Quote:
Originally Posted by c.dric  do you mean there is no fundamental clash between theism & pantheism ??
based on the definitions i've read, they have absolutely nothing in common except for one little word : god. |
I would say that, and I would even say that there is no fundamental clash between moderate theism and atheism. Obviously, the fundamentalists believe in an entirely different kind of God, but your average intelligent theist's view of God is so abstract that it can very well be described by the Pantheistic model.
If you can't see the similarities, I guess there are two options. Either you simply don't understand what God is to theists, or I haven't described Pantheism well enough. For me, it's pretty clear that it's not the
word God that we have in common, but the
idea, and that is a very fundamental similarity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by c.dric what do you think of dawkins' view that pantheism is just sexed-up atheism ? |
It's arrogant, like most of the stuff that comes from him. He could just as well have said that Buddhism and Hinduism are sexed-up atheism, and even Judaism that certainly does not talk about God in the sense that he understands it (though I doubt he has actually done much research on the subject). Actually, even the original Christians were called Atheists at the time, because they didn't believe in any tangible 'gods' (remember, the gods people believed in at the time had human forms and personalities) but rather in a single force guiding the universe. Aristotle was called an Atheist, but he firmly believed in an 'unmoved mover'.
It all comes up to definitions at this point. Atheism is defined as
"The belief that God does not exist."
That is a very vague definition, since the word God is too abstract to be easily defined. It's nearly impossible to even discuss the existence of something like God (on a similar note, does the Mandelbrot set exist? Does consciousness exist? ). From his speeches and books, it seems to me like Dawkins pretty much goes with the fundamentalist view of God, that He is some sort of an invisible friend in the sky. Defined thus, he is right in saying that the Pantheists have the same view.
So, you could twist words around and call Pantheism 'sexed-up atheism', but I could just as well call Atheism 'dumbed-down pantheism', but I am not going to, because then I would be playing the same game as Dawkins.