Religion

"Par ailleurs, un certain panthéisme, ou plutôt « pandéisme », se dégage de son œuvre où l'inspiration néoplatonicienne complète parfaitement la stricte orthodoxie chrétienne."

"Pandeism is another belief that states that God is identical to the universe, but God no longer exists in a way where He can be contacted; therefore, this theory can only be proven to exist by reason. Pandeism views the entire universe as being from God and now the universe is the entirety of God, but the universe at some point in time will fold back into one single being which is God Himself that created all. Pandeism raises the question as to why would God create a universe and then abandon it? As this relates to pantheism, it raises the question of how did the universe come about what is its aim and purpose?"

"Yesterday's pan-deists, who worshiped trees and brooks, have become members of various environmental groups doing much the same thing. People like Al Gore, others, and perhaps the reforesting Obama, have become their latter day shamans."

"Dottrina, che pel suo idealismo poco circospetto, non solo la fede, ma la stessa ragione offende (il sistema di KANT) : farebbe mestieri far aperto gli errori pericolosi, cosi alla Religione, come alla Morale, di quel psicologo franzese, il quale ha sedotte le menti (COUSIN), con far osservare come la di lui filosofia intraprendente ed audace sforza le barriere della sacra Teologia, ponendo innanzi ad ogn' altra autorità la propria : profana i misteri , dichiarandoli in parte vacui di senso, ed in parte riducendoli a volgari allusioni, ed a prette metafore; costringe, come faceva osservare un dotto Critico, la rivelazione a cambiare il suo posto con quello del pensiero istintivo e dell' affermazione senza riflessione e colloca la ragione fuori della persona dell'uomo dichiarandolo un frammento di Dio, una spezie di pandeismo spirituale introducendo, assurdo per noi, ed al Supremo Ente ingiurioso, il quale reca onda grave alla libertà del medesimo, ec, ec."

"Se Deus é tudo isso, envolve tudo, a palavra andorinha, a palavra poço o a palavra amor, é que Deus é muito grande, enorme, infinito; é Deus realmente e o pandeismo de Nejar é uma das mais fortes ideias poéticas que nos têm chegado do mundo da Poesia. E o que não pode esperar desse poeta, desse criador poético, que em pouco menos de vinte anos, já chegou a essa grande iluminação poética?"

"The New Age movement includes elements of older spiritual and religious traditions ranging from atheism and monotheism through classical pantheism, naturalistic pantheism, pandeism and panentheism to polytheism combined with science and Gaia philosophy; particularly archaeoastronomy, astronomy, ecology, environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, psychology, and physics."

"The empu uses a typical pedanda ketu, "crown" which is tall and red, and a ball. Another man leads Pande ceremonies on the island. He represents a curious mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, and, if it can be called this, "Pandeism." Thirty or so years ago some of the Singaraja Pande leaders felt the need for proclaiming themselves to be something other than Hindu, since they considered their fundamental beliefs to be different enough from Hinduism to warrant making a distinction."

"Were the revolutionary Pandeist concepts of the Third Testament just a bunch of lies invented by a monster? Could the synergy between deism and pantheism championed by Damarus be truly mythical, as Ammold Paramo had advocated?"

"God is growth, God is structure/knowledge, God is everything and nothing simultaneously. And, rather heretically for the Abrahamic religions, to perceive i.e. to cognate i.e. to be of matter i.e. to be structured energy generating a gravimetric field is an aspect of God relating to another aspect of God through light, which is of course God. In this, the underlying metaphysics are most definitely Pandeist."

"[W]hatever the deity which satisfied Arnold's personal experience may have been, the religion which he gives us in Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible is neither Deism nor bare Pan-Deism, but a diluted Positivism. As an ethical system it is in theory admirable, but its positive value is in the highest degree questionable. Pascal's judgment upon the God who emerged from the philosophical investigations of Rene Descartes was that He was a God who was unnecessary. And one may with even greater truth say that the man who is able to receive and live by the religion which Arnold offers him is no longer in need of its help and stimulus. To be able to appreciate an a man must himself be already an ethical idealist."

"Against Bruno, Ratzinger is critical of what other commentators have described as his pandeism."

"Why does calling God the author of sin demand a pandeistic understanding of the universe effectively removing the reality of sin and moral law."

"All the actions of created intelligences are not merely the actions of God. He has created a universe of beings which are said to act freely and responsibly as the proximate causes of their own moral actions. When individuals do evil things it is not God the Creator and Preserver acting. If God was the proximate cause of every act it would make all events to be "God in motion". That is nothing less than pantheism, or more exactly, pandeism. [However, t]he Creator is distinct from his creation. The reality of secondary causes is what separates Christian theism from pandeism."

"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."

"A pandeist scientist or philosopher studying the Universe is not necessarily irrational, nor is he or she particularly distinguishable, from an atheist scientist or philosopher who loves the subject of his or her work."

"A deist who believes in God that is the Universe is a pandeist, and is not only compatible with the theorem, but is now affirmed in their conditional belief as being demonstrably proven as a theorem of information theory."

"Pure Vedantic Hinduism as described in particular in the Upanishads is monist and either pandeist or panendeist - Brahman is the Universe, we (as Atman or "God-souls") are a part of Brahman and Brahman itself, parts separated from the whole to be able to appreciate the whole and ever seeking to rejoin the whole and its perfect state of being as all things. Brahman in the Upanishads is not a being that is worshipped - they make it absolutely clear that Brahman is indifferent to worship and is not the object of worship."

"Let us now (at last) state the basic theorem: If God exists, then God is identical to the Universe. That is, the theorem is a statement of conditional pandeism. If God exists at all, God must be absolutely everything that exists."

"Vedantic Hinduism is organized monistic pandeism and acknowledges up front that its scriptures are myths and legends to be mined for parabolic insight, not "divinely inspired truth", and Buddhism isn't a religion, it is an essentially atheistic psychosocial philosophy that unfortunately incorporates some of the religious cosmology of Vedic Hinduism, in particular the notion of serial reincarnation, that is probably false."

"Pandeism, like deism, has no specific theistic creed or scripture that defines the belief as a system, so there is freedom so far to consider a God that is the sentient Universe, or a God that is the non-sentient Universe, or to further attempt to specify God by ascribing attributes that do not appear, at least, to contradict the necessary minimal set."

"Deism and pan-deism, as well as agnosticism and atheism, are all Non-Theisms."

":FREE THINKERS: all people whose beliefs regarding "spirits" are compatible with modern science. Deism, pan-deism, agnosticism and atheism are compatible; theism is not."

"The next [world-view] belief system might be like an umbrella that reaches out to cover atheism, deism, agnosticism, and pan-deism because the difference between those assorted beliefs pale in comparison to the importance of not tolerating the belief that some "mystical being" can alter cause and effect, thus interfering with the science and technology we need to replace this old civilization before it is too late."

"Belief in a single deity, however, is consistent with science and natural cause as long as that belief is in a First Cause that has not and does not, subsequently, alter or change natural order. Reader and Author alike have their own personal preferences, but what is important to the next world-view and way of thinking is accommodating to the still-widespread longing to believe in a "supreme being" while at the same time, not adopting anything which can disturb natural order and natural cause. The next belief system would need to be like an umbrella that reached out to cover atheism, deism, agnosticism, and pantheism (that is, pan-deism). Only in this way, now, can we bring humanity into the real age of scientific discovery, build a new civilization, and ultimately expand the human race far out into the universe beyond this cramped small planet in which we are now so confined."

"In the greatest poet of the older generation in France, Victor Hugo, a weak species of pantheistic deism asserts itself, in spite of his enthusiastic rationalism; we still trace in him the influence of the preceding century; religion is glorified at the expense of religions; love, which unites, at the expense of dogma, which separates and scatters."

"I first came upon this extension of ecumenism into pan-deism among some Roman Catholic scholars interested primarily in the "reunion of the churches," Roman, Orthodox, Anglican]]. [...] We may perhaps ask what is the ultimate aim of the Curia in promoting the pan-deist movement. [...] They do not necessarily discern in Rome's ecumenism and pan-deism a project for world dominion."

"One high school teacher once told me that Śankara said that God became the world. In the beginning there was God and then he created the world out of himself. So God became the world. And now there is no God. It is exactly like making idli out of rice. The rice is gone; only idli is there. Later, I repeated this as Śankara's philosophy to someone and he laughed so hard that I knew that there was some mistake in what I had said. But I didn't know what the mistake was and he didn't correct me either."

"Interestingly enough, during the Vatican Council there was criticism from WCC Circles of this Catholic willingness to extend the word and even the concept ecumenical to relations with non-Christian religions. It was felt that ecumenism was being contaminated by “pan-Deist” and syncretistic tendencies."

"If the Bible is only human lore, and not divine truth, then we have no real answer to those who say, "Let's pick the best out of all religions and blend it all into Pan-Deism - one world religion with one god made out of many"."

"Regarding Western Pantheism, some people feel that the word "pantheism" is misused. Since theology is the study of religion and and means "all," pantheism implies following all religions. The principal of following all named deities, then, would be called Pan-De-ism. So, pantheist or pandeist? You decide."

"Sin embargo, resulta sospechoso el modo que tiene el autor de unir la mitología griega con la cristiana, llegando a una especie de pandeísmo, que, por lo demás, siempre queda limitado por la presencia de esa divina Providencia."

"Today we are witnessing movements of all kinds toward union. In the commercial world we are seeing great mergers. In the economic world we are seeing whole nations uniting. In the labor world, the unions are waxing bigger and becoming more powerful. In the financial world there is evident an increasing monopoly. In the religious world there are great movements toward union and not only in the professedly Christian world. The church of Rome uses the term "pandeism", to describe her current program of bringing under her wing the non-Christian religions of the world. In this, Rome will finally succeed, because the prediction says, "all the world wondered after the beast". (Revelation 13:3)"

"Higgins claimed to reveal the existence of an ancient universal religion (he called it Pandeism), out of which all religious doctrines originated—a religion that yet survives as a secret, fragmented sect that carries its ancient messages in parts of Greece, the Middle East, and India, with its origins in the last."

"It will be seen that this fact of the Immutability of REALITY, when clearly conceived, must serve to confute and refute the erroneous theories of certain schools of Pantheism which hold that "God becomes the Universe by changing into the Universe." Thus it is sought to identify Nature with God, whereby, as Schopenhauer said, "you show God to the door." If God changes Himself into The Phenomenal Universe, then God is non-existent and we need not concern ourselves any more about Him, for he has committed suicide by Change."

"Pandeism is the belief that a god gave up their status as a god to become the universe, and is thus based on the ideals of deism."

"Darwin sometimes described himself as an agnostic, but his expressed religious beliefs are in general more in keeping with deism, or possibly with pandeism ."

"Where did these “designed laws” or “fixed laws”, as he calls them elsewhere, come from? Darwin made no secret of his belief that they were designed by “an omniscient Creator”. The phrase “whether good or bad” is significant and places Darwin in a position not very different from a believer in an impersonal God, who is amoral and uninvolved in the world. So, although Darwin may not have been conscious of deism as such, his own religious beliefs are a good match for deism, or possibly for pandeism (as discussed earlier in this chapter)."

"Straddling as he does deism and pantheism, Einstein could possibly be classified as a believer in pandeism, a label indicating a hybrid blend of pantheism with deism, which was well described by Raphael Lataster in 2013."

"Sometimes pantheists will use the term "pandeism" to underscore that they share with the deists the idea that God is not a personal God who desires to be worshipped."

"Abschnitt vorbereitender Natur in einem ersten Hauptteil von den psychisch-religiösen Welt-und Lebensanschauungen in ihrer historischen Entwickelung; der zweite Hauptteil bespricht die philosophisch-deistischen und theosophischen Anschauungen vom Pandeismus der alten Ägypter und Inder bis zu Leibnizens prästabilierter Harmonie und Herbarts Realen; der dritte und letzte endlich bringt die metaphysischen und physischen Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, sucht die Anfänge des Idealismus bei den Indern auf und verfolgt ihn bis Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ev Hartmann und Eucken, reiht an den Spinozismus den jüngsten Neuspinozismus und Neuidealismus an und gelangt schließlich über den Empirismus usw. und den Positivismus zur Aufzählung und Besprechung der eigentlich physischen An-schauungen im engeren Sinne (Materialismus, Atomistik, Energetische Anschauungen usw)."

"Hinduism is a diverse system of thought with beliefs spanning monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, pandeism, monism, and atheism among others; and its concept of God is complex and depends upon each individual and the tradition and philosophy followed."

"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."

"I suppose a Hindu could never persecute." "He never yet has done so; he is the most tolerant of all the races of men. Considering how profoundly religious he is, one might have thought that he would persecute those who believe in no God. The Jains regard such belief as sheer delusion, yet no Jain has ever been persecuted. In India the Mohammedans were the first who ever took the sword."

"Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future. Is God's book finished? Or is it still a continuous revelation going on? It is a marvellous book - these spiritual revelations of the world. The Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and all other sacred books are but so many pages, and an infinite number of pages remain yet to be unfolded. I would leave it open for all of them. We stand in the present, but open ourselves to the infinite future. We take in all that has been in the past, enjoy the light of the present, and open every window of the heart for all that will come in the future. Salutation to all the prophets of the past, to all the great ones of the present, and to all that are to come in the future!"

"Our watchword, then, will be acceptance, and not exclusion. Not only toleration, for so-called toleration is often blasphemy, and I do not believe in it. I believe in acceptance. Why should I tolerate? Toleration means that I think that you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live? I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship with them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the Mohammedan; I shall enter the Christian's church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhistic temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and in his Law. I shall go into the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the heart of every one."

"We 'tolerate' those we consider not good enough, but we do not extend our respect to them. 'Tolerance' implies control over those who do not conform to our norms by allowing them some, though not all, of the rights and privileges we enjoy. A religion which involves the worship of 'false gods' and whose adherents are referred to as 'heathens' can be tolerated, but it cannot be respected. Tolerance is a patronizing posture, whereas respect implies that we consider the other to be equally legitimate – a position which some religions routinely deny to others, instead declaring these 'others' to be 'idol worshippers' or 'infidels' and the like.... Tolerance, in short, is an outright insult; it is simply not good enough. pointed out that this notion of tolerance had emerged from religions built on exclusivist claims according to which other religions are false. Hence, tolerating them is the best one can do without undermining one's own claim to exclusivity. Religious 'tolerance' was advocated in Europe after centuries of religious wars between adherents of the different denominations of Christianity. In many European countries, Churches functioned as religious monopolies according to which the mere practice of the 'wrong' religion was a criminal offence. 'Tolerance' was a positive attempt to quell the violence that had plagued Christianity for centuries in Europe, but it did not provide a genuine basis for real unity and cooperation, and so it often broke down."

"If all enlightened men were, like us, to point out, in an impartial spirit, various defects found in different religions, it is not at all impossible that all quarrels should cease, that people should live together in peace all following one religion, and that truth should thus triumph."

"If your prophet was sexually insecure, or if his later interpreters were, that religion demanded celibacy or repression or even hatred of women; if the prophet was a homophobe, he preached persecution of homosexuals; and if he was both lecherous and greedy, he preached polygyny. If he was luxurious, he preached give-me-money-and-God-will-make-you-rich; if he felt put upon he preached God-of-Vengeance, let’s kill the other guy; and no matter how much well-meaning ecumenicists pretended all the gods were one god under different aspects, they weren’t any such thing, because every prophet created God in his own image, to confront his own nightmares."

"The historian is a reversed prophet."

"I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist."