PANTHEISM and THE BIG BANG
AT 51 : September 15th 2000
The general idea of pantheism is described in the standard reference books - such as the PAN Dictionary of Philosophy edited by Anthony Flew
(ISBN 0-330-28396-6) - from which the following has been scanned.
The association between atheism and pantheism (to which the above refers explicitly) is understandable. The idea that God is non-existent is, when you come to think of it, a near relative of the idea that God is the sole extant entity; neither rests upon the idea that the Creator is distinct from the Creation. Traditional Christianity rests upon the idea of a prior Creator who Created It All and who will Outlast It All; much of Christian theology is an attempted inquiry into, or dogmatic presumption about, how this perceived separateness is bridged - how the Creator/Creation dichotomy is to be understood. In Christian eyes, a pantheist is one who is slipping into atheism; that perception is, itself, sufficient to make humanists wonder if they can do a deal with pantheists.
The thrust of this article is to reflect upon whether such a deal is to be had but, first, it is necessary to say a few things about The Big Bang - a theory based coherently upon a huge and varied accumulation of observed data.
A very succinct account of the meaning of the phrase Big Bang is given by Smoot and Davidson in Wrinkles in Time (ISBN 0-349-10602-9)
"That moment" is often said to have been about 15 billion years ago.
Pantheism is an attractive notion to people who cannot see great merit in theism but who feel a need to believe in something that defies proof ..... indeed a need to believe in almost anything so long as that belief is in disregard of considerations that, by their very nature, hinge upon empirical evidence or avowedly fallible assumptions.
Pantheism is not prone to certain intractable problems that make theism such a fertile field for disagreement - often pressed to the point of violence and cruelty that the contenders would not willingly stoop to for other than religious reasons. (People who believe absurdities commit atrocities).
One such battleground comprises the beliefs that various theists hold as to the extent and sorts of divine intervention that can take place. Miracles are believed to be divine interventions in the ordinary workings of nature - divine countermanding of natural law. Any given event might be considered miraculous by one lot of believers while others believe that the report of it is fraudulent or based upon illusion. There are no reported cases of devout Hindus seeing the Holy Virgin in the sky; there are no reported instances of devout Christians seeing rather weird statues drinking milk in a temple!
Pantheists need have no such problems. The universe, which, in their opinion is synonymous with God, works the way it does - (pantheists would say) that way is God's way. To pantheists there is no such thing as a miracle; miracle is to them a categorical non-starter. Some events we understand; some we do not: some things we might expect to come to understand; some things, which we do not even suspect to be the case, emerge as time goes by. Yesterday's miracles have a habit of metamorphosing into today's headline fodder and then into tomorrow's technology.
Clearly there is, semantics apart, a huge area of effective agreement between pantheists and secularists as to the way we assess what happens. Observing what happens and formulating laws of nature is identical with identifying God's Laws; they are the self-same laws and secularism is effectively the same as pantheism in this respect.
It is no wonder that theists suspect pantheists of being closet atheists. It is no wonder that the pioneer of modern pantheism, Spinoza, was persecuted by the religious establishment of his time and place (seventeenth century Amsterdam).
But it is in ethics that the secularism/pantheism alliance most is likely to prosper. Religious ethics is all about acting in accord with the Will of God. There is much self-righteous dispute, among theists, as to what the Will of God actually comprises. Generally, it appears that the perceived Will of God is none other than the ethicist's culturally predicated will.
Secularism and pantheism are alike in resting ethics upon human needs in relation to what is possible - given the way the world (i.e. God) works. There can be quarrels here too but at least we achieve some wisdom by basing ethics upon what is observed to happen rather than what it is asserted that an inscrutable god wishes to happen.
There is an obvious affinity between pantheists (who revere the God-Universe) and "green' secularists. However it has to be admitted that among secularists, as among religionists, there are those who take the dated Biblical view that the 'Creation' is for the benefit of humans - male white humans especially.
Where can the Big Bang be fitted in to all this.?
A cosmologist, speaking at a recent Orkney Science Festival, reminded us that a vacuum is not as simple as we once thought; it is now believed not to be simply nothingness but rather to be "teeming with virtual particles." Virtual particles, it seems, are enitites that can change very easily into real particles only to revert to the virtual state after a very brief actual existence.
The theory of current cosmology runs roughly as follows. In the originally ubiquitous vacuum some virtual particles came together to make a minute actual particle which immediately went off bang in a big way. Space and time were generated and ....... bingo ..... we have a universe.
Pantheistically speaking, perhaps God was originally the ubiquitous vacuum creating the universe of space and time (spacetime) from within itself - by this Big Bang route.
This is fascinating - to those who like this sort of thing. Too bad that it characterises the pre-Creation God as a ubiquitous vacuum who turned a little bit of Himself into the universe we know and love.
An unkind thought presents itself: perhaps this pantheistic model of the Big Bang explains why theological discourse is often vacuous.
The next issue, Number 52, will appear on October 15th 2000.
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