Welcome to a Pandeism Anthology node of the Pandeism index!!
Early on in the writing process, I was asked by the publisher to write summaries of the book,
Pandeism: An Anthology, at various levels of specificity. The sum of these came out thusly (with some amendment for noding purposes), and serve as a useful
introduction to the whole of the book.
Pandeism: An Anthology was published in January 2017, and was for about a month thereafter one of the best selling
e-books in
Amazon.com's
Deism category. It has since fluctuated up and down a bit, but has stayed in the top hundred books for this category.
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Pandeism: An Anthology presents the work of
sixteen authors, new and old, examining the implications of the revolutionary evolutionary theological theory of
Pandeism -- the proposition that the
Creator of our
Universe created by becoming our Universe, and that this proposition can be demonstrated through the exercise of logic and reason. These authors present a wide range of views originating from their varied experiences, from professional theologians and religious educators to lay philosophers with PhDs in the hard sciences. Collectively, these authors have assembled the most extensive examination of Pandeism put to print in over a hundred years.
Section I: Fundamentals of Pandeism
What is the
essence of Pandeism? This section contains articles broadly examining the
heart of the proposition. It is
logic-based, friendly to
science and scientific
discovery, and yet accounts for
spirituality, and for characteristics of
the human experience that defy
quantification.
First, in “The Idealist Interpretation of Pandeism,”
Bernardo Kastrup PhD argues “for an interpretation of the facts of reality that renders Pandeism both genuine as a theology and metaphysically sound.” Next, in “A Theorem Concerning God,”
Robert G. Brown PhD sets forth a logical proof, effectively a mathematical argument demonstrating that any entity which could properly be called “God” in fact must be either pandeistic or panendeistic.
Alan H. Dawe thence examines a
divine reality, in “God, the Universe and Pandeism,” outlining broadly the capacities of what he terms God-Consciousness, the operative force which undergirds both the pandeistic Creator, and the more expansive theological model of Dawe’s own
The God Franchise.
After a
poetic interlude (poems throughout the book were provided by inestimable poetess
Amy Perry), we find “God Without Religion,” wherein
Dr Michael Arnheim sets forth the particular case for
Deism as against both
Atheism and
Theism, and makes an especial plea for unity among those holding to variations of this middle view, including proponents of Pandeism.
“Pantheistic God-Concepts: Ancient, Contemporary, Popular, and Plausible Alternatives to Classical Theism,”
Raphael Lataster argues for an end to the myopic focus of religious studies on the dichotomy between Theism and Naturalism, pointing to the often-ignored expansive history of pantheistic, panentheistic, and pandeistic theological options.Lastly, in “Why Pandeism Is Better Than Theism,”
Knujon Mapson argues for the logical superiority of Pandeism as a theological model accounting for everything that theistic models claim, but doing so with fewer assumptions.
Section II: Philosophical Implications of Pandeism
“
Omniscience,
Omnipotence and Pantheism,” by
Richard Francks PhD, sets the stage with an observation on the nature of omniscience as applied to experiential knowledge. Next, “Leibniz’s Best World Claim Restructured,” by
William C. Lane, presents a tour-de-force of moral consequence, explaining how a creator wholly becoming the creation— without knowing in advance every negative consequence of that happening, and yet bearing all such consequences—escapes the ‘problem of evil’ while exhibiting one aspect of a maximally loving being: maximal closeness to that which is loved.
Zoltan Istvan, in “
Transhumanism and Theistcideism,” contemplates the drive of living things to live, and of intelligent life to better itself, achieving some remarkable conclusions about the desire of nonomnipotent beings to obtain omnipotence—and of an omnipotent being to destroy itself and begin anew. Following another poetic interlude, “Pantheistic Reflections,” by
Poffo Ortiz, introduces us to the pandeistic notion of biopantheism, and powerful arguments of pantheist/pandeist morality.
Lastly, in “Pandeism, the Holographic Universe, and Simulation Theory,”
Anthony Peake considers the evidence for the popular theory that our Universe is itself a simulation—and how this too is a concept consistent with a pandeistic Universe.
Section III: Criticism and Analysis from Other Views
Throughout its history, Pandeism has drawn both a critical and comparative eye from adherents to other theological models. The conventional practice in organizing comparative religious literature seems to be to order pieces so that conventional Western world views are given prominence. Here, we upend this tendency by putting ahead of these the analysis from what is likely the the oldest religion on earth,
Hinduism. Other views presented encompass some nontraditional approaches to mainstream belief systems as well.
In “Hindu Dharma—Living on the Edge of Infinity,”
Sushma Sahajpal illuminates the viewpoint of Hinduism, often misunderstood or misrepresented in Western frames of thought, and examines how its theological propositions tend to compare to those of the pandeistic model. “Beyond Creator and Universe: From Pandeism to Ismaili Muslim Neoplatonism,” by
Ismaili Gnosis, makes a case for a particular interpretation of
Islam over Pandeism.
In “Omnientheism: God According to Biblical Universalist Unitarianism,”
Orlando Alcántara Fernández makes a spirited plea for the soulfulness of theistic thought against the harsher light shone by Deism, Pandeism, and Panendeism.
William Walker Atkinson, with his chapter, “Axioms of Reality—Concluded,” sets his early twentieth-century ‘New Thought’ ideas against Pandeism, arguing against both the evidence for it (as compared to his own view) and potential effects of its adoption.
And lastly—but hardly least—we close with the view from what is modernly the strongest challenge to theistic faith, with “An Atheist Critique of Pandeism.” Here,
Dan Dana PhD contends that the same
skepticism which applies to Theism leads to the same
absence of
evidence when applied to Pandeism.
The book closes with another poem, this a selection from an
ode by
William Wordsworth.
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All told, this collection launches a venture heretofore only flickeringly imagined in the course of human history, its success and the tendency of readers to recommend it to others serving as the launching pad from which future volumes will follow, and perhaps even one from which a transformation of all of human
thought can begin.