Abstract
I argue that a metaphysical controversy, comparable with the ‘pantheism controversy’ of the late 18th century, is being played out today in the world-wide clash between religion and science, in which one side adheres to a strict materialism and the other admits phenomena of inspiritment as having a place in ontology. Just as the pantheism controversy was resolved, to some degree, via the concept of panentheism, so the solution to the contest between science and religion today might be pointing us in a panentheist direction. Taking into account (a) the empirical evidence of science, (b) the widespread evidence of spirit phenomena from different religions and spirit traditions, and (c) that the experience of spirit phenomena varies according to cultural frame of reference, I conclude that spirit phenomena must emanate from something that is common across cultures. The only thing that could be common across cultures is matter: it must be matter itself then that is imbued with spirit. While this position has affinities with panentheism, I argue that ‘panentheism’ is not in fact an appropriate name for it in the 21st century, as this name excludes the experience of many cultures for whom phenomena of inspiritment are not describable in any kind of theistic terms.
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Notes
Kate Rigby, Topographies of the Sacred, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2004, p. 39
The term ‘panentheism’ was introduced by Carl Krause in 1828 to describe philosophies such as Schelling’s and Hegel’s. Ibid p. 271 n96
I first came across this wonderfully useful term, inspiritment, in Peter Read, Haunted Earth, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2003.
I like to call this my ‘reverse ontological argument’. Instead of starting with a presumption that spirit-phenomena do not exist then showing, as the traditional ontological argument does, that a spirit-God must be added to the plain old world of matter, it starts with a presumption that many spirit-phenomena exist, but then shows that all of them must in fact be returned (without being reduced) to matter.
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This paper was presented at a Panentheism panel at the Parliament of World Religions, 2009, in Melbourne, Australia.
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Mathews, F. A Contemporary Metaphysical Controversy. SOPHIA 49, 231–236 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0178-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0178-4