Pantheism
Pantheism has served as a bit of a strawperson in these pages, but I think it is big enough to be able to take it. It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. The worst that can be said of the pantheists is that they don't make very good scientists. And how bad is that? I was a transcendental pantheist, and not too bad a scientist at an early age. Now I'm a theist and a much worse scientist, so there you go. Did anyone say that I could be disarming? I'm a disarmamentarian ('disarmament Arian'!? I don't think so, but thanks for the thought, Bill!) .
Let's face it, those pantheists are not real strong on rationalism, nor on the Metanarrative. They are the darlings of the postmodernists because they can be soooo pluralistic. They are a necessary antidote to the fundamentalist excesses inherent in theism. And similarly they have withstood the materialism that necessarily inhered to the incarnation. The Atom/Adam cut no ice with them. And when it comes to the second coming, won't the last be the first?
And remember there is no substance. Love is just the vacuum energy of the Sunyata, the great void. There is no-self relative to the dissolution of the vacuum energy that is the cosmic agape of the omega. Christians have trouble grasping these intangibles, bless their hearts. And who doesn't?
The Alpha is a bit more of a problem for pantheism. The megalithic Angkor sailed right by them. If one lives in Giza, it is more difficult to ignore these omphala. But aren't the pantheists supposed to be navel gazers? Maybe in the next life.
7/1/02