2015 Council on Pandeism meeting text

We had a great Pandeism meeting on Dec. 12 at noon Pacific Time. Much of it was spoken, but some was typed. A lot of the typed stuff makes little sense out of the context of the spoken conversation, but here it is anyway, as a record for the interested.

Blessings!!

[12:12:51 PM] K Mapson: hello, is anybody out there?
[12:13:34 PM] K Mapson: who's that?
[12:13:39 PM] K Mapson: Juice?
[12:14:17 PM] juice The Jedi Dominguez: my computer inst compatible and I'm signing thru my phone
[12:14:19 PM] K Mapson: [I'm actually not sure who else is in the call, you're the only vid I see, but I hear another voice]
[12:14:32 PM] K Mapson: That is the Buddhabrot!!
[12:15:06 PM] K Mapson: It is indeed.
[12:15:31 PM] K Mapson: Juice, are you typing?
[12:15:39 PM] juice The Jedi Dominguez: can you hear me? not sure how to join
[12:15:42 PM] K Mapson: The Buddhabrot is a mathemetical formula.
[12:15:55 PM] Amy P-----: we can't hear you right now, juice.
[12:16:02 PM] K Mapson: are you speaking? I'm sure I heard you (or somebody) earlier.
[12:16:15 PM] Amy P-----: yeah somebody said hello.
[12:16:53 PM] Amy P-----: we hear you
[12:16:56 PM] K Mapson: hello, we hear you!!
[12:17:09 PM] Amy P-----: yes
[12:17:10 PM] K Mapson: Yes, can you hear Amy?
[12:17:40 PM] Ivan Sanders: Wish I could join you guys
[12:17:57 PM] K Mapson: Ivan Sanders is the creater of Koilas
[12:18:11 PM] K Mapson: longtime friend -- good man for the cause
[12:18:18 PM] K Mapson: yes he is
[12:18:20 PM] Ivan Sanders: Koilas.org is for you guys. If you want to add or change anything to it let me know.
[12:18:39 PM] Amy P-----: thanks, Koilas
[12:18:41 PM] K Mapson: http://www.koilas.org/
[12:19:25 PM] K Mapson: Koilas is a quite interesting effort to build a pandeistic religion.
[12:19:26 PM] Ivan Sanders: It's totally for you guys. And for the world. I can do anything with it, so let me know and we can use it for any purpose.
[12:19:46 PM] K Mapson: Ivan, I signed the book contract today.
[12:19:52 PM] K Mapson: with the what where on Twitter?
[12:20:00 PM] Amy P-----: alien face
[12:20:06 PM] K Mapson: Crispy Sea?
[12:20:14 PM] Ivan Sanders: Congratulations! I have to go, traveling today. You guys have a good and productive meeting.
[12:20:23 PM] Amy P-----: thanks for coming
[12:20:39 PM] Ivan Sanders: Take care. Miss you KM
[12:20:50 PM] Ivan Sanders: (penguin)
[12:20:54 PM] K Mapson: Bless you, Ivan -- we'll be in touch!!
[12:21:05 PM] K Mapson: YES!! Phillip -- one of my writers!!
[12:21:15 PM] K Mapson: I'm typing in.
[12:21:22 PM] Phillip Jones: Hi
[12:21:39 PM] K Mapson: We have Amy, Juice, and Phillip
[12:22:45 PM] K Mapson: So now would be the time for the statement, for inspiration!!
[12:27:11 PM] K Mapson: I feel you, brother -- same for me!!
[12:27:17 PM] K Mapson: (no, mine blew up completely)
[12:28:56 PM] K Mapson: Being told not to look for an answer is no better than being told that the answer comes from a Bronze-Age book.
[12:29:22 PM] K Mapson: Very into that, yes.
[12:29:48 PM] K Mapson: If our Universe was designed for us to evolve to this point, why would it be meant to stop here?
[12:29:58 PM] Amy P-----: good point
[12:31:06 PM] K Mapson: But that's good!! That's a way through the usual filter!!
[12:32:09 PM] K Mapson: Yes, the Internet.
[12:32:32 PM] K Mapson: reaches people who, generations past, would only ever have been told things by their parents and peers
[12:32:46 PM] K Mapson: The book will be in print too!! ;)
[12:34:13 PM] K Mapson: It is an inevitable synergy. An idea like Pandeism comes to make sense at the same time as the technology comes to exist to disperse the knowledge.
[12:34:47 PM] K Mapson: (almost as if it was planned like that) ;)
[12:35:41 PM] K Mapson: I define a deity by what it does -- it's an entity able to create a rational Universe, with whatever power and intellect is required for that.
[12:36:26 PM] K Mapson: I think there's a universal underlying connectedness, which people sometimes feel, and mistake for the bearded guy in the sky.
[12:36:48 PM] K Mapson: But an awesome cell!!
[12:36:58 PM] K Mapson: We are all awesome cells!!
[12:38:29 PM] K Mapson: Some of our writers who focus on the consciousness aspect -- Bernardo Kastrup and Anthony Peake.
[12:39:36 PM] K Mapson: (if you look them up on Amazon, you can get a sense of their writings)
[12:40:16 PM] K Mapson: Very confusingly -- since I use PanDeist on some sites.
[12:40:45 PM] K Mapson: He is.
[12:41:24 PM] K Mapson: Typing -- no microphone.
[12:42:45 PM] K Mapson: I would consider "science" as a whole being the means by which we discover how the Creator did everything.
[12:43:57 PM] K Mapson: I'd recommend to everybody to read William C. Lane's article on Leibniz's Best World, which addresses this issue very well (it will be republished in the book as well). It's dense writing, but packed full of thought.
[12:44:42 PM] Amy P-----: which subject?
[12:45:36 PM] K Mapson: Lane's article? Its ostensibly about morality, but it points out that a pandeistic Creator could not create a Universe with no suffering in it, unless it makes physics insanely more complex.
[12:45:55 PM] K Mapson: So far as we can tell, our laws of physics are the simplest set of rules which can bring about our life-generating Universe.
[12:47:59 PM] K Mapson: Dawkins is great at explaining that part, actually -- too bad he sees it through such a reductionist framework.
[12:49:56 PM] K Mapson: We are evolving ourselves. What we evolve ourselves towards is inevitably something more godlike, in intellect at least.
[12:51:32 PM] K Mapson: A friend of mine once described the theistic image of god as "a cartoon clown suit" thrown on the Creator to make it comfortable to envision.
[12:51:45 PM] Amy P-----: haha I like that
[12:52:37 PM] K Mapson: That's why theism is so terrible tho -- we take all these human traits, bigotries, fears, and assign them to a god.
[12:53:59 PM] K Mapson: That is what Ivan Sanders is doing with Koilas -- writing a religion that will be updated as new knowledge is added.
[12:54:08 PM] K Mapson: Sure!!
[12:55:46 PM] K Mapson: I want to go over the state of the book, and the plan for it, and for the Kickstarter to support it.
[12:56:08 PM] K Mapson: These are, in my view, all ways to distribute the knowledge.
[12:56:33 PM] K Mapson: For example, Kickstarter is a fundraising platform, but people who look at this there will learn about it.
[12:57:14 PM] K Mapson: There are countless forums out there, beyond Twitter and Facebook and the like.
[12:58:37 PM] K Mapson: An the unending battles between "Christianity" and "Islam" or between "Theism" and "Atheism" suck all the oxygen out of the room. Like "Coke" and "Pepsi" -- with no option for "water"!!
[12:59:36 PM] K Mapson: That's why it is so important that we have even these small discussions.
[12:59:56 PM] K Mapson: Phillip, has this helped you think about what you will write?
[1:00:20 PM] K Mapson: (that is a great, great direction)
[1:00:48 PM] Amy P-----: glad you agree
[1:01:27 PM] Ivan Sanders: Wish I could participate. Last time there were 3 of us and it lasted 3 hours. Again, I want everyone to know that Koilas.org is for everyone and I would love to add more content in the website. Take care everyone and keep me in the loop at [email address]
[1:01:45 PM] K Mapson: Ivan, we'll definitely keep you in!!
[1:02:20 PM] Amy P-----: thanks, we brought Koilas up again while you were absent, Ivan
[1:03:24 PM] K Mapson: We must always begin by confessing we could be wrong in everything we believe.... unfortunately, the most wrong people never take that step.
[1:04:31 PM] K Mapson: I tend not to call it a religion -- it's a philosophy, a framework for seeing our Universe in a way which makes sense.
[1:05:14 PM] Amy P-----: I agree with that view as well
[1:05:25 PM] K Mapson: I  love that. Must find it.
[1:05:32 PM] Amy P-----: must find what?
[1:05:37 PM] K Mapson: that quote
[1:06:29 PM] K Mapson: Juice, find out where that quote about the Nobel Prize comes from!! :D
[1:07:08 PM] Amy P-----: hyperspace by michio kaku
[1:07:41 PM] K Mapson: So I wanted everybody to know we have ten authors so far for the Pandeism Anthology, and are aiming to get all pieces in by March.
[1:08:44 PM] K Mapson: The Kickstarter will be started most likely in January, to fund a college writing competition with a modest cash prize, with the winning article to be published in the book as well.
[1:09:28 PM] K Mapson: Authors thus far:
[1:09:30 PM] K Mapson: Robert G. Brown
William C. Lane
Raphael Lataster
Orlando Alcantara Fernandez
Bernardo Kastrup
Phillip Alexander Jones
Alan Dawe
Anthony Peake
Julian West
Michael Arnheim
[1:09:48 PM] K Mapson: Brown is physicist at Duke Univ.
[1:10:54 PM] K Mapson: Lataster is an Australian theologian
[1:11:04 PM] K Mapson: by Bernard Haisch
[1:11:27 PM] K Mapson: (I asked Haisch to write a piece for the anthology, but he's not writing in that area anymore)
[1:12:51 PM] K Mapson: I'd kind of like to get some 'opposing viewpoints' pieces from atheists/theists, but have gotten no bites from those I've asked.
[1:13:29 PM] K Mapson: But 10-12 pieces is a healthy selection for an anthology.
[1:14:35 PM] K Mapson: The fact that other possibilities are possible doesn't itself make any possibility impossible. ;)
[1:15:19 PM] Amy P-----: what other types of voices do we have in the anthology?
[1:15:22 PM] K Mapson: If there's no beginning, everything would already have happened infinitely long ago!!
[1:15:50 PM] K Mapson: Alan Dawe (from New Zealand) is more of a spiritualist -- he wrote "The God Franchise," great book.
[1:16:04 PM] K Mapson: Julian West is a historian of mythology
[1:16:43 PM] K Mapson: Michael Arnheim is a UK barrister, who wrote "The God Book" (just came out) which is an argument for Deism.
[1:17:04 PM] Amy P-----: any other info to cover after this, k?
[1:17:44 PM] K Mapson: I think we're good -- I think we've got a sense of direction. Naturally, we could go on talking about the topic for hours.... but at some point we must live our lives as well!!
[1:17:56 PM] Amy P-----: haha, ok
[1:18:26 PM] K Mapson: I'm going to put up a website to track progress, and will send it to everybody.
[1:18:54 PM] K Mapson: You're both writers -- write!!
[1:19:16 PM] K Mapson: Amy, from you I want a poem. I'll sneak that into the book as well.
[1:20:21 PM] Amy P-----: @amybeff
[1:20:30 PM] K Mapson: Well, for Juice, and all of us -- keep getting into arguments with people about it -- hearing their objections always sharpens our ability to address the possibilities.
[1:21:57 PM] K Mapson: There are like ten Facebook Pandeism groups.... need to bring them all together.
[1:22:16 PM] Amy P-----: alright, let's keep that in mind
[1:22:27 PM] K Mapson: (Amy, do I know you know you on Facebook)
[1:22:44 PM] Amy P-----: Not currently
[1:22:50 PM] K Mapson: (find me there, I'm the only Knujon Mapson)
[1:22:57 PM] Amy P-----: got it
[1:22:59 PM] K Mapson: Mind = blown
[1:23:12 PM] K Mapson: Nope -- that is it for today -- blessings, all!!
[1:23:27 PM] K Mapson: And thank you all so much!!
[1:24:15 PM] K Mapson: :)
[1:24:22 PM] *** Call ended, duration 1:15:23 ***
[1:24:23 PM] Phillip Jones: :-)
[1:24:51 PM] juice The Jedi Dominguez: 👍🏾 :)
[1:24:59 PM] Phillip Jones: (champagne)

Council on Pandeism meeting text

Here is some of the text of the Council on Pandeism meeting which happened on May the 4th.... this was a Skype meeting, so most of the action was audio, but there were many comments typed out as well -- note that many of these comments were in response to spoken words so their context might be unapparent, but I still feel it worthwhile to post them as is -- and these are they:

[11:52:15 AM] Ivan Sanders: Can you see me
[11:53:22 AM] K Mapson: I can see and hear.
[11:55:42 AM] K Mapson: I am going to live-tweet the discussion, if that's okay with everybody.
[11:56:35 AM] K Mapson: or it's 9AM on a Sunday ;)
[11:59:35 AM] K Mapson: there are two really big camps out there -- indoctrinated theists, and reactionary atheists, and each wants to shoehorn everything which doesn't fit into their camp into the other, which hurts other theological models
[12:00:09 PM] K Mapson: can't tell you how many theists have come at me with purely anti-atheist arguments, and atheists with anti-bible arguments
[12:02:11 PM] K Mapson: Deists tend to be sympathetic, since Pandeism is a logic-derived viewpoint
[12:03:07 PM] K Mapson: well I mean that it is itself logical
[12:04:29 PM] K Mapson: Deism has always been targetted by the criticism that it can't explain why a Creator would create and then step away, not intervene. That is what Pandeism resolves within the deistic frame.
[12:08:12 PM] K Mapson: I think that's an absolutely good sense of motivation.
[12:08:35 PM] K Mapson: Over the 90s.
[12:09:31 PM] K Mapson: I remember first hearing about it from a lunchtime lecture from a philosophy prof.
[12:10:38 PM] K Mapson: He was a Hartshorne follower, and Hartshorne had written a snippet on it which intrigued the prof, I remember he got quite animated about the subject. So, it got me animated about it.
[12:10:53 PM] K Mapson: But really it took the Internet to find out anything about it.
[12:11:30 PM] K Mapson: Nope, he wrote a few paragraphs about it, in the 40s.
[12:11:47 PM] K Mapson: (pronounced Harts-Horne)
[12:12:23 PM] K Mapson: I know a lot more about Harshorne now than I did then (he went for Panentheism)
[12:13:06 PM] K Mapson: That's actually very controversial for theists, as process theology proposes a Creator which is constanly becoming (and so not "perfect" from the outset)
[12:13:34 PM] K Mapson: the theists want their Creator to be "perfect" -- and so incapable of learning/improving
[12:14:38 PM] K Mapson: the "-en" part is an appendix, an unnecessary addition for those who wish to have some part of deity watching over them (but apparently doing nothing whle people starve and suffer)
[12:15:31 PM] K Mapson: the Problem of Evil is, I think, the strongest argument for a Creator which has made itself wholly *unable* to intervene -- otherwise, if it had any sense of compassion, it would do so
[12:16:49 PM] K Mapson: Christians go berserk when you suggest God is the "author" of evil (but any Creator is necessarily the author of all things)
[12:19:43 PM] K Mapson: Taoism and Pandeism are *very* complementary
[12:21:03 PM] K Mapson: I'm getting every other word.... type it out?
[12:22:23 PM] Jaidyn Saunders: OK.  Ever since reading all I could about Pandeism, I have been hooked.
[12:23:19 PM] K Mapson: My experience has sort of been that All Roads Lead Back To Rome
[12:25:29 PM] K Mapson: Buddhism is awesome, but it has some problems as a theological model -- it provides excellent moral guidance, but it is in no way explanatory of *why* our Universe exists at all or what purpose it serves, or we serve within it....
[12:26:33 PM] K Mapson: ....and (in Tibetan Buddhism at least) there is a notion of wholesale reincarnation of the mind, which is simply not supported by science as yet. I don't need that presumption.
[12:28:18 PM] K Mapson: I think that's exactly right.
[12:29:12 PM] K Mapson: barely understanding anything now
[12:30:02 PM] K Mapson: better not to have it coming through all the time tho
[12:30:28 PM] Ivan Sanders: The question is:  What is our most effective route of educating people of the existence of Pandeism?
[12:30:44 PM] K Mapson: hey, you guys been watching Cosmos? great stuff, I think (sorry for the tangent, just came to mind)
[12:32:25 PM] Ivan Sanders: I would agree that people aren't educaed about it
[12:32:38 PM] Ivan Sanders: educated*
[12:33:34 PM] K Mapson: (but they did that bit on Giordano Bruno, which led some bloggers to talk about how Bruno was a Pandeist)
[12:33:43 PM] K Mapson: I'd like to add something which I think calls back a point raised much earlier....
[12:34:25 PM] K Mapson: ....which is that Pandeism is a good thing for the world -- it is a thing which, if people understood it and behaved accordingly, would be good for the world.
[12:34:57 PM] K Mapson: Which is something which I think has proved to be untrue under the theistic faiths, and which is not something atheism effects one way or the other.
[12:35:59 PM] K Mapson: if Pandeism is correct, then we are all part of a greater one, and ought to treat each other so
[12:37:05 PM] K Mapson: And science itself reveals that interconnectedness. We are biologically related to every living thing on our planet. And atomically related to every thing in our Universe.
[12:38:22 PM] K Mapson: It is somewhat amazing to me that people who understand that we all come from stardust can at the same time be opposed to drawing a spiritual or metaphysical understanding from that very knowledge.
[12:39:28 PM] Ivan Sanders: I think spreading Pandeism and Pandeist thought through scholarly writings will help because it will educate those who already think (the scholars). The more people who think and write about Pandeism the better.
[12:39:42 PM] K Mapson: I think for one thing we need to get out there in the world with a published book which focuses on this model, instead of glancing upon it.
[12:41:32 PM] K Mapson: Raphael Lataster is working on a book which will cover Pandeism at some length (or so he tells me).
[12:42:17 PM] K Mapson: Haisch would be "The God Theory" ("Mind of God" is Paul Davies)
[12:42:27 PM] K Mapson: sorry, not to be a smartass....
[12:42:42 PM] K Mapson: there's a lot of books out there to keep straight!!
[12:42:55 PM] Ivan Sanders: There sure are
[12:43:46 PM] K Mapson: I see these authors, Haisch, Davies, Dawe, even Scott Adams, writing about the same essential idea, but every time inventing a new name for it.
[12:43:56 PM] Ivan Sanders: The religious scholarly world is full already, it seems. Is there room for Pandeism?
[12:44:11 PM] Ivan Sanders: Are scholars interested in reading works on Pandeism?
[12:44:35 PM] Ivan Sanders: I read reddit pretty much every day... :(
[12:45:50 PM] Ivan Sanders: We could even write about religious market saturation.
[12:46:31 PM] K Mapson: this'll take a few minutes....
[12:48:43 PM] K Mapson: I think Adams is simply being flippant (or guarding against theological critics)
[12:49:22 PM] K Mapson: it doesn't matter that Adams disclaims unnamed portions of it, the book captures one formulation of the idea
[12:49:50 PM] K Mapson: though I don't subscribe to the 'God blew himself up and is dead as a doornail' version, either
[12:50:54 PM] K Mapson: Id o get pushback from theists who assume that Pandeism means 'God is Dead'
[12:51:44 PM] K Mapson: Definitely!!
[12:52:05 PM] Ivan Sanders: The big crunch has not been discounted by science, which I like.
[12:52:15 PM] K Mapson: One might put it that we are a dream our Creator is having in order to understand itself.
[12:52:35 PM] K Mapson: My larger response was that some time ago I got Project Gutenberg to take up Max Bernhard Weinstein's 1910 book which goes on at good length about Pandeism throughout, but it's on the back burner for them now, and is in a years-long queue. A translation of that book into English would provide information in the context of the true age and historic scope of the theory.
[12:53:00 PM] Ivan Sanders: Thank you Mapson, good addition.
[12:53:54 PM] Ivan Sanders: This is a nice literary interpretation of Pandeism, Jaidyn.
[12:54:43 PM] K Mapson: I agree with that, but I believe the Universe is not simply a thing set forth for entertainment, but to fulfill an actual need to learn -- a need so strong that our Creator ought to feel like a person dying of thirst needs water.
[12:55:00 PM] Ivan Sanders: Interesting.
[12:55:57 PM] K Mapson: It is indeed excellently framed. Wonder if Warren Sharp is somebody we could communicate with....
[12:56:12 PM] Ivan Sanders: Maybe, lets follow up on that if we can!
[12:57:12 PM] K Mapson: I've heard of this multiverse thing, but I hain't never seen one. ;)
[12:57:22 PM] Ivan Sanders: Ohhh Mapson
[12:58:04 PM] K Mapson: a logical interpretation -- not 'scientific' so much as consistent with science
[12:58:42 PM] K Mapson: we can't claim to be able to prove such a thing through scientific-type means, but we can show that science does not contradict it
[12:59:13 PM] K Mapson: "I am every kind of scientist."
[1:00:09 PM] K Mapson: it would be the source of all of them, I think
[1:01:00 PM] K Mapson: no matter how many there are (if there are many) the question remains at the very bottom of inquiry, why do conditions exist which allow Universes to arise at all, one or many
[1:03:49 PM] K Mapson: the notion of a multiverse is not a point of agreement amongst scientists tho -- it is a theory with interesting potential, but a dearth of practical evidence
[1:06:52 PM] K Mapson: yes -- and learns thereby what it is like to exist as we do
[1:07:41 PM] Ivan Sanders: What becomes of our consciousnesses after we perish?
[1:07:57 PM] K Mapson: but I think, as well, that we are still on a path not yet complete
[1:08:29 PM] K Mapson: I think we have much evolution before us before we reach the potential programmed into our Universe.
[1:08:59 PM] K Mapson: imagine what our descendants 100,000 years from now might be capable of thinking and experiencing
[1:12:13 PM] K Mapson: I think there is some means by which everything which happens in our Universe -- including thoughts and experiences of consciousness -- is recorded indelibly.
[1:13:13 PM] K Mapson: what some would call an Akashic record, but of all things, not simply of 'spiritual things'
[1:14:35 PM] K Mapson: I believe that any Creator which would go to the trouble of setting forth our Universe would do so in a way wherein all knowledge generated by such Universe would be retained within itself.
[1:15:09 PM] Ivan Sanders: I agree, Mapson, and I think this is important.
[1:16:00 PM] K Mapson: (Christians will tell you that this entire record exists in their god's mind before the Universe is even created, which begs the question, why bother creating it)
[1:17:02 PM] K Mapson: that the laws of physics provide for the retention of this information
[1:20:49 PM] K Mapson: The community of scholars has its own channels through which it must be reached.
[1:21:16 PM] K Mapson: (by 'scholars' here I mean the people who write articles that get published in the journals)
[1:22:23 PM] K Mapson: But it would be good to reach that community, because if publication-hungry scholars begin to investigate Pandeism, they will quickly generate insights into it)
[1:22:40 PM] Ivan Sanders: Exactly!
[1:23:47 PM] K Mapson: I am not especially astounded by that -- academic publishing is greatly driven by what is accepted within a certain orthodoxy.
[1:25:09 PM] K Mapson: that's one reason I want to get the Weinstein book translated and out there -- it shows that this theory was discussed a length a hundred years ago
[1:26:18 PM] K Mapson: yeah, no door to door
[1:29:54 PM] K Mapson: Christians and Muslims have a strong doctrinal compulsion to evangelize (to the extent that they believe they'll face eternal hellfire if they don't); atheists, I think, feel that they have a strong motivation to counter the damage that theistic faiths cause.
[1:30:04 PM] K Mapson: Yes, God's Debris, read it.
[1:32:04 PM] K Mapson: I agree with that.
[1:33:03 PM] K Mapson: I do wish we had a Pandeist equivalent of Neil de Grasse Tyson -- somebody who was really good at just talking and explaining this in conversation.... that's the top of my wish list.
[1:33:13 PM] Ivan Sanders: Mine too!
[1:34:17 PM] K Mapson: I very much appreciate what you've done with the website -- looks much better than anything I've come up with....
[1:34:42 PM] K Mapson: sound pretty clear to me
[1:35:15 PM] K Mapson: yes, exactly
[1:38:10 PM] K Mapson: I'm all here.
[1:38:42 PM] K Mapson: I'm glad to provide any of my writings for Koilas.
[1:41:32 PM] K Mapson: people have this idea (driven by theistic faiths) that 'science' is like another religion itself, when it is simply a methodology of determining and verifying physical realities
[1:42:09 PM] K Mapson: that's why you always hear creationists referring to 'evolution' as a "belief" when it is simply an understanding
[1:43:58 PM] K Mapson: yes, 100%
[1:46:01 PM] K Mapson: prayer to me is nonsensical, as it is an appeal to what one conceives of as an outside intervening force to bend the laws of nature to provide the praying person with some nonnatural benefit -- I prefer to focus on meditation, an inward-pointed seeking of truth
[1:50:14 PM] K Mapson: to what degree has the power of meditation been scientifically tested?
[1:50:52 PM] K Mapson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation
[1:52:05 PM] K Mapson: So it seems a scattering of studies have been done, and have tended to show that meditation has tangible effects, though the reason these effects occur has not been delved more deeply into.
[1:53:57 PM] K Mapson: I  put it with the whole body of theological phenomena (revelations, prophecies, miracles, etc) -- a claim of such a thing is subject to scientific examination, but if it does exist, it is a side-effect of a pandeistic Universe, of our being part of an underlying unconscious mind far exceeding our comprehension
[1:54:43 PM] K Mapson: you know, the large-scale structure of our Universe (in terms of distribution of galaxies) is like a brain with 500 billion times as many neurons as a human brain
[1:59:38 PM] K Mapson: I'm relaxing.
[1:59:49 PM] Ivan Sanders: I think we all agree that meditation (and inward prayer) can be beneficial. By no means is it required by Pandeism or Koilas and should not be considered such. With that, we should be careful in how we word ideas about praryer and meditation, especially in anything we put onto the internet or print. Would you agree?
[2:00:03 PM] Ivan Sanders: prayer*
[2:00:31 PM] K Mapson: Prayer*   *results not guaranteed
[2:00:41 PM] Ivan Sanders: Yes!
[2:01:50 PM] K Mapson: good meeting so far
[2:03:58 PM] K Mapson: I like that we save trees by having it online instead of in print.
[2:04:57 PM] K Mapson: But all changes must be changes in accordance with logic.... I've seen some internet communities where 'facts' can change solely based on the number of members of one community of interest being brought into the discussion.
[2:06:07 PM] K Mapson: Case in point, Wikipedia, where for example their is a page on the 'Genesis creation narrative' where every other such theology is called a 'myth' because of the numbers arising against calling *their* myth a myth....
[2:07:48 PM] Ivan Sanders: Collaboration is only as good as the rules set forth. I believe we should create a canon of literature about Koilas. This creation (Bhago) should be changeable and should be a collaboration. The facts should not be based on members thoughts, but in reality, logic, reason.
[2:08:20 PM] Ivan Sanders: I think, with that, we should update it periodically to reflect changes in science.
[2:11:30 PM] K Mapson: We all know how to contact each other.
[2:13:21 PM] K Mapson: Well you know I've tried my hand at writing one -- and I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of rephrasing of the same notion to show for it. There are people who write books and people who do other things, and I'm still discovering which of those I am.
[2:13:44 PM] Ivan Sanders: Sounds like you're on board with the concept of the Bhago?
[2:14:49 PM] Ivan Sanders: A collaboration of our ideas for Koilas that we can update and change somewhat regularly to reflect the scientific understanding of the universe.
[2:15:37 PM] K Mapson: I'm on board. There are others we know are interested, I think.
[2:15:43 PM] Ivan Sanders: Great!
[2:17:58 PM] K Mapson: voted on by whom though? the three of us? anybody who wishes to vote? must be some intermediate
[2:18:12 PM] Ivan Sanders: That is a good question we should ask ourselves.
[2:19:44 PM] K Mapson: I think that is a reasonable approach
[2:21:47 PM] Ivan Sanders: A good way of conducting the creation of the Bhago is creating an outline of what we would like to see in it. From that we can distribute the writing tasks accordingly. You may already have something that fits a portion of our outline, and we can use that! All writings that contribute to the Bhago should use Koilas terminology (Deiwos, It, Bhago, Koilas). Eventually, it should come together as a nice piece of work.
[2:23:08 PM] Ivan Sanders: If nobody is opposed to this approach, I will begin creating an outline using google docs, one that everone can contribute to.
[2:23:45 PM] K Mapson: I look forward to it.
[2:27:24 PM] K Mapson: I would like to add to this my encouragement that we all keep putting the word out on the various venues through which thought is distributed on the Internet. It doesn't really take an extensive amount of writing to post things (even links to things) on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and other blogs and forums and such.
[2:28:41 PM] Ivan Sanders: Any way we can spread Pandeism is good, in my opinion (outside of knocking on people's doors).
[2:30:01 PM] K Mapson: I'm good, brother. Going to save the text from this conversation -- any objection to posting the whole thing somewhere?
[2:32:04 PM] K Mapson: I kind of think we cross the bridge of having large numbers when we have large numbers.
[2:32:47 PM] K Mapson: We have no "keepers of the flame" and ought to be as open as possible
[2:34:55 PM] K Mapson: Jaidyn, are you on Twitter?
[2:35:14 PM] Ivan Sanders: I'm not opposed to meeting frequently and discussing ideas. I think that could benefit our project as we can come together and talk about what we have written and changes/additions/deletions.
[2:35:39 PM] K Mapson: I see Ivan and other pandeists there frequently, so I don't feel alone in the pursuit.
[2:36:01 PM] K Mapson: I don't suppose you're on Wikipedia?
[2:36:32 PM] K Mapson: I very much enjoyed this, and I am sure that we can get more people in future meetings
[2:38:07 PM] Ivan Sanders: Being the most active Pandeists, what impact can we have?
[2:39:05 PM] Ivan Sanders: I think we ARE Pandeism right now
[2:39:19 PM] K Mapson: It is more than us, though.
[2:39:28 PM] Ivan Sanders: I hope so!
[2:39:44 PM] Ivan Sanders: I would love to get them engaged in our conversations.
[2:40:26 PM] K Mapson: I'd like to get the people out there like Bernard Haisch and Paul Davies and Bernardo Kastrup to at least be more aware that what they're writing of exists under another name
[2:40:46 PM] Ivan Sanders: That would be an excellent impact to have.
[2:41:02 PM] Ivan Sanders: I wish they would engage us in the conversation too. And hopefully they will.
[2:42:41 PM] K Mapson: (shorter meeting next time tho)
[2:42:58 PM] Ivan Sanders: Hopefully!
[2:44:09 PM] K Mapson: This was great, glad we're on this track, brothers.
[2:44:37 PM] K Mapson: no, that's good
[2:45:21 PM] K Mapson: take care

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 and the Knowledge of Good and Evil

I have in the past addressed the question of Pandeism and the problem of good and evil. Here, I extend that analysis to the question of human knowledge of good and evil. How, especially, can we know what is good or evil if we discern a theological model which supposes our Creator to have entered into the Creation without knowing what is good or evil. Indeed, while curing such a lack of knowledge handily answers both the question of why our Creator created at all, and why evil is able to exist in a created Universe, some find that the absence of rules set down from above leaves disconcertingly open the question of what is or is not morally wrong. And yet, whether we are able to attribute such knowledge to an original metaphysical directive or no, it seems absurd to suggest that we do not in fact know what is good and what is evil, and especially to suggest that absent directions from a higher power, we would be unable to distinguish the most beauteous good actions from the most grotesquely evil actions.




Evil deeds may seem to have no good end, but to a Creator wishing to experience existence in the form of a Universe filled with beings experiencing many different things, evil deeds -- and responses to them -- may be very instructive indeed!! If our Creator initially exists alone, and has no experience of fear or suffering, or relations with other entities at all to inform it of what these are like, it is logical to suppose that it becomes the Creation with no initial sense of what interactions ought to be deemed discreditable. We must realize, naturally, that virtually any sensible understanding of evil requires at least one sentient being and at least one other being, for a man who is alone in existence except for a pebble can not particularly do 'evil' to that unfeeling pebble. And perhaps it is we who, by rejecting our own inherent divinity and (often more importantly) the divinity of all around us, bring upon ourselves the consequences of evil -- suffering, and the fear or anger or sadness caused by suffering.



We must first distinguish here is rejection of an innate characteristic itself from rejection of knowledge of such an innate characteristic. Consider gravity. A knowledgeable person accepts that gravity exists and holds us to the surface of our planet, and exists as a central force such that those who stand on the opposite side of the planet are not hanging upside-down there, but simply standing just as we are. But suppose an opposer, an 'antigravitationist' were to come along and reject gravity, to deny that it exists, to deny that it is inherent to his own existence as a being having mass, and to deny even that he will fall and will ultimately suffer and cause suffering were he to walk off a high ledge over a dense crowd. Rejecting gravity does not change the behaviour of gravity, it simply changes the behaviour of its denier, making it more likely that he make ignorant decisions leading to bad ends.



And what of the validity of our perspectives? If we are each of us but a fragment of our Creator, why are not all perspectives equally valid, why do we not devolve into moral relativism? The answer is that being fragments of our Creator is not by itself enough to prevent our being ignorant fragments. Consider the conviction shared by the vast majority of humans that it is morally reprehensible to sadistically torture a newborn baby. There may be some few sick minds which are attracted, rather than repulsed, by such a notion. But that attraction necessarily proceeds from some level of ignorance of the suffering which they would inflict, or an inability to appreciate it. Or, going back to gravity, the antigravitationist who jumps from the ledge out of lack of belief may simply be acting out of ignorance of the certitude of gravity. And yet, it would be wrong on that basis to claim that such fractional views mean 'humanity' does not know about gravity. This would be little different from accrediting to a random teaspoon of you brain cells the quality of being 'you' and holding your knowledge and your views. And so, simply being fragments of our Creator does not give us the perspective of our Creator, for the true perspective of our Creator would be one which incorporates all knowledge generated to that point, and would be ignorant of no fact (even as we as fragments are inherently ignorant of many).



But a solution lies in the law of averages, and in the continuous advancement of knowledge. Firstly I will reiterate the reason our Creator may be supposed to not inherently know 'right' from 'wrong' or 'good' from 'evil' so far as those term applies to interactions between limited beings, for before the existence of ourselves and reflective beings like us, our Creator can know only its own existence as a being without such limitations. But it would necessarily be existing alone as well; and so it logically follows that the most efficient means by which such an entity may come to know what it is to exist as a limited being amongst limited beings is to experience existence in a Universe designed to bring about such beings. And that proposition is sufficient to parsimoniously account for the very existence of our Universe and everything in it.



Okay, but still, where does that leave us with right and wrong, good and evil? If our Creator is as ignorant as we are, does that remove our responsibilities to seek a moral compass and live by it? Well I contend not, and here is why: We find in our existence circumstances which we as individuals understand to be wrong, to be evil, and we find others who agree with us as to these matters. These understandings derive from human experience, ultimately I would suggest from the experience of suffering and beliefs as to its causes. A child learns early that touching the fire causes suffering. It is 'wrong' for him to touch the fire (and he may even believe the fire itself to be 'evil' at this point). The child would learn this if brought up amongst people of the most remote tribe, who had never heard of any deity. And at some point he is given to learn that others will experience the same suffering from the same cause, and if he possesses empathy (which is simply a form of knowledge), he will feel it is wrong to force others to touch the fire.



And as these sorts of understandings are built upon by more and more people, they become codified. Their origins lost in history, they are themselves accredited to the direct intervention of our Creator (or to comparable beings). Naturally, some of these beliefs arise by happenstance or coincidence, out of the same ignorance that once led men to believe the world to be flat. A person who sees a black cat and shortly thereafter becomes ill may draw a false correlation between the events, and if the idea is spread into the culture, others who become ill will suddenly take notice of black cats which happen to exist in their environment, and the mistaken correlation -- the proposition that black cats are 'evil' -- will becomes codified.



But just as belief in a flat Earth gave way to knowledge first of its roundness, then of its subtle oblateness, scientific inquiry and logical examination ought to eventually dispel those elements steeped in ignorance, leaving behind a progressively more accurate picture of what it is which we do which tends to cause suffering, and to alleviate it. And so it seems that knowledge of good and evil, derived from experience of suffering and codified by breadth of acceptance amongst men, will be winnowed by the advance of knowledge toward condemnation of the true causes of suffering. Simply put, we continue to learn that what is good is what objectively minimizes suffering and brings happiness, and that what is evil is what objectively increases suffering and reduces happiness. The ability for knowledge to be shared amongst members of our species means that we will, on average, holistically tend towards a greater understanding and appreciation of these elements, and to act accordingly. And our Creator -- being inherent within us -- will learn as we learn, will indeed have already learned as we have learned, adding every bit of human knowledge to its complete compilation of the knowledge of a Universe which is of it.

Pandeism and the God of the Gaps

Atheists are quick to point out how theistic conceptions of God have seemingly retreated to smaller and smaller fields in the face of advancing scientific discovery. The flow of the argument is that many things -- the diversity of biology, the experience of illness, the motions of planets and stars in the night sky, lightning and thunder, magnetism -- all have at some historical point attributed to the intentional intervention and action of a deity figure. That these explanations are no longer required suggests that all things still attributed to a deity will recede along the same path, to be discovered as having deity-free roots in the scientifically explicable dynamics of our Universe.

But this attack is inapplicable to Pandeism, for which our Creator has always lain precedent to a meta-explanation of all things discoverable by science. Pandeism is not an instance of a theory being posited to explain what was left after earlier explanations were rendered obsolete. For the pandeistic model finds its roots in the Emanationism known to the ancient Greeks, which preceded even monotheism as a theological model. Under this model, our Universe, our physical experience of existence with all of the phenomena it contains, was posited to have emanated wholesale from a divine being, without that entity having any concern for the nature of the emanation, possibly without our Universe being significant enough a byproduct of its existence for any notice of it to be taken at all. But, fundamental to this proposition is the requirement that all of the physical phenomena of our Universe, the thunder and lightning, the diseases and the seasons and the sunrises, were simply that -- phenomena of our Universe, somehow built into its fragmentary fabric, but in no way requiring resort to the intervention of a deity as an explanation.

This may be visualised by picturing our existence as a big circle. The 'God of the Gaps' argument contends that the whole of the circle was once filled in by religion, making the circle, let's say, a big red spot. Then, scientific explanations came along and erased a chunk of the redness here and another chunk there, until all that is left are a few blots of red here and there within the circle -- and, naturally, the red outline of it. The outline is the bit that can never be erased, because no matter how complete an explanation science is able to offer, there is always that one preceding question of why do we exist in circumstances where the effective scientific explanation, whatever it is, is able to operate. Suppose we agree with Stephen Hawking, that the law of gravity makes it possible for our Universe to expand itself into existence; why, then does such a law of gravity exist at all? Is it simply a brute fact, or is it the mechanism of a Creator at work?

And so, to the pandeist, the role of God is not 'shrinking' if the gaps being filled by science were not the original gaps at all, but later erroneous religious constructs. The pandeistic model supposes that all that originally existed was that thin red outline; people later came along with myth and superstition and filled the whole thing in red, bit by bit, imagining an intervening deity as the answer to every question occurring within that circle. And then science came along and simply erased those errors, never coming close to erasing the boundary itself.

And, indeed, to the pandeist, the scientist is engaged in the most worthwhile endeavour, for he uncovers the mechanism by which our Creator has set forth our Universe, and so discerns more precisely the size and shape of that boundary line, that last level of explanation which may never be resolved simply by scientific investigation. And so science, in erasing the ancient gaps, points us reverently towards the Mind of our Creator and provides us with the best tools for comprehending the purpose and destiny of a pandeistic Universe.

The problem of the unevangelised

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