The Semantic Dance Of Pantheism
John Love-Jensen

From: “Love-Jensen, John”
To: “’Positive Atheism’”
Subject: RE: Positive Atheism, Cliff’s Writings — Which 10 Commandments.
Date: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 2:18 PM

Dear Cliff Walker,

I hope you enjoyed Solon’s 10 Commandments. :-)
 

Any form of atheism has more similarities with any form of pantheism than either have with any other form of theism, with the possible exception of Deism — but even Deism is a far cry from atheism or pantheism.

On my soon-to-be-put-up webpage, I try to distinguish between theism (belief in one or more gods) from [for lack of a better term] “Deus-ism” (belief in a supreme being deity / deities).

Specific forms of theism: monotheism (which refutes the existance of other gods), ditheism, tritheism, henotheism, polytheism.

Monotheism is a lot like panatheism (strong atheism), except that panatheism doesn’t make an exception for the last god.

One of my favorite quotes...

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“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
     — Stephen F. Roberts

  

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From: “Positive Atheism”
To: “Love-Jensen, John”
Subject: Re: Positive Atheism, Cliff’s Writings — Which 10 Commandments.
Date: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 5:48 PM

Would you help me on the Pantheism section in our FAQ?
 

Well, theism generally means belief in one or more gods. Some Christians tend to differentiate between Theism (belief in a personal god) and Deism (belief in an impersonal god). I forgot the cute little book put out by Inter Varsity Press in the late 1970s that made these distinctions.

I agree that we ought to distinguish between the notion of a supreme deity and the notion of deities who are subject either to the elements or to other deities (or are co-equal, etc.). However, it may be easier simply to describe these differences rather than trying to train the English-speaking cultures to redefine these terms.
 

Where did this come from? I’ve heard it for years, and would like to verify that Roberts originated it (or at least was the first to publish it). I know that at least the idea has been floating around for a while.
 

This is where I would urge caution in coining Deus-ism: Precisely how is it not a Deus-ism? I mean, if the universe (or Stenger’s super-universe, of which this universe is but a bubble) is “god,” then how is this “god” not supreme? Your “god” is all and all, and thus is supreme — or am I missing something?
 

To say “unsubstantiated” is to solve the argument before the argument starts. I satisfy myself by simply saying “claims.”
 

Johan Grahn suggested to me that “strong” or dogmatic atheism is impossible because of the Burden of Proof. We have since beefed up the language we use in our criticism of the “strong” position.

Panatheism? Again, the problem with coining terms is that you end up having to explain yourself anyway. Why not simply explain the situation in the first place?
 

So sorry! I’ll go back and change it in the previous sections of this letter.

Meanwhile, this question has been in our FAQ for almost a year. Note also that as far as I can tell, this question is original with me (I have studied language and semantics to enhance my writing skills). Someone else may have thought of it before me, but I have not encountered that quote.
 

Okay, then my question remains a semantic one: why confuse the issue by using a term (“god”) that conveys, to most people, something completely different from what you mean? In other words, why do you need a term to describe this sense? Why not simply describe it as you have done here, and avoid using a unique and unfamiliar definition for the word?

At the risk of offending, I’ll ask: Could it be that you seek to start a religion or to further a religion that has already existed? In other words, is there a connection between your use of the word “god” and a possible desire to practice religion?

Meanwhile, I have a similar sense of awe and wonder and respect. The most profound writing I’ve read in a long time was the first chapter to Richard Dawkins’s “Unweaving the Rainbow.” His views of time and the unlikelihood of even existing coincide with my thoughts and ponderings that I had as a child of about ten. In fact, this view is so “awe-some” that to think in terms of a “god” or “God” is, to me, almost tantamount to blasphemy.
 

Your concept of pantheism may fit snugly within the range of the “strong” definition of atheism, but I think “strong” or dogmatic atheism encompasses many more outlooks.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to think about panatheism for a while.
 

I don’t understand what you are saying, here.
 

If mine sound unfriendly, it’s my “down-to-business” side showing through. My approach is always from a sense of wonder and respect for the art of discussion. I am awed by the fact that we (sometimes) can actually communicate complex ideas to one another — and occasionally change one another’s minds.

Occasionally, I am being unfriendly, in a way, but only when my opponent in the discussion is lying or playing some other game of dishonesty. Then, my frustration comes through and I get a little hard-nosed. I do this deliberately in such cases because this is how I would come off in conversation with such a person. Most of these opponents have been Evangelical or fundamentalist Christians, but a few of them have been dogmatic agnostics (how’s that for an oxymoronic concept?).
 

I strongly advocate being sure of the terminology and also the game rules for the discussion. When I ask a question, it is usually to gain further insight into what the person is saying.

Cliff Walker
“Positive Atheism” Magazine

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From: “Positive Atheism”
To: “Love-Jensen, John”
Subject: Re: Positive Atheism, Cliff’s Writings — Which 10 Commandments.
Date: Friday, July 21, 2000 2:11 AM

No insurmountable schism exists as long as we both agree that humans have what they see as perfectly valid reasons for believing the way they do. This is the crux of my approach to anybody’s religious beliefs.

However, I’d go so far as to say that we’re less than a gnat’s ass apart in the cosmology sections our core philosophies. I merely ask why you insist on your use of this one word: “god.” I will continue to probe, simply because I want to exhaust all the questions I have about this matter while you are still willing to talk about it.

Though I offer some suggestions later in this letter, these are merely rhetorical; I do not seek to change you, I merely wish to probe possibilities. I sorely wish to see some specific language developed to describe what you call scientific pantheism, but I wish to replace the religious terminology with language that more people can accept.
 

This is precisely why so many Christian apologists who write to us immediately (and without even looking) launch their tirades against us — as if we held the “strong” position.

Meanwhile, I hold the “weak” position precisely because it is virtually unassailable. While I would never root for a sports team that is the guaranteed winner, but I will go with a philosophical outlook that I think is most likely to withstand scrutiny. This, I think, is the nature of the quest for truth.
 

First, I recommend getting the Microsoft Encarta dictionary set and loading the CD-ROM onto your hard drive. Then, if you suspect someone will have to look up a word such as alethiology you will be able to see that it returns an error in Encarta and you’ll need to simply explain what you’re talking about. (Ahem!)

Secondly, the dogmatic agnostics I’m thinking of take Robert Anton Wilson way too seriously — more seriously than Wilson takes himself! I know this from having met Wilson on three occasions: some of what he’s doing is pure satire.

What the dogmatic agnostics are doing is fighting dogmatism, so they portray all traditional religion as dogmatic and all Randi-type skepticism as dogmatic. They then raise questions based upon anecdotal accounts of seemingly supernatural and just-plain-weird occurrences and say, “See? Can you explain that?”

Unfortunately for this position, very few theists are as dogmatic as these agnostics portray them, and hardly any atheists are as dogmatic as the agnostics claim.

Likewise unfortunate for this position, the “weak” atheistic position eliminates agnosticism as a “middle ground” between theism and atheism, because the “weak” position sees the world as a varied range of ideas rather than a binary set of two extreme dogmas. True, the “weak” position is binary, but it is binary within a wide range of forcefulness — from dogmatic theism to theistic agnosticism and from dogmatic atheism to simple I-don’t-know agnosticism.

One agnostic even spent several letters needling me as to why I bother using the term atheist at all, since it has a specific meaning to most theists. Why don’t I simply abandon the moniker “atheist” and start calling myself what I am: an agnostic?

(Sound familiar?)

The answer is that I call myself what most people who have thought the way I do have called themselves: an atheist. I call myself an atheist because this is the term we have used to describe ourselves. I’m sorry that theists and self-proclaimed agnostics use a different meaning for his word; unlike “God” and “god,” it’s our word, dammit! (to quote Johan Grahn).

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And to think I so carefully differentiate between natural law (which is not the result of any divine decree of any kind) from what my opponents call “Divine Law” (such as “Don’t put a rubber on your willie” or “Vote for George Dubya for President”).

This is my biggest problem with much of pantheism is that it takes language usually reserved for religion and applies it to nature.

In fact, I think the only difference between pantheism and atheism is that atheists admit we are talking about nature. Neither believes there is some guy up there — some Oriental Despot, Only Bigger, And Invisible — who coos and purrs over our praise and prayer, and who has an unhealthy interest in how we conduct our sex lives. Both of us have a sense of awe and reverence toward the universe and toward nature and reality (and I’ll bet neither of us expect the universe to appreciate our sense of reverence).

The only difference is that you use religious language to describe your otherwise atheistic outlook, and I admit that I have found no language to adequately describe my outlook — particularly my sense of awe — but I reject religious language because it already has solid precedence as meaning something other than what I am trying to communicate.
 

And:

I don’t blame them for not getting it: y’all have absconded with their word — not vice versa — and y’all have given it a different definition from that which they are used to pondering.

This is precisely why I prefer to admit my atheism; I am an atheist in every sense, both strong and weak, when it comes to the Christian god-claim. After admitting that I don’t believe in any “God” (in the traditional or popular sense of the term), I then accept the challenge of expressing my awe and reverence for the universe, for reality. Methinks that this will require complex language, that it cannot be boiled down to a single term already in use, and that it is complicated enough to prevent it from being reduced even to a bumper sticker.

For now, if someone asks me whether I hold the universe in awe, or if they falsely criticize me for lacking wonder about “creation,” I simply point to the Dawkins piece I mentioned earlier. This does a better job at touching the sense of awe that I had as a child, when I realized that I exist only through the remotest of luck and the most unlikely of good fortune, that these twists of luck are multiple, ranging from the fact that “time” happens to be “now” while I am currently alive (and not a thousand years from now when I’ll be long dead), to the fact that life may not have ever evolved anywhere on any planet, to the fact that all someone had to do was sneeze way back then and my ancestors would never have met and procreated. I am a monumentally unlikely long-shot, and so are you. I thought this way as a kid of eight or ten, and Dawkins is the only one who has yet been able to put my childhood sense of awe into writing.

And no, I cannot reduce any of this to a single term: pantheism is close in some senses of the term, but it also misses the mark in other ways. Also, it is easily misunderstood by those who don’t know what I am thinking, or who wouldn’t understand even though Dawkins says it so clearly.
 

I can see using the term “god” poetically, in order to express this point, buy you are taking it much further (not unlike the creationist who takes an obviously poetic passage from Genesis or Psalms and wants it taught as science in the public schools).

I would go along with calling the universe “god” if it were clear that I was speaking poetically in order to convey my sense of awe and reverence (though I have done just that, spoken of the universe poetically and use the term “god” in my presentation to convey my awe, and some people have balked at hearing my lips pronounce the sound “god” without stopping to think about the context of what I was saying — “Oooh! Cliff said ‘God’! Did you hear that? Cliff the atheist said ‘God’!”).

However, y’all go much further than poetry, and are using the word “god” where most listeners hear the word “God” (capital “G”) which has, for most, a specific and entirely different meaning.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a movement which openly accepts that the god-talk is poetic and which strives to find ways to express what you are saying without resorting to the word “god.” I’m even willing to become involved in such a project. I’d even like to see a way developed wherein one could reduce this idea to a single word, but I am skeptical that such thinking could become widely accepted by the public.

Meanwhile, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that people such as Christians and atheists are going to misunderstand you and are going to balk at your use of the word “god” to convey something completely different from the majority of our experience.
 

So, then, you seek to further a religion?

In other words, what role does loyalty to the religion play in your decision to defend your use of the term “god” to denote the universe?
 

I don’t think it’s blasphemy against the concept of “God” or “god” (though some Christians might think this way). I do think that to use the term “god” to describe the awesome wonder that I feel toward the universe (and toward reality) is to demean my feelings toward the universe. No concept of “God” or “god” holds a candle to what I feel about the universe — unless I were to call this feeling itself “god” — as you have done. All other definitions for the term “god” or “God” would cheapen how I feel about the universe if used to describe the universe.

Only the poetic sense of the term “God,” describing how someone else (but not me) would feel toward a deity (but not the universe), would convey how I feel toward the universe (that is, how some feel toward their respective conceptualized deities).

For this reason most of all, I think your energies would be better spent discovering or developing some different language. I mean, most of us who study and discuss different religious and philosophical movements are by now used to the term Gaia and know approximately what it means to those who use the term. (I am not here suggesting any similarity to your movement and the Gaia movement, I am simply using it as an example of a coined term (idea, if you will) that has actually caught on.

You see, at this point in our conversation (and correct me if I’m wrong), I get the impression that you are virtually indistinguishable from me in philosophical outlook in that you are an atheist who simply uses the term “god” to mean something different from what I mean when I use it. If I’m not mistaken, that is the only difference between our philosophical outlooks — at least in the major points (though we may differ on this or that minor element, such as an ethical point or a mode of expression).

In other words, I would call you an atheist (and correct me if I’m wrong) in that you lack a belief in any of the deities commonly endorsed by humankind, and your concept of “god” is unique in that it is only a “god” because you choose to use this label for what the rest of us would call “the universe in all its awesome splendor and majesty.” You use the term “god” more strongly than we would, though we might be tempted to use this language if we could be assured that the listeners could recognize that we were waxing poetic.

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This is more confusing than it is amusing. Let me tell you my not-so-amusing story.

“Positive Atheism” is a term that I grabbed during the approximately two hours I had available to me on October 4, 1998, between the time I found out I had been driven out of United States Atheists during a political grab, and the time I had to scramble to find a new name for my website (formerly “Critical Thinker”). I had deleted the index.htm file in the interim and opened the site up with a new name placed onto the Return Home link of each file within about three hours of grabbing all my possessions from USA Headquarters.

I was fortunate enough to be able to catch Lavanam in his office in Vijayawada, India, during this brief window of time (it was nighttime here, and Vijayawada is 13.5 hours ahead of us). During this conversation, I requested his permission to use this phrase that was coined by his father Gora in a context similar to the one Gora used it. Gora uses “Positive Atheism” indicate a proactive ethic wherein (among other things) humans deliberately and actively interfere with the natural order of things in order to make better lives for themselves and their fellow humans.

I was only dimly aware, at the time, that the phrase “positive atheism” also means dogmatic atheism (sort of). I had, long before naming this magazine, wondered if atheism could be a positive (as in healthy and constructive) force in our society (see my December, 1995 column, “Can Atheism Be Positive?”). I reprinted George H. Smith’s piece, “The Scope of Atheism” (the first chapter in his wonderful book “Atheism: The Case Against God”) as early as July, 1997.

This marks my introduction to the “strong” and “weak” distinction within atheism, though I had previously cringed whenever one of USA’s leaders, usually Jerry Billings, would defend the “strong” position before the group by stating that he knows for a fact that no gods exist. It was Smith who showed me how to see and describe what has always been my position: I have never been convinced by any god claims, but it is stupid for me to think I know there cannot possibly be anything that the term “god” or “God” describes. I have since learned a lot.

Even so, Smith’s ideas did not make their way into my editorial column until January, 1998, “Atheists In And Out,” where I discussed the “weak” position for the first time since the article appeared. I did this deliberately because the discussion leader at CRT’s meetings (Jerry Billings) was were so outspoken in his dogmatism. (Perhaps nobody bothered to read the article I’d reprinted? Perhaps since Jerry did almost all the work, he was allowed to have almost all his opinions go unchallenged? Come to think of it, this coincides with the beginning of the end of my friendship with Jerry; he tended to take his atheism very personally, whereas I only tend to take personal matters personally — such as did you steal something from me or defame me through the use of falsehood?)

I used the “weak” definition as my default definition for atheist in the May, 1998 column, “Reflections On The ‘A’ Word.” In December, 1998, two months after leaving USA and forming Positive Atheism Magazine, I devoted the entire “Atheism: A Primer, Of Sorts” piece to advocating the “weak” position. The “weak” position also makes its way (obliquely) into the April, 1999 column, “Why Err, If You Don’t Need To?” in the sense that I speak from the perspective of hearing god-claims, rather than from the perspective of whether or not gods actually exist.

To me, the “weak” position is right in line with Korzybski’s General Semantics and post-Einsteinian “English Prime” in that the “weak” position speaks from having encountered god-claims and whether or not those claims are believed, whereas the “strong” position (on the surface) speaks of what “is” and what “is not.”

By the time the controversial December, 1999, column, “Atheism & Fundamentalism,” came out, I had described the “weak” definition and announced that “this magazine holds” this view. This column marks a drastic change in my focus, and the beginning of what would eventually progress into my open criticism of the “strong” position. Another big change in this respect is the July 7, 2000, letter from Johan Grahn where he clearly shows me that the “strong” position is logically untenable — at least in terms of the Burden of Proof as pertains to empirical proof. I had suspected this before, of course, but he is the first to show this to me in English, and thus to allow me to state it with words.

But in the February, 2000, column, the very intimate look at Cliff Walker called “Monument To Lost Faith,” I describe my rejection of several ideas in very “strong” language; however, the ideas I reject are specific ideas (that a “God” who looks after us; that I can influence situations through prayer; that I am part of a greater whole in the “metaphysical” or “synchronistic” or “New Age” sense). I have rejected these particular beliefs, and am a “strong” atheist when it comes to these specific ideas (though I am a “weak” atheist in general, and when I am first encountering anybody’s god-claims).

Since the middle of June, when I began to spend lots of time in the Letters section, I have escalated my criticism of the “strong” position to being open and unashamed about it. All this time since Smith’s introducing me to the concept, you will notice, I am very stern with theists who come on and insist that I hold the “strong” position, and then proceed to ram “strong” atheism up my poop chute (even though I don’t hold this position, and state as much in my writings and in the FAQ).

It appears that the current changes my views have been undergoing are nearing completion. Yesterday, began work rewriting the “What Is Atheism” section of the FAQ. I will work some more on it tonight if that Guinness I just poured (Dublin-style) doesn’t do me wrong. (Too many of those and the Pookah pays a visit.)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell the history of how I developed my current position in regards to the “negative atheism” versus “positive atheism” versus “Positive Atheism” discussions. Hope this part didn’t weary you, but I wanted to get this out for the record so I can post it. (I’ve also been listening to the new Mojo Nixon MP3 Set live from Colorado on July 7, 2000, all day while I’ve been writing this, and Mojo always inspires me toward fiercely independent thinking. I, “The Doc,” helped Mojo get his career off the ground in San Diego during the mid-1980s. At one point, he and I were the only two that thought he’d ever make it. Today, he’s still a man after my own heart in that he allows free trading of his MP3s on the Internet.)

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This is why I prefer simply to describe what I am saying rather than trying to use a term to say it. When I worked with addicted people, I refused to use the term alcoholism or alcoholic in my presentations, because they mean so many things to so many different people. So, I spent over seven years walking completely around the word alcoholism mainly because I saw the entire concept as folkloric. There certainly is no medical data to back up the claim that it realistically describes the situation.

I assume that pantheism means that the universe is god, and that polytheism means belief in more than one god (Trinitarianism excepted, which also describes one god as well as three, which qualifies it as monotheism; I don’t want to make the Christians any more mad at me than they already are, so I will usually respect their insistence that Trinitarianism is a form of monotheism). One fellow I know coined omnitheism to describe his belief that the claims of all religions are true. Paganism is varied and is either polytheism (many gods, usually subject either to the elements or to a superior or supreme goddess or god) or one god being the universe itself. Sometimes paganism is indistinguishable from atheism (“strong” or “weak”). Paganism seems more descriptive of a particular approach to the various -isms than descriptive of any one of those -isms. The phrase “all things and beings are modes, attributes, or appearances of one single unified being called God” describes the pantheism that I understand to be the Hinduism advocated by the Krsna Society; this pantheistic deity appears to be seen as a personal being, rather than impersonal as you suggest. “New Age religions” seems to be even more of a catch-all even than paganism, which is why I usually joke that “New Age” rhymes with sewage — but this is more my reflection of New Age music than of New Age philosophy (but only slightly more)!
 

Well, atheism has meant many things in the past, but usually means one of two things now: dogmatic atheism (“No gods exist”) and “weak” atheism (“I lack a god belief” or “I have encountered no god-claim that holds water with me”). Before, it has meant wickedness (see Mirriam-Webster’s Tenth Collegiate) and it has also meant “You don’t believe in the same god I do, though you may believe in some god.”

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It only ticks you off because you appear to prefer precise terms. I am more of a realist than a semanticist, except in the sense that I respect (and often actually practice) Korzybski’s General Semantics and post-Einsteinian language ideas (wherein one speaks only of one’s observations and measurements, never pretending that any “ultimate reality” exists). I met Robert Anton Wilson in about 1990 and his works have influenced me since the early 1980s, after I ducked out of a brief fling with Evangelical Christianity. Thus, I realize the limitations of language, and the need for precise descriptions.

The problem of the multiplicity of god-ideas reminds me of a passage from Paul Krassner’s Confessions of a Raging, Unconfined Nut: “Indeed, one of LBJ’s favorite jokes was about a popular Texas sheriff running for reelection. His opponents had been trying unsuccessfully to think of a good campaign issue to use against him. Finally one man suggested spreading ‘a rumor that he fucks pigs.’ Another protested, ‘You know he doesn’t do that.’ ‘I know,’ said the first man, ‘But let’s make the son of a bitch deny it.’”

In a similar way, by insisting that the Christians and other fundamentalists qualify their respective gods (so we can distinguish them from other god-ideas), we force them to unwittingly admit that they are (at minimum) dealing in a very pluralistic culture and (at most) admitting that they are making this stuff up as they go along (usually in response to the various and sundry “pluralistic” god-definitions that those of us with a sense of humor keep imagining).

I have, on occasion, deliberately misunderstood the Christian god-claim during conversations with Evangelists (though not in this forum). Every time the Evangelist says something about “God,” I respond as if I were thinking of a pantheistic or a polytheistic “god” or some other typically non-Western or non-modern god-idea. The Evangelist then must back up and “correct” me. It’s fun to watch this pan out (they take themselves so seriously, and it’s hard to get them not to take you seriously).

What I intend to show by doing this (though they might not get it right away; they may never get it) is that I think they might be making up their specific god-definition as they go along (or at least choosing one specific god from among a whole menu of options), in response to my misunderstanding. Only the most honest Evangelists (or the most lazy) will admit that they don’t know. Once they admit that they don’t know, then my question is, “They why are you telling me about it if you don’t know?” But Evangelical Christians are up a creek because their god allegedly commanded them to tell me about Him.
 

Unfortunately, language in practice can never be as precise as we would want it to be in theory. Thomas Paine recognized this in refuting the notion of divine revelation as written word:

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“...the Word of God cannot exist in any written or human language.

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God. The Word of God exists in something else.
               — The Age of Reason
 

  

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Since this whole thing is a discussion (since I am asking the theist to see this as a discussion and not a decided matter), it’s only fair that I refrain from calling their claims “unsubstantiated” at least until I have given them the opportunity to try to substantiate their claims.

Cliff Walker
“Positive Atheism” Magazine

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From: “Love-Jensen, John”
To: “’Positive Atheism’”
Subject: RE: Positive Atheism, Cliff’s Writings — Which 10 Commandments.
Date: Friday, July 21, 2000 1:17 PM

Hi Cliff,
 

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“I believe in God, only I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E.”
~Frank Lloyd Wright

“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
~W. K. Clifford

  

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“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
— W. K. Clifford

I disbelieve in the Christian god (and all other imaginary gods) based on the reasonsing in Clifford’s well stated proclamation. I don’t disbelieve because I think that they are all fucking made-up, pretend and imaginary. I disbelieve because there is insufficient evidence.

  

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From: “Positive Atheism”
To: “Love-Jensen, John”
Subject: Re: Positive Atheism, Cliff’s Writings — Which 10 Commandments.
Date: Friday, July 21, 2000 9:23 PM

I would appreciate simply taking what I have and both correcting it and adding to it in a very basic sense. I am shooting for the basics common to all pantheism, and the few major sub-categories within this bigger category. This is not a philosophy volume, but is intended to try to briefly show where pantheists are coming from on the big issues. I am particularly interested in SciPan (and would welcome a section that compares SciPan to other forms of pantheism because it seems to be catching on (at least many are giving lip service to it as an alternative to traditional theism). Of course, I would need to address the traditional forms of pantheism which I think Hinduism (at least as expressed by the Krsna Society) qualifies is a form. I would also appreciate a brief run-down of the argument over language we have been having, and if you know of some objections I’ve missed, that have been aired within your congregation, I’d appreciate those as well. As always, I will take what you write and rewrite it to fit my style and intentions. I’d be glad to give you credit for your assistance, though, by linking to your site (and to this discussion) from the Pantheism write-up.
 
 

You’ve only been looking in the sci-fi section, not the philosophy, occult and metaphysics, sexuality, drugs, or other sections where his nonfiction might be found. Illuminatus! is a satire, spoofing the fact that there are so many vastly different world views coming from a single species. In it, Wilson and Shea took all the different paranoid conspiracy theories that came into the Playboy “Letters To the Editor” forum over the course of the six years Wilson worked there and tried to weave them into a fictionalized unified theory. Of course, in order to do this, the book must be classified as fiction. Hell, it’s gotta go somewhere!

The book you might find interesting is called Quantum Psychology wherein Wilson tries to incorporate the revelations and enigmas of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into a basis for understanding how the human mind works (or should work). It’s real fun, intended to be read by small groups, and has group exercises that you do at the end of each chapter. It’s similar to his earlier book Prometheus Rising except with the latter he admits that it is contrived. Quantum Psychology is serious in that the author actually believes what he is writing.
 

I was hoping you’d catch the fact that I’ve been needling you to abandon your use of the word god just as this fellow needled me to abandon my use of the word atheist.

The only difference I see is that atheist is our term, whereas your use of god is (as I see it) an intrusion.
 

You’re still missing my point: I’m trying to distinguish what is commonly seen as Divine Law from what is commonly seen as natural law. To do this with any other theist is sometimes a tedious job indeed. To do this with a SciPan is, I suspect, impossible, because what you say unravels all this work I’ve done with the regular theist.

And now, you dismiss what I was trying to say by taking cover in what your specific religion of about 800 members teaches. Could you at least have stepped outside your worldview long enough to acknowledge what I was trying to say?

Again: My opponents (all except about 800 of them) have a tough time distinguishing between “natural law” and “divine law.” This is a source of unending pain when discussing these matters with them, requiring that I type tens of thousands of characters of text in order to even get anywhere with them (though you’d think this was not necessarily the case).

Now you come in and dismiss the whole thing with a turn of semantics and by fleeing to your own world view, rather than acknowledging that I am speaking of their world view.

Finally, you turn around and accuse them of absconding with their terminology when, in fact, I think SciPan has absconded with traditional theism’s terminology. I mean, even when Joseph Smith announced that he had the original, uncorrupted Christian Gospel, he at least used the motif of angels and golden plates and a new (that is, recent) revelation in order to give his case at least some credibility among the more gullible. You haven’t even done this, but simply declare that our culture has been “inundated” with the long-standing traditional views dating back over 15 centuries.

Are you even recognizing that yours is just one viewpoint among many? or are you insisting that view is intrinsically true?
 

So what? They have historical precedence in their use of the terms, and they are the majority in our neck of the woods. You’re not going to get very far by coming in and accusing them of co-opting your terminology when it is y’all who have come in (recently) and co-opted terminology that has had a specific meaning for the majority of people over the course of a thousand of years. This is why I am asking why you even bother? why not simply come up with some new language so that the rest of us who aren’t in this group of 800 can understand what you’re saying.

True, you are welcome to make any word mean anything you want within the context of the 800, but you are now speaking with a member of the general population, who deals with hundreds of different people, and who has noticed that almost all others use this language to mean one specific thing (with very minor variations). Your use of the same terminology is a whole new ball game from what has been done all these centuries.

Of course we will be inundated with their terminology: it’s their terminology. This is why I only use their terminology to speak in terms of their world view. I will not use their terminology to describe my own world view unless my world view at least somewhat coincides with the world view that their language describes. And since my world view is almost diametrically opposed to theirs, the least I can do is leave their terminology alone and find some words and concepts that better describe what I’m talking about.
 

Again: I am talking about your version of pantheism, not just any “whacko” version out there somewhere.

I will repeat: my biggest problem with the pantheism you advocate is that it takes language usually reserved for religion and applies it to nature.
 

This is the same as what we’ve been discussing: You are taking something natural (human ethics, etc.) and creating an artificial boundary between what you call “nature” and what you call “spiritual” — but it’s all still squarely within the realm nature!

When regular theists say “spiritual,” at least they are talking about something they say is not natural but supernatural.

Why not simply use terms like ethics and aesthetics instead of risking confusion by using terminology which, for the vast majority of Western people and for almost two dozen centuries, has indicated the supernatural?

I say this as a copy editor whose job it is to take unintelligible writings and change them so that a diverse readership can understand what is being said. The problem with your copy is that you insist on doing the equivalent of using the word apples to convey the message “oranges.” In your case, I would go so far as to suggest that you use the term apples when you want to say “not apples.” At least when Lenny Bruce used the term apples it was clear to all listeners that he meant “breasts.”
 

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“I believe in God, only I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright

  

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We wouldn’t know this to hear to the language you use.

True, Wright appears to have been defending himself against an Evangelist of some sort. I can relate. I was court ordered to practice this religion known as Alcoholics Anonymous, and I had to be there for three years. I started off going, “I don’t even know what spiritual means!” but soon realized that I would be rejected and ostracized for these views. So I changed my tack and pointed to a passage in the literature which listed “spiritual principles”: honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. So, I changed my tune (only so I could survive in this subculture) and started saying, “I don’t know what y’all mean by ‘spiritual’ but the book says that ‘honesty, open-mindedness and willingness’ are ‘spiritual principles’ and this is good enough for me, because these are ethics and values — and I can get behind ethics and values real easy because they are human inventions and do not necessarily come from the realm of the supernatural.” (See my article from that era called “Completely Realistic” for my attempts to describe trying to survive in a world that was entirely foreign to me.)

You can rest assured that the moment my three years were up, I stopped using the term spiritual to denote naturally occurring phenomenon and went back to my normal use of language by simply calling these things ethics and values. Because these things are ethics and values. No terminology relating to the supernatural is required to explain or describe them.

By the way, my crime was illness, physical debilitation, disorientation, poverty, homelessness, and keeping myself alive by shoplifting tins of oysters, clams, and sardines. I had no drug or alcohol related charges or convictions, but was ordered by a court to undergo religious instruction nonetheless. In fact, I initially balked by calling myself an atheist, and the judge ordered me to be held in jail for 30 days for refusing her order to get some religion. Believe me: such