Q&A: Moral Panentheism
Moral Panentheism
Question
Hello Rabbi, you have written and said in several places about the theological distinction between monotheism and pantheism, panentheism, and the like, that these are misleading uses of amorphous definitions and are basically meaningless (I hope I am stating your view accurately). I am not a theologian, so I cannot enter into a discussion of abstract theology. But if morality is a direct derivative of God, does this discussion therefore have value, and do the different positions have argumentative significance? For example, are the kinds of claims that Popper calls "biological naturalism," for that matter, not a derivative of pantheistic theology? Thank you.
Answer
If you want to focus on examples (a welcome policy in my opinion), it would be good to spell them out. I’m not familiar with this.
Discussion on Answer
I hope you understand what is written here. I don’t. I asked for an example and a concrete question.
With your permission, I’ll translate the paragraph from The Open Society and Its Enemies (pp. 71–75):
“The first to put forward a Chinese or Chinese version of the Chinese Chinese was the Chinese Chinese. From him too comes the identification of nature with truth and convention with opinion (or ‘deceptive opinion’).
No extra charge 😉
And Rotem, regarding your question about moral pantheism, see Eliezer Berkovits’s fascinating discussion in God, Man and History, also published by Shalem. His conclusion there is very unsympathetic to pantheistic morality.
I’m not coming to defend pantheism. I’m only wondering about Rabbi Michael Abraham’s assertion that there is no philosophical meaning to the discussion and definition of a divinity embodied in nature as opposed to a transcendent divinity. The claim is that such determinations do, for example, have moral implications, and therefore the discussion is relevant. Also, claims like “this is nature and therefore it is moral” (what is also called the naturalistic fallacy) seem to me to stem from that “religious” intuition.
It seems that Rotem wrote clearly. Pantheism (identifying nature with God), as distinct from atheism (denial of God), provides a convenient basis for naturalism (deriving morality from examining nature, that is, deriving morality from looking at the ways of God). And if there is a practical difference between pantheism and atheism, then they are not theoretically equivalent. A pantheist could derive from nature, for example—just as an example—that it is moral to prey on animals and forbidden to relate equally to your family and to strangers.
[In my opinion the answer is, on the contrary: since they are theoretically equivalent, go and learn that the implication is only apparent. If there is a valid practical difference, then of course the dispute carries meaning; but undermining the meaning of the dispute also explains why the practical differences are invalid.]
As for the quote from Karl Popper, it seems that a sophist named Antiphon learned “humanitarianism” from nature, and in this way he grounds morality in God (without moral realism). That is a concrete example of the practical difference there can be between an atheistic and a pantheistic view.
I’ve had my fill of “for example”s. Please bring an example with a well-defined argument, and not merely hypothetical slogans. Otherwise, I won’t respond here anymore.
I’ll quote Karl Popper from the book The Open Society and Its Enemies (pp. 71–75), from the paragraph that made me wonder about this issue:
"The first to put forward a humanitarian or egalitarian version of biological naturalism was the sophist Antiphon. From him too comes the identification of nature with truth and convention with opinion (or ‘deceptive opinion’). Antiphon is a radical naturalist. He holds that not only are most norms arbitrary, but that they are directly opposed to nature."
Actually, I think the whole chapter is relevant to the claim. The argument I’m asking about is this (as far as I understand it): the criterion for morality is God, God is nature, therefore nature is the criterion for morality. From this conclusion I would say that a panentheistic view has certain moral implications, and therefore the distinctions between monotheism, atheism, pantheism, etc. are not empty word games.