Panentheism (response to Nykytyne2's questions for theists)

[ObjectiveBob]

Have you looked into Eastern Orthodoxy? It's very much compatible with panentheism.

[SLemonspunk]

I just want to say thanks for explaining these things.

[futab1000]

you'd be better off sticking to pantheism...

[edwardtang1977]

you say god is undefined and can't be defined so to avoid the question...then how do you believe in something so abstract?

When you answer things that takes this much time....it is probably you are trying to convince yourself.

What does god have to do to make YOU think twice?...asking YOU!

Your opinion, not asking for facts so there should be an answer

[wimsweden]

I enjoyed watching this video, but I'm somewhat confused on a couple of points. At one moment you say that a certain question by Nykytyne presupposes an anthropomorphic conception of "God" (which you presumably don't hold), but later on you say something like "God" allows us to have or chooses to give us freedom. That sounds like a person with intentions. I'm also confused by "God" not being evil and only us humans being evil, but then you say later on that we are "God".

[0ThouArtThat0]

I think we have every reason to believe there are many, many other conscious intelligent organisms on other planets in our own galaxy, and just as many in every other spiral galaxy.

We live in a universe, as the ancient already knew, whose center is everywhere.

[0ThouArtThat0]

The universe is perpetually becoming new to itself because of consciousness.

[jenni4jlss]

I appreciated most, your response to the 3rd question. Religion is tricky, because it represents spiritual freedom, but most often prevents it. If we (humanity) are the divine, then what are we waiting for?

[RazorBoy55]

Cool haircut! But I still think you should go all the way for a shaved head! It would look very handsome on you. Why not?

[theDracoIX]

@ThouAT You were in one of my dreams last night, lol. It was stormy out, and you approached my front door - which was rattling from the wind.

I let you in and we found ourselves staring at what I called a tube of glue, but... you replied - no, I think it's more like adhesive, lol.

So we sat there, debating over the definitions of glue and adhesive, lol.

After that, the roof flew off the top of my house, and a crew of strippers came parachuting down around us.

So yea, it had a happy ending.

[AnarchyInYourHead]

20 mins is normally WAY past my patience to watch but I felt compelled to watch this one anyway. Thanx. I've been referring to views as pantheist, but I now think panentheist is a better description. I've taken up weekly meditations with a local Quaker group and I'm finding them extremely beneficial.

[AnarchyInYourHead]

I used to half-jokingly say "Math is God." On some level I was trying to describe what I would now call the Divine. I look at the mathematical formulas we derive to describe behavior of stuph in our world, and these are sort of analogous to the divine. The only "perfect" sphere is made of infinite points defined by a formula, but the imperfect ones in our world, e.g. soap bubbles, are "guided" by that perfect one that only exists in the abstract (the Divine that's outside our universe).

[Poisonfrogg]

cool... thnx for the vid... enjoyed it

[zueskronos]

Mathew the notion of christ can be found almost anywhere, evidently even B.C Greece, Egypt etc....so the question would have to be what exactly is the point of it all?

[Wespa]

Thanks for sharing. I am Pantheist too and those were a lot of like mine thoughts. :)

[TDP788]

Nicely put

[CosmicSisyphus]

How we know our mystical experiences aren't simply neurochemical conjobs (AKA veridical perceptions)? Much of what we experience has no grounding in reality. I am an indirect realist, so I sort of assume we have access to the external world through our filtered perceptual representations, even though we don't know the thing-in-itself. A schizophrenic patient remarked, "I am you and you are me." Rumi said the same thing basically, "Say I am you... I am all orders of being." In other words...

[CosmicSisyphus]

@CosmicSisyphus schizophrenic man enlightened?

[plutodrvv]

While I applaud your comments and agree with much of what you say you should be very conscientious of the literalitsts and fundamentalists and distinguish your self from that camp and preface your statements with that point. Religion has become a political weapon and many claim to be Christian but use this as a code for conservatism and bigotry and a "return to tradition". Let's remember there was never an idyllic world in which to return to unless they mean slavery and subordination of women.

[NeoBards]

It's great to see a Panentheistic response to Nykytyne2's questions! Excellent video!

[FixMeThin7]

I think "religion" with its rules and rituals was created by man as an attempt to reach God. However, according to the Bible, God's son became flesh in order to reach man. People gain salvation by grace as opposed to legalistic rituals and good works. Islam says there is no sure way to gain salvation except if you are a martyr for Allah. If you kill yourself in the name of Allah, then you get 72 virgins. Mormons think you become a God of your own world. To me those religions scream man-made.

[fareedfilms]

No your wrong, in Islam according to their Qur'an and athentic Hadith, if you commit suicide in any way you will go to hell and live there for eternity continuing to kill yourself over and over in the way you first did. Suicide is completely prohibited in Islam along with any murder, and if you done your research with authentic texts instead of the media's scare tactics then you would of known. A martyr in Islam is someone who dies fighting to protect his religion.

[FixMeThin7]

So, you're saying the Islamic suicide bombers around the globe are committing suicide and will end up in hell for all eternity according to their religion, or are you saying they're martyrs and protecting their religion? You're not making yourself clear.

[LimpLoser]

' The vengeful jealous God of the Old Testament '? You are forgetting the book of Jonah where God spares a wicked Nineveh.

Matt, why not try reading the Bible before spouting off about it.

[Dall5000]

One act of mercy does not negate the multitude of atrocities committed in the old testament by Yahweh.

[LimpLoser]

@Dall5000. Have you read The Old Testament?

[LimpLoser]

@Dall5000. The Old Testament is filled to the brim with God being nice to people.

Try reading it.

[GeistWerk]

Great video, Matt.

I just have to disagree on one tiny point. You say that hell is an idea of the old testament and that it is somehow overcome by jesus and that all people are saved by jesus.

Quite the opposite is true, actually. In early judaism there was not even a concept of afterlife.

The idea of hell, the idea of seperating good from evil after death started with Jesus Christ.

[Professoranton]

This is old school good stuff. Very enjoyable.

[HaleyMary]

It seems sometimes that there can be certain degrees of what is good and evil, although there are absolutes, I think there are some things that are morally good and some things that could be morally wrong depending on the situation and what each individual person values.

[jimbobubbadj]

Matt, hows it going in the UK? How are your studies going? Its great that you and others are questioning everything. Later Bro! Before I forget, I have not been able to see Andromeda damit!

[HaleyMary]

I agree on religion, that it is based on experience, not belief. Sometimes not so much religion or a set of commandments, but more spirituality and being at one with the universe. Never asking why something is, just accepting that it is.

[theprodigy2186]

@0thouartthat0

I noticed you looked surprised when he said that christians still worship "yahweh". I was too...

However I was EVEN MORE surprised when I heard vertias48 (a christian utuber) say in his latest video explicitly that he worships YAHWEH!

Perhaps you know more about christianity than veritas48 does... LOL and he says he's an apologist!

It doesn't surprise me though... sadly : (

[silversoul7]

I'm a Christian and I worship Yahweh. The idea that the Old Testament is separate from the God of the New Testament is a gnostic idea -- in fact, one of the main reasons why I reject gnosticism. Jesus' name in Hebrew was "Yeshua," spelled YHShVH, while Yahweh is spelled YHVH. Jesus' name is YHVH with the letter "Shin" in the middle of it, which has significance too great to go into here. Christianity is in fact a child of Judaism, not a negation of it.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I wouldn't say the two are separate, silversoul. But are you familiar with Jung's "Answer to Job"? He argues pretty convincingly that Job's conscience outshined YHWH's display of power and thereby forced God to become human through Christ. So the human being aware that "I and the Father are one" is the new face of divinity, not separate from YHWH but a more complete and perfected manifestation.

[UncannyRicardo]

Nice views Matt, your views are one of the new evolutions of the old religions.

[f417h]

i agree it is something felt personally through experience, and once it becomes, it is no longer questioned. it just is.

≈merci

[CammieSpectrum]

but where is God in existence, whatever form you might imagine? and how is this an explanation for what emerges and exists, if god is intended as part of what emerges and exists?

[Nykytyne2]

I'm at 4:50 and I'm confused.

As far as I can tell, consciousness and intelligence are properties of animals. I can't think of any reason to infer consciousness in something as simple as a hydrogen atom. What makes you think they are conscious? And what makes you think they have less intense experiences than we do? To me this sounds like totally unfounded speculation.

(continues watching)

[wholethinker]

Nyk:

"what makes you think they have less intense experiences than we do?"

Agree with you. If I hit my finger with a hammer, I have the same experience as my finger. Even the hammer has the same experience according to the Newton's third law.

Regarding the hydrogen atom's consciousness: Can you say where the consciousness is located?

[0ThouArtThat0]

I certainly don't think a hydrogen atom is fully conscious, but if we desire a monistic evolutionary cosmology, matter and mind (i.e., extension and intension) must share a common origin. Human consciousness must have it's roots in the proto-experience of atoms. If our human interiority is something added later to what had originally been purely extended and entirely non-experiential matter, then we've got two separate substances on our hands.

[0ThouArtThat0]

In one sense, our conscious human experience is the result of an organized society of billions of trillions of atoms. One atom can't do very much, the future possibilities of action are quite limited for it. But nonetheless, the meger quality of intension afforded it (gravitational attraction) is enough to create stars and planets. The point is not that atoms are conscious, but that evolution is creative; and creativity implies the participation of mind in all matter.

[normonics]

I don't think you can show an atom ever 'ignores' gravity, or does not 'obey' it. I'm having a hard time buying there is anything worth calling 'intention' in these relations. It seems what you have done is define creativity in a non-mental way and then proceeded to equate your new definition with mind...sleight of hand.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I think this is a side issue in respect to the point I was trying to make in this video, which was that the universe is an evolutionary process wherein new forms of organization emerge which go beyond (in terms of complexity and/or consciousness) what had come before. So in a panentheistic cosmology, more emphasis is placed on immanent creativity than on a transcendent creator.

[Nykytyne2]

I think we can avoid this problem simply by thinking of consciousness as an emergent property. Hydrogen atoms are the basis for hydrogen gas, but hydrogen atoms on their own are not gasses or proto-gasses. Air molecules in a tornado need not be proto-tornadoes, nucleic acids don't need to be considered proto-life. In the same way I think experience can emerge without some sort of proto-experience in its most basic units.

[0ThouArtThat0]

The problem with emergence as an explanation for consciousness is that it doesn't explain how something entirely exterior and extended (matter) could all the sudden gain interiority and intentionality. Consciousness isn't simply a new physical property, like "wetness"; it is an entirely new ontological domain.

[normonics]

'Matter' or 'Physical reality' is not inherently 'exterior'. Only our models of it are, because this is the only way we can conceive these models. Of course, the weakness of this approach is obvious in 'problems' such as the wave/particle duality (among many other things). That said, exteriority always lies in relation (is reciprocal with) interiority, which I think is partly your point.

[normonics]

However this does not seem to preclude the possibility of the interior-exterior relation co-emerging/evolving. So, exteriority doesn't 'gain' interiority, they emerge and evolve in relation to one another. What 'existed' before this emergence? Words will not suffice because words are inherently from a particular perspective, and there was no perspective.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I agree exteriority doesn't 'gain' interiority at some magic moment in cosmic evolution. They co-emerged and continue to co-evolve.

Words do reach their limit in these sorts of highly speculative discussions, but it seems to me that we can't help but enter into them if we are in pursuit of truth. 500 character limit doesn't make metaphysics much easier...

[normonics]

So if these discussions are speculative, why identify yourself with any label such as this? If you believe this perspective is 'right', then others must be 'wrong', and in that case you haven't escaped any of the pitfalls of standard dogmatic religion. Why not just discuss them as interesting ideas, and not commit to any of them?

[npeffer]

Don't things like "interiority" and "intentionality" assume such a thing as free will, or that the mind is non-deterministic? In a deterministic universe, "intent" can't truly exist; it's just a name used to describe a specific collection of regularly caused physical events.

[npeffer]

I think a good way to think about it is that no part of consciousness is truly creative - it's the reason that you can't imagine what a color outside the visible spectrum would look like. All "creativity" is a spin of direct experience.

I don't think it's too difficult to imagine overlapping patterns of memory and calculation giving rise to the illusion of intent and consciousness.

[0ThouArtThat0]

What are "regularly caused physical events"? Can you describe them independently of your own subject perceptions of those events? Don't forget that science must include percipient events (i.e., the conscious, knowing scientist) in the physical/natural events it describes. Somehow the lawful evolution of our universe has produced scientific knowledge and increasing technical mastery of itself. So not only is the universe logically organized, it can be known by itself to be so!

[0ThouArtThat0]

npeffer, Yes, interiority is equivalent to spontaneity. It is the hidden presence of possibility. Hidden because it is never fully actual, as matter is, but exists by virtue of absence: consciousness drags the past ahead into the future. Past and future are not extended in space, they are intended and remembered in time.

[Exmech2]

Yes it can, actually. Autocatalytic systems tend to evlove to a more complicated system. The fly does what a fly does on only 300,000 neurons. A portion of the brain that is about the size of a cigarette pack is close to 300 Billion neurons. Consciosness is, indeed, physical property, though not a "new" one. Look up Christoff Koch, who is doing remarkable work in this field.

[0ThouArtThat0]

In which field? Computational neurology? I agree! But I don't think Koch is doing any work on consciousness. Not that his research isn't relevant, but he has already decided that consciousness is located in the brain. I don't think he has considered the radical re-orientation a serious study of consciousness requires of scientific materialism. If we want to study our own immediate experience of reality, we need to bracket the hypothetical world of mass and energy that physics describes...

[0ThouArtThat0]

...we need to look at the lifeworld, our meaningful embeddedness in the flow of earthly time amongst others we naturally care about (whether we love, fear, or hate them).

The science of consciousness is first and foremost the science of science. We can't say anything of meaning about nature until we understand how and why it is that the human soul is capable of knowing such a thing in the first place. Consciousness isn't just another natural phenomenon, it is the nous doing the knowing!

[0ThouArtThat0]

Natural science studies the conceptual relationships between perceptions--it finds the lawful patterns hidden beneath the flux of appearances. A science of consciousness turns to look at the conceptual process itself. Can you catch yourself in the act of thinking? It seems we can only lay hold of thoughts, of the byproduct of thinking--not ourselves as thinkers. We as thinkers are 'free' in this sense, that we determine thoughts and are not determined by them. We are the thinker, not the thought

[vexgodglove]

@0ThouArtThat0 There is no reason to think of consciousness as an either/or thing. Animals other than humans arguably display signs of possessing some level on consciousness. It isn't that consciousness suddenly sprang into existence, it emerged gradually through ever increasing neurological complexity.

[GnomesAmok]

@vexgodglove

your confusing intelligence with consciousness. every animal is concsious.