through. First, imagine a point in space. Now imagine that a straight line begins at that point and extends infinitely onward in one direction from that point. Flat space, please, don't want that line curving around and becoming itself. Now imagine a second point right next to the first, with a parallel infinite line extending infinitely outward in one direction. So now you've got infinite nonintersecting lines. If either line could be aware of its own infinitude, it might imagine itself to be the only thing in existence capable of being infinite. Now, let us take the second infinite line and move its starting point backwards an inch relative to the other line. Now you have two infinite lines, but one is an inch longer than the other.

Now let's take that longer line and stretch it along a second dimension, making it a flat plane with a few inches of height (and still infinite length). We keep it parallel to our first line, so they still never intersect; the first line still has every reason to believe itself to be uniquely infinite, even though it is right next to a thing that is not only an inch longer, but has an entire additional dimension of substance. And now we will take the second object (which is now a plane) and curve it into a cylinder which completely surrounds the first line, but continues never touching it. And just for the sake of it, we'll take that end of the cylinder that goes past the first point and curve its edges toward one another, into a sort of hemispherical cap which closes off that end of the cylinder (still without touching the original infinite line). Indeed we could do all of these operations to the first line and make into an infinitely long tube with one end beginning with a hemisphere, and still have it completely contained within a slightly larger tube with which it never intersects.

Now you might at this point be thinking, 'yes but the gods envisioned by human faiths are not mathematical constructs, they are not tubes; so what's the point?' Well, you would be correct that man-described deities tend not to be mathematical constructs, but human ideas of the ultimate are necessarily constructs nonetheless, for they are invariably described in human languages, and with human words and concepts such as 'infinite' and 'absolute' (and really those are concepts which, if not outright mathematical, are subject to mathematical discussion). Lest we delve too close to describing perfectly spherical gods in a vacuum, let us get straight to the heart of the capacities philosophically ascribed to deity-models. Able to do anything; possessed of all knowledge. But wait, there's the catch. No matter how much knowledge a god possesses, it is impossible for it to know that it is not missing some knowledge of which it is unaware, such as the existence of a greater surrounding entity which contains it. It's like this....

Remember Neo, in The Matrix; once the nature of the Matrix was revealed to him, he found that while outside of it he was a normal human, but inside of it he had, essentially, superpowers. But how could Neo outside the Matrix know he was really outside the Matrix? After all, though things smelled and tasted and felt different, all of that could simply be another trick of the computer, sending signals which let Neo to think that he was experiencing those differences. Naturally, the lack of superpowers in the 'real' world (and existence of superpowers in the 'false' world) would be trivially easy to conjure up through the signals sent to Neo's brain (if he has a 'brain' at all, for Neo's entire existence could be as a subroutine within a larger program, one programmed to believe itself to be an independent organic entity). And no amount of contemplation would then allow him to peel back the falsity of the 'real' world outside the one he already knew to be false. But suppose instead of being programmed to believe himself to be a superpowered human, Neo was programmed to believe himself to be an omnipotent/omniscient deity? Anything which he wished to bring about would instantly present itself to him as having transpired; any knowledge he wished to have would instantly manifest itself in his mind. If he wished to set forth living planets orbiting burning stars to fill hundreds of trillions of galaxies, and know the every movement past and future of every atom in them, he could (if sustained within a powerful enough system) do so with a thought. But none of this would prove that it was Neo's inherent godliness causing such things to come about, for it could always be an even greater being, an imperceptibly nonintersecting surrounding cylinder of a being, providing all of these experiences.

Even if in some relative sense the Bible or the Qu'ran or the Baghavad Gita were true (such that there was a Creator entity which set forth all that we humans are able to perceive at least, and all the events recounted transpired as set forth there), even this Creator entity could never know that everything it was doing was not part of some infinitely greater Creator-entity's thought experiment. (Here is an inverse proof of this -- imagine a true all-powerful being not sustained within anything greater than itself; such a being could, by definition, create a slightly lesser being which believed itself to be the true 'only all-powerful being,' and which would by dint of the true all-powerful being's all-powerfulness, be absolutely unable to detect the greater being of which it was part).

And if no hypothetical Creator of our entire Universe could possibly actually know whether it was the ultimate being, then surely we spatially and temporally and intellectually limited humans can have no inkling as to what the truth is of such a thing. And here's the even greater rub; supposing that there was a god of this or that scriptural type, and that this god was unknowingly simply an entity sustained in existence within a greater being (and perhaps one of many so sustained), then the greater being within which it was sustained would itself have no way to be sure that it wasn't merely the thought experiment or subroutine or what have you of an even greater thing than itself, a cylinder within the cylinder, within perhaps inestimable layers like a neverending Russian doll. And that is why Godel's theorem makes it impossible for there to be an absolutely omniscient deity. (Which is by the way of no concern to Pandeism, which never proposes absolute omniscience anyway, but only ever proposes such relative omniscience as would be required to account for our finite Universe so far as we are able to perceive it.)

Pandeism fully accounts

What is it that we, as pandeists, mean exactly when we claim that 'Pandeism fully accounts'?

That Pandeism is meticulous as to the miraculous and provides profundity as to prophecy; that it is a revolution in revelation; and a vision as to oracles. To give the quick summation, the theological model of Pandeism combines the coherently reconcilable elements of Pantheism with Deism, attempting to answer open questions left by each with aspects of the other -- concluding that experience demonstrates elements of both are likely correct, that our Creator did set forth our Universe, but that it did not "leave it" but instead completely became the energy of which all things are made and the unconscious governing dynamics by which all things are able to operate.

This pandeistic model accounts for the state of our Universe with the fewest assumptions required of any theological model. Derivable from First Principles, the whole of the set of assumptions necessary for Pandeism are:

• that ours may be a Created Universe, and if this is so, then our Creator necessarily possesses these characteristics:
  



• 
  
  

  
  
  

  sufficient power to set forth the forces of which our Universe is
  composed

  
  
  

  sufficent intelligence to set forth the governing dynamics guiding those
  forces into the states which we observe

  
  
  

  rationality, for ours is a rational Universe, consistent in the application
  of those governing dynamics

  
  
  

  a rational motivation to create such a Universe as ours.

Pandeism fully accounts for every claimed miracle, revelation, scripture, prophecy, vision, dream, oracle, sign, egrigor, spiritual activity, spiritual emotion, etc, and it does so for all faiths. For if any of these occur at all, then they are simply explicable as manifestations of the power of our Creator unconsciously underlying our Universe, as unwittingly misread through the biased minds of human observers.

Imagine for a moment, if you were able to travel back in time to a much earlier point in human history, and were there able to show a select handful of pre-civilisation homosapiens perhaps a ten-minute vid of vital images which accurately laid out the history of our Universe and our planet only to that point. Understanding that you would not be able to communicate anything with them verbally for lack of a common language, how do you imagine they would interpret what they saw? The Big Bang, the massive cycles of starbirth and stardeath necessary to generate heavy elements which permit the existence of our world at all. The violent geological activities, periods of evolution, the strange eras of prehistoric beasts which necessarily preceded human existence, even the seemingly sudden leaps in human technology (from nothing to the lever, wheel, inclined plane, fire, axes, and such) -- if the primitives with whom you shared these images then felt the need to relay that vision to others, using what limited language and symbology as was then available to them, would they not couch it as a series of miracles, creditable to the intervention of inscrutable metaphysical forces such as a deity?

And yet, if our Creator because our Universe, if we are of our Creator in this fragmentary sense, wafting on the winds of its unconscious sustainment despite our illusion of concreteness, then all of our religious visions represent such manifestations, glimpses of the commonalities well known within the unconscious mind of the metaphysical progenitor of which we are so stunningly a part. Our world glitters about us with the promise of a similar oneness of being, a potential to be whatever world we wish it to be -- if we wish it.

Under the pandeistic model it need not be assumed that our Creator is a conscious and active deity who chooses to act or not act, and is opposed by some evil entity -- presumed to have been created by it as well, either errantly or as part of some complicated scheme for which additional levels of excuses and assumptions must be made. For our Creator need not continue to interfere in our Universe, judge or condemn, send seeming conflicting messages to prophets of various faiths, nor need it to create or permit any other spiritual forces to contend with man. Pandeism avoids the traditional response to the multiplicity of claimed miracles, revelations, prophecies, and so forth supporting irreconcilable differences of faith, which has been the invocation of the agency of evil spirits. Such assumption is itself deeply irrational, for it is simply impossible for there to be an evil spirit from whom 'miraculous' results emanate for the affirmance of other faiths. All laws of nature, and the laws of physics among them, these are necessarily the laws of our Creator, and all things are bound by them except (and only except) as allowed by the power of our Creator; put otherwise, even were we to impose upon our Creator the additionally assumed characteristics of consciousness and a need to intervene, our Creator would nonetheless be the force sustaining our Universe. It would be impossible for anybody, any entity, to violate the laws of physics except by using such Creator's own power to do so. And if there is proposed to be a conscious Creator, this simply means that nothing miraculous may occur except as done by that Creator.

In the pandeistic model, our Creator unconsciously underlies existence, and so what miracles occur (if anything is not susceptible to naturalistic explanation) do so because that power is manifested by the fragments of our Creator which constitute all of existence. And, as importantly, no good and wise Creator would grant free reign to an entity sufficiently powerful as to undermine the ability of other entities to make informed decisions, if reward or punishment hinged upon such decisions. If so powerful an entity were deemed to exist, it would immediately render fatally suspect any widely held belief, as any one of us could have lived our entire existence in an illusion generated by it to secure our falsity of beliefs. If an 'evil spirit' exists at all, and is so successful as to be responsible for all the religions with which one disagree (though others adhere tightly to them) then it is overwhelmingly likely it is equally responsible for that last faith with which one does agree. And, in fact, whatever the 'truth' is, would then most likely reside only in a minor and obscure and generally ignored or even reviled group, whose few members display impeccable morality.

Another benefit of the pandeistic model is that it equally accounts for all scientific discovery -- all that is discovered by science as to how our Universe operates simply is an uncovering of the governing dynamics set in motion by the Creator in the moment of creating/becoming of our Universe. If science reveals our Universe to be billions of years old, it is so, and is because the rational goal sought by our Creator was one which required our Universe gestating through billions of years of natural development to give birth to its desired set of information. If science reveals our descent from a Universal Common Ancestor, it is so, and is because our Creator set forth a Universe capable of giving rise to sufficiently complex life through a simple process of evolution by natural selection.

And, lastly, this model contains a remarkable powerful basis for morality, as it proposes that all things are part of our Creator, and that our Creator experiences through us the consequences of our actions. We ought therefore to be motivated to act in ways which avoid causing suffering and harm, because in so doing we would simply be inflicting these things on our own Creator -- and, in a way, upon ourselves. And indeed, such raises the Golden Rule from good advice to universal law, for that which we do unto others, we may thusly veritably do unto ourselves!!

And so, because the pandeistic model fully accounts for all of the proof generally presented in support of both faith and science, it is presumably true against any theological system which requires additional assumptions to account for the same proof -- and especially against any system which fails to fully account for contradictory beliefs and the manifestations of the miraculous claimed to support those beliefs, and for contradictory scientific discoveries.