suppsupppsupplement: This classificational thing is becoming complicated, but before I lose mental control, I am, with my last residue of overlook, able to utter a last conclusion: With this whole figure, to say, that Peirce was a theist, and not a panentheist, only works if:
-- Panentheism is a kind of theism,
-- The term "Panentheism", or the concept, existed at Peirce´s time,
-- Peirce was aware of this term or concept, and did not approve of it.
Supp-supplement: Ok, classical theism, claiming, that God is unchanging and unaffected, is not something, christianity can be subsumed under, but merely has an influence on christianity and other religions. So, Jon, you are right, of course. Sorry!
Supplement: I have googled, and found, that christianity is a kind of theism. Ok, the other way, my post could have been wrong, is, that I was thinking, that panentheism would not be a kind of theism, but maybe it is. This way, panentheism may be compatible with christianity, but not with some other kinds of theism, like, as you wrote, "classical theism", of which I don´t know, what that is.
Jon, List,
well, I had thought, that christianity is a kind of theism. So it is not, so I am sorry for my post.
Best regards, Helmut
List:
Where has anyone shown that the distinction between panentheism and (classical) theism is fallacious or unclear? On the contrary, I spelled out the very fundamental differences between them in the post to which Gary R. responded by starting this new thread (https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2024-09/msg00062.html). He claims that panentheism is compatible with Christianity but not that it is compatible with (classical) theism. In fact, he has consistently agreed with me that Peirce explicitly professed to be a theist and not a panentheist.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 3:01 PM Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
Gary, List,Great text, Gary! (in my opinion). Exactly my view. Analysis and synthesis seem to be opponents, but in this case analysis leads to synthesis: The distinction between panentheism and theism is analysed, and shown to be a fallacy, or at least you show, that there is no clear distinction. A distinction that is not clear is not a distinction at all. So this analysis leads to the synthesis of panentheism and theism, or at least the kind of theism that is the same or compatible with panentheism. And it shows, that there rather is a distinction between that kind of theism and other kinds of theism, dogmatic, or whatever we might call them.Best regards, Helmut14. September 2024 um 01:13 Uhr
"Gary Richmond" <[email protected]> wrote:Jon, Gary F, Jeff, List,[Still in Belgium, I was able to find an adapter so I could charge my computer so that, hopefully, this message, unlike the last addressed to Ben et al. will not contain as many unforced errors (I recently was watching the US Tennis Open, so I'm still in that scoring mode).]JAS: quoting Peirce to the effect that while his contemporaries could readily see Nature making deductions that "I have not succeeded in persuading my contemporaries to believe that Nature also makes inductions and retroductions" (NEM 4:344, 1898).If Nature is capable of acting not only deductively, but also inductively and, especially, retroductively (and thus posit testable hypotheses -- testable by nature itself -- then it would appear that that is all that is necessary for evolution to occur including the evolution of human intelligence. And, I would add, the intelligence to conceive of God in a way that satisfies the scientific and aesthetic mindsets.JAS: if panentheism is true, then our existing universe is an organic part of God such that God is affected by everything that happens in it.There are religious views -- even Christian ones -- that maintain just that position: that God is affected by everything that happens in the world. There is even Biblical support for this view. For example, consider Matthew 6:25-2625 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?I was myself raised in a non-orthodox Christian tradition that sees God as caring for us, suffering with us, etc., and thus not wholly independent of us. And this is, as well, an aspect of the Cosmic Christic view involving the Trinity with Christ being that personal aspect of God which is involved in the world.My sense has always been, and from my first reading of Peirce's article "Evolutionary Love," that his theism was far from the classic one, very far from the credal orthodox view. But was he a panentheist? Well, there is, as Jon has pointed out, direct testimony to his being a theist and not a panentheist.But then there is the argument, essentially scientific, I'd say, in "Evolutionary Love," which, in my view, strongly suggests that such Love requires the reality of something at least like a person (in my thinking, at least until recently, someone like the Cosmic Christ. Logic is one thing; love is quite another. Of course this is mere conjecture.But putting 'love' aside for a moment, if Nature makes not only deductions and inductions, but also abductions (hypotheses), then isn't it acting at least like a person? Perhaps like a scientist? Christ Scientist? (Although I personally don't think that in Mary Baker Eddy's sense.)But of late Christianity has come to me to seem too narrow and too problematic a religion to express this kind of deep intelligence, growth, care and love generally. On The other hand, Peirce was opposed to strong atheistic claims which he found to be as dogmatic as dogmatic religious views.Thus he saw some form of religious belief as reasonable, given the richness of human experience, including in areas like ethics and logic. In a word, he was cautious of atheistic views that rejected the possibility of a spiritual dimension to existence.One might ask: would Peirce's religious views have evolved over time? We can't, of course, know. What we can assume, as I noted a short while back, is that he was critical of atheism, especially when it took a rigid, materialistic form; also, that he saw belief in God as having pragmatic value. In my view, the kind of atheism that sees the universe as a kind of chance accident, an attitude of mind-less "nothing-but-ism" has had and is now having detrimental ethical and ecological consequences. (It doesn't seem that anyone in this discussion is arguing in the vein of the meaninglessness of our existence.)But if atheism is untenable (which Peirce thought, and I agree), while the forms of religion now in existence seem to many philosophically minded individuals inadequate to the challenges of our time, what would a, shall we say, "scientific" religion look like? (Btw, Dewey's attempt at articulating that completely fails in my view.)Best,Gary R.
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