{"id":1272,"date":"2009-12-22T00:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2009-12-22T00:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T00:39:00","slug":"creeping-pantheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1272","title":{"rendered":"Creeping Pantheism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Highbrow journalist Ross Douthat<\/a> is bothered by creeping pantheism.<\/p>\n

In a recent New York Times<\/i> piece, he calls pantheism “Hollywood’s religion of choice.”<\/a><\/p>\n

The “news hook” for his column is the new movie Avatar<\/i><\/a>, which repeats the Pocahantas story<\/a> once again. Some critic called it “Dancing with Smurfs.”<\/p>\n

To Douthat, “Avatar<\/i> is Cameron\u2019s long apologia for pantheism \u2014 a faith that equates God with Nature and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.”<\/p>\n

And that bothers him. He likes the certainty of the monotheistic religions (he is Roman Catholic), even when you sense that he does not subscribe to all of even the Catholic church’s dogma:<\/p>\n

[P]antheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions \u2014 with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps \u201cbring God closer to human experience,\u201d while \u201cdepriving him of recognizable personal traits.\u201d For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.<\/i><\/p>\n

I do not mean to dismiss his anguish:<\/p>\n

The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its \u201ccircle of life\u201d is really a cycle of mortality.<\/i><\/p>\n

I am not sure that all Pagans have reconciled themselves to that truth either.<\/p>\n

Do you ever sing,<\/p>\n

We all come from the Goddess,
and to her we shall return,
like a drop of rain
flowing to the ocean<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and wonder if there is too much loss of individuality there? I think that that is something like what Douthat is trying to articulate.

<\/b>
UPDATE:<\/b> Another blogger watches Avatar <\/i>and says that minus the sci-fi elements, it is a movie that Wendel Berry <\/a>or even J.R.R. Tolkien might have approved of, for it presents a fully integrated culture in contrast to “our world of Facebook friends and warehouse shopping clubs.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Highbrow journalist Ross Douthat is bothered by creeping pantheism. In a recent New York Times piece, he calls pantheism “Hollywood’s religion of choice.” The “news hook” for his column is the new movie Avatar, which repeats the Pocahantas story once again. Some critic called it “Dancing with Smurfs.” To Douthat, “Avatar is Cameron\u2019s long apologia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1187,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1187","url_meta":{"origin":1272,"position":0},"title":"All Great Men Were … Rosicrucians?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the 100th anniversary of modern Rosicrucianism.For all their concern about tracing lineage, however, it is possible to find beneath the umbrella of modern Rosicrucianism just about any belief, philosophy or superstition you might care to name \u2013 pantheism, reincarnation, alchemy, psychic power, astral out-of-body travel, telepathy. There are Cosmic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":500,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=500","url_meta":{"origin":1272,"position":1},"title":"\"What's on your iGod?\"Mark Morford\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 30, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"What's on your iGod?\"Mark Morford has some fun with the \"spiritual but not religious\" meme. 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My view of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1023,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1023","url_meta":{"origin":1272,"position":4},"title":"A Day for Desk Work","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It is a damp, grey day here on Hardscrabble Creek, with the temperature struggling to climb out of the 40s F. It's a good day to be indoors editing Pomegranate articles. Were the weather warm and sunny, I would want to be doing chores outdoors--all the little jobs that built\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1062,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1062","url_meta":{"origin":1272,"position":5},"title":"Prairie Fog","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Two days ago: morning fog creeping west from the Missouri River, south of Fort Pierre, South Dakota.","rel":"","context":"In \"travel\"","block_context":{"text":"travel","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}