siti
Well-Known Member
Please note this is not a call out, but in another thread, quite a few people have objected to my definition of a certain - let me call it - way of thinking. I suspect that this objection is partly because the perception is that I have an opposing religious view. I'm not sure that I do and to be perfectly honest, I have no clear idea how I would define, categorize or label my religious 'viewpoint'. Certainly I have no religion - I don't go to any church, synagogue, temple or mosque - I don't have any religious affiliations at all. But my views are probably religious in nature in some sense. Here's what I think about the world/reality/God...
1. We are all connected - not only to each other but to every other living thing on planet earth and to all the billions of stars etc. 'out there'
2. That connection is probably mediated by a common, shared thread of ubiquitous "connectedness" that I call experience - this is a form of panpsychism - but I prefer to call it panexperietialism
3. It is entirely possible as far as I can see that the emergence of holistic organic experiential (and perhaps conscious) wholes could occur above the level of the individual organism (like a human being for example) and may happen at the levels of communities, biomes...and onward and upward to the level of an entire universe.
4. I have no objection to calling the possible emergent creative 'experientiality' (that may or may not be 'conscious' in the normally understood sense) of the entire universe "God"
5. None of this conflicts with science - evolution is a routinely observed fact of nature - which means - if the whole of the universe is sufficiently 'god-like' to qualify for the title 'God' then God also evolves
Most of the above is a consistent with process philosophy but it is expressly not 'theism' - it is 'non-theistic' IMO because 'God' whilst possible is neither necessary nor necessarily one nor necessarily the 'creator' nor any of the omnis in any of the usual senses of any of 'theistic' religions.
It might be 'deistic' in the sense that I expressly deny God any powers beyond or above nature. It may be 'panthe-istic' in the sense that God may (but I don't suppose it has to be) 'all' of the universe. It is probably naturalistic because although I may be stretching the boundaries of what I am saying beyond what naturalistic science knows, it is not beyond what is reasonably inferrable from what we know. And if it were not for the fact that I have no issue with using the word 'God' - it might even be atheistic, because I would then just be talking about the apparently inherent creative propensity of the natural universe.
How do you 'define' or 'label' that?
1. We are all connected - not only to each other but to every other living thing on planet earth and to all the billions of stars etc. 'out there'
2. That connection is probably mediated by a common, shared thread of ubiquitous "connectedness" that I call experience - this is a form of panpsychism - but I prefer to call it panexperietialism
3. It is entirely possible as far as I can see that the emergence of holistic organic experiential (and perhaps conscious) wholes could occur above the level of the individual organism (like a human being for example) and may happen at the levels of communities, biomes...and onward and upward to the level of an entire universe.
4. I have no objection to calling the possible emergent creative 'experientiality' (that may or may not be 'conscious' in the normally understood sense) of the entire universe "God"
5. None of this conflicts with science - evolution is a routinely observed fact of nature - which means - if the whole of the universe is sufficiently 'god-like' to qualify for the title 'God' then God also evolves
Most of the above is a consistent with process philosophy but it is expressly not 'theism' - it is 'non-theistic' IMO because 'God' whilst possible is neither necessary nor necessarily one nor necessarily the 'creator' nor any of the omnis in any of the usual senses of any of 'theistic' religions.
It might be 'deistic' in the sense that I expressly deny God any powers beyond or above nature. It may be 'panthe-istic' in the sense that God may (but I don't suppose it has to be) 'all' of the universe. It is probably naturalistic because although I may be stretching the boundaries of what I am saying beyond what naturalistic science knows, it is not beyond what is reasonably inferrable from what we know. And if it were not for the fact that I have no issue with using the word 'God' - it might even be atheistic, because I would then just be talking about the apparently inherent creative propensity of the natural universe.
How do you 'define' or 'label' that?