I used to be a pantheist (someone that believes that God is in everything and everything is God) and avid New Age practitioner. But I can never return to that paradigm. If pantheism is true, then it is okay for the rapist to rape a child. After all, it is only God raping itself.
Everything that happens to you, says New Age teaching, happens to you because you wanted it to happen to you for your own spiritual development. Before you were born you requested to go through certain trials in this life. In other words, that raped child requested to be raped so that she can grow spiritually. You be the one to go look her in the eye and tell her: “You wanted to be raped so that you can grow spiritually.”
I can never return to being a pantheist.
4 comments:
What brought this on?
Not our conversation on Friday - but another conversation with another friend on Sunday, who admitted to being a pantheist.
I didn't get involved in an argument with the person, apart from saying that I used to be a pantheist.
I guess all these recent discussions (and hanging out with too many philosopher-friends) just re-awoke in me the question: Why did I change from pantheism to theism? Or rather, why am I not a pantheist anymore? There's probably an array of reasons, but recently it's especially the unsustainable morality of pantheism that disallows me to return to a pantheistic paradigm, even though it superficially looks very enticing.
It is all nice and cool to say that right and wrong are all relative (which is the case if God is in everything and everything is God), but it is a decrepit statement when the rubber meets the road. When a child is raped - is that right or is it wrong? Or doesn't it matter? A pantheistic view (and it's modern manifestation in the New Age movement)leaves me disgusted.
No offense intended to my pantheist friends.
how frustrating - i can't comment, coz i've never heard of the terms "pantheism" and "theism" before.
go figure.
i'm gonna go read about it, then come back here to voice an opinion.
i probably am familiar with these views... just not the language.
the rapist question is an interesting conundrum..
i wonder into which sect/belief system/etc i fall... maybe there is a name for people like me...
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and how important is it to be labelled anyway?
i believe in most of the Christian beliefs, but the jesus freaks scare me. I believe in most of the Creationism stuff. I think Satanism is dumb. Their rules are a bit dodgy.
The crystal healing people and faith healing people, and snake handling people to test faith are a bit ... contrived.
in my humble opinion, anyway, and based on my experience.
Catholics are a bit strict, their focus is more on methodology, than belief.
happy clappers and jehovah's witnesses are a bit too excited and i can't help but feel they are missing the point...
It's a personal choice issue. People should do what works for them, what they feel comfy with.
I think somewhere in the bible it states that witchcraft and voodoo are real, but humans are not supposed to mess with it. it should just be left alone, coz nothing good ever comes from it.
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scuze me while i google "pantheism" and "theism", and try to figure out why they are mutually exclusive.
okay, so "pantheism: God is nature." vs. "theism: God is seperate from nature."
These are some pretty old doctrines, and seem to spand Hinduism, Bhuddism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and a bunch of other -isms that i don't even care to mention.
two concepts that i think are key here, are the ideas of "free will" and what constitutes "nature".
ie, is it "nature" for some deviant to rape a baby?
according to satanism, humans should give in to the nature of the beast, which is pretty much to do as you feel, regardless of consequence. (I'm paraphrasing) coz, i read somewhere that humans are a composition made up of half angel, half beast.
i don't know of any other animals, other than humans, that go around raping their young.
but, how much free will do animals have? they go in heat, and then everyone of the right age is fair game.
it's a survival thing.
scott adams, creator of dilbert, believes that "free will" is a fantasy. it doesn't exist. basically, people are just moist robots, pre-programmed to react in certains ways based on certain stimuli.
So, was there a Programmer?
i read somewhere else that the greatest triumph the devil has achieved, was to convince mankind that God does not exist.
so, does pantheism subscribe to baby raping as acceptable behaviour? was the baby asking for it? did the rapist exercise free will?
my moral compass / human nature / survival instinct tells me that baby raping is out like bike-riding in church. That dude needs to get his head read. Preferably in a cell somewhere, far away from babies.
As far as I can tell, rapists are imbalanced, they often do feel remorse and self-hatred for what they do, and say they "couldn't help it".
So, in the same way you get mutations and evolutionary happenings that are designed to ensure survival of the fittest, i'd say that rapists are in the minority, it's a sickness, and it's a way for nature to control all this over-population of the planet.
but, that's a whole other issue.
i don't think the world is over-populated, although most cities are.
Mr Smith of the matrix said that humans are a virus on the planet. i think AIDS is the best anti-virus a Programmer could institute.
So, what's been bothering me is, is God some PC dork sitting in a room playing The Sims on all of us, much like a cruel kid pulling the wings off butterflies, or the legs of spiders just to see em squirm?
If "God is nature", then the evolution theory is plausible.
Bottom line is, we don't know how it all started. But, we have this awesome handbook, which said "God created the heavens and the earth".
Maybe we should ask God for an encyclopedia, instead of a story book?
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