Understanding the God of Panendeism

How God Interacts in Different Theologies

The Theistic God

In Theism, we typically find God watching us from some metaphysical realm outside our own universe. Despite living in an alternate sphere, the Theistic God is often though to be aware of everything, as well as very involved in our material lives. Because of this direct relationship with humans, it seems that the God of theism would have to be either cruel and unwilling to help many, or limited, and incapable of uplifting everyone. Many Theists believe that they can sway God's will through prayer to achieve different results from what God would have chosen otherwise.

The Deistic God

In Modern Deism, God created the universe and its inhabitants and then walked away from it. There is no connection between creation and creator. Everything we do (good or evil) is an expression of our own free will. God doesn't see it, God doesn't act on it - we as humans are left on our own. In contrast, much like in Theism - many Classical Deists did believe God was involved and guided the world. Many Classical Deists also prayed.

The Pandeistic, or Pantheistic God

In Pandeism, God created the universe and either died or was absorbed into it, and therefore, God is the universe. In Pantheism, God is and always has been the universe. Both views theorize that beings are interconnected, encapsulated experiences of God, and that individuality is ultimately an illusion. In these theories, experiential beings are more or less the result of God tricking itself into believing that it is limited with the end goal of achieving different perspectives and experiences that would not be possible as a boundless, infinite God. Since both Pandeism and Pantheism claim that God is the totality of everything, to say that it acts or doesn't act seems meaningless without a subject to be acted upon.

The Atheistic Material Universe

In Atheism, God is not present, and everything that exists came into being through natural processes that did not involve a cognitive being.

The Panentheistic, or Panendeistic God

In Panentheism and Panendeism, God is present in the totality of everything, but not materially or cognitively limited to or manifest as it. God itself posses an individual, greater cognizance, separate from all other beings, transcendent of the sum of all beings, and greater than the universe itself. God is infinite - our own cosmos, anything outside of it, and anything within or without it that lies beyond our current means of perception. We are free observers of, and witnesses to the vast beauty of creation, and of being itself. We possess inherent qualities that draw us freely towards resonance with God's character, and we can sense when we find unity in things like love, creativity, and . In this way, God interacts with us, and we interact with God.

Written by Benjamin F. Sullivan, Published with Permission via Panendeism.org

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A Panendeist's Explaination of Why Evil Exists

To understand why bad things happen, we must first imagine a world without them.

What Would Life Look Like Without Evil?

To understand why evil happens, I think we must first ask ourselves, what would the world look like if it was absolutely perfect? If you just scratch the top of that though experiment, you'll probably get some very positive imagery, maybe some picture of you running through a meadow under a perfectly blue sky, but, if you follow that thought process all the way through, you'll arrive at a horrifyingly meaningless form of existence. Why? Because there is only one perfect response and action to every choice you make, in fact, there may only be one utterly perfect thing for you to be doing - ever.

A Day in a Perfect Life

For the sake of illustration, lets imagine that there were multiple perfect things that you could engage in. Now imagine waking up in your perfect home (which is identical to everyone else's perfect home), surrounded by your perfect family, who loves you not because they have a choice, but because that's the only thing they can do - after all, they're perfect too. You get out of your perfect bed and have the perfect breakfast, followed by the most utterly perfect mid-day activities and family time. You wow as you enjoy the perfect picnic at the perfect park, your taste-buds burst in ecstasy as you consume the perfect dinner with your perfect family. After your dinner, you engage in the most remarkably perfect sex in the most perfect position with your perfect wife, and at night, you and your family all lie together in the meadow, looking up at the perfect stars in the perfect night sky - each of you has gone through the entire day in an unshakable and unrelenting mental state of ecstatic loving bliss.

Now imagine that every single family on earth is doing the exact same thing that you're doing, perhaps at different times (depending on geographic location), and all without any choice to deviate from this objective 'perfect' state of being. Imagine that every day will be exactly the same and that you will never die, nor will you ever deviate from this state of existence.

'Perfection' Eliminates the Purpose of Being and Free Will

Besides being terrifying to imagine, a perfect world, with perfect beings, and a perfect material nature cannot accommodate purpose, actual freedom, or a reason for being. In a perfect world, there are no problems to solve, no diseases to cure, no triumphs, no struggles, no tears, and no victories. In such a world, we would simply exist as choice-less beings with no objective meaningful purpose or means of defining our own existence.

Bad Defines Good and Good Defines Bad

Without bad to define good, good is nothing. When you see a beautiful sky on a sunny day, you can appreciate it because you've seen stormy skies that bring rain and destruction. In the same sort of way, when you love deeply, you can appreciate it, because you've known what it means to feel alone.

A perfect world is like a perfectly white room in which you, and everything around you are also perfectly white. In this room, you see nothing, because there is no contrast to define one thing from another. The same would be true of a perfectly black room. It is only by allowing the freedom of both elements, black and white, that innumerable variations of grey can lend form and meaning to this room and all that lies within it.

So in our perfect world scenario, you can't really love or really enjoy anything, because you have nothing to define what makes anything worthy of love or enjoyment in the first place. Everything you do, and everything that happens around you, is simply a set of incomprehensible actions that take place without anyone ever having chosen to do them.

The Scope of Good and Evil

Since good and evil are two parts of an integral whole and necessary to define one another, we must consider that the greatest possible experiences of love, joy, or attainment exist in polarized contrast to equally powerful capacities for hate, sorrow, and failure. We, our world, and the universe it occupies are free, and such freedom requires both good and evil to exist as unrestricted elements. To limit the scope of how bad things could be, would be to limit scope of how good they could be also, ultimately this would diminish our own freedom and depth of experience.

Because Evil Exists, We Have Purpose and Meaning

As humans, it is our transcendent purpose to choose good over evil. When we choose to engage in things like love, friendship, creativity, caring for our fellow beings, or improving the world around us, we find unison with God, and we feel the transcendent beauty, good, and meaning of it.

Written by Benjamin F. Sullivan, Published with Permission via Panendeism.org

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Understanding Deism, Pantheism, & Panendeism

This article is meant to be a quick, at a glance guide to understanding Supernatural Theism, Pantheism, and Deism and how they each define God differently.

In Deism God is transcendent, but God is not present materially. God is completely apart from us and creation itself.

In Pantheism and Pandeism, God is universally manifest in and as everything. In this world view, God is not transcendent because God is the manifestation of all reality. Therefore, in Pantheism, we are Gods.

In Panentheism and Panendeism, God is both transcendent of material reality, and present in it. God is in us and we are in God. This is effectively a kind of "natural theism." In this view, we are all part of God, but we ourselves are not gods.

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