A Pantheist and A Christian: A Conversation

Me and my best friend, we're both born and raised in China. I'm a self-cultivated Pantheist, he's a baptized Christian.

We had a very interesting Whatsapp chat the other day, on the integration of a classical Christian concept into the Pantheist philosophy: The Three Parts of Human - Body, Soul and Spirit. We chatted in Chinese, so I'll try to make the best effort of translation into English, and below it is:

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Me: Hey I recently came to the realization of three concepts about human life:

Me: Body, Soul, Spirit

Him: Ah! Right! The Spirit, the Soul and the Body!

Me: The "Body" is, of course, the physical human body; the "Soul" is referring to a type of energy, which interacts with the material world via using the "Body" as a vehicle; the "Spirit" is a "higher" form of energy that can direct the paths of the "Soul".

Him: You can generally understand their relationship as the one between the Id, the Ego and the Super-Ego as introduced by Sigmund Freud, although they're not exactly the same.

Him: In the Bible, the body and soul of a human being is not entirely separable, unlike the ideas from the Ancient Greece.

Him: [In the Christian ideas, ] When your physical body dies, your Soul and your Spirit go to the Underworld too, and situated in a conscious-less and power-less state.

Him: And the concept of "Rebirth" in Christianity, it talks about the spiritual rebirth in the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit and from the Holy Spirit.

Him: And the God itself is the Spirit

Me: The three concepts, the Body, Soul and Spirit, the distinctions and connections among them, they work pretty compatible with the philosophy of my beliefs, so I just took them and implemented in mine.

Me: And of course, in my philosophies they're not gonna be quite the same as in Christianity.

Me: You know, I believe in Pantheism.

Him: Aha! So it's something similar to the Shinto religion in Japan?

Him: Everything in this world has divinity within them, or that everything in the world has the God's power - or energy - within them, but this type of "Energy" does not possess a conscious in itself, nor does it act like it has a personality or something like that.

Me: Ah, well, not really familiar with Shinto.

Him: Alright. I vaguely remember the theology of Baruch Spinoza is a kind of Pantheism

Me: In my beliefs, everything in the whole Universe has divinities in them, everything in the Universe is inter-connected, the entirety of God is the entirety of the Universe, and everything within this Universe is a part of God.

Him: Then in your views, does this God of yours have consciousness, have plans, or is this God driving the progression of history toward a certain pre-determined direction?

Me: No.

Him: Then that's quite classical Pantheism.

Me: I mean there isn't any "plans" from the God, or the Universe for sure, but as for "consciousness"... Even if there is "consciousness", it should just be a collection of the consciousness that everything within the Universe possesses.

Me: The Universe has no way to "be conscious" or be aware of where it is going.

Me: If we want to assume the Universe surely are aware of where it is going, then that's just humans projecting something that they themselves have onto the Universe itself: If humans have consciousness, then the God - the Universe - must also have it!

Him: Un-huh, even if it really does have, there might just be no way for humans to know.

Me: Thinking that "Oh! Because humans have a consciousness, plus that humans are so superior and great, therefore the even-more superior God must have a consciousness too!"

Me: This, to me, says a lot about how condescending and ignorant the humans can be.

Him: Yeah, I can see how much "human-centered" that is. We humans always imagine the alien species as our own look-alike.

Me: Yeah precisely.

Me: And I found that if I take the ideas of Pantheism, and on top of that I add the Christian concepts of Body, Soul and Spirit, then boom! I get a deeper understanding of the Energies, which is the most fundamental essence of the Universe, or the essence of the God. I can divide the Energies of the Universe into three parts that are separated yet connected.

Him: Ah I see! I actually wasn't able to totally grasp the difference between the Soul and the Spirit.

Him: I just thought they're like Ego and Super-Ego.

Him: I see emotions and feelings as part of the Soul, the thoughts and the consciousness as part of the Spirit.

Me: I also think there's no superiority or inferiority among the Body, the Soul and the Spirit, I think they are three parallel types of Energies.

Him: Like three section views of a geometry?

Me: Yup, that makes sense too

Me: The physical "Body" is the portion of the Energies that's been materialized, and the "Body" portion of the Energies also include what we call our "mind" and "ego"

Me: Here, the word "ego" is limited in referencing only to the thoughts we generate in order for the physical body to preserve its status of being intact, to protect itself from being harmed or damaged; the word "mind" here is also limited to referencing only to the more advanced types of abstract thinking and planning that is used by the ego to serve the purpose of protecting the physical body.

Me: The "Soul" in my philosophy is the portion of Energies that causes or drives the physical, material Body to conduct activities related to being "alive", which is to move around and maintain metabolism.

Me: For example, when you build a rocket and launch it: The rocket itself - including all its material and its physical shape and form - is the "Body", while the "Soul" of the rocket is its kinetic energy while it is in the motion of flying

Me: The "Spirit" here then, let me put it this way: If the flying rocket does have a "Spirit", then it would be thinking about how to generate maximum kinetic energy while consuming minimum fuel, and it doesn't really concern if the physical "Body" of the rocket gets protected during the process or not.

Me: you can see they're together as one, yet clearly distinguishable.

Me: Ah this is what you get when you studied Theoretical Physics too well LOL

Him: Then is it right to say that the "Body" is the fundamental need for self-preservation, it's quite a passive and defensive form of energy; the "Soul" and "Spirit" is a need for self-development, it's a proactive and adventurous form of energy?

Me: The "Spirit" is the proactive and adventurous Energy, but the "Soul" is just neutral.

Him: So... You see the "Energy" as the common material, and the Body, Soul and Spirit as three different forms of application of this "Energy"?

Me: Yeah almost. Three different forms of manifestations of it.

Me: The very essence of the Universe itself is the Energies: The materialized mass, the kinetic energy and the energy that optimizes the kinetic energy, they're all Energies.

Me: They're all ways of the Universe manifesting itself.

Him: Ah I see. Then there comes a question for you naturally: If you have Energies as the material that's commonly shared, and you have all applications of this "Energy" that are also commonly shared among everything and everyone in the whole universe, then how do you explain the individual differences that exist among everything and everyone?

Him: Or in other words, do you think there really are differences between individuals, or do you think it's just an illusion?

Me: Hmmmmmmm, the reason for individual differences lies in the Initial Conditions and the Time Integral.

(*for non-geeks: how the environment is when things started forming, and how it is influenced by the environment through its evolution)

Me: The individual differences are real as the individuals present themselves simultaneously at each and every moment of time.

Me: But is it possible that the "you" at 100 million years back in history are identical to the "me" 30 thousand years in the future? I think it's absolutely possible.

Me: I think I got this theory by just integrating all the theories of physics, psychology and philosophies I know of, and put it on top of my own subjective life experiences.

Him: Gotya.

Him: This reminded me of Aristotle's Four Causes, encapsulates your theory pretty well actually.

Him: The Energies are the material cause of yours, the Body is the formal cause, the Soul is the moving cause and the Spirit is the final cause.

Him: The mechanism and process of all four causes interacting with each other is what resulted in the individual differences.

Him: But down to the bottom of it, they're all causes, and the material cause is always the Energies.

Me: I think all four causes share the same essence: The Energy.

Him: Well then, the Body is the material cause, the individual differences is the formal cause, the other two remains the same.

Him: And the reason why those four (Body, individual differences, Soul and Spirit) are causes? Because they're all united as Energies.

Me: Speaking of "form", I think the fact that we can tell apart different "forms" of Energies in the Universe is because the way the Energy manifests itself are interpreted as "forms" by humans that happens to exist the way they are in the Universe, who happened to have this version of interpretation of the Universe.

Me: I mean, the reason why humans feel the materialized "Body" form of Energy is precisely because we happened to have a materialized form of energy that we call "Body", and we needed to come up with a way to make sense of that.

Me: Imagine a life form that does not possess a materialized physical form, it does not have a Body but it does have a Soul and a Spirit.

Me: Then they cannot possibly for the life of theirs figure out what it means by having a materialized form of Energy called the "Body"

Him: Absolutely.

Me: Therefore, if we see the Universe itself as a "life form", then it might just have one "form" of Energy: just the Energy itself.

Him: Alright. So you said earlier that all these forms of Energy are no higher or lower than any other forms of energy, then why do you think are there Kinetic Energy and the change of it?

Me: The Big Bang, of course.

Me: But "why" is there a Big Bang is beyond my knowledge LOL

(*I read somewhere before that the M-Theory seemed to have an explanation to why Big Bang happened.)

Him: So you believe the Big Bang provided both the initial conditions of the movements and the laws of motion, correct?

Me: Yup.

Me: But a version of laws of motions that we can experience as the human species we happened to be.

Him: Then I think your theory is a combination of Pantheism and Deism. Deism claims that the God created the world and made the laws of motion, then the God left the world running on its own and never interfered. And your theory clearly identifies the world as the same as God.

Me: Hmmmmm... Actually I've always been skeptical about Law of (physics in) the Universe being ever-constant and ever-unchanged.

Me: And I do not believe God made the laws.

Me: But rather, the God does not "know" what and how "the Laws" is, the concept of "the Laws" only exist in the experience of humans.

Me: Let me put it this way: If humans hadn't existed, "the Law" wouldn't exist in the head of humans.

Him: To be fair, your ideas are even more cautious than the basic assumptions of modern science. The assumption that the law of the universe exists ever-constant regardless of space and time is called Uniformitarianism. But it does have a caveat, that it cannot be proved, people just got stuck in their own circular reasoning [in order to prove it].

Him: Then your theory is leaning more towards Pantheism.

Me: I dunno... I wonder if I'm actually an Agnostic some times.

Me: Because my version of Pantheism is merely a theory that I put together for the purpose of me being a human trying to make sense of the Universe

Me: Had I not been a human, or had I been a nebula, a cloud of dusts floating in the universe, then I might just have put together a completely different theory.

Me: Hmmmmmm, but even if I really were a nebula, I might still reach the conclusion that the Universe itself is equivalent to the Energies?

Me: But then, what's outside of the Universe? Multi-verse? A collection of Universes?

Me: And isn't this understanding itself a revelation of the limitation of human's abilities to think?

Me: Then what's outside of the Universe must be my toilet sewage pipe!

Him: I would say it's not Agnostic but rather Rationalism. Because from your point of view, any other non-human objects in the universe is perfectly capable of cognition, reasoning and reaching to conclusions, this type of rationalism that always reaches to the conclusion that "the Universe is the Energies" is no different between you as a human and other objects like a nebula. Therefore in your system of Pantheism beliefs, there is an underlying value of Rationalism that sits parallel with the "Energies".

Him: It's actually a pretty sound theory. It's neither denying the system of cognition created by humans, nor denying the existence of the material world outside of the existence of humans. And the reason why humans are able to experience and study the world, according to your theory, is because human and the world share the same raw materials.

Him: Sure there won't be separations between human and the world then.

Me: Interesting notion about the Rationalism. Let's actually try to break the loop of Rationalism for a bit.

Me: Imagine the whole Universe has a shape of a sphere, or any other random shape. Then if we scale it down enough, it would eventually fit the dimensions of an atom to the human eyes.

Me: And then, what happens if this particular atom exists on my own skin at the top of my head?

Me: Then you think about it, the human civilization spent tens of thousands of years, and exhausted all the knowledge and skill they can possibly have, they finally travel through the universe far enough and deep enough, that they crushed through the impenetrable wall of the universe, and they found themselves ended up inside an atom at the top of their own head

Me: Would you have lost your mind or not?!

Him: Have you ever thought of this type of a model, that the whole world is just a dream of the God, and we're somewhere in the delusional dreamy thoughts of the God?

Him: If this is the case then the Universe is not even the "Body" of the God, but just a bubble of the God's thought?

Me: Well first of all, the God doesn't necessarily have a "brain" that is capable of "dreaming"

Me: But yeah I get what you're saying.

Me: And I'm not ready to accept this concept yet... It's too damn delusional.

Him: But this explains perfectly why we ended up at the top of our heads after we broke through the wall of the universe!

Him: Because it's in a dream, everything is delusional and everything is possible, and even the law of the universe can just change randomly.

Me: Either ways, the whole concept of Logic, the cause-and-effect, just went down the toilet. Gone.

Me: And if we continue expanding this thought like a sci-fi story:

Me: The human astronauts finally broke through the wall of the universe and ended up on the top of their own head, not the same year but their own head from last year. Then everything the human civilization was based on - the concept of time, cause and effect, the logic, the dimension - everything just goes crushing down through the toilet hole.

Me:Then from this point on, there is a rather optimistic option for the humans to adopt to: They can give up clinging on their fundamentalism beliefs in their rationality as a whole, and turn to study the law of randomness that exists outside the realm of logic and rationality. Then maybe in 10,000 years of time we'll come up with an inter-galactic travel agency where people begin their seven-day vacation travel plan to another galaxy by chewing down some frozen plastic pipes and instantly got reborn into another alien species.

Me: And when it's time to come back home, they just go grab an extraterrestrial dragonfly and toss it into an ice-erupting volcano, then they'll be back home in no time.

Me: Just what the f*ck is this LOL

Him: Classical witchcraft I guess?

Me: I knew our ancestors didn't just draw those weird stuffs for no reason!