My Epiphany

I just realized that there can only be two possibilities.

Life either arose from spirit, or it's an accident.

In other words, the only two choices are either pantheism or atheism.

Believers in an external godhead may argue that there is are other choices,... that some external God created us as its pets.

However, I just realized that even if that scenario is true, all they are really saying is that their God is pantheistic in its nature, and that they are just pets of this pantheistic being.

In other words, they just hold that their God always was and always will be.

Well that's just the pantheistic view being applied to their God.

So all they are ultimately saying is that their explanation of reality is that the true nature of God is ultimately explained by pantheism. And then they go on to claim that this pantheistic God went on to create is as lesser beings from itself.

So even if that's true, then the ultimate true nature of existence is pantheistic, since the God who runs the show is ultimately pantheistic in its true nature.

In other words, my epiphany is that all religions that claim to have external deities must ultimately collapse to become the pantheistic picture in the nature of their very deity.

So all deity-based religions are nothing more than complex subsets of the pantheistic view.

This leaves us with ultimately only two choices for reality.

1. Atheism - we have a non-spiritual essence - Life is all just some sort of accident.

2. Pantheism - we have a spiritual essence - Life arose from spirit.

I think I did well.

I got it down to just two possibilities.

I'm not saying that this is profound. I'm sure other people have already been aware of this.

I just found it rather profound for me. The sudden realization that all ideas of external-deities must ultimately reduce to pantheism. Their deities themselves would then have a pantheistic nature.

I should have realized this years ago.

Just to clearly,... I have always realized that it's redundant to demand that an external God exists as an explanation for reality, because then we would have no explanation for that God. And those people just kept saying, "But God always was and always will be!"

It never actually dawned on me that what they were really saying is, "But my Godhead is pantheistic!"

But that's truly what they are demanding. They are demanding the existence of a pantheistic Godhead to use to explain that our existence can't be pantheistic. It's a totally redundant argument. They need pantheism in order for their original Godhead(s) to exist.

So it's ever more redundant than I first realized. They aren't just proclaiming that they need a Godhead to explain reality, but in the same breath, they are demanding that the true nature of their Godhead is already pantheistic in its true nature.

It's redundancy beyond redundancy.

They need to demand the existence of a pantheistic deity in order to deny that our true nature is pantheistic.

It's totally circular. There can be nothing other than pantheism if there is any spiritual nature to reality at all.

All religions that claim to have godheads ultimately must reduce to pantheism in that this must be the true nature of their Godhead.

It's ultimately either pantheism or nothing.

Uh ohhhhh....

Kat

(((KAT))))

If life started from a spirit then where did the spirit come from ?.
If life started from and accident then where did the accident come from ?.An accident is created .
A spirit must be created to exist .
An accident must have factors created to happen.
As for those God believing ones it is obvious all people wish to know who created him .
Did we not start from zero again ?.

Well, another circle. And the circle goes round and round.
Kat

This really is an epiphany for me. Even though it's basically just a different way of looking at something that I've already known for years.

Here's the scoop,...

From now on when a Christian asks me to explain the pantheistic view I'm just going to say,....

Imagine the biblical God at the beginning of creation before that God actually started to create anything.

That deity is a pantheistic deity.

It always existed, it always will exist, and its totally spiritual in nature.

The biblical view of God is just a pantheistic view of an entity that then goes on to create a playground and pets.

So Christians already know what pantheism is, and they already accept it.

They just refuse to realize that we are all this pantheistic being. They demand that we are just its pets.

But ultimately they being with the very same idea!

They begin with the existence of a pantheistic deity.

So when they claim that pantheism is a cold or ugly idea. All they are doing is claiming that their basic idea of a Godhead is a cold or ugly idea because it's the same idea.

The only real difference is that they create God using pantheism first, and then they claim that their God created us as its pets that are somehow external to it and could ultimately be denied its presence.

They just begin with pantheism and then get really weird with it.

This is true.

I'm not saying which is true (atheism or pantheism)

I'm just saying that all deity-based religions ulimately reduce to pantheism.

That's all I'm saying.

~~~

In other words, to claim that there is a God that always was and always will be, is just saying that God is a pantheisic entity in its own right.

~~~

The problem is how this god came to exist . It does not matter if you look at him in one direction or another . Once the issue of a god or gods is not resolved it makes it impossible to understand how life started .

But that's not the point.

I'm not claiming to have explained how life got started.

I'm just saying that it's silly for people to demand that an external godhead is the answer whilst they simultaneously claim to deny pantheism as being unreasonable or 'weird'.

Because ultimately they must rely on the pantheistic picture as being the true nature of their deity.

In other words, deity-based religions are necessarily a subset of pantheism. They are just special cases of pantheism where the pantheistic godheads then go on to create lesser beings as pets.

For these people to claim that pantheism "makes no sense", or is in any way "weird" is absurd, because they are ultimately demanding that their Godheads are pantheistic beings whether they like it or not.

In other words THIS IS WHAT PANTHEISM IS!

If a religion begins with a God that always was and always will be. Then stop right there!

Before it has even begun to create anything, you've already just described a PANTHEISTIC entity!

All religions that contain a godhead must necessarily begin with pantheism.

That's all I'm saying.

Pantheism is a GIVEN whether you belive in a godhead or not.

That's the epiphany!

I don't know Sam, and I don't claim to be answering that question.

I'm just saying that this is the same as pantheism.

The spirit always is.

It's no different.

Religious people who claim they don't "like" the pantheistic picture, but for some reason they like the idea of a Godhead don't seem to realize that the Godhead itself would be a pantheistic entity.

That's my only point.

People who believe in deities can't deny pantheism. They must recognize that their belief in a deity is just a subset of pantheism.

Their views require a pantheistic deity before they can even begin to move forward.

They can't deny pantheism. They require it just to get started.

All a deity-based picture is saying is that first there is a pantheistic deity (call it God), and then that pantheistic deity creates us as its pets.

But they ultimately began with pantheism and then just go on to make it more complicated.

So, I may be a "naturalistic pantheist"?

This overwhelming presence is everywhere inside you and outside you and you can never be separated from it. I call it God.

Whatever else is taken from you, this can never be taken from you.

Wherever you are, it's there with you.

Wherever you go, it goes with you.

Whatever happens to you, it remains with you.

We are part of nature. Nature made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed into nature. We are at home in nature and in our bodies. This is where we belong. This is the only place where we can find and make our paradise, not in some imaginary world on the other side of the grave. If nature is paradise, then separation from nature is the only hell. When we destroy nature, we create hell on earth for other species and for ourselves.

See....that is why I ask that there be green grass and flowers and animals in my heaven.

Nature is our home, our security, our peace, our past and our future.
We should treat natural things and animal habitats as believers treat their churches and shrines, as sacred - to be saved as it's natural beauty.

My God made these things and wishes they be left as they are. For our fulfillment and their longevity.
Kat

That's how I like to think of life.

Well damn Abra. We are more alike than I thought. Not really. I already knew your heart. I am a naturalist all the way. I love mother earth and all her bounty and life.

Kat

where is the epiphany, my distant friend?

you have been saying that for as long as I have known you.

I am glad that you are rejoicing though!

peace.

Happiness all around. On me.
Kat

I had an epiphanic experience reading your epiphany James.

I still don't need to strip down to labels, that which sits well within me.

Nor do I need to justify to myself, nor others, that which is RIGHT for me.

I really liked yours too.

Chap. 1. God, Creator of All Things

1782 [The one, living, and true God and His distinction from all things.] * The holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one, true, living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, omnipotent, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will, and in every perfection; who, although He is one, singular, altogether simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, must be proclaimed distinct in reality and essence from the world; most blessed in Himself and of Himself, and ineffably most high above all things which are or can be conceived outside Himself [can. 1-4].

1783 [ The act of creation in itself, and in opposition to modern errors, and the effect of creation] . This sole true God by His goodness and "omnipotent power," not to increase His own beatitude, and not to add to, but to manifest His perfection by the blessings which He bestows on creatures, with most free volition, "immediately from the beginning of time fashioned each creature out of nothing, spiritual and corporeal, namely angelic and mundane; and then the human creation, common as it were, composed of both spirit and body" [Lateran Council IV, see n. 428; can. 2 and 5]

1784 [The result of creation] .But God protects and governs by His providence all things which He created, "reaching from end to end mightily and ordering all things sweetly" [cf. Wisd. 8:1]. For "all things are naked and open to His eyes" [ Heb. 4:13], even those which by the free action of creatures are in the future.

by Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger (1819 - 1883)

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In the next place, as against Pantheism, the council (cap. i, De Deo) teaches that God, "since He is one singular, altogether simple and incommutable spiritual substance, must be proclaimed to be really and essentially [re et essentia) distinct from the world most happy in and by Himself, and ineffably above and beyond all things, actual or possible, besides Himself" (Denzinger, 1782-old no. 1631); and in the corresponding canons (ii-iv, De Deo) anathema is pronounced against anyone who would say "that nothing exists but matter"; or "that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same"; or "that finite things both corporeal and spiritual, or at least spiritual, have emanated from the Divine substance; or that the Divine essence by a manifestation or evolution of itself becomes all things; or that God is universal or indefinite being, which by determining itself constitutes the universe of things distinguished into genera, species and individuals" (Denzinger, 1802-4; old no. 1648).

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm

I've been claiming all along that pantheism seems like the most logical choice to me. And that the biblical stories contradict the personality that they claim their deity has.

However, for me the 'epiphany' is the recognition that any deity that is claimed to already exist is automatically the pantheistic view in an of itself.

In other words, it makes no sense for a believer in a deity-based religion to denounce the pantheistic view, because they are already using it.

To say that one more time,...

If a person who claims to believe in a deity-based religion tells me that they don't understand the pantheistic view, I know now how to explain it to them,...

Just ask them to imagine their "God" before it actually starts to create anything and there you have a pantheistic deity.

That's pantheism. What the pantheistic deity does after that, it is basically irrelevant.

If they want to have it creating pets and claiming that we are its pets then so be it. They still had to start with a pantheistic being in the first place.

They can no longer claim that they don't understand pantheism or say that it makes no sense to them, because they are ultimately starting their religion with a pantheistic being in the first place.

That's the epiphany.

The following is a quote of Morningsong, a born again Christian.
It seems to me she describes the pantheist nature of god in this statement.





I understand the meaning of "praising god." It is in inner joy of being.