I've been thinking alot about God lately.
I kept coming back to what everyone likes to call the "problem of evil". It's fairly self explanitory, really; if there is a god, and if he/she/it is, in fact, omniprescient and omnipotent, then there shouldn't be evil in the world. But there is evil, so either (a) god isn't as powerful as we say he/she/it is, (b) he/she/it is unable, unwilling, or outright malevelent, or (c) there is no god.
So.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
I started doing some reading about different theories about god.
One group, the deists, beleive that, although god did exist at one point, there isn't a god now. Or, at least, he isn't around in a way that he can be reached.
Then, there's the pandeists, who hold that the universe is all that's left of god.
It's all incredibly convoluted, I assure you.
So, last night I had some trouble sleeping.
Sometime around three, or two, or so, I got to thinking about religion again.
I was thinking about that pandeism thing.
About how there was a god, but there isn't anymore.
I mean, where'd he go?
What'd he do after he created everything?
What, did he just leave, to go create another eveything?
Well, yeah.
He created another everything. And anotherone after that. And so on, infinitely.
And all that's left of him, in this universe, is, well, this universe.
So, theoretically, he's everywhere, and nowhere, simultatneously.
It's Schrödinger's God.
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2 comments:
I think you misread pandeism - the roots of the word are in pantheism and deism, and pantheism is the theory that God is the universe. In that way it is similar to deism, God "isn't around in a way that he can be reached" because God is the universe.
This is explained by Warren Sharpe as it applies to certain Eastern belief systems in his Philosophy for the Serious Heretic:
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.
A harmonious view is that of Rabbi Harry Waton in A True Monistic Philosophy:
God did not create the world, He became the world. God became the world to realize himself, in material form, to realize an eternal and infinite aim. It is for the purpose of realizing His eternal and infinite aim that He became the world. Now notice this. God had to conceive the one primordial idea to become the world. Thus the idea preceded the world. This is supposed to be the relation between cause and effect. The cause is assumed to be prior to and independent of the the effect; while the effect is assumed to be posterior to and dependent upon the cause.
And of course all of these trace back at least to Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who conceived in the Ninth Century(!) that God had become the universe so that the universe could provide a mirror for God to understand itself.
The long and the short of it is that God did not create this universe and then abandon it to create other universes. That would be pure deism, with an added excuse for why God abandoned the universe. Pandeism is, in a way, the opposite. God never really abandons the universe. God becomes the universe, and is still here. God can not be reached because God has committed everything that was part of God to being the matter and energy of this universe, so that God can understand what it's like to actually be something, in a concrete sense.
I hope this is helpful to your understanding of pandeism, and salves your sleepless nights.
Hm. Thanks.
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