Pantheism

Author: Andrei A. Buckareff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108457507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Book Description
This Element focuses on some core conceptual and ontological issues related to pantheistic conceptions of God by engaging with recent work in analytic philosophy of religion on this topic. The conceptual and ontological commitments of pantheism are contrasted with those of other conceptions of God. The concept of God assumed by pantheism is clarified and the question about what type of unity the universe must exhibit in order to be identical with God receives the most attention. It is argued that the sort of unity the universe must display is the sort of unity characteristic of conscious cognitive systems. Some alternative ontological frameworks for grounding such cognitive unity are considered. Further, the question of whether God can be understood as personal on pantheism is explored.

Pantheologies

Author: Mary-Jane Rubenstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548346
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Book Description
Pantheism is the idea that God and the world are identical—that the creator, sustainer, destroyer, and transformer of all things is the universe itself. From a monotheistic perspective, this notion is irremediably heretical since it suggests divinity might be material, mutable, and multiple. Since the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, Western thought has therefore demonized what it calls pantheism, accusing it of incoherence, absurdity, and—with striking regularity—monstrosity. In this book, Mary-Jane Rubenstein investigates this perennial repugnance through a conceptual genealogy of pantheisms. What makes pantheism “monstrous”—at once repellent and seductive—is that it scrambles the raced and gendered distinctions that Western philosophy and theology insist on drawing between activity and passivity, spirit and matter, animacy and inanimacy, and creator and created. By rejecting the fundamental difference between God and world, pantheism threatens all the other oppositions that stem from it: light versus darkness, male versus female, and humans versus every other organism. If the panic over pantheism has to do with a fear of crossed boundaries and demolished hierarchies, then the question becomes what a present-day pantheism might disrupt and what it might reconfigure. Cobbling together heterogeneous sources—medieval heresies, their pre- and anti-Socratic forebears, general relativity, quantum mechanics, nonlinear biologies, multiverse and indigenous cosmologies, ecofeminism, animal and vegetal studies, and new and old materialisms—Rubenstein assembles possible pluralist pantheisms. By mobilizing this monstrous mixture of unintentional God-worlds, Pantheologies gives an old heresy the chance to renew our thinking.

The Forever All: A Philosophical and Spiritual Guide, 2nd Ed

Author: Guyus Seralius
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1304943135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
In my pantheistic view, the entire universe is the Supreme Being, an infinite, purposeful system of positive and negative forces which has always existed and always will, and each of us is that eternal being of light and darkness. In this book, I discuss the importance of balance and how it is the heart of the All and the secret of life. I discuss the needed balance between the atheists and the theists, between the capitalists and the socialists, between the Democrats and the Republicans, and between the government and the governed. I also discuss how neither science nor religion, independent of the other, can adequately explain the world and how ultimate truth will only arise when the scientific thinkers join forces with the spiritual thinkers. I created this book as a philosophical and spiritual guide for all those seeking truth. Inside, you will find my views on pantheism, metaphysics, science, technology, politics, and religion, along with samples of my artwork. (30 illustrations included).

Spinoza's Pantheism

Author: Shahin Soltanian
Publisher: Kashfence Trust Publications
ISBN: 0473537346
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Book Description
Spinoza was a 17th century philosopher most famously known for his pantheistic view of God, nature and their relationship to the self. The book Spinoza’s Pantheism is a critical evaluation of the pantheistic theory proposed by Spinoza about God and reality. The author evaluates Spinoza’s pantheistic view of God as an infinite substance. A related theory to that of Spinoza known as unity of existence, developed by the 17th century Muslim philosopher Sadr Al-Din Mohammad Shirazi, is also critically analysed in the book. The author comes to the conclusion that neither version is philosophically tenable on the basis argued for by their respective proponents. Dr Shahin Soltanian is the founder of Kashfence Philosophy. He has a PhD from the University of Auckland in Philosophy.

Apologetics in the New Age

Author: David K. Clark
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1592447333
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
Many books have successfully defended Christianity against Western rational skepticism. 'Apologetics in the New Age' represents the first serious attempt by evangelical philosophers to answer Eastern pantheism in general and the New Age movement in particular. Teaming up with David Clark, Norman Geisler, one of evangelicalism's leading apologists, probes the pantheistic worldview and its relationship to the New Age movement. Pantheism, the authors write, constitutes the soil in which the movement grows. The notion that every person participates in the divine has found fertile expression in contemporary American culture. The American consciousness of the Eastern alternative has risen rapidly in the last few decades, the authors remind us. Christian apologists have been caught unaware.... For this reason, we believe that Christian apologists must turn their attention in a new direction by developing new arguments for this New Age.

Pantheism

Author: Michael P. Levine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134911572
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Book Description
Many people who do not believe in God believe that 'everything is God' - that everything is part of an all-inclusive divine unity. In Pantheism, this concept is presented as a legitimate position and its philosophical basis is examined. Michael Levine compares it to theism, and discusses the scope for resolving the problems inherent in theism through pantheism. He also considers the implications of pantheism in terms of practice. This book will appeal to those who study philosophy or theology. It will also be of interest to anyone who does not believe in a personal God, but does have faith in a higher unifying force, and is interested in the justification of this as a legitimate system of thought.

Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers

Author: John W. Cooper
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 0801027241
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
This landmark book--the first complete history of panentheism written in English--explores the subject through the lens of various thinkers and discusses how it has influenced liberation, feminist, and ecological theologies.

God

Author: Reza Aslan
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0553394738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The Earth, The Gods and The Soul - A History of Pagan Philosophy

Author: Brendan Myers
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1780993188
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
Philosophy was invented by pagans. Yet this fact is almost always ignored by those who write the history of ideas. This book tells the history of the pagan philosophers, and the various places where their ideas appeared, from ancient times to the 21st century. The Pagan philosophers are a surprisingly diverse group: from kings of great empires to exiled lonely wanderers, from devout religious teachers to con artists, drug addicts, and social radicals. Three traditions of thought emerge from their work: Pantheism, NeoPlatonism, and Humanism, corresponding to the immensities of the Earth, the Gods, and the Soul. From ancient schools like the Stoics and the Druids, to modern feminists and deep ecologists, the pagan philosophers examined these three immensities with systematic critical reason, and sometimes with poetry and mystical vision. This book tells their story for the first time in one volume, and invites you to examine the immensities with them. And as a special feature, the book includes summaries of the ideas of leading modern pagan intellectuals, in their own words: Emma Restall Orr, Michael York, John Michael Greer, Vivianne Crowley, and more ,

The Religious Function of the Psyche

Author: Lionel Corbett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113476247X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred in their lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G. Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit are dealt with by means of a religious approach to the psyche that can be brought easily into psychotherapeutic practice and applied by the individual in everyday life. The book offers an alternative approach to spirituality as well as providing an introduction to Jung and religion.