A thought on Pandeism and the Jefferson Bible

Thomas Jefferson famously carved out the supernatural passages of the Bible to retain it as a book of superstition-free moral advice -- and one which happens to, to a great degree, simply repackage moral adages previously presented in a wide range of other systems, such as the Vedas of Hinduism, and the Teachings of the Buddha in the East, and the West's doctrines of Atenism, Code of Hammurabi, Epic of Gilgamesh, and Fables of Aesop. The moral authority of ALL scripture, Pandeism explains, derives from each touching on the mind of a single underlying Creator. Blessings!!

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.

Evolutionary biology as reflected by analogy in Hindu scripture

Efforts to narrow the rift apparent between, on the one hand, science, and on the other, religion (or, most especially, revelation-based theistic faiths) often run through the territory of creative interpretation of one discipline or the other. There are, naturally, two directions in which this prescription flows: one, the assertion that the scriptural account is literally accurate, and that science is accurate only insofar as it may be read to support the scriptural narrative; and two, the assertion that scientific accounts alone are accurate and that whatever is reported in scripture is an allegory of the scientifically discoverable occurrence, or is otherwise subject to a scientific explanation. For example, as to the first method, geographic markers usually taken to indicate slow and sporadic flooding events may be proposed by scriptural literalists as evidence of a single world-wide flood, an event remarked upon in religious traditions from many parts of the world. As to the second method, certain of those same signs might be staked as logical explanations as to why the scripture-writers believed a localized flood to be worldwide, or were given to a metaphor of such a flood (then argued to have never been intended for literal interpretation) thus preserving some measure of validity to that scripture.

Falling within the latter vein,of late, are particular series of parables in Hindu scripture which tell of Vishnu--the ultimate expression of the divine essence, the meta entity within which our whole Universe is wrapped--revealing himself to man in particular forms, known as avataras, arriving in a particular progression. Those forms, it is noted by followers, were those particularly appropriate to the situation in which he appeared (appearing, for example, as a fish to warn of the coming flood, and as a turtle to assist in salvaging what remained after the flood). But more than that, it is posited, a remarkable correlation is to be found between the mythical recounting of the progression of those forms and what is now understood by scientific examination to be the order through which evolution by natural selection has brought to pass the variety of life on Earth.

The ten incarnations accepted by most authorities on the Hindu scripture are:
. Matsya . -- which begins as a very tiny fish, but grows to be a great fish, filling the ocean
.. Kurma .. -- a tortoise
... Varaha ... -- a boar
.... Narsimha .... -- a "hybrid" half-man and half-lion
..... Vamana ...... -- a Dwarf
...... Parasurama ...... -- Rama, the hero with an axe
....... Rama ....... -- the princely hero of the Ramayana epic
........ Krishna ........ -- the divine teacher of the Gita
......... Buddha ......... -- the enlightened founder of Buddhism
.......... Kalki .......... -- which is yet to come....

We begin, then, with Matsya. Matsya comes to warn the faithful Dravidian king Manu that a flood is coming which will drown all life on Earth. When he first appears, he is the tiniest of minnows, whom Manu is able to fit in a jar; but soon Matsya outgrows the jar, and then the tub in which he is next placed, and then even the river, and finally the whole ocean. Then the fish reveals itself to be Vishnu, and instructs the king of the coming flood, and of the need to save all manner of medicinal herbs and other valuable seeds. It is noteworthy that the flood thus described is not claimed to have come from Matsya (or Vishnu), and not to be a punishment directed against man; it is simply a natural occurrence which man is being warned of. Representations of Matsya tend to depict a four-armed upper torso of a man protruding from the mouth of a great fish, but the myth makes it clear that Matsya was the fish itself. And in support of the evolutionary biological argument, it is claimed that Matsya's piscine nature represents the oceanic origin of all life on Earth.

Kurma, the huge tortoise, is the form Vishnu takes after the flood has passed, in some accounts it arrives right afterwards to assist in the rebuilding of civilization, but in most it comes in a different era to deal with a different ocean; as an amphibious animal it is capable of retrieving the gods' elixir of immortality which had been carried by the flood to the ocean's deepest reaches. Restoring it to the demigods of the day, it enables them to defeat various evil demons who had stripped them of their powers. Kurma is claimed, then, to represent the transition from fish to reptiles (though a true amphibian in between would have been a better tell of this). Not long after, the demon Hiranyaksha appears, steals the Vedas, and plunges the Earth itself to the depths of the 'cosmic ocean.' Vishnu reappears in his third avatara, Varaha, the giant Boar. After a thousand-year battle, Vahara prevails and carries the Earth up from the depths between his tusks, in order to return it to its rightful place in our Universe. The boar, then, is claimed to represent the next transition, from reptile to mammal.

Narsimha, the "half-man, half-lion," to my mind, brings forth the image of an animal with some feature which would make one think of a man, and some which would make one think of a lion: the baboon. There are many species of baboon, and amongst them, the Guinea Baboon is known in particular for the lion-like mane of the adult male. It is observed to walk at times on all fours, and other times to stand and take a few steps on its hind legs, and to manipulate things in a markedly human-like fashion with its dexterous primate hands. This is, it must be confessed, a bit of a stretch to accommodate the scriptural narrative into an evolutionary narrative, but at the same time there is no actual half-man half-lion in existence to work into it scientifically. In the myth, Vishnu appears in this 'half-man, half-lion' form to defeat Hiranyakashipu, a demon who had been granted immunity from enemies when indoors and out, when on the ground or in the sky, during the day and in the night, and from both manufactured weapons and living hands. Narimha defeated Hiranyakashipu by seizing him in a doorway (neither inside nor out), at twilight (neither day nor night), holding him on his thigh (not on the ground, nor in the sky), and disemboweling him with his lion-like nails (neither living hands, nor man-made weapons).

That last beast is the last 'beast,' all the rest of Vishnu's incarnations being recognizably human. As to Vamana, the "dwarf," this raises the image of "Lucy," the famously diminutive specimen of species Australopithecus afarensis, a short-statured link in the chain of human evolution. The remainder of the incarnations are human, though arguably representative of progressive stages of human evolution, or, alternately, of the evolution of human civilizations, if not both. Parasurama, Rama, and Krishna are most easily analogized as simply being humans advancing across different levels of civilization and enlightenment. Parasurama, notably, is 'Rama with an ax,' and is oft depicted as swarthed in a beardly beard, conceivably, then, a hairier 'primitive man' version of Rama. And though the inclusion of the Buddha amongst these incarnations is claimed by some as cynically indicating some co-option of religious symbolism by the Hindu majority, it confesses at the same time a universality of recognition of the Buddha as a force for goodness and instruction toward right conduct. But observe as well that in a smaller number of traditions, a brother of Krishna named Balarama, described as well as an enlightened teacher, is included in place of Buddha; this view is most often criticized from the view that Krishna and Balarama lived at the same time, while all other avatara live in distinct and nonoverlapping eras.

And at last there is Kalki, riding a white horse, bringing with him the immolation of our Universe entire, in a blinding white light -- stepping out of the evolutionary fold, this is claimed by some to presage the physics dictating the end of our Universe itself, either by a Big Crunch (possibly leading to a new cycle), or heat death, or some comparably cataclysmic coming.

And through all this it must be remembered that there are precious few 'fundamentalist' or 'literalist' Hindus, who would claim all the tales told above to be literal truths instead of symbolic depictions, making it more palatable to assume that stages of evolution by natural selection were indeed being showcases here. Indeed, some nineteenth century Hindu thinkers thought Charles Darwin had himself taken an unacknowledged cue from Hinduism, an error fueled by J. B. S. Haldane, an English scientist of the same field, who connected the ideas after the fact. But that claim would have been inestimably strengthened by more and more explicitly intermediary incarnations invoking animals which would fill fossil record gaps. Perhaps if Vishnu had earlier appeared as a great crustacean? Or an improbably large bacterium? But still, were one looking for a revelational theistic faith whose scripture was most immediately analogisable to the scientific evidence available, the evolutionary progression of the avatara of Vishu offers as qualified a candidate as any.

Pandeism versus the wars and violence of Theism and Atheism

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One need not venture deeply into the realm of theological discourse to discover atheists and all kinds of theists arguing endlessly over which faith is responsible for the most wars, oppression, violence, and deaths.

Christians:

The Crusades, the Inquisition, European wars from the Dark Ages right up through the Twentieth Century, including the English Civil Wars, Napoleanic Wars, the Pogroms, the Holocaust, Witch burnings, Genocide against Balkan Muslims, and the new Twenty-First Century Crusades.

Muslims:

Wars of conquest, the Armenian Genocide, invasions against Israel, Islamofascist regimes, Terrorism, 9/11, 7/7, theologically based execution of gays, and virtually enslaving women through denial of rights....

Jews and Palestinians:

Generations lost to unending oppression, strife, and recalcitrance in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank

Hindus and Muslims:

Unending strife between India and Pakistan; many wars and acts of terror....

Shintoism:

Religion of Japan, authors of Nazi-allied World War II aggression

Even Buddhism:

Religion of the Vietnamese, both North and South, who used brutal tactics in Vietnam's Wars.

And too many tribal and folk religions to count having blood, murder, and war on their hands as well....

Atheists:

The deadly regimes of Stalin and Mao and their totalitarian successors, including persecution of those wishing to exercise religion.

Arguments fly back and forth over which despots and killers were of what faith and how much every one amongst them was motivated by religious beliefs.

But then we come to Pandeism

No nation has ever been stirred to war by Pandeists. No government has ever sought to justify oppression or tyranny with Pandeism. No pandeist has ever sought to force another person to change his practices or beliefs through threats and torture.

And why not?

Perhaps because violence and oppression are the means left to those not having the whole of the truth on their side. But, as well, because pandeists believe that we are ALL part of our Creator, and so to do harm or injustice to another person is to inflict the same harm or injustice upon our Creator; and, ultimately, upon ourselves!!

Pandeism: A Philosophy of Peace!!