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The Internet May Be Killing Religion, Suggests Sociologist
January 25, 2018 in Pantheism News
A new study published in the “Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion” claims that the internet is making more people become religiously unaffiliated.
Sociologist Paul McClure at Baylor University surveyed 1,714 American adults and asked a series of questions including their religious practices and internet use. He identified a pattern of increased internet usage being linked to lower religious affiliation and exclusivity.
He told told publisher Psypost,
“One of my main findings in this study is that increases in internet use correlate with a loss of religious affiliation, and I also discovered that individuals who spend lots of time online are less likely to be religious exclusivists, or in other words they’re less likely to think there’s only one correct religion out there. To make sense of these findings, I argue that internet use encourages a certain ‘tinkering’ posture which makes individuals feel that they’re no longer beholden to institutions or religious dogma.”
Studies are showing that the “spiritual but not religious” category, which includes atheists, agnostics, pantheists, and religious “nones”, is on the rise. Pew Research did a major study in 2014 of the major rise in numbers of people who do not affiliate with religion, especially among Millennials. 35% of United States Millennials identify in that category. Among the “nones” are atheists and agnostics, of which two thirds are men and are more educated that the average population.
McClure believes he is one of the first to study whether or not the internet is the underlying reason for this phenomenon about the changing way people are thinking about religion and its practice. He says the data reveals that that the internet is allowing people to ‘tinker’ with religious ideas outside their realm and that is making them less dogmatic.
If that is the case, with internet use only rising, a new unaffiliated religious future awaits our society.
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Vatican Forbids Scattering or Preserving Dead Ashes to ‘Avoid Pantheism’
December 9, 2016 in Pantheism News
The largest Christian church on the planet with over one billion members, The Roman Catholic Church, issued detailed instructions on burying the dead earlier this year. The instructions warn against, “every appearance of pantheism…” The instructions also conflate pantheism with nihilism.
The instructions, put together by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, suggest that the appearance of pantheism being “avoided” are the primary motivation for not allowing its members to scatter or preserve deceased loved one’s ashes, even in the case of a dying wish. It goes on to instruct that a, “Christian funeral must be denied,” to those who request scattering of their ashes contrary to church law.
Pope Francis approved the instructions and ordered its publication.
Popular mainstream media portrays Francis as a progressive with moderate or liberal values.
The Roman Catholic Church has a history of disparaging pantheism and considering it heresy. Baruch Spinoza’s famous pantheist book, The Ethics, was put on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books (the index was abolished in 1966). The 16th Century thinker Giordano Bruno was famously burnt at the stake for his vocal celebration of pantheism. To this day, the church has defended rather than condemned the actions of the violent inquisitors. It continues to attack pantheism in recent doctrine updates.
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Creationist Author Claims Adolf Hitler was a Pantheist in a New Book
October 19, 2016 in Pantheism News
Richard Weikart, professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, has penned a new book about Adolf Hitler, claiming, among other things, that Hitler was a pantheist. The book summary:
“Adolf Hitler was a pantheist who believed nature was God. In Hitler’s Religion, Weikart explains how the laws of nature became Hitler’s only moral guide—how he became convinced he would serve God by annihilating supposedly “inferior” human beings and promoting the welfare and reproduction of the allegedly superior Aryans in accordance with racist forms of Darwinism prevalent at the time.”
Weikart is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, a controversial organization based in Seattle, Washington, which advocates the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design. The anti-evolution group aims to have public high schools teach religious anti-Darwin views alongside scientific theories.
Weikart has written similar books in the past, claiming that Darwinian teachings led to racism in Germany. The academic community has been widely critical of those books. Historian Daniel Gasman reviewed the book saying it should be read with “caution.” University of Chicago historian Robert Richards calls Weikart’s books, “a desperate tactic to undermine evolution,” concluding that, “There’s not the slightest shred of evidence that Hitler read Darwin,” and “Some of the biggest influences on Hitler’s anti-Semitism were opposed to evolution, such as British writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose racial theory became incorporated into Nazi doctrine.” Several academics put out a statement about the author’s attempt to link Hitler and Darwin:
“Weikart’s claims regarding a lineage from Darwin to Hitler via Haeckel have been examined by historians of science and indeed have generally been found lacking. Numerous reviews have accused Weikart of selectively viewing his rich primary material, ignoring political, social, psychological, and economic factors that may have played key roles in the post-Darwinian development of Nazi eugenics and racism. Since there is no clear and unique line from Darwinian naturalism to Nazi atrocities, useful causal relationships are difficult to infer; thus, as Robert J. Richards observes, ‘it can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis’.”
Like “atheism”, pantheism has a long history as a term of theological abuse, according to author A.H. Armstrong and others. As recently as 2010, Pope Benedict XVI criticized the movie, Avatar, for “promoting pantheism.”
Adolf Hitler’s religious views have been studied extensively and include no links with pantheistic ideas nor evidence that Hitler ever explored such theological concepts according to the mainstream academic views .
UPDATE: A previous version of this article stated that the book was funded by the Discovery Institute. The author states that his religious anti-Darwin book is actually funded by a public university, California State University, Stanislaus.
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New Book of Articles About Pandeism Released
October 19, 2016 in Pantheism News
A person who calls himself, “Knujon Mapson” (spelled backwards, “no spam, no junk”) organized a successful Kickstarter.com campaign with 100 backers (including many in the pantheism community) for a proposed book on pandeism, a doctrine that combines aspects of pantheism and deism. He raised $2,551 to put together, “A diverse collection of articles being completed by authors from all over the world on the fascinating theological theory of Pandeism.” The book is entitled, “Pandeism: An Anthology.”
The heavy 472 page book includes sixteen authors, promising to be, “the most extensive examination of Pandeism put to print in over a hundred years.” It retails for $29.95. Knujon Mapson calls himself, “a student of the revolutionary evolutionary theological theory of Pandeism, a constant contributor to various discussion fora on the topic, and an occasional coordinator of discussions amongst other pandeistic thinkers.” Nothing more is known about the book’s organizer.
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Pantheism.com is Live for Beta Testing
October 4, 2016 in Pantheism News
Join us in our effort to help create vibrant freethinking international and local communities of thoughtful people on this planet. We are designing pantheism.com in a unique way that emphasizes personal interests and allows freethinkers to connect with like minded people locally and worldwide. It is an ambitious project that we hope you will be a part of as we take the broad minded philosophy of pantheism, with its amazingly diverse audience, and apply it to open source technology. Be a part of this journey by joining up as we hope to revolutionize the realm of spirituality with big ideas and radical freethinking. Keep in mind, we are beta testing and still editing all aspects of the website, so have patience with the site and, of course, your input is most welcome. Thanks!