A Defense of Science and of "Scientific Pantheism"

A Response to Gary Suttle

by Paul Harrison

This article is a response to A Response To "Scientific Pantheism" by Gary Suttle

Gary raises some interesting points.

First the name scientific pantheism. This is the name for a consistent, empirical, materialist and non-dualist brand of pantheism. Since there is more than one form of pantheism, this version has to have its own name. What name to choose exercised me for a long time and still does whenever someone like Gary complains.

Gary is right that the history of the word "scientific" in religion (and scientific socialism) has not been helpful - you could often assume you were dealing with its opposite. But I am not too worried that others have abused the word. Scientific pantheism does not abuse it. Its principles are those of empiricism, the same ones that underlie science.

Nor am I worried about pantheism being associated with science. Pantheism does predate science - my hero Heraklitus thought the sun was no bigger than a human foot. But The real founders of Western pantheism, the Stoics, were excellent scientists and astronomers. And we are immeasurably better off now we know how immense the sun really is, now we know those are other galaxies out there, not just holes in a black roof. We wouldn't know that without science.

Science, too, is what tells us about the ozone hole, and global warming. We'll be in a real mess if we try to deal with our problems without science, or with amateur or religion based "science." We wouldn't even know we had these problems or what their causes were till it was too late to do anything about it.

The problems Gary points to have not been caused by science at all but by technology. Various technologies have caused social and environmental problems since the beginning of human tool use. We invent something that looks good - we use it - it creates problems we didn't foresee - so then we look for new technologies to deal with the problems. Note here that technology isn't all bad either - we rely on it even for low-tech solutions.

The better our science, the better our technologies can be to deal with the problems. As for Frankenstein science like cloning, ending death, vivisection etc, what's needed is better public and political control over technology - not an end to all science.

As far as I am concerned at this point the only viable alternative name is naturalistic pantheism (Bernt Rostrom's favourite). This is a good name, I like it, it's got nature in it, it means relying on scientific rather than supernatural explanations. If I'd thought of it at the beginning, I might have used it. However, Scientific Pantheism has got around, the URL links are up in a lot of places, and a change might confuse people. I have to say that only three people out of hundreds who have written to me have had any problem with the scientific name. None of them were scientists. Quite a number of people, several of them scientists, are happy with the name scientific pantheism.

So to sum up, the name is not fixed in stone. I'd be interested to hear other reactions from UPS members for or against the two options scientific or naturalistic (e-mail: harrison@dircon.co.uk). Please indicate your occupation.

Gary goes on from the name to the substance, accusing scientific pantheism of being basically nothing other than atheism in cunning disguise. Good pantheists like Spinoza were often accused of atheism, so I'm in good company. But it was usually theists doing the accusing.

Pantheism means equating the universe with divinity, or with God if you insist on that word. Now if there is only the universe, where does God come in? The word God in pantheism is just another name for the Universe. So pantheism is not a theism. The theists were right in one sense: as far as their God is concerned, pantheism is atheistic.

But like Gary they were wrong in another. Pantheism (and scientific pantheism) does have a profound and mystical sense of the divinity in all things. That feeling does go beyond science, but it is not in any way incompatible with science and can benefit from science. Without science we would have little idea of the amazing interdependence of nature. Without science we would feel the universe was a lot less numinous than we do. The Hubble Space Telescope - a product of science and technology - has been the greatest gift to pantheism in all human history.

Now the pantheist (and scientific pantheist) sense of the numinous is very far from the hard-nosed skepticism and alienation of many atheists. Strict atheism does not acknowledge any numinous quality in anything.

Of course every pantheist can use whatever terms they like for their own experience of the numinous. Gary is welcome to call it God. Other pantheists call it Goddess or Tao or Nirvana or Buddha. They too are welcome.

"God" is useful as a bridge when dealing with theists, or when simplifying the message for outsiders. But it may actually be an obstacle to true perception of reality. "God" is not a neutral word meaning ultimate. It carries a huge amount of semantic baggage for anyone brought up in a theist culture. It means the creator, the loving forgiving wrathful punishing father-figure, all of that. Most of us have these childhood associations lurking there in our subconscious.

I personally prefer not to use any of these names. My divinity is the Universe and nature. I call them Reality, or Being, or the One. Personally I would not want my direct perception of these to be clouded in any way shape or form by any misleading associations, conscious or not, from theist religion.

I do disdain faith as the belief in things which are impossible or contradictory. So does Gary. But I do not disdain faith of the other definition, and endorse as much as he does a "strong belief" in the beauty of nature and the exuberant creativity of the Universe.

Paul Harrison (e-mail: harrison@dircon.co.uk) is the vice president of the Universal Pantheist Society and runs the Scientific Pantheism web site which can be found at: http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/index.htm

This article is a response to:

A Response To Scientific Pantheism" by Gary Suttle

A Defense Of Science and of "Scientific Pantheism"
A Response to Gary Suttle
by Paul Harrison, reprinted from Pantheist Vision Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer Solstice, 1997

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For more information about Pantheism, or questions about this website please contact Harold Wood at ups@pantheist.net Pantheism \Pan"the*ism\, n. [Pan- + theism.]: Any doctrine, philosophy, or religious practice that holds universe [cosmos], taken or conceived of as the totality of forces and/or matter, is synonymous with the theological principle of God.

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