The Animal Pals Learn About Religion

The animal pals were sitting happily around their picnic blanket on this fine sunfilled day, laughing and singing songs and telling stories, and such, for that is their friendly way. There was the good Dr. Turtledove and Mrs. Turtledove, and their three little turtledoves, who pleased everyone with their beautiful song. And there was diligent Colonel Ram whose ram regiment was known well for its discipline, and his dear old friend Mr. Bull, who had come with his lady Ms. Cow. And then there was Mr. and Mrs. Goat and their kids, and Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon, and Mr. and Mrs. Badger, and various little ones playing in the grass.

And as the day got on into the afternoon, they noticed that wise old Mr. Turtle was sitting under a tree nearby, flipping through a black-bound book with some gold lettering on the cover, and the others asked, "what book is that?" And Mr. Turtle told them, "well this one's called a 'Bible'--"

"Buy bull?" interrupted Mr. Bull "don't know if I like the sound of that...."

"Well," Mr. Turtle went on, "some feller gave it to me. Seemed to be some kind of salesman. Told me to read the stories in it and take 'em as true, and that afterward I'd be kind to get in a habit of giving some money to the group of salesmen he'd come from. Don't reckon I'll do that, but I guess it couldn't hurt to have a look-see at what's in here."

"O, read us some!" the animal pals exclaimed. And so, old Mr. Turtle flipped open to one of the beginning pages.br>
Mr. Turtle read the story which told of the main character -- apparently a lord of some sort, making a garden and creating all the animals in it, one kind at a time (Dr. Turtledove commented "that's just silly, hasn't he ever heard of natural selection?", but was hushed by the others wanting to hear the story.)

And so on he read. There was some odd bit about this 'lord' intentionally putting a bad tree in the garden, and then one of its animal creations, a snake, getting the humans in the garden to eat some of its fruit. A bunch more stories were all centered on humans and their usual boring human troubles.

But then Mr. Turtle read: "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." He looked up just a bit as some of the animal pals gasped; then back down to the text. This lord made a flood, he read, and then: "Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth."

The animal pals sat, stunned-- until finally one of Mr. Goat's kids piped up: "What-- what did the animals do to this 'lord' of the humans that made him want to drown everybody?"

Mr. Turtle flipped back and forth through the pages for some moments before intoning, with a sad shake of his head, "nothing. They did nothing wrong at all."

"Well," shrugged Mr. Pigeon with a nervous laugh, "at least he had somebody save a few of every kind, right?" The other animals glared at the comment, so Mr. Pigeon tried to change the subject, asking "So, uh, what happens after this flood?"

Mr. Turtle returned to the book. "Well let's see. Genesis eight: Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he--" Mr. Turtle stopped and blinked hard at the text for a moment, "he sacrificed burnt offerings on it."

"Wait a minute, now" Mrs. Turtledove interrupted, "so out of all the animals he murders, this 'lord' has but a tiny number saved-- and then he lets some of those get killed as well? As a-- as a sacrifice? That's insane!!"

"Yes, the very definition of it. Quite disgusting," Dr. Turtledove agreed.

Mr. Turtle read on, "The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma--"

"What?!?!" cried out several of the animal pals -- "this 'lord' finds the smell of our burning flesh 'pleasing'?"

Mr. Turtle harumphed in agreement with their disgust, and flipped ahead a few pages. "Indeed. Let me see if I can find something less horrific." He began reading from a random page: "And the Lord said to Abraham, 'Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.'" The other animal pals looked on warily. This didn't sound like it would end well. "Abraham brought all these to him, cut them in two--"

Mr. Turtle stopped reading abruptly, while some of the animal pals looked positively ill. He flipped through the book further. "Let me see. Let me see. Oh no, no, more demanding of animal sacrifices." After a pause, "there's a story where this 'lord' tells this human, Abraham, to kill his own son-- the human's son-- but.... at the last moment sends a ram to be killed instead."

"It figures," muttered Colonel Ram, snorting at the insult.

Mr. Turtle flipped on some more, coming to more and more similar instructions of this lord. At one point he read out: "And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers' skins."

"Hey, what the fuck!!" cried out Mr. Badger. "Oh, really," chimed in his wife.

There was more, much more, and it descended into deep horror. One story-- it wasn't even a story, really, just animal slaughter porn-- demanded a bull be slaughtered right in front of some religious meeting tent, that the bulls blood be smeared on things, and specific organs burnt, again so that the smell of the burning flesh would please this horrible lord's nostrils. Similar instructions were demanded of several rams, with the equally horrific instruction that its blood from its murder be smeared on the ears of certain favoured human children. And the stories went on, demanding the slaying of sheep and goats and various bird for the perverse pleasure of this human lord.

At last, everybody agreed, enough was enough. Mr. and Mrs. goat trotted over and tore and chewed the pages from the offending book. They spat and shoved the remnants of the vile thing into a deep hole dug by Mr. Badger, and after several of the animal pals relieved their bowels into the hole, they at last covered it over with dirt, never to be though about again.

And then the animal pals went back to their usual way, laughing and singing songs and telling stories.

THE END

Pandeism asks: How powerful is your Creator?

If you believe that ours is a created Universe, then there is only one question to ask.

Is the Creator in which you believe powerful enough to set forth the Universe as we experience it, in every particular while needing do nothing more than set forth the energy of this Universe and the governing dynamics which control the behavior of that energy?

Is it powerful enough to initiate a Universe where everything which we experience comes to pass -- stars, planets, the origin of life, the rise of complex ecosystems, the rise of intelligent life, machinery, technology, and social institutions -- by doing no more than causing the Creation?

Is it powerful enough to bring about our experience of our world without needing to interfere again, after the moment of Creation?

If the Creator in which you believe is not this powerful, then it is inferior to one which is.

Now, you may claim that it has such power, but that you believe it has continued to intervene....

But if it was powerful enough to bring about our Universe in every particular without intervening... that would include bringing about the appearance of intervention where there is none.

And you may claim to believe your Creator has told you otherwise....

But if it was powerful enough to bring about our Universe in every particular.... that would include bringing about your belief that you have been told things -- even when you have not.

And you may claim to believe your Creator would not mislead you....

But every faith has its own holy books and sacred traditions. And though these contradict and conflict with one another, most of their adherents share the conviction that theirs is the only truth, and that their Creator would not mislead them.

But if our Creator was powerful enough to bring about our Universe in every particular, without intervening in any way after the very moment of Creation.... that would include bringing about your belief, and everyone else's competing belief that you would not be mislead.

But then, there is the Creator discerned by the theological theory of Pandeism....

The pandeistic Creator is not only powerful enough to bring about our Universe in every particular --including the existence of intelligent life and all of our beliefs and traditions--through nothing more than a singular transformative moment of Creation....

It has actually done this!!

And this accounts for our Universe in every particular, including all beliefs to the contrary.

Naturally, you may yet deny that this theological model fully accounts for every aspect of our Universe....

You need only confess that your God lacks the power to set forth our Universe in such a manner.

Answers in Pandeism: 'Converting' to Pandeism

I was asked not long ago by a person of a different faith:

If I convert, what is some advice for beginning the conversion from [insert religion here] to Pandeism?

"Conversion" here is, I think, an imprecise word. From the perspective of one vested in religious terminology, it is easy to think in terms of "converting" from Christianity to Judaism, from Islam to Hinduism, even from some theistic belief to 'Fundamentalist' Atheism (the absolute certitude that there can be no metaphysical characteristic of our Universe). And indeed, there is some amusement inherent in the constant efforts of certain die-hard Catholics and Protestants (even Mormons) to "convert" each other to "Christianity."

But Pandeism, based as it is on probabalistic logic, is inherently a more agnostic point of view. It is the view not that this is how things are, but that this is the most probable state of theological affairs, based on the determination of what is absolutely necessary, the elimination of what is impossible, and the assignment of comparative levels of probability to everything which remains. One becomes a Christian or a Muslim by declaring certainty in its doctrines and forsaking the possibility of their falsity or errancy. One does not become a Christian by announcing the belief that "maybe it is possible that Jesus could have been resurrected"; one does not join Islam by determining that "the possibilities that Mohammad was or was not a prophet are in equipoise." To become a Pandeist is thusly more like choosing to become a critical thinker, a demander of proof and of the weighing of probabilities (and not only proof for propositions such as "there is a god" but for counterpropositions such as "there are no gods" or even "there can not be any gods").

Note as well that the pandeistic position is one which has independently been arrived at, at several historical times and places, by people who had never heard of each other's work, and even used completely different terminology to describe what is, on examination, the exact same concept. This is, then, a fundamentally universal theological model, able to be discerned by anybody who possesses the right combination of analytical ability, intellectual openmindedness, and general scientific knowledge. Contrarily, no person has ever come to discern any doctrine of any revelational faith without first being told of that faith by somebody else. Nobody ever decided (so far as has been reliably recorded) to become a Christian or a Muslim or a Mormon without first being told about it by somebody who already knew of (and probably adhered to) that faith. But, as few Pandeists as there have been, they have been as like as not to figure it out for themselves solely by strict examination of the characteristics of the world around them. (And indeed, more than one person I've met had arrived at the conception, and were pleasantly surprised to find that it has a formal name -- and a community of adherents!!)

Remember that Pandeism arises from the application of logic and reason, and sharply applies the principle of parsimony (which is, the belief that where an event may be accounted for by explanation with fewer assumptions, then there is no basis to accept any additional assumptions). There is without doubt some challenge for one who takes Pandeism seriously, and to its logical conclusion; for once we recognize that all things are part of our Creator, and all experiences are shared with our Creator, we must act in accord with that belief. Now, if you wish to start down this path, there is some bit of reading I would recommend:

* The God Theory and The Purpose-Driven Universe by Bernard Haisch
* Rationalist Spirituality by Bernardo Kastrup
* The God Franchise by Alan Dawe
* The Mind of God by Paul Davies
* The Pandeist Theorem (in A Theorem Concerning God) by Robert G. Brown
* God's Debris by Scott Adams
* Our Goal Is God: A Guide to Spiritual Awakening by H. Thomas Miller

One thing you might observe about these authors is that many of them have Ph.D.'s in physics or astrophysics or other 'hard science' fields. These are not lightweight thinkers, nor are they people easily inclined to accept an explanation on somebody else's sayso. Another, perhaps more obvious point is that almost all of these titles refer to 'God,' a term beset with the baggage of theisms past, unfortunately still often required to telegraph the ultimateness of the concepts to be conveyed. But there are gems of thought within these books which well-inform any seeker after truth!!

Pandeism vs Theism: The Unevangelised

Pandeism vs Theism: The Unevangelised -- an old vid but one making a singularly poignant point.

Pandeism Fully Accounts

I have posted this before, but it's so far buried in past posts that I thought I'd simply bring it to the fore once again....

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.)

Answers in Pandeism: Part IV: Looking Back to Christian Deism

As I have mentioned in past posts, a while back I received this email:

Hello,

I am a 17 year-old that has been thinking about becoming a Pandeist for the past few days. Currently, I am a Christian and come from a background of Christians. I have read a lot on Pandeism recently and have a basic understanding of it. I share a lot of similar beliefs, but I just have a few questions:

Do you acknowledge the existence of Jesus?

Do you pray?

What do you do as a Pandeist? Do you congregate (as in a church or synagogue)?

If I change to Pandeism, how should I approach my parents about not being a Christian anymore?

If I convert, what is some advice for beginning the conversion from Christianity to Pandeism?

I have answered some of these questions here before, and today I address this one:

If I change to Pandeism, how should I approach my parents about not being a Christian anymore?

Now that is indeed an interesting question. One thing about Pandeism, it recognizes that we each inhabit our own lives, and so each of us knows ourselves (or is capable of knowing ourselves) better than any person outside ourself can. That is indeed one of the very points of our existence, that we each generate our own unique set of experiences, which we (being a part of our Creator) contribute to the whole of the experience of our Universe. You know your parents, possibly better than anybody else in the world; how will they react to one approach or another? What purpose is served by 'approaching' them at all? And indeed in some sense the question ought to be, if Pandeism presents a more logical and reasonable approach, how can Iteach my parents about my understanding of Pandeism? How can I bring them around to understanding the logic of the position (even if they are perhaps unable to break faith with the psychologically comforting beliefs of their ancestors).

And as to the question of not being a Christian anymore -- well, is that so? Who decides that? I know some who consider themselves Christian Pandeists on the strength of their faith in the correctness of the peace and love and tolerance taught by Jesus, and not at all in mythic aspects such as the virgin birth, or the resurrection tale, or of casting body-possessing evil spirits into pigs. This descends, indeed, quite directly from Christian Deism, a tradition which long ago embraced the values and non-mystical teachings of Jesus. An example, possibly the most famous, wasThomas Jefferson, an avowed Deist who spoke of 'nature's God,' and produced for himself the "Jefferson Bible" -- a Bible from which Jefferson had cut out all reference to revelations and miracles, aspects which he rationally deemed to be later human inventions or incorporations designed only to deify one man, instead of elucidating all men.

No contradiction, no paradox, extends from adopting certain of the values and ideals claimed to have been espoused by Jesus, and yet believing in a deistic theological model. Let us examine this. One of the earliest mentions of Christian Deism dates from 1737, where one Thomas Morgan wrote:

For God, according to these Philosophers, makes and governs a natural World that is capable of governing itself, and that might have made itself as well, had they not pass'd a needless and insignificant Compliment upon, the Creator. But I hope they will mend their Scheme, and compound this Matter for their own Honour, and not pretend to fay, that God has made a necessary World, or a self-existent System of Creatures. Yet this is the philosophical Scheme of Atheism, which its Patrons would fain call Deism, and in which the Christian Jews or Jewish Christians assist them, by joining inadvertently in the fame Cry. But if this be not a fine Scheme of Philosophy, let Christian Deism stand for an odd Sort of Religion, and let the Christian Jews be for ever orthodox, and be allow'd as the only religious Men in the World. It is certain, that if God governs moral Agents at all, he must; govern them by Hope and Fear, or by such a wise and suitable Application of Rewards and Punishments, as the different Circumstances of Persons, and the Ends of Government require. And these Rewards and Punishments must be such as are not the natural, necessary Consequences of the Actions themselves, themselves, since every one must see that this would be no Government at all, and that the Case, in this Respect, must be the very same whether we suppose any rectoral Justice, or any Presence or Operation of God in the World or not. And yet this which is really no Government at all, is all the general Providence which some seem willing to allow. But since those Gentlemen are all deep Philosophers, and above the gross Ignorance of the common Herd, I would here only ask them, What are the Laws of Nature ? What is the Law of Gravity, the Law of communicating Motion from one Body to another by Impulse, and the Law of the Vis -Inertia of Bodies ? Are these natural, essential and inherent Properties of the Bodies themselves, or are they the regular Effects of some universal, extrinsick Cause acting incessantly upon the whole material System, by such and such general Laws and Conditions of Agency?

The moral philosopher: in a dialogue between Philalethes, a Christian deist and Theophanes a Christian Jew. By Thomas Morgan, 189-190, 1737

And then a bare two years later, one John Leland wrote:

This may give the Reader some Notion of this Writer's Candour and Sincerity, and what we are to think of his pretended Regard for Christianity, which in Effect amounts to this: That the Christianity revealed in the Writings of the New Testament is Jewish Christianity; that is, Christianity corrupted and adulterated with Judaism, which according to him is the worst Religion in the World. But the true and genuine Christianity is Christian Deism, to be learned not from the Writings of the New Testament, but from the Volume of Nature, from every Man's own Breast, from the Heavens, the Earth, and especially the Brute Creatures,the genuine uncorrupted Instructors in our Author's Christianity. So that the "Gentlemen that assume to themselves the Title of Deists, seem resolved that for the future they only shall be called the true Christians too. Those that look upon the New Testament to be divinely inspired, and receive it as the Rule of their Faith, and take their Religion from thence, must be called Christian Jews, who only put a strange Mixture of inconsistent Religions upon the World for Christianity : whereas these Christian Deists teach it in its Purity, and in order to propagate pure uncorrupted Christianity they do their utmost to discard.the Writings of the New Testament, that Is, the Writings that give us aft Account of the Doctrines taught by Christ and his Apostles, But since these Gentlemen will not allow; us the honourable Title of Christians, it is but fair that they should leave us that of Free-Thinkers, to which I really think the Advocates for the Gospel Revelation have a much juster Pretension than they.

The divine authority of the Old and New Testament asserted. By John Leland, viii-ix, 1739

Now, firstly I do not mean to at all impugn Judaism by quoting accounts which suggest it to have 'corrupted' Christianity, for really any theistic influence is bound to be just as corrupting of efforts to achieve truth through reason. Consider Buddhism -- the founder of that faith, the Buddha, denied being at all 'divine' and dismissed the idea of the existence of divine beings who were any more in control of their ultimate reality than man. He would have absolutely laughed at the objectively ridiculous idea that bowing to a statue of himself would be thought to bring about luck for people living many centuries later -- and yet this is modernly precisely what many Buddhists do, venerating the man at the expense of the message, and attributing miracles tointervention resulting from prayers to the Buddha. (And, as I have discussed elsewhere, Pandeism accounts for the experience of efficacious prayer.) And it may seem strange as well to those inculcated with theistic traditions to speak of Deism as an 'uncorrupted' Christianity, but some fundamental ideas remain -- the idea that what we do unto our neighbours, even unto 'the least of' our neighbours, we do to our Creator; not that doing bad to our neighbours is simply condemned, but that we are actually doing it to our Creator, that our Creator is physically and emotionally experiencing through us all we do, and all that is done to us.

And so Pandeism leaves room for reverence for a human Jesus, even for Jesus as a sort of naturally occurring divine figure, akin to the Buddha as a mystically gifted product of the rational processes of a rational Universe. And really, it is this view in which Pandeism places a higher veneration on men like Socrates and Jesus, Mencius and the Buddha, and more modern men of holy bearing, such as Gandhi. For it is no great boon to deem a man to be 'God' -- for Pandeism, through logic and reason, explains that all man and all things are equally part of our Creator. It is the knowing of this, and the consequent understanding that we must love and respect each other as the pieces of our Creator we are, which is the most remarkable achievement attainable.

So, taking this back to the original question, are you telling your parents that you are "not being a Christian anymore," or are you telling them that you're simply no longer the kind of Christian who venerates the mythic aspects of ancient books over their metaphorical import? And, to bring this back to one additional level of depth of thought, since Pandeism teaches that we ought to strive to minimize negative experiences in the world (so far as we have control over them) and maximize positive experiences (all such experiences after all being the experiences of our Creator as well), if such a declaration will lead to grief and conflict, why must you tell anybody especially what reason dictates to be your inner beliefs?