Thanks for your thoughtful response. Since pantheism existed a long time before Christianity did, I have to ask... who is doing the redefining? Your ( and most of us' ) understanding of the term is a local, modern, and mostly Christian understanding, not at all the only, or even predominant understanding throughout history.

As for sentience, it's interesting to me that when I look up the definition of the word god, in most dictionaries, at least one of the definitions is "a supreme being." And when I look up being, it just says something that exists, and supreme is just the largest or greatest or most ultimate. Sentience is not a universally required part of the definition. So I can't help noticing that the word universe is also used to designate the largest thing that exists. It created us ( and all of our mothers ). It provides for our needs. We live according to its laws. It will exist after we are gone. It seems quite a natural fit for the definition of a god. No sentience required.

So my question is... regardless of how ancient, or even modern, people anthropomorphize not only god, but, instinctively, almost everything... isn't the thing they are personifying really just the sum total of reality, conceived as a single entity? religious literalists doing it unconsciously, and pantheists doing it consciously and poetically?

@skado Good point. I can only say yes. And I've been in a week-long process of gathering the thought coherence to write a theory in relation to the psychology of your last paragraph.

In this context, I can't see why the universe would not qualify in this particular distinction as the term "God". Though in the course of conceptual language and its affective meanings, I wonder if its usage is perpetual prey for a loop of semantics, like in our discussion.

If there's variation in the definition crossing culture, philosophy and language, then the answer is subjective, depending on who you ask. Though in my cultural perspective, the Spinozan application still doesn't ring, as the limitations of my knowledge won't allow me to consider the cosmos as "The Ultimate Being" in the same way that the Old World was unaware of the New-- the discovery of more, and the common cultural use of the word evoking the supernatural personified. I suppose this is where my agnosticism peeks.

Since we've advanced enough of our scientific knowledge of the physical world to make such distinctions, wouldn't the word "universe" be the more specific and accurate term without the broad and subjective applications given the word "God"? One is certainly more sterile and less poetic, but to the atheist shouldn't it be? If only to keep ourselves rooted in the raw reality of things.

Thanks for plucking my brain. It's been a tedious day.

@summatyme
“I wonder if its usage is perpetual prey for a loop of semantics, like in our discussion.”

Well it is of course. And that is exactly why it would not be advisable to use such language in just any and all circumstances where the only goal is to quickly convey utilitarian information.

But being as this site’s stated raison d'etre is to facilitate serious discussions around the topic of non-belief, it seems a fitting place to explore the nature of the thing we’re not believing in.

“If there's variation in the definition crossing culture, philosophy and language, then the answer is subjective, depending on who you ask.”

That’s certainly true too, and I would say maybe inevitable. But it’s also true that within a given culture, definitions always change over time, and sometimes not in particularly useful ways.

So we always have the option of being passive in the face of destructive cultural drift, or trying to exert some constructive influence.

“Though in my cultural perspective, the Spinozan application still doesn't ring, as the limitations of my knowledge won't allow me to consider the cosmos as "The Ultimate Being" in the same way that the Old World was unaware of the New-- the discovery of more, and the common cultural use of the word evoking the supernatural personified. I suppose this is where my agnosticism peeks.”

I think I understand what you’re saying here but correct me if I’m taking up the wrong tangent. To put a slightly finer point on my original statement, I would say... it’s not to identify the cosmos as we currently understand it with the concept of “Ultimate Being” so much as to identify everything that actually exists, inside or outside of the cosmos, or anywhere else, whether we know about it or don’t yet, or possibly never will with the concept of “Ultimate Being”. In other words, Whatever Is.

It seems, at minimum, to be a useful abstraction, and for an abstraction to be used, it must have a name. And it doesn’t much matter what name we assign to it, as long as everyone in the conversation knows which “thing” it refers to.

“Since we've advanced enough of our scientific knowledge of the physical world to make such distinctions, wouldn't the word "universe" be the more specific and accurate term without the broad and subjective applications given the word "God"?”

For general purposes, yes. Probably more often than not.

For specialized, philosophical purposes, being multilingual can open up some unexpected vistas.

“One is certainly more sterile and less poetic, but to the atheist shouldn't it be? If only to keep ourselves rooted in the raw reality of things.”

Wherever needed, certainly. Maintaining a strong connection to reality is the primary goal I’d say. A secondary, optional goal might be... cautiously introducing the occasional flight into unknown territory, for the sake of discovery.

“Thanks for plucking my brain. It's been a tedious day.”

I hope my troublesome post has not added unnecessary aggravation. I’m grateful for your constructive contribution.

@summatyme
Now I’m thinking I did misread your comment. When you said “I suppose this is where my agnosticism peeks” I assumed you were speaking about the doubtful side of agnosticism, but now I see you may have been speaking about the side that’s not ready to close the door on belief in a literal God person. I can see how that could be a formidable barrier to a wholehearted acceptance of pantheism.

@skado You had it right the first time. I'm not convinced and don't believe in any deities. The door is all but closed, but god isn't going to fit through the crack.

@summatyme

Glad to hear it!

That all makes perfect sense according to your personal definition of the word god, but the point I'm making is that there are different definitions of that word, some of which have existed and have been popular long before your definition was, and are still extant today. One of those is the pantheist god, which is, as established not by my whim, but by thousands of years of human history, and the likes of Spinoza, Einstein and Sagan. And there is no scholarly ( or otherwise ) consensus that says a deity must be sentient. I don't believe in any of the gods you don't believe in, but I do believe in taking the broadest view of history, linguistics, culture, and anthropology available to me. And that broad view, well established in human practice, includes a definition of god as the total of whatever exists.

Well.... no... that's not MY personal definition of the word "god". It's the agreed upon English definition of the word "god".

[merriam-webster.com]

If people create their own definition of words that are not generally accepted as proper definitions then I am under no obligation to acknowledge those definitions. You can define "car" as a cardboard box with six rollerskates stapled to it but I will not use that definition.

There is no commonly accepted definition of "god" that is "everything that exists in the universe". We already have a words for that.

But it really seems as if you aren't interested in discussing the existence of "god". You just want to discuss semantics.

@Charles1971 “But it really seems as if you aren't interested in discussing the existence of "god". You just want to discuss semantics.”

I think that’s a pretty accurate assessment

I know, right?!

That's not my argument, and I'm not arguing for the existence of "god", and I'm not accusing anyone of anything.

My argument, or rather observation, is that we all tend to define "god" according to our specific cultural background, and the narrow window of time in which we live. And when we are certain we don't believe in any gods, what we're usually saying is... we don't believe in any gods as our culture defines gods today.

But of course, not only have other cultures defined gods differently at other times in history, but other people define god differently right now, in our own time, and in our own culture. If the likes of Baruch Spinoza, Albert Einstein, and Carl Sagan (two of whom lived during my own lifetime ) found it meaningful to publicly identify as pantheists, I really don’t mind being associated with that kind of idiocy.

We might all be well served to ask why these greatest of minds, both ancient and modern, chose to express their views in such terms, especially when those three in particular were the greatest of champions of science, rationality, and materialistic worldviews.

It's easy to assuage our discomfort with such language as being required by the social pressures of the time, but that really doesn't do justice to men who, by any standard, were nothing if not iconoclasts. And Sagan was living as recently as 1996, so times haven't changed that much.

I'm not making an argument for the existence of anything that we all, here, don't already agree exists. I'm just observing that cocksure certitude that our own cultural understandings are the only ones that have any validity, bears a remarkable resemblance to religious fundamentalism.

@skado personally, I think you’re full of hot air and trying to sound smarter than you really are

@Marcie1974
Marcie, you can demonstrate for us how smart you are by responding to my claims with reasoned counter-claims, instead of ad hom attacks. If I’m not very smart you will be able to make me look pretty silly with your superior knowledge and communication skills. If instead, you counter with more insults, it will be clear to everyone, who is the hot air artist.

Right? I’m going to rename snow to god. So if you believe in snow then you believe in god...gotcha!!

The post is ridiculous but I doubt the OP see that

The question is who is redefining god? the people who defined it centuries or perhaps millennia before the Christians existed... or the early Christians, or the post-Enlightenment Christians, or the Pat Boone Christians?

This post isn't about what word we use to call the thing, or even what features we might mistakenly attribute to the thing in our ignorance. But about what we might have been referring to which actually does exist.

Humans have been perennially plagued with ignorance, but our species is not, scientifically speaking, universally psychotic. My point is that we are much more likely to mischaracterize things that exist which we don't understand, than to hallucinate out of whole cloth things that have no existence in the real world.

@Marcie1974

The OP sees that you found this post ridiculous enough to participate in.

@skado Early humans may have anthropomorphised the universe, so what? That doesn't make it a god, it simply means that early humans had an imagination.

@skado you’re stretching, big time. Not sure if you actually believe in what you’re writing or just trying to sound “smart”

Regardless, it seems most people agree your post is bunk

@Marcie1974

Marcie, you may notice that a few people have been able to understand what I’m talking about, and whether they agree or not, give reasoned and respectful responses.

If this subject doesn’t interest you, why not check out other threads where you can contribute something of value?

@redbai

I probably wouldn't consider Einstein and Sagan "early humans". Who knows? Maybe late humans are capable of imagination too.

@skado I'd say it's a stretch to say that Einstein and Sagan believed the universe was a conscious being.

@redbai

They quite clearly didn't. But we now understand how the universe doesn't need consciousness in order to create complex, living, conscious creatures. Einstein and Sagan, like Spinoza before them, realized that the entity that humankind had always called "God" was, and had been all along, Nature itself. Names and understandings had changed, but the entity itself was still what it had always been.

@skado Can you please provide a quote where Spinoza, Einstein and Sagan admit to the realization that the concept of Gods, in general were no more than a different understanding of nature as an entity?

IMO, calling "Nature" an "entity" is a big assumption and no more than the anthomophoism that I spoke of above. The assumption appears to be forcing an identity where none is warranted. Where is the evidence that the universe has an identity?

@redbai

In my understanding of it, it's not about whether the universe has an identity, or personality. It's just about how we use language, a great deal of which has always been metaphorical. So yes, it's anthropomorphizing the universe. That's the point. That's all God ever was, regardless of how people might have reified that image in their minds.

To say that Einstein or Sagan were pantheists is not to say that they participated in any kind of ritualistic worship of course. It's just to say that they recognized that the best understanding of the concept of "God" was as a figure of speech representing the entirety of reality. And they both used that figure of speech in just that way.

"In a letter written to Eduard Büsching ( 25 October 1929 ), after Büsching sent Albert Einstein a copy of his book Es gibt keinen Gott ( "There is no God" ), Einstein wrote, "We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul [Beseeltheit] as it reveals itself in man and animal."

"In Ideas And Opinions, published a year before his death, Einstein stated his precise conception of the word God:
"Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).""

"Dorion Sagan, son of famous scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan, published the 2007 book Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature, co-written with his mother Lynn Margulis. In the chapter "Truth of My Father", Sagan writes that his "father believed in the God of Spinoza and Einstein, God not behind nature, but as nature, equivalent to it."

The above quotes were pulled from the wikipedia article on Pantheism, all of which is a pretty interesting read, and also includes plenty of references to Spinoza. [en.wikipedia.org]

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." - Carl Sagan, U.S. News and World Report

@skado Intriguing. I've always understood those quotes to be a polite way of dismissing the concept of Gods without hurting the feelings of those that believe. Like telling someone who doesn't understand the science behind a cell phone that it's magic because they won't understand or will refuse to accept the actual dynamics involved with the technology. All three men knew their audience and knew that telling them that God was nonsense would ostracise them from communities in which they were admired and benefited. So they came up with politically correct ways of addressing the inevitable "God" questions.

What I see in those quotes is intelligent and clever men trying not to get bogged down in the ridiculous dialogs about gods and their place in the universe.

@redbai
There might well have been some of that, but these were all men whose professional contributions to science and culture were more likely to set them at odds with the status quo than whatever casual comment they may have made about their personal religion. It was certainly no secret that none of them believed in the supernatural.

And certainly Sagan’s son would have no reason to continue the ruse after his father’s death.

I think what motivated these very well-informed men was more nuanced than that. I think they saw that what humans were calling god was really the collective forces of nature, and that the existence of those forces was undeniable, so what we call them is just not worth the discord it causes between people. Let people call them what they will, and envision them as they will and turn our energies to more constructive projects.

@skado I think you're ignoring the times that they lived in and what their "personal feelings" about religion (as I don't know that any of them had any "personal religion) would have meant in the advancement of their careers. I also don't see anything particularly deep or relevant in calling nature "God".

It also occurs to me that the phrase "what humans were calling god was really the collective forces of nature" ignores the ceremonial and religious nature of the "God" concept. Worshipping Thor over Loki has nothing to do with nature.

@redbai
It’s not that there’s anything deep about calling nature god, it’s just what apparently happened. The deep part of the question is whether we want to invest our energies in building walls or bridges.

@skado I don't believe you've demonstrated that it happened nor do I believe that accepting your premise affects the ability to successfully interact with other people or communities.

@redbai

I don’t have any way to prove it, or feel any need to. Just sharing how it appears to me. It wasn’t my first impression, but the more I look into it, the more it appears that way to me. YMMV

You state there is a creator, but don't attempt to prove it.

A “control spell?” Are they witches who cast spells? Wizards?

@Marcie1974
Yes, exactly - witches they are. They work so hard to erase our roots and make us feel like something bad will happen if we disobey their written law. They make us feel we have the right to overpopulate and disregard nature. Our true ancestors (not sons of Abraham) lived in harmony with nature

@Marcie1974, @Alienbeing
You can never PROVE there’s a creator. But man can’t explain where the first atom came from. So I believe

@SocialDarwin Better read a little more. Math proves something can come from nothing.

@Alienbeing
No it doesn’t

@Alienbeing
God is all the things we don’t understand. But we are part of god not withering helpless sheep that must pray for everything

@SocialDarwin A God or Gods do not exist. Are you saying you use the word "God" to describe anything you don't understand?

@SocialDarwin Yes it does, Google Krause and view the video. Don't display ignorance, it isn't flattering.

@Alienbeing
So, even if math can explain something from nothing (which I went through calculus and never saw evidence of that), 99% of the population are not brilliant enough to grasp. And the very tiny percentage that could grasp it would take millions of years to convince the common hurd. So for the foreseeable future, religion (of sort) will influence us all.
So, my idea of REPLACING one religion for a more modern/liberal one is a giant step, but not as unrealistic as doing away with religion

@SocialDarwin Whether 99% of people can or cannot grasp a fact does not change the fact. Apparently you refuse to look into the fact that math explains how something can come from nothing. It is easily available on line. Your stubborn approach proves you are not worth fruther contact.

Great question. Thanks.
I don’t expect to change the world. I am outnumbered, and everyone has as much right as I do to make sense of their experience however they can.

I am a fan of pure science, as distinct from applied science ( but that too ). And I see the spirit of science as being willing to accept the verifiable evidence, even if, and maybe particularly if, it conflicts with our comfortable worldview.

And... the assumption that establishing a habit of doing so, regardless of presence or absence of immediate practical usefulness, will eventually accrue to a better experience of life for all concerned.

So my answer is... because it’s there. What’s true is true, whether I can see any practical use for it at the moment or not.

The universe can seem cruel.

Accepted by whom? It seemed to work for Einstein.

Nobody alive knows what? Whether the universe exists? Whether humans have always been capable of metaphorical representation of complex abstractions?

@skado Spinoza's god ? "Deus sive Natural" Couldn't be more different than the Judeo/Christian god so why call it god why not just nature ?

@Moravian

Why not have the flexibility of calling it either one, as is appropriate to a given context?

@skado To which context. Gods by definition are supernatural. Nature is super as described in Lyall Watson's great book "Supernature" but it is not supernatural.

@Moravian
I know we normally think of gods as supernatural, but apparently Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan found some reason to think otherwise. Almost any words that can be used literally can also be used metaphorically. Possibly, before the Age of Enlightenment, a metaphorical understanding was the more common.

Yes, the meanings of words do change over time and words can have two or more meanings. If I say something is sick I mean it is bad or unwell. If my young friends say something is sick they mean it is really good.
Musicians such as Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix are called rock gods but we do not really think they are gods in the original sense but to use the word god in the context of a natural phenomenon is somewhat disingenuous in my opinion.

@Moravian
It’s not easy to know exactly what was “original”. We know what was original to our own experience, and it’s real easy for us humans to unconsciously assume that’s the way it’s always been. When we start digging through history, the picture changes a bit. Then when we reach back beyond the invention of writing, the lights dim considerably.

To my mind, it makes more sense to follow the moon, so to speak, rather than the finger pointing to the moon. Words only point to phenomena. But what was the phenomenon that the word was originally pointing to?

Were humans, and are we still today, a psychotic species, responding consistently across cultures to events that had no basis in reality? Or were we always responding to the collective natural forces in which we are immersed, and just giving them names that best represented our inadequate but sincere understanding of those forces?

...which then leaves us the need to arrive at a definition of God.

@DangerDave I absolutely DO NOT need to research any kind of nonsensical bullshit.

The point is that there are different conceptions of god. And one quite well established one is that god is simply whatever the universe is.

@skado, yes, but you want to discuss a definition of God. I took it as the entity that controls the energy and driving it to be the existence of everything. On that, more definitions might be made, for the best or for the worse.

Pantheists don’t necessarily claim it has intelligence.

That syphilitic taint is yours, not the pantheists’.

@skado Did not say that the syphilitic taint was pantheist, I said that pure pantheism needed to avoid being infected, read it again.

Sounds like you don’t need converting.

@skado I love theories, myths and legends, not just proven science. There is sometimes truth in old knowledge.