Pantheism

From the Greek pan, all, and theos, god. The most famous modern pantheist is Baruch Spinoza, who in his Ethics (1677) argued that there is only one substance in the universe — "God or Nature" — and that everything that exists is a mode or expression of that single substance. For Spinoza, the "God" of pantheism is not a personal being with intentions; it is the rational, necessary order of reality itself.

Pantheism should be distinguished from panentheism (the view that the universe is in God but God also transcends it) and from classical theism (the view that God created the universe but remains ontologically separate from it). In strict pantheism there is no creator-creature distinction. The universe is not God's work; the universe is what God is.

Pantheistic tendencies appear in many traditions: Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, certain forms of Taoism, Stoicism's logos, some strands of Jewish mysticism, and the romantic nature-mysticism of writers like Wordsworth and Emerson. When scientists like Einstein or Stephen Hawking talk about "God" as the order of the cosmos, they are usually invoking something close to Spinoza's pantheism — not a being who listens to prayers but the impersonal lawfulness of the universe.

For a secular reader, pantheism is worth noticing because it blurs the line between theism and atheism in an interesting way. Richard Dawkins has described pantheism as "sexed-up atheism," meaning that once you identify God with nature, you have not added any empirical claim; you have only changed what you call things. The theological content is thin, but the emotional content — reverence for the whole — can be substantial.