Pandeism

112 quotes found

"So what motivates God?" I asked. "Do you have the answer to that question, or are you just yanking my chain?" "I can conceive of only one challenge for an omnipotent being—the challenge of destroying himself." "You think God would want to commit suicide?" I asked. "I'm not saying he wants anything. I'm saying it's the only challenge." "I think God would prefer to exist than to not exist." "That's thinking like a human, not like a God. You have a fear of death so you assume God would share your preference. But God would have no fears. Existing would be a choice. And there would be no pain of death, nor feelings of guilt or remorse or loss. Those are human feelings, not God feelings. God could simply choose to discontinue existence." "There's a logical problem here, according to your way of thinking," I said. "If God knows the future, he already knows if he will choose to end his existence, and he knows if he will succeed at it, so there's no challenge there, either." "Your thinking is getting clearer," he said. "Yes, he will know the future of his own existence under normal conditions. But would his omnipotence include knowing what happens after he loses his omnipotence, or would his knowledge of the future end at that point?" "That sounds like a thoroughly unanswerable question. I think you've hit a dead end," I said. "Maybe. But consider this. A God who knew the answer to that question would indeed know everything and have everything. For that reason he would be unmotivated to do anything or create anything. There would be no purpose to act in any way whatsoever. But a God who had one nagging question—what happens if I cease to exist?—might be motivated to find the answer in order to complete his knowledge. And having no fear and no reason to continue existing, he might try it." "How would we know either way?" "We have the answer. It is our existence. The fact that we exist is proof that God is motivated to act in some way. And since only the challenge of self-destruction could interest an omnipotent God, it stands to reason that we . . ." I interrupted the old man in midsentence and stood straight up from the rocker. It felt as if a pulse of energy ran up my spine, compressing my lungs, electrifying my skin, bringing the hairs on the back of my neck to full alert. I moved closer to the fireplace, unable to absorb its heat. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" My brain was taking on too much knowledge. There was overflow and I needed to shake off the excess. The old man looked at nothing and said, "We are God's debris."

- Pandeism

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"Some of us think that postmodernity represents a similar change of dominant worldviews, one which could turn out to be just as singular as modernity by being a stunning amalgam of James and Weber. If we are correct, then the changed attitudes, assumptions, and values might work together to change ways of life which in turn transform our geographies of mind and being, that is, both the actual physical landscapes and the mental valuescapes we inhabit. One increasingly common outcome of this ongoing transformation, itself a symptom perhaps of post-industrial secular societies, is the movement away from self-denial toward a denial of the supernatural. This development promises to fundamentally alter future geographies of mind and being by shifting the locus of causality from an exalted Godhead to the domain of Nature. How this Nature is ultimately defined has broad repercussions for the, at times, artificial distinction between religious and secular worldviews. For Levine, “secularism is a positive, not a negative, condition, not a denial of the world of spirit and of religion, but an affirmation of the world we're living in now ... such a world is capable of bringing us to the condition of 'fullness' that religion has always promised.” For others, this “fullness” is present in more religious-oriented pantheistic or pandeistic belief systems with, in the latter case, the inclusion of God as the ever unfolding expression of a complex universe with an identifiable beginning but no teleological direction necessarily present."

- Pandeism

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"The Eastern view of morality springs from a fundamentally different view of reality. We in the West regard the universe as a creation of God; like an invention or a product. After he created the universe, God set himself to oversee it and manage it. We see God as our boss. He created the universe, he is present in it, he manages every part of it, but he is still separate from it. It's like he installed video cameras all over the universe, so he can see everything that happens, and he can cause this or that to happen, but he is not a part of what happens. The Eastern view is very different. To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is "The Great Unknown Outcome." Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, and God is really just playing around."

- Pandeism

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