Talk:Censorship/Archive 1
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Censorship! Right here in River City
Example of a censorship claim
(Cosmotheism is a form of classical pantheism that identifies God with the cosmos, that is, with the universe as a unified whole.
Overview
Cosmotheism asserts that "all is within God and God is within all". It considers the nature of reality and of existence to be mutable and destined to co-evolve towards a complete universal consciousness, or godhood.
Etymologically, cosmotheism differs from 'pan-theism' in that "pan" is Classical Greek for all, while the Greek word cosmos means an orderly and harmonious universe. Cosmotheists take this as meaning the divine is immanent to reality and consciousness, an inseparable part of an orderly, harmonious, and whole universal system.
In its broadest sense, the word cosmotheism may be considered simply as being synonymous with pantheism, although not all modern pantheists would accept Cosmotheism as a synonym for their own worldview due to the historical association of Cosmotheism with a political movement, white separatism, which some within the pantheist community may find objectionable.
According to a Cosmotheist Web site dedicated to the late Dr.William L. Pierce:
- "Cosmotheism is a religion which positively asserts that there is an internal purpose in life and in cosmos, and there is an essential unity, or consciousness that binds all living beings and all of the inorganic cosmos, as one."
- "What is our true human identity is we are the cosmos made self-aware and self-conscious by evolution. "
- "Our true human purpose is to know and to complete ourselves as conscious individuals and also as a self-aware species and thereby to co-evolve with the cosmos towards total and universal awareness, and towards the ever higher perfection of consciousness and being."[1]
Some claim Albert Einstein was a Cosmotheist, [2], along with Carl Sagan, Benedict Spinoza and other historical figures—although there is no quoted evidence of any of these three claiming to be "cosmotheist" as such, and all could also be said to be Pantheist.
Mordekhay Nesiyahu's cosmotheism
In Israel, Cosmotheism was also described by Mordekhay Nesiyahu, one of the foremost ideologists of the Israeli Labor Movement and a lecturer in its college Beit Berl in Israel.
In Cosmotheism — Israel, Zionism, Judaism and Humanity towards the 21st Century, Nesiyahu proposed not to just assume the existence of God, being "prior to all that was created," but to consider God as only being a result of the development of the universe and the consciousness of all of humankind.
Divinity in this particular view is inherently a human invention.
The development of the divine (or what the believer would qualify as being "the revelation of the Divine") was, in Nesiyahu's opinion, both the condition for a more exalted human functioning and all that bears the fruit that comes out of it.
In Nesiyahu's universalist re-imagining of a secular divinity, the universal celebration of Cosmotheism is the basis for rebuilding the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and is also a secular ethnically Jewish and a Zionist contribution to all of humankind.
Dr. William L. Pierce's Cosmotheism
Origins
In the United States, cosmotheism sometimes refers to a religion adopted in 1978 by National Alliance founder and white separatist the late Dr. William L. Pierce. Pierce affirmed his cosmotheist belief in a speech that he once gave entitled "Our Cause":
- "All we require is that you share with us a commitment to the simple, but great, truth which I have explained to you here, that you understand that you are a part of the whole, which is the creator, that you understand that your purpose, the purpose of mankind and the purpose of every other part of creation, is the creator's purpose, that this purpose is the never-ending ascent of the path of creation, the path of life symbolized by our life rune, that you understand that this path leads ever upward toward the creator's self-realization, and that the destiny of those who follow this path is godhood."
Pierce's interpretation of cosmotheism ([3]) was greatly influenced by several disparate factors: interpretations of George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman; strains of German Romanticism; Darwinian concepts of natural selection and of survival of the fittest, mixed with the related early 20th century eugenic ideals; and Ernst Haeckel's version of monism.
Religion, society, and race
The foundation of Pierce's Cosmotheism was essentially similar to classical monistic pantheism — he recognized no physical difference or separation between human and divine, between creator and created — but with a few differences.
Pierce described his form of Cosmotheism as being based on "[t]he idea of an evolutionary universe ... with an evolution toward ever higher and higher states of self-consciousness," and his political ideas were centered on racial purity and eugenics as the means of advancing the white race first towards a superhuman state, and then towards godhood. In his view, the white race represented the pinnacle of human evolution thus far and therefore should be kept genetically separate from all other races in order to achieve its destined perfection in Godhood.
Dr. Pierce believed in a hierarchical society governed by what he saw as the essential principles of nature, including the survival of the fittest. In his social schema, the best-adapted genetic stock, which he believed to be the white race, should remain separated from other races; and within an all-white society, the most fit individuals should lead the rest. He thought that extensive programs of "racial cleansing" and of eugenics, both in Europe and in the U.S., would be necessary to achieve this socio-political program.
His National Alliance was to be the political vanguard and the spiritual priesthood of this program, which was designed ultimately to bring about a "White racial redemption". His Cosmotheist Community Church, which was to be the next step of this plan, was set up in the mid-1970s, alongside Pierce's other political projects — the National Alliance, National Vanguard Books, and the weekly broadcast American Dissident Voices — all from his mountain retreat headquarters in West Virginia.
Critical assessments
Pierce's views have been characterized as a version of early twentieth century racial anthropology, but driven by spiritual, as well as scientific, beliefs. This area of his belief was likely influenced by his early association with George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party. Others have noted the German Romantic roots that Pierce's ideas shared with Nazism and have observed similarities between the two ideologies: Pierce's plan for white divinity was similar to Adolf Hitler's vision for the Herrenvolk; also, his attacks against Jews as "parasites" on white society, who would prevent the white race from reaching its destined godhood by replacing the white elite with their own kind, echoed previous Nazi descriptions of Jewish traits and character. [4]
Other criticisms have been harsher if not as factually-accurate; for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized Pierce's Cosmotheism as "an unsuccessful tax dodge". Followers of Pierce's cosmotheism do call many of these characterizations erroneous, as can be seen from this part of the Dr. Griffin interview with Dr. Pierce below from "The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds":
Dr Pierce-"And then there was a big fight with the IRS which I lost. They said that we weren't a church. They were obviously under pressure to take away the tax exemption we had. The IRS sent some agents out here to check us out. I still have the report they wrote. It had things like the road out here was very rough and not conducive to people getting to the services, and that we didn't have enough chairs and where were people going to sit, and there was no central heating system and so there couldn't be services in the winter— a bunch of baloney."
Dr. Griffin-(The IRS revoked Pierce's church status and the revocation was upheld in court. Pierce thinks the IRS was responding to pressure applied on it by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. While the vast majority of people view the ADL in a positive light, as an opponent of bigotry and intolerance, Pierce sees it as a Jewish instrument of thought control and the abridgment of freedoms. He contends that the ADL seeks to harm or even destroy anyone or anything that gets in the way of the Jewish agenda for this country, which includes him and his organization.)
Dr. Griffin-"You think your racial views were the real reason the IRS got on your case?"
Dr. Pierce-"If I had been preaching a doctrine that didn't irritate the Jews they would have left us alone. There are all kinds of snake-handling cults and everything else up here in these hills, and the IRS lets them call themselves a church and doesn't bother them. It is no big drain on the federal budget, and the IRS stays in good graces generally by not bothering people more than it has to. But in our case they were determined to get us, and it was strictly because of what I was teaching on racial and Jewish matters."
Related articles
- Classical pantheism
- Creativity Movement
- Eugenics
- List of Pantheists
- Pan-atheism
- Panentheism
- Pantheism
Uncritical Reference for Nesinyahu's Cosmotheism
- Cosmotheism, Israel, Zionism, Judaism and Humanity - towards the 21st Century by Mordecai Nesinyahu (Poetica - Tuvi Sopher Publishing, Tel Aviv.)
- Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, by Mattias Gardell[5] (ISBN 0822330717)
- The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce's Theology of Revolution, by Brad Whitsel[6] published in Nova Religio Vol.1, No.2, April 1998.
External links
Mordekhay Nesiyahu's cosmotheism
Dr. William L. Pierce's Cosmotheism
Jewish, Marxist, Pan-atheist, and Fundamentalist Christianity Criticisms
- The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce's Theology of Revolution by Brad Whitsel[7] (Nova Religio)
- Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, by Mattias Gardell[8] (ISBN 0822330717)
- A Blemish on the Blossom: Pantheism and White-Supremacist Hate Groups by Esther Hugenholtz[9] (Pantheist Index)
- [10] Pseudo-Pantheism by [11] (Encyclopedia4U)]
- The Devil and its False Faces by [12]
Cosmotheist Advocacy
- Cosmotheism site
- A Tribute to the late Dr. William L. Pierce
- The Path, by Dr. William L. Pierce
- On Living Things, by Dr. William L. Pierce
- On Society by Dr. William L. Pierce
- An example of a Cosmotheist affirmation of belief
- Interview with Dr. William L. Pierce on Cosmotheism (from The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds by Dr. Robert Griffin)
The following was censored by Cunctator, who is dicking me around.
- The term is also use to describe restrictions on the way ideas are expressed, such as using the term shithead. The prohibition is not on describing the person as stupid or obnoxious but on using profanity.
As such, it is likely not to be only a diatribe against censorship in the us...when you all find that article in stupidely long, and have edited all your soul the very good Steve original article with all the others points and all the other censorship that should not exist in the US (since forbidden by the constitution) we can move it back. Anthere
Line 1:
- WELCOME GNN'ERS! I EXPECT YOU TO WAGE GUERRILLA WARFARE WITH ME HERE! EDIT THE "STATE TERRORISM" ARTICLE WITH YOUR OWN INPUT! ADD YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT STATE TERROR, DEBATE NWO SUPPORTERS YOU FIND AROUND OTHER ARTICLES, ESTABLISH YOUR PRESENCE THROUGHOUT! THERE IS NO FIELD OF HUMAN ENDEAVOR FREE OF POLITICAL DEBATE AND REVOLUTIONARY ACTION!
- Answer to an Iraqi Doctor of Rutbah, an essay on state terrorism by Frederick George Wilson mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=1884&grp=27 - - America bombed your children's hospital because she is the worst state terrorist on Earth. She wants your oil, and the effrontery of your children's hospital is in the way. It is a "shield." You dared build your hospitals in cities and not hundreds of feet underground. You dared have a nationalist drop of blood in your body, or a Hippocratic and humanitarian one, and you saved the lives of Iraqi soldiers, and America added this attack to her long list of crimes, making your hospital a target, only to lie and say the strike was accidental. You dared speak out against the hypocrisy of America's supporting brutal dictators where it suits her, but brainwashing her people into supporting the removal of others, in the name of "democracy." Your people dared resist even after thirteen years of starvation by America, under cover of the criminal United Nations-- thirteen years of the crime of genocide--add this to the list of crimes of America and the Bush Crime Family. You dared live in an Islamic country, against which the rulers of the West wage war while declaring publicly that Islam is not the enemy, so that the moderate Islamic leadership in America, hence the masses of Muslims in America, will support a government which secretly seeks to destroy their civilization. As part of her twisted agenda, America is conditioning the world to believe her crimes just, but self-defense by targets of this agenda, terror. These are some of the reasons America bombed your hospital, Doctor. There may be far uglier ones in the hearts of her rulers. Allah only knows.
Media distraction
"media distraction" is not censorship. Martin
I was about to link to a potential article named government-suppressed literature from Samizdat, but that didn't seem to be an appropriate title... the list of banned books is, of course, basically a just a list. How about an article on the subject of goverment suppression of literature: the whys, hows, whos, whats, etc. And where would that be? Government suppression of literature? (I've put this suggestion here as it seemed the most appropriate place. I will now link to this talk page from the two mentioned article talk pages.)-- Sam 21:25, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Censorship on Wikipedia. Is the Censorship page complete in its definitions and descriptions of censorship?
Background. Activists who believe in Evolution repeatedly revert statements like "Creationists point out that despite finding millions of fossils, science has never produced even one transitional animal."
Definition. Statement A consists of the following assertion: "Creationists point out that despite finding millions of fossils, science has never produced even one transitional animal."
Postulate. There exist at least two significant Creationists who say, have said, and will say, "Despite finding millions of fossils, science has never produced even one transitional animal."
Hypothesis. People who revert hackneyed straw man arguments like Statement A above are not "evolutionist censors."
Applying the definitions of censorship on the Censorship page, it appears that many people believing in Evolution repeatedly have "attempt[ed] to suppress information, points of view, or method of expression," such as Statement A, about Creationist demonstrations that none of the fossils that the evolutionists have found are "transitional."
In my opinion, the evolutionists have found plenty of "transitional" fossils, including fossils that likely are the fossils of the common ancestors of men and the chimpanzees. So I think Statement A is wrong. But, by damn, it is a black eye to justice, Wikipedia, and the Earthly Way that the evolutionists will not let the Creationists say what Creationism is.
In conclusion, the current definitions on the Censorship page are complete enough to label those who support the deletion of Statement A rather than rewording it to correctly express the Creationist view have done censorship. And it would be a simple matter of statistics to measure whether or not those who support the censorship are "evolutionists." Rednblu 23:37, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- My take on the current state of the creationism article is that it is much too focused on creation science and does not treat creationism as a theological topic. As such, if the creationism article were entitled creation science, I would have no objection to the way that article is evolving, no pun intended. What *I* find objectionable is the way that the creationism article has become a battleground for the forces of creation science and the forces of evolutionary biologists, whereas the topic of creationism qua creationism in theology has been stuffed into article on creation beliefs. We might as well stuff all religious topics into an article entitled, "Quaint superstitious beliefs and other silly stuff that religious conservatives advocate." -- NetEsq 01:27, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- Well, "creation beliefs" is better than the previous "creation myths" as the default title. I've been here long enough that, I've seen editors threatened with the label "fundamentalist vandal" for objecting to that title. Mkmcconn 01:38, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- We might as well stuff all religious topics into an article entitled, "Quaint superstitious beliefs and other silly stuff that religious conservatives advocate." We already have that one. It's at Supernatural. As for creationism, the article is about what creationism means today. Christian theological perspectives e.g. on the origin of the soul are better discussed elsewhere, nor should Christian theology on the origin of the universe be given preferential treatment in that article. The term "creation science" is not neutral and therefore unacceptable as a page title.—Eloquence 01:42, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
- I wholeheartedly disagree. An article on the supernatural is not an appropriate place to discuss what you consider to be "quaint superstitious beliefs," nor is the creationism article an appropriate battle ground for the controversy arising from creation science. Pursuant to this line of reasoning, the present theology article should be redirected to the article on the supernatural. -- NetEsq 02:01, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- I also wholeheartedly disagree. I do not object to the text on the Creationism page, but in my opinion, the text on the Creationism page does not describe even "what creationism means today." What we need to negotiate here is a title for the text that is on the Creationism page, I would suggest. Why is "creation science" not a neutral page title? After all, if you redefine terms so freely in terms of "what they mean today," then surely "creation science" is a neutral title--even if it is an oxymoronic concatenation of two antonyms. Rednblu 02:28, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
CENSORSHIP of a RELIGION and of NON-POLITICALLY-CORRECT INFORMATION
I'm restoring (yet again) the text that Paul Vogel keeps deleting rather than editing. Others are more than welcome to weigh in on whether the deleted text is NPOV or not. BCorr|Брайен 01:06, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
The deleted text was just complete POV nonsense, and most especially, that stupid and "invented" term by David Gerard, which NO TRUE COSMOTHEISTS actually consider themselves to be!-PV
Piercean
Piercean is not an aceptable term, its used by no one, as paul suggests. find a better word or way to say it, as I tried to do awhile back Sam Spade 02:08, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- So what do they call themselves, or do they just claim to be the entirety of Cosmotheism - which they aren't? The only problem I had with your previous wording was that it seemed to claim the site was officially associated with Pierce himself in some way - David Gerard 07:38, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
No Cosmotheists anywhere do call themselves "Piercean", which is the point. The http://www.cosmotheism.net or Cosmotheist website is not officially associated with Pierce at all, but, it was dedicated to him due to his three main cosmotheist writings: "The Path", "On Living Things", and "On Society".-PV
Evidence?
"all could also be said to be Pantheist"
Mormons can also claim that Carl Sagan a Christian but that does not make it true and this kind of propaganda does not belong in Wikipedia. JWSchmidt 03:24, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The "evidence" is from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of 1996/1998, of which states that "pantheism" and "cosmotheism" are true synonyms, meaning "All in GOD and GOD in ALL". Which Mormons can claim Carl Sagan as one of their own? Where is your evidence for that "propaganda", JWSchmidt?-PV
- Providing a definition for "X-ism" and then saying that the views of some dead person are in some way related to the definition of X-ism does not mean that the person was an X-ist.
I agree, unless of course, those views were quite obviously x-ism and x-ist!-PV
- "Carl Sagan .... could also be said to be Pantheist" <- Only by someone wishing to re-write history, an activity that is not promoted by Wikipedia.
Hardly.
Carl Sagan's own pantheistic words and writings has and had indicated that he was indeed a "pantheist".-PV
- Sagan often discussed the idea that it is the unity of the cosmos that provides some scientists with a sense of wonder. He was often asked about god and never embraced the idea that god is anything more than a creation of people seeking to express their sense of wonder. Sagan felt comfortable expressing his sense of wonder without introducing god into the equation beyond the MENTION of how OTHERS make a larger role for god. JWSchmidt 14:46, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Not exactly true. You need to re-read or watch Cosmos again, JWSchmidt.-PV
- You support the positive claim that Sagan in some way had the idea of "Cosmos = God". It is incumbent upon you to provide the evidence to support your claim. JWSchmidt 01:12, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- That they claim them is relevant to mention. Go on, remove it and watch the edit war ... I'll stand back here with the popcorn - David Gerard 08:18, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
No, it is only true by definition.
Again, the "evidence" is from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of 1996/1998, of which states that "pantheism" and "cosmotheism" are true synonyms, meaning "All in GOD and GOD in ALL".-PV
- The Cosmotheism page seems like a war zone for religious zealots. When they restrict their efforts to such fringe pages they probably serve a marginally useful community function. Eventually they will grow tired of the war and leave Wikipedia in peace.
The only actual "religious zealots" are some bigots here that only wish to add their own POV and their own biased and POV "invented terms" like "Piercean" into a serious article on the religion of cosmotheism or classical pantheism. These POV bigots had re-started the "edit war" with their own additons of such obviously "obnoxious" and POV statements and "invented terms" and such false and typically slanderous and biased and POV links, which I have only deleted to maintain a Wiki NPOV.-PV
- Please don't delete external links because you disagree with their POV -- BCorr|Брайен 13:52, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
I didn't delete those two external links because I had disagreed with them, but, only because these both had really nothing to do with COSMOTHEISM, the actual subject of the article, nor even with White separatism, and they were also obviously very biased POV's verses any Wiki NPOV's, and they were falsely equating "White supremacy" with "White separatism".-PV
- You are deleting them because you don't agree with them. Your reply to BCorr proves that. - Tεxτurε 16:02, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Nonsense. I don't agree with Brad Whitsel's nonsense article, either, but since it actually addresses "Cosmotheism" it should stay as a "criticism".-PV
I have reverted 191's edit to this talk page since it duplicated all the text and created a mess. It looks like a cut-and-paste error. - Tεxτurε 16:09, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Ok. Deleted POV links not related to article.-PV
- The duplicated entries are on this talk page. Your deleted links are your own POV and not necessarily correct. - Tεxτurε 17:03, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What are you talking about, now, Texture? You are not making any sense.-PV
A POV against many of PV's POVs
I have just joined with others in reverting a deletion of links that PV seems insistent on preventing others from seeing. Some people can't seem to get the hints that most rational human society, and maybe indeed the whole universe, is in some sense against their particular forms of bigotry, far more than they are in any way for it.
I am a rather patient person, and have simply observed without comment for several days now the attempts at honest dialog and commentary, and the attempts to disrupt and discourage it, that have been made on some of the pages that PV is inclined to promote his POVs. Hypocrisies exist to the extreme, when people strain to make positive and absolute associations with people who would likely be repulsed and revolted by their particular views and ideas, and seek to eliminate any direct criticism of such views as they are inclined to promote as "irrelevant", and unworthy of any consideration.
It is a certainty that labels are always limited in their application, and can be dangerously misused and abused by those who delight in manipulating others impressions and will in dishonest ways. The most absurdly obnoxious and pathetically narrow minded of bigots will often rely upon them and various connotations that they have, to try and make their own particular bigotries seem almost sane and reasonable. Sometimes they will succeed for a time, with some people who are ignorant of some important details, but where information is freely available few remain fooled for very long.
It is not an entirely original observation to say that when a person is inclined to interrupt others, and to break up or eliminate other people's coherent statements of their views, opinions, and expressions of facts, it usually reveals a marked lack of having many of their own. Such behavior is often manifest among those unusually obsessed with the idea of winning over others they like to presume are "inferior", and in making any efforts they can at seeming right rather than in making any sincere effort at being so. One who is not familiar with the actual progression of the attempts at dialog, as they have occurred, can become very confused as to who, or is not, actually speaking and what points are attempting to be made. That certain individuals insist on making such interjections as disrupt the flow of others expressions, to thoroughly ravage any attempts by others to make their points in a cohesive manner, reveals an extreme rudeness, and an extreme inability to even tolerate cohesive and rational dialog and argument. They say such things as if you don't like their rudeness, then "Don't talk to me", in attempts to mantain their own vain sense of superiority.
From one of the sites of advocacy of "Cosmotheism" one can find such statements as "My purpose is the Creator's Purpose" – This may be true of any individual, but is true of all individuals as well… and their own particular sense of their own purposes, and that of God's, are not therefore synonymous. Some people's primary purpose often seems to be to show others how stupid and bigoted a human being can become. It proceeds to "My path is the Path of the Creator's Self-realization", and "My path is the Path of Divine Consciousness", which again can apply to any individual no more than it applies to ALL individual's and ALL paths, something some people seem intent on ignoring or denying. And finally: "My destiny is Godhood". Most pantheists that I am aware of would totally reject the idea of mortals becoming "gods" let alone "God", and would vigorously assert that though God is indeed in all, and that all are in some sense "within" God, mortals do not ever become God, and cannot. The part may be entirely of the total and ultimate Reality, but never is nor can be the totality of Reality. Those who would insist otherwise are to that extent solipsists, rather than pantheists. I believe that most would assert that some mortals can and do become aware that their own existence, and that of everyone else's is to some extent, and for some reasons and purposes a portion of God's ultimate will and omnipresent being. Even so, some people are inclined to focus on the truths of love, and the love of truth, on honest and respectful communion with other souls and minds in a spirit of appreciation and generosity, and might be compared to brain cells and nerves, eager to form mutually beneficial connections, and some are more focused only upon themselves, their narrow concerns, and upon that which is to be excluded, ignored, and denigrated, often very improperly. These individuals can be more appropriately compared to cancer cells consuming an organ's resources while obliviously disdainful of the health of the whole organ or organism of which it is a part, or in a far more familiar and common analogy, to rectums. When the pressures of poorly digested facts and ideas are at work, there can often seem to be no end to the foulness that can emerge from them. One can refrain from calling any specific person a "rectal cavity full of bovine excrement", and still describe the metaphoric associations that are at work, in such ways as to make it plain as to whom, and to what ideas, such terms and metaphors most aptly apply.
I thoroughly expect that PV will break up my assertions with interjections of his own, and would be delighted if in this one instance at least he could actually resist his impulses to be rudely reactive, and actually prove me mistaken. - Moby 01:17, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I am "Rudely reactive"? Hardly. LOL! :D
Was your rant above, Mody, really just lying and hypocritical and typical Psychological projection? Absolutely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Racialist This is quite typical of "SSEE" or "Malignant Narcissistic" mental pathologies. blacklisted URL removed from archive -- Kesh 01:35, 16 September 2007 (UTC) -PV
- Sir, your behaviour on this talk page falls outside the bounds of our No personal attacks policy. Please familiarize yourself with this policy immediately, cease all personal attacks, and desist from engaging in this activity, or you risk being blocked from editing. - Fennec 13:44, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
These individuals can be more appropriately compared to cancer cells consuming an organ's resources while obliviously disdainful of the health of the whole organ or organism of which it is a part, or in a far more familiar and common analogy, to rectums.
Thank you for making my points so clear! LOL! -PV
Deleted these two slanderous, false, and POV links that are not related to the Cosmotheism article.
- Pseudo-Pantheism (Encyclopedia4U)
It is generally agreed that the most widespread form of pseudo-pantheism in existence today is the view sometimes termed "cosmotheism." Although an older edition of Webster's dictionary defines 'cosmotheism' as synonomous with pantheism, the term has taken on certain connotations in modern usage, owing chiefly to its use by Dr. William Pierce to describe his racially-hierarchical system of thought. Cosmotheism as it appears today, promoted chiefly on the internet, is widely considered to be a racist ideology which has appropriated the terminology of pantheism in order to legitimize itself.
- A Blemish on the Blossom: Pantheism and White-Supremacist Hate Groups by Esther Hugenholtz (Pantheist Index)
However, we should be alert and try to ‘ban’ these sort of nazi-characters from our own Internet pages and discussion forums. We should inform those new to Pantheism that the large majority of Pantheism is in fact benevolent and that these hate-groups luckily form a tiny, but loud, minority. Let’s make sure they stay that way.
Within our organizations we can formulate even more clearly our egalitarian and democratic stances to make sure that the message gets across as clear as possible. Formulating a Credo, like the World Pantheist Movement has done, may have a twofold effect: firstly, it clearly states our ethical position and secondly, it deters those with bigoted views from joining or seeking contact.
Neo-nazis try to infiltrate all sorts of religions and philosophies in order to recruit. We are not the only victims in their book. Nonetheless, their presence is a blemish on the blossom of Pantheism. But the blossom in itself is still as radiant as ever. Don’t be deterred from Pantheism because of a few hate-filled fringe groups.
It is quite clear just who or whom is the actual "HATE GROUP" and just who or whom is actually quite "hate-filled".
Another case of Psychological projection at it's typical worst!!!
-PV
- Restored links. Your assertion that they are slander is POV. The links are not POV, although the linked pages may be... and they are labeled as criticism. - Fennec 15:53, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
BS!
They are quite SLANDEROUS as anyone linking to them can CLEARLY SEE.
Fair criticism of one's religion is one thing, but, these two are so obviously quite false and biased and POV subjective.
Neither one fairly belongs within the article on Cosmotheism.-PV
Useful balance?????
Hardly!!!
Maybe then we should provide such biased and POV and clearly slanderous links critical of "Judaism", or of any other "religion", within the rest of the Wiki Encyclopedia?-PV
- See Judaism#Critics for such an external link - Tεxτurε 16:35, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Let us see if we can add quite a few more "external links" to it:
- [14] - Critics of current modern "Jewish/Zionist Supremacism" and the immorality of "Malignant Narcissism" and its typical lying hypocrisy and psychological projection
and then we will watch and see the hypocritical lying censorship and banning and reverting etc, etc, ad nauseum, that would soon follow?-PV
PS--That didn't take very long to prove my proven point at all! LOL! :D http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Judaism&action=history
- Depends on if they are responsible links and not more appropriate somewhere else. I think there is some latitude in the "critics" section. - Tεxτurε 16:45, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It is quite clear that the two links I had deleted from cosmotheism criticism were not "responsible ones", whatsoever. However, it is also clear that the POV bias and slander of cosmotheism is really so over the top and is so completely false as only to make any actual and valid criticisms of cosmotheism also look quite stupid and petty and false and POV biased. If that is your foolish and POV intention, then, so be it.-PV
PS--The "latitude" for actually determining any such "credible or fair or inflamatory analysis or criticism", http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Judaism&action=history is really only given to all such typical lying hypocrites, obviously! LOL! :D
- Let's try removing inflamatory analysis that does not exist in the critical links on this page, shall we? Be fair about it if you plan to do it. - Tεxτurε 22:02, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You don't seem to have any problem with the "false and inflamatory analysis" of those two "critical links" of yours to the religion of Cosmotheism, though, do you? That is why your asking for "fairness" for Judaism when you and your ilk are being so "unfair" yourself, regarding the criticism of cosmotheism is the just height of lying hypocrisy, Texture.-PV
- Are you aware that I do not write content for this article as you claim? I have only tried to prevent content removal or twisting that is not accepted by the majority. I am trying to be fair here just as I am trying to be fair at Judaism. Check my record. - Tεxτurε 16:09, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- To further clarify, those "two.. links" are not mine nor did I call them "critical" in any comment or summary - Tεxτurε 16:14, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"Fair"? For "Balance"?
Sure.
Like this, for example?
Pseudo-Pantheism
Pseudo-Pantheism has been deleted in accordance with Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion. If you wish to recreate the article please discuss it at Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. - Fennec 15:43, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"False accusations" are "personal attacks" are they not?
Would you ever ban yourself for ever doing so?
You had ONLY deleted the NPOV version of the article, and then added the slanderous POV version of it to cosmotheism in a link!!!
It is quite clear that what articles or links "deserve" deletion really has nothing to do with either "fairness nor even with factual accuracy or balance" but only with the selfishly subjective and egotistical and POV bigotries of a mob or cabal of censors, liars, and hypocrites, that actually do not uphold the wiki NPOV, whatsoever.-PV
There is no cabal. - Fennec 16:08, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The actual and objective facts here do indicate otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist -PV
For example for Judaism and the Talk Pages:
Critics Is there any objection to listing an example or two of critics to Judaism? It does not need to have a POV analysis attached to it but should show who the critics are. - Tεxτurε 22:40, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Yes. Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism have no place on the Judaism website, and that is what these two links were. I have no objection to the article covering conflicts between Jews and other groups (e.g. Christians). I also think there is value to covering conflicts among Jews. But as a culture that has been in the minority for virtually 2,500 years, it is inappropriate and offensive to have a section on "critics." By the way, I wouldn't support a link on the "Christianity" page on "critics." Can you imagine a link on the German page called "critics?" Sure, the article can cover the Nazi period, or talk about current issues dividing Germans -- but that isn't the same thing as criticizing "Germany." Of the two links I deleted, one was purely anti-Semitic. The other was in my opinion a silly but certainly not offensive critique of a book by Telushkin. It can't be represented as a critique of "Judaism," it is practically a book review. Put it someplace else. Slrubenstein
The above is by another user. My text is below: Paul, what is your objection to "critical analysis" versus "analysis" for infidels.org? It is an accurate statement that the analysis does not agree with Judaism. - Tεxτurε 16:20, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Texture, the point is that if you can allow any pov "criticisms" of one religion, ie. cosmotheism, then the same should hold true for Judaism.
Therefore, this link:
[1] - Critics of current modern "Jewish/Zionist Supremacism" and the immorality of "Malignant Narcissism" and its typical lying hypocrisy and psychological projection This link should be allowed as a "criticism" or you must remove the similar offensive pov links from cosmotheism.
The title given to this link is POV. A more approproate NPOV title would be indicate somehow that the content at the other end of the link claims this, that, and the hypocrisy thing. Furthermore, I urge you to state your point, don't prove it. - Fennec 17:20, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Criticism The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce's Theology of Revolution by Brad Whitsel (Nova Religio)
Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, by Mattias Gardell (ISBN 0822330717) A Blemish on the Blossom: Pantheism and White-Supremacist Hate Groups by Esther Hugenholtz (Pantheist Index)
Pseudo-Pantheism (Encyclopedia4U)
Any hue and cry of "anti-semitism" or "nazism" etc. ad nauseum for such a link is not relevant, if one is being hypocritical in actually allowing similar pov and slanderous links on cosmotheism, or any other religion, within Wiki articles.-PV
PS-For quite clear examples of their typical lying hypocrisy and the removal and deletion of any "criticisms" of Judaism from the page history section on Judaism such as [15].
(cur) (last) . . 14:10, 13 Apr 2004 . . RK (Removing (again) a link which is clarly Nazi and anti-Semitic.)
(cur) (last) . . 14:04, 13 Apr 2004 . . 24.45.99.191
(cur) (last) . . 00:59, 13 Apr 2004 . . Slrubenstein
(cur) (last) . . 22:55, 12 Apr 2004 . . Mkmcconn (This link does not belong, if Wikipedia aims to be a credible source; but at least its contents should be more accurately described, as long as it remains)
(cur) (last) . . m 22:34, 12 Apr 2004 . . Texture (Reverted edits by 68.237.92.227 to last version by Texture)
(cur) (last) . . 22:17, 12 Apr 2004 . . 68.237.92.227
(cur) (last) . . 21:59, 12 Apr 2004 . . Texture (removing POV - link description should not be an analysis of what would be found)
(cur) (last) . . 21:13, 12 Apr 2004 . . 24.45.99.191
(cur) (last) . . m 20:46, 12 Apr 2004 . . Slrubenstein (Reverted edits by 24.45.99.191 to last version by Slrubenstein)
(cur) (last) . . 20:37, 12 Apr 2004 . . 24.45.99.191
Since any organization of your statements was lost I won't try to insert this in the proper place. Your latest addition to this talk page seems to be a rant against many people and not me. I have tried to support your inclusion of criticisms into Judaism although I disagree that you should be allowed to add detailed analysis to the link description.
If you don't appreciate my support I will back off and let you deal with the issue in the all-or-nothing manner that seems to be the only solution for you. I would rather see your POV included in others POV in a stable manner. I'm sure you don't agree with how I see it, but what can I do. - Tεxτurε 18:07, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have revised the critical link description there, at Judaism to be far more NPOV and factually accurate, even if what it links to is not.
However, I am quite sure that your ilk will still delete it and then will still only keep the exact same kind of critical slanderous and pov linked nonsence about cosmotheism, like the hypocritical liars and bigots and psychological projectionists that they usually and almost always are.
We shall see.-PV
- I formatted your new addition and did not find it preblematic in the current form. BTW, what is my "ilk"? - Tεxτurε 18:26, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Ok. FYI: Entry Word: ilk Function: noun Text: Synonyms TYPE, breed, character, description, kidney, kind, nature, sort, stripe, variety It is only up to you, to some extent, to actually decide that question.-PV
- No, it isn't up to me. I am asking you to define your terms as you have used them. You have made a statement of my "ilk" will do this or that and I'm curious what you may be mislabelling me as. - Tεxτurε 20:55, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This same "ilk", perhaps, that always refuses to learn the lessons of history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist -PV [signature added by No-One Jones]
- I find this to be a personal attack. You know nothing about me and are grouping me with some unrevealed group that does not learn from its history. - Tεxτurε 14:30, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
That is not any any "personal attack", whatsoever.
However, your falsely calling me a "vandal" and then falsely "censoring me" and then falsely "banning me", was actually a "personal attack". Here too:
"Thanks for the heads-up on PV. It looks like it is temporarily being managed. The problem is, anyone who uses anonymous IP numbers is hard to block effectively. A temporary solution is to protect the page. I am a sysop but I have been involved in the dispute so I cannot protect the page. I suggest that if he reappears you ask another sysop to block the page. I brought up the matter on the list-serve and it was pretty much ignored. I think we have managed to control PV by reverting, but if he comes back there is a need for something more serious and I am not sure if the mediation process is the appropriate thing. Slrubenstein
The above is by another user. My text is below: anon IP are normally hard to block but he obviously has dedicated IPs that would be easy to block indefinitely. The same ones get used repeatedly making me believe (depending on time of day) that these are work and home. - Tεxτurε 20:16, 20"
- Reread your quote above now that I have separated out the only portion by me. - Tεxτurε 22:26, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Vandal is a term I use because it applies in my opinion. I don't know why you put "censoring me" in quotes since that is your claim, not a quote from me. I have never banned you. (I am involved in the conflicts that I would ban you for, therefore, I am constrained from doing so.) - Tεxτurε 15:15, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The ilk of which you are a demonstrated "member" is the same ilk or group of typical "lying hypocrites" that have here "censored" any valid criticism of Judaism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Judaism by falsely calling it "Anti-semitism" and that have only allowed or that have always falsely inserted and reverted only their own quite bigoted pov's and only their own quite deliberately false slanders and "criticisms" of other religions, such as cosmotheism, but, do not allow any valid "criticism" of their own Jewish or Marxist "religion" or "dogmatisms": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist
- Really? Then why was I fighting to get your critical links included in Judaism? - Tεxτurε 15:15, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Jewish/Marxist slanderous "Criticisms" of cosmotheism:
The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce's Theology of Revolution by Brad Whitsel (Nova Religio)
Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, by Mattias Gardell (ISBN 0822330717)
A Blemish on the Blossom: Pantheism and White-Supremacist Hate Groups by Esther Hugenholtz (Pantheist Index)
Pseudo-Pantheism (Encyclopedia4U)
If you are not a member of that "ilk", then don't BEHAVE like such "ilk", and lie and censor any valid "criticisms", or only allow your own pov and quite slanderous and false "criticisms":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist
-PV
ps-I have revised the critical link description there, at Judaism to be far more NPOV and factually accurate, even if what it links to is not.
However, I am quite sure that your ilk will still delete it and then will still only keep the exact same kind of critical slanderous and pov linked nonsence about cosmotheism, like the hypocritical liars and bigots and psychological projectionists that they usually and almost always are.
We shall see.-PV
Really?
"Thanks for the heads-up on PV. It looks like it is temporarily being managed. The problem is, anyone who uses anonymous IP numbers is hard to block effectively. A temporary solution is to protect the page. I am a sysop but I have been involved in the dispute so I cannot protect the page. I suggest that if he reappears you ask another sysop to block the page. I brought up the matter on the list-serve and it was pretty much ignored. I think we have managed to control PV by reverting, but if he comes back there is a need for something more serious and I am not sure if the mediation process is the appropriate thing. Slrubenstein
The above is by another user. My text is below: anon IP are normally hard to block but he obviously has dedicated IPs that would be easy to block indefinitely. The same ones get used repeatedly making me believe (depending on time of day) that these are work and home. - Tεxτurε 20:16, 20"
Some "help"?
- Reread your quote above now that I have separated out the only portion by me. - Tεxτurε 22:26, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You had falsely and personally insulted me by calling me a "vandal".
What do you expect?
I have demonstrated the "lying hypocrisy" and psychological projection of all those that have "slandered" cosmotheism in their false and slanderous and pov Jewish/Marxist criticisms, whilest these same pov bigots only reverted and banned anyone that linked to any valid "criticisms" of Judaism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist
-PV
PS--For example:
From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud@...> Subject: Re: Paul Vogel's anti-Semitism Newsgroups: gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:44:26 +0000
Believe it or not, it is best to request mediation on this matter with him, although I would vote to accept this matter for arbitration as it sits now (although I know certain other arbitrators would not).
Fred
From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste-GtutR9TLYbWHXe+LvDLADg <at> public.gmane.org> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l-g2DCOkC13y2GglJvpFV4uA <at> public.gmane.org> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:04:58 -0400 To: wikien-l-g2DCOkC13y2GglJvpFV4uA <at> public.gmane.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel's anti-Semitism
Paul Vogel has been adding an anti-Semitic link to the Judaism page. I explained in detail on the talk page why I think this is inappropriate, and I deleted the link. Although some other users believe that such a link is acceptable as long as it is clearly identified, I think if Wikipedia is going to have any links to anti-Semitic material it should be on the anti-Semitism page.
In any event, after I explained why I deleted the link, Vogel responded, "Any hue and cry of "anti-semitism" or "nazism" etc. ad nauseum for such a link is not relevant, if one is being hypocritical in actually allowing similar pov and slanderous links on cosmotheism, or any other religion, within Wiki articles.-PV " -- a response that ignored my explanation entirely.
I replied, "I am not "allowing" slanderous links on the cosmotheism page. Two rights do not make a wrong. If you have a problem on another site, seek mediation -- don't take out your frustrations here."
And then Vogel made clear the anti-Semitic logic by which problems on the cosmotheism page are really "Jewish" problems: "Aren't you? Each one of those 4 slanderous POV articles and each one linked as "criticisms" on the cosmotheism page have been written by "Jews", and you have not ever protested and ever insisted upon their actual "removal" have you? The problem is on THIS SITE, WIKIPEDIA. The lying hypocrisy of your own "ilk" is responsible for this nonsense, and so it actually is YOUR OWN PROBLEM. Unfortunately, there is no effective medication for psychological projection on your and your own ilk's part, but, hope springs eternal!.-"
Do I need to explain my outrage? Vogel doesn't identify the people working on the cosmotheism as wikipedians but as "Jews." He doesn't identify me as a wikipedian but solely as a "Jew." And because I am a Jew, he holds me responsible for what other "Jews" have done on another site.
This use of "Jew" as a slur; the identification of my "ilk" as hypocrites, reeks of anti-Semitism. If this itself does not merit banning, I certainly think some strong action should be taken.
Thanks,
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701
- So, no response to your false accusation that I banned you? No response to the fact that I tried to support your additions of criticisms to Judaism? I supported your point that it was not above similar critical links. I did not expect your attack after I did so. I have learned. - Tεxτurε 16:17, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
So, no apologetic response to your false accusation and personal insult of calling me a "vandal"??? Your own censorous "ilk" had banned me, even if you, personally, did not.
"User:66.2.156.69 Anonymous troll vandalising Judaism, and Holocaust. Reverts etcAndyL 03:13, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC) Do we need to quickpoll this user? If he continues, I'd feel comfortable giving him a day off on my own discretion - and I suspect dozens of admins would agree with me. Pakaran. 03:11, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I agree with you Pakaran. This is an IP user, and the activity seems to be simple vandalism that clearly violates NPOV. If the user continues I will ban the IPs for 24 hours and protect any of the pages if nessecary, such as the user coming back under another IP and re-editing the pages in question with the same vandalism. Seems a simple issue to me. --Flockmeal 03:17, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)
As I understand it this person had been blocked at one (or more) points for 24 hours with no effect. Now that it is clear that he is an anti-semite using Wikipedia as a platform to spread anti-semetic views, I believe his should be banned. His contributions to articles are at the very best contentious -- but usually they amount to no kmore than adding obscure and self-serving links to neo-nazi websites. On talk pages his anti-Semitism is clear. When I wrote, on the Judaism talk page, that a link to an anti-semitic site is inappropriate, he replied that people were placing inappropriate remarks on the cosmotheism page. This is very bad behavior at wikipedia -- no contributor should "punish" one page begause of something that happened on another page. More importantly, he is punishing me for what others have done, an example of collective guilt that makes perfect sense in his anti-semitism, but not in a wikipedia community. He practically said that Jews control wikipedia, which is a classic anti-semitic stance. I think he should be banned. Slrubenstein 12:31, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
No change, no improvement. When is there going to be some action?AndyL 03:41, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Just ban this idiot. Don't go through quickpolls since this is unambiguous vandalism. And do it quick. Ban the IP before he/she gets a user name, which complicates things when we need to ban vandals. 172 20:20, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I've just banned the IP. Along with hard-banned User:Zog, this Nazi scumbag has no place on WP. 172 20:26, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This should not be the place to list vandalizing anons. I agree with 172. - Tεxτurε 20:38, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This user has not vandalized anything, only expressed a strong POV. silsor 20:43, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)
I was not voting. Only agreeing that anon vandals should not be Quickpolled and should be banned. I haven't voted (and I don't even see anywhere to vote.) - Tεxτurε 20:54, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Silsor, this user wasn't guilty of, say, childish Michael-style vandalism, but he/she's in league with other POV trolls/hard-banned vandals (e.g., JoeM and Zog) who couldn't function as constructive editors or writers on WP. 172 21:05, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Vandalism is deliberate mischief, but it seems this user believes what s/he is writing. Antisemitism is not against any policy and neither is being "in league" (which I have not seen) with other people. I have reviewed all of this user's edits and I think we need to treat his/her POV in the same way we would treat any other user's POV. silsor 21:16, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)
User:216.99.245.135 possibly same anonymous troll as 66.2.156.69. Same behaviour as above. AndyL 03:13, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See my comment above. Slrubenstein 12:31, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)"
It is clear that those "criticism" links to cosmotheism are both very slanderous and false, and yet you have "done nothing" to have them deleted.
My "attack" only came after your own quite "false accusation" and "personal insult" of "vandalism" about me.
Learn from your own bias and slander of others, Texture, such that
people in such selfish and pov "glass houses" should not throw such stones!-PV
- You can continue to quote other people but you have made no proof of me. I openly admitted my opinion of your earlier activities as "vandalism". I explained why on numerous occassions. I won't take your time to define it again.
I am not any "vandal", regardless of your own "definition" of it.-PV
- You haven't answered my question. Instead you quoted a lot of other people who you feel are personally against you and tucked into those quotes is one from me: "I was not voting. Only agreeing that anon vandals should not be Quickpolled and should be banned. I haven't voted".
You hadn't answered nor apologized for your own false accusation and personal insult of "vandalism" and your own bigoted agreement with banning me, thereby. -PV
- You repeatedly ignore my attempt to help you. I guess you can't generate a good "righteous indignation" by giving credit to any assistance you get. Feel free to reply although I may not. This is not a conversation, discussion, or debate. It is a chance for you to rant against others. (made clear by the verbatim posting of this in Judaism and here.) - Tεxτurε 17:16, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I find it quite curious that you consider falsely calling me a "vandal" and being in agreement with banning me, thereby, "helping me" or "assisting" me??? What I would consider "helpful" or "assisting" would be your own "righteous indignation" of insisting that alternative POV's be allowed within Wikipedia and that a "cabal" of Wikipedia pov bigots not be allowed to only have their own POV's represented here, as opposed to upholding the Wiki NPOV policy? My rants are all about maintaining the Wiki NPOV, and that means ALWAYS allowing alternative POV's within ANY articles, and whether you "personally support" them or not.-PV
PS--If you allow such "criticism links" to cosmotheism then the same should apply to Judaism:
Criticism
- Freud's criticism of the ancient origins of Judaism and how it de-evolved away from the original ethical Judaism also later advocated by the prophets
- Jews as a chosen people
- Jewish ethnocentrism
- David Duke's critical historical analysis of "Jewish Supremacy" and its impact on the modern world
- Anti-Semitism
- http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/guido_deimel/judaism.html Judaism and Jewish Apologetics] - Critical analysis of the moral aspects of parts of Judaism; from Infidels.Org
- Piety and Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism David Landau, Hill and Wang, 1993
- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0745308198/102-2015385-6701711?v=glance Jewish History Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years]
- I supported you when you first added critical links to Judaism. I reverted the first attempts to remove the links without discussion. (Check the page history and discussion page.) I later agreed that specific links were excessive and not valid for balance. Later efforts instead provided links inside wikipedia that seemed appropriate and some of the critical links were kept. I was satisfied with this compromise as it retains links critical of Judaism. I don't agree with your current additions and will not enter into further discussion about Judaism on the Cosmotheism talk page. The discussion is not related to Cosmotheism. - Tεxτurε 18:57, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Stop deleting the valid links to "criticisms", http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Judaism&action=history just because you don't happen in your own pov to like them and do falsely call them "Anti-Semitic", such as [16] Thanks! :D -PV
While I agree that there should be critical links to Judaism I do not agree with the extreme links being suggested by Paul. - Tεxτurε 17:52, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Why not?
You seem to agree with the "extreme" critical "links" to cosmotheism??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmotheism#Criticism If you allow these Jewish/Marxist slanderous "critical links" within the cosmotheism article, then, so should you allow my "critical links" to Judaism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism#Criticism both here and above and within that article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cosmotheism -PV
Your "lying hypocrisy" has just been exposed above and made quite clear.
Obviously, any such "censorship" of "criticism links" is only ok with you and only when certain "topics" and only when a certain "religion" or only when some specific and certain "ilk" is "concerned", right Texture?
[snip rant -- Paul, if you must babble about a different article, do it on that article's talk page. This page is for talking about cosmotheism, not whatever article is sending you into a tizzy right now. —No-One Jones]
(cur) (last) . . 01:50, 20 Apr 2004 . . Mirv (talk:cosmotheism is for TALKing about COSMOTHEISM, not ranting about whatever subject happens to be on your mind)
My "tizzy"? LOL! Hardly. :D
Well, Mirv, I am talking about cosmotheism, and the "ilk", like you, that is responsible for slandering it, lying hypocritically, and then censoring the TRUTH by always falsely calling me a "vandal", "troll", "anti-Semite", "Nazi", etc, ad nauseum, or whatever false pov bigoted "personal insult" that you and your "ilk" has smeared me with in your own typical pov hatred, bigotry, and obvious psychological projection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist If you don't like it, stop doing it.-PV
- Okay, then, explain what this text has to do with cosmotheism . . . and this too, please. —No-One Jones 02:29, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
[text from talk:Holocaust snipped as irrelevant to this article]
- To be clear: By "explain" I did not mean "paste the text back in again"; I meant "tell me why that text from talk:Holocaust is relevant to cosmotheism". It's not that difficult, really. . .
--No-One Jones
Indeed!
That is why I did so, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Cosmotheism&oldid=3260950 and that is why you had "deleted it".
What they ALL DO have to do with cosmotheism is that the TRUTH is considered SACRED to all TRUE COSMOTHEISTS, and for its OWN SAKE, period.
This is not something that I would really expect either you nor your pov ilk of "lying hypocrites" to ever actually understand.
Therefore, we do not appreciate such censorous "lying hypocrites". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quickpolls
-PV
I told you so...
But, you had to find out for yourselves. Ah well. Soon he will be gone, I'm sure. Wikipedia will join the other 20-30 internet sites and forums that have banned him.
Nat 03:00, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"20-30 other internet sites and forums have banned" me, Nat?
Really?
Even if it actually had been that many, what "Naturyl", "Nat", aka James D. Quirk, the Director of the Universal "Pan-Atheist" Society, and his "ilk" has ever honestly ever actually said is WHY, and that being that they can't stand nor abide ANYONE posting only the WHOLE TRUTHS of REALITY, as opposed to only THEIR OWN SELFISHLY SUBJECTIVE and EGOTISTICAL and EGOISTIC POV and DOGMATISMS.
IF ever I was banned or censored, from any site or forum, that has been the actual factual REASON, totally regardless of what such "lying hypocrites" like "Nat" have ever said only to "slander me" and to "personally insult me", and to "smear me" and to "character assassinate me" and all only to ultimately "ban and censor" me and thereby CENSOR and BAN ANY ALTERNATIVE POV or even ANY NPOV that they won't actually ever uphold nor allow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Naturyl -PV
Indeed! :D And most especially, those that do so, and by doing so, are only being typical "lying hypocrites" and pov bigots and censors! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Naturyl -PV
PS--Here is my own "prediction", Sam. If you continue to uphold "fairness" and "rationality" and the "Wiki NPOV", against these "ilk" of "lying hypocrites" and censors, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Paul_Vogel and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AndyL#White_Separatist and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sam_Spade/_-_archive_April_2004#I_must_object etc. ad nauseum... then soon you will be the "next target" of their SSEE pov slander and smear campaigns and then you will be banned and censored, too!
- But only if he "greatly" increases his "use" of quotation "marks" - DavidWBrooks 14:47, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What a "comic". Keep your "day job", David. :D
Perhaps mediation?
Given the disputes you're involved in, have you considered the use of mediation between you and those you're disagreeing with as a possible way to resolve the disputes? Jamesday 21:28, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"Mediation" will not likely resolve the disputes, as there is a cabal of "lying hypocrites" within Wikipedia that will not listen to reason nor act in "good faith", and will do and say "anything", including "bald-faced" lies, in their slanderous campaign to have me banned and censored and mostly due to my "unpopular" religion of cosmotheism that requires me to uphold the WHOLE TRUTHS of REALITY, for their own sake, without regard to egotism or self-delusion.-PV
I don't claim to be on your side 100%. I only said I tried to help you in Judaism in adding a critical links section. I later came to agree that not all your links were appropriate. I will vote to have you blocked if you continue in this manner. Your approach is disruptive and not helpful to a community effort. If you would like to reform and become a useful contributor I will help you as much as I can although I will retain my own opinion and disagree when your statements seem incorrect or excessive. From here it is up to you. You can continue to claim your cabal of anti-Pauls or you can contribute to a group effort. - Tεxτurε 22:33, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"I don't claim to be on your side 100%".
Indeed! What I would consider "helpful" or "assisting" would be your own "righteous indignation" of insisting that alternative POV's be allowed within Wikipedia and that a "cabal" of Wikipedia pov bigots not be allowed to only have their own POV's represented here, as opposed to upholding the Wiki NPOV policy? My rants are all about maintaining the Wiki NPOV, and that means ALWAYS allowing alternative POV's within ANY articles, and whether you "personally support" them or not.-PV
"I only said I tried to help you in Judaism in adding a critical links section."
"Critical links" that were only "certified Kosher" and NOT actually very critical of either Judaism nor of "Jewish Supremacy", and nowhere near as "slanderous" nor as pov as were the "critical links" to cosmotheism, which was the actual point.-PV
"I later came to agree that not all your links were appropriate."
Why not? You seemed to agree with the "extreme" critical "links" to cosmotheism??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmotheism#Criticism If you allow these Jewish/Marxist pov slanderous "critical links" within the cosmotheism article, then, so should you allow my pov "critical links" to Judaism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism#Criticism both here and above and within that article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cosmotheism -PV
"I will vote to have you blocked if you continue in this manner."
I would vote to have you and your own cabal and own ilk banned and blocked for your typical pov "double-standards" and for your pov "lying hypocrisy". -PV
"Your approach is disruptive and not helpful to a community effort."
And they said these same hypocritical lies about Socrates and Jesus and Bruno and Copernicus.-PV
Lying hypocrisy, slander, bearing false witness, and always attempting to ban and to censor alternative pov's is bigotry and tyranny and this selfish "behavior" has no place in any "community effort" to create a NPOV and a factually accurate and objective encyclopedia.-PV
"If you would like to reform and become a useful contributor I will help you as much as I can although I will retain my own opinion and disagree when your statements seem incorrect or excessive."
If you and your currently Selfishly Subjective and Egotistical and Egoistic ilk of slanderous and lying and hypocritical ilk would like to reform, and would like to become truely useful and HONEST and TRUTHFUL contributors to this NPOV Wikipedia Encyclopedia project, then please do keep your own false pov opinions to yourself and just respectfully agree to disagree with me and even when your own ilks statements are proven factually incorrect and even when they too are so obviously and excessively pov.-PV
"From here it is up to you."
On the contrary, it is actually only up to you, and your own SSEE ilk to reform only their own quite bigoted behavior and stop their own lying hypocrisy and abandon their own slanderous "double-standards".-PV
"You can continue to claim your cabal of anti-Pauls or you can contribute to a group effort. - Tεxτurε 22:33, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)"
Actually, I can continue to do both, for as long as there actually is such a cabal and ilk of SSEE censoring bigots, liars, and hypocrites that continues to censor, ban, revert and block my NPOV edits for greater factually accuracy and objectivity, which is my best "contribution" to this group effort of a NPOV encyclopedia that reflects many and not just ONE BIASED POV, of ONE ILK of lying hypocrites and censorous and slanderous pov bigots and dogmatists.-PV
===Examples of "lying hypocrisy" and "psychological projection" on the part of bigoted pov censors.===
User is blocked From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Hadal.
The reason given is this:
Personal attacks and trolling.
To Vogel: I will double the length of this block if you try to evade it again.
"Personal attacks and trolling"????
I do consider your "reasons" to be deliberately false "personal insults" and your additional "threat" of doubling the length of the block equally hypocritical and tyrannical.
You should be not be allowed to "block" any users in this way and in this quite clearly selfish and abusive and vile misuse of administrative power.
You have also abused the TRUST that the Wiki higher ups here have actually entrusted in you when you are so selfishly and deliberately abusing that power.
If this is what the Wiki has devolved into, then this project and Wiki Encyclopedia will very soon lose all credibility with the rest of the users. -PV
COMPARE THE CRITICISMS
Compare the biased and pov "criticisms" linked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmotheism#Criticism to this far more "objective" and less biased and more NPOV interview by Dr. Griffin with the late Dr. Pierce regarding his own and quite unique "interpretation" of cosmotheism:
"Cosmotheism
by Dr. Robert S. Griffin
Pierce told me that during the early 1970s he formulated a race-based religious orientation to provide the spiritual basis for the direction he was taking with the National Alliance. He needed a name for what he had put together, he said, and he came up with Cosmotheism. He's not sure whether he ran across the term in an encyclopedia or made it up. One day when I was in his office with him in West Virginia, I asked him to help me understand what Cosmotheism was about. He rose from his desk and went to a file drawer and pulled out some pamphlets, sorted through them a bit, and then handed three of them to me. "You can look these over. I wrote them on Cosmotheism back in the late 1970s. They are going to sound a little naive, but here they are."
I spent a minute or two looking them over. The three pamphlets were each about twenty pages in length and had the Life Rune prominently displayed on their covers. The pamphlets inform the reader that the Life Rune, or Rune of Life, is the insignia worn by the members of the Cosmotheist Community on their jacket lapels or blouses. Of course, it is also the symbol of the National Alliance. The Life Rune is one of the characters in an ancient alphabet of northern Europe and represents the processes of birth and renewal. The Cosmotheist literature says that it signifies "the upward Path of Life which we strive to follow." 1
As I was paging through the pamphlets, I noted that they were written in stilted, bible-like prose. One of the them, entitled The Path, was printed in 1977. The second, On Living Things, was printed in 1979. The third, On Society, was printed in 1984. They were produced by the Cosmotheist Organization, not the National Alliance. I asked Pierce about this Cosmotheist Organization.
"The National Alliance came first.” Pierce replied. “We had meetings every Sunday evening at our offices in Washington. Members of the Alliance were invited to bring other people, and a variety of people showed up. In fact, too big a variety— but I'll get into that. One of the more interesting people who came, I remember, was John Gant. Gant had degrees in both medicine and physics, and he was a professor at George Washington University. He did medical research and was a consultant to the Air Force. He was also an amateur astronomer— as matter of fact, there is a crater on the moon named after him. He died about fifteen years ago, and I inherited some astronomical instruments from him. So I had people like that coming to the Sunday night meetings.
"On those Sunday nights, I'd show movies that I got from the local library. They were from a series called Civilization hosted by an Englishman named Kenneth Clark. I think the series may have played on PBS. [It did.] Clark was a fairly subtle man. While he never spoke out directly about racial matters, there were a lot of implicit messages in his series. For example, in one of the episodes he compared an African tribal mask from the Guggenheim collection in New York with the Apollo of the Belvedere sculpture which reflects the epitome of Greek art. Clark said that while the carved mask is indeed art, it is fair to say that the Apollo sculpture is an expression of a higher artistic sensibility. He did this kind of thing a number of times, and to me it was an indication that he was sensitive, intelligent, and insightful, and hadn't been subverted by political correctness. At the same time, he didn't want to stick his neck out and buck the forces around him. So he would come out with these little hints and just leave it as a ‘word to the wise,' as they say.
"After the Clark movies, I would give talks, some of which we have on tape. [“Our Cause,” paraphrased in the last chapter, was one of them.] Some of the talks got into racial differences, comparisons between whites and blacks, that kind of thing. I know Stephen Jay Gould [the Harvard University evolutionary theorist] and others disagree with me, but I believe that the groups that remained in the tropics simply did not evolve as rapidly as those that migrated to the northern hemisphere. The northern peoples had to deal with severe seasonal changes in climate, and the sorts of attitudes and behaviors that sufficed in the tropics simply wouldn't keep you alive in northern Europe eons ago. There was a much more rigorous selection process in this kind of challenging environment. The result was that whites evolved further. We developed certain faculties to a greater extent than blacks did. Evolutionary development, and particularly racial differences, is a basic idea behind Cosmotheism. Although if you look over those pamphlets on Cosmotheism I put together, race isn't mentioned very much at all.
"When I would speak about race on Sundays, I noticed that it appealed to a certain type in the audience. Other times, the lesson I drew from one of Clark 's episodes was more subtle and related to certain aspects of our own nature as a people and as a civilization. I noticed that some people were interested in that, but I could see the eyes glaze over in the first group, the ones that liked the race material. What was going on was that some people wanted me to tell them what we were going to do about the problem we have right here in Washington, D. C. with blacks and Jews. They didn't want to hear about anything else. The way they looked at it, we had these very immediate and urgent problems to deal with, so cut the philosophical stuff, who wants to hear about that?
"My attitude about their way of thinking was, yes, we have immediate problems, but if we want to arrive at a good, lasting solution to them we need to think about these other things that I was bringing up. Some people who came to the meetings agreed with me on that, and others didn't. So what I did was split the group up. I would invite everybody to the National Alliance meetings on one Sunday, and then, on alternate Sundays, I'd invite just the people who I thought were receptive to the more fundamental things I wanted to talk about. That second group became the Cosmotheist Community.
“The Cosmotheist group didn't just get into abstract things. Sometimes we discussed very practical things, like how to raise children. Suppose you are a parent: how can you possibly keep your child from being taken over by the people who are wrecking our civilization? Is there any way you can compete with television and the school system and the corrupted kids your kid comes into contact with? We got into questions like that.
"After a time, we— I'm talking about the Cosmotheist group— decided that it would be worthwhile to try an experiment. We'd try to create an environment more under our control than it is now and live with people who share our values and raise our kids in that sort of setting. We talked about buying some land on which we could build a community. I said to the group, 'Look, I have so many thousand dollars in savings I can put toward it, but it isn't enough. Some other people are going to have to cough up some money, too.' I wanted to open up a bank account. I also told them, ‘We are going to have to do this in a business-like way. What we really are is a church— we're like one anyway. So why don't we call ourselves a church, because there are some advantages to that. For one thing, we won't have to pay taxes.'
“When I said all that, I really didn't have the foggiest idea what I was talking about. For example, you don't have to pay taxes on a fund like the one we were setting up in any case. We could have called ourselves the Ajax Land Requisition Society, anything, and all the gifts to that entity would have been tax deductible. It didn't have to be a church. Although then again, there were some advantages to being a church, because if you are the Ajax corporation rather than a church and put money into an interest-bearing account, you have to pay taxes on the interest the fund accrues. But I didn't know all those details then.
"I also talked to the Cosmotheist group about how anything that has ever made an impact and shaped people's lives has been more than just an idea. It has been an idea with a concrete embodiment. It not only had a doctrine, it had rituals and songs and priestly vestments, things like that. For example, if you walk into a Methodist ceremony you can immediately distinguish it from an Episcopal ceremony or Roman Catholic ceremony.
"As it turned out, we did organize ourselves as a church. So first we were the Cosmotheist Community and then we became the Cosmotheist Community Church. I had assumed that if we became a church we would incorporate and have a board of directors and so on, but then I found out that Virginia [Pierce's operations were in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington] doesn't incorporate churches. The attitude of the state is that it and the churches shouldn't have anything to do with one another. The churches should regulate their own affairs and not ask the state to do it for them.”
"How many people were involved in the church?" I asked.
"Around twenty," Pierce replied.
"Did you have a title in the church, minister or something like that?"
"I never had a formal title. ‘Teacher' was one I often used. When I had to deal with the government taxing agencies and so forth in order to qualify for something, I would call myself a minister. But I always felt a little funny and awkward with that because the idea of a minister reminds me of these potbellied hypocrites in fancy collars preaching pap to the congregation of sheep on Sunday morning. I didn't want to have anything to do with that."
I read through the three pamphlets on Cosmotheism that Pierce gave me and listened to a tape of a talk he gave back in 1976 at one of the Sunday evening meetings called “Cosmotheism: Wave of the Future.” I concluded from that that what Pierce calls Cosmotheism is a version of a religious orientation called pantheism. It helps to understand Cosmotheism if it is put in its pantheistic context.
Pantheism as a religious perspective and tradition differs from three others which are more familiar to us in this culture: theism (Judaism and Christianity are examples), atheism, and humanism. 2 Even though pantheism doesn't have a strong foothold in Western society, it is far from a rare phenomenon in the world. 3 Taoism, some forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, the religions of American Indian tribes, and the pagan religions of northern Europe before the Christian influence all embody a pantheistic outlook. Many Greek philosophers reflect a pantheistic frame of reference, including Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics, as did philosophers of more recent times such as Spinoza, Fichte, and Hegel. (Spinoza, by the way, to whom many attribute the term pantheism, was Jewish.) Among the prominent literary figures whose work reveals a pantheistic perspective on the world are William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, D.H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, and Gary Snyder.
And what is this perspective on the world? The words used to express the pantheistic orientation vary greatly, but what they all share is a picture of how everything fits together. Pantheists get beyond the particulars, this discrete entity and that one, to a perception of an all- encompassing and unified order to things. Pantheism is the view that everything that exists— nature, animals, human beings, everything— forms an integrated whole. To the pantheist, everything is interrelated. Thus, pantheists see human life not as independent and self-contained but rather as an integral part of the world. This stress on wholeness should not be taken to mean that pantheists are contending that "all is one," that there aren't separate entities in the world, that the perception of distinctions is an illusion. Rather, pantheists— or most of them, anyway— are saying that the various elements that comprise the world are not merely distinct; and that most fundamentally, most importantly, they are not distinct. When pantheists look at the world, they see connectedness, they see unity. What makes pantheism a religion and not simply an insight or a philosophy is that this unity that pantheists see is divine — it is sacred. To pantheists, the world isn't simply a set of interrelated concrete phenomena. There is more— call it God— and this “something more” infuses, permeates, the world. It is part of everything, and everything is part of It. It divinizes the world and makes it holy. When pantheists look at the world, they see God.
Pantheism can be better understood if it is contrasted with theism— again, Christianity and Judaism fall in this category. The theistic tradition is characterized by the belief in a personal God— that is to say, a God with the characteristics of a human being. This theistic God has a personality and bearing— like that of a commanding father perhaps. This is a God who can hear and see and pass moral judgment and make decisions and take purposeful action. He is focal: all power and holiness flow from Him. He was so powerful that he had the power to create the universe, a universe which he now in a parent-like or monarch-like way oversees. He is separate, distinct from nature and mankind. He is not of this world. He is apart, above, transcendent, looking down on us all.
The appropriate relationship to the theistic God is deferential and devotional. He is prayed to. He is an object of worship— the sole object of worship. The worshipper does not identify himself with God or seek to merge with God or become God; that would be blasphemous. Rather, the fundamental objective of religious practice in the theistic tradition is to establish a proper relationship with God. Cultivating this proper relationship brings the worshipper peace and happiness and perhaps an ecstatic joy, and it gives him direction in living in accordance with God's will and in escaping God's displeasure or wrath. The worshipper gains strength and guidance from God— perhaps with assistance from a messiah— in the lifelong task of achieving salvation in this life and bliss and serenity in the next life.
In theistic traditions, there is the belief in personal immortality. The faithful will survive death in some form. Death is regrettable to be sure, but that regret is softened by the conviction that the next world will be a better place than this one is. In fact, in theistic traditions existence on earth is in large measure perceived as a time of preparation for the afterlife.
Like theists, pantheists believe in God; pantheism is not a disguised form of atheism or a substitution of naturalism for religious faith. Where the difference lies is that pantheists do not perceive of God as a person or anything like a person. The pantheistic god doesn't have a personality. It doesn't have a mind. It doesn't perceive as does a human being. It doesn't formulate intentions and carry out actions in response to circumstances in the manner of a person. Pantheistic religions tend not to play up the creator-of-the-universe conception of God as do theistic religions. There is more of a tendency in pantheism to attend to God and world— however they/it came to be— simply as realities to be encountered and taken into account at this time and in this life.
Pantheism denies the beyondness, the otherness, of God. God isn't up there, over there, someplace else, transcendent. God is here, a part of all this, immanent. God penetrates everything in the universe. God is in nature. God is in human beings. God and man and nature are not distinct— or at least not totally distinct, or only distinct. What makes things a bit complicated is that while pantheism emphasizes God's immanence, there is also a tendency within this tradition to view the being of God as if it were not completely exhausted by the universe. That is to say, God has a transcendent dimension as well as an immanent one. Some scholars have used the term panentheism (note the "en" in the middle) to distinguish the strand of pantheism that stresses both the immanent and transcendent quality of God. 4 So we need to be careful not to set up rigid dichotomies. Still, however, the most useful distinction to keep in mind for our purposes is the basic one between a transcendent God (theism) and an immanent God (pantheism).
If God exists but isn't a person, then what is It? (To have used He at the end of this last sentence would have personalized God and been at variance with pantheistic thinking.) One finds a variety of words used to describe God within pantheism. God is described variously as the Force, the Divine Spark, the Principle of the World, and the Plan for the Universe. Alternatively, God may be referred to as the Spirit of the World or the Soul of the World. Still other possibilities, God may be spoken of as the Divine Unity or the Process— or Unfolding— of the Divine Unity. Yet another way of referring to God within the pantheistic tradition, the world is called the Self-Expression of God. These aren't the clearest of terms imaginable, but then again cloudiness of meaning is not unheard of in matters of religion, and they do communicate a basic sense of how pantheism conceives of God.
What is the proper relationship of human beings to the pantheistic God? Since God is not a person or separate from everything, it isn't a personal relationship in the way two people would relate to one another. There isn't a deferential posture toward this God. Rather than a worshipful response to the presence of God as one finds in theism, in pantheism there is respect, awe, wonderment. And rather than devotional practice, in pantheistic religions there is an emphasis on the search for knowledge of the Unity and the development of personal resources of a certain kind: namely, the understanding and wisdom and personal strength that will contribute to one's living a life in accordance with the Unity or, another way to say it, that will allow one to integrate with the cosmos. Thus meditative and contemplative activities are more consistent with pantheism than prayer. Really, any activity—whether intellectual and non-intellectual— which brings people into closer contact with things as they actually are and to a better understanding of how it all goes together and where they fit in the larger scheme of things— including a walk in the woods— is an appropriate religious practice within the pantheistic tradition.
Within pantheism, there is more of a focus on integrating into this world than winning forgiveness of sin or a place in the next world. Also, in contrast to theism, this integration may well include a merging with God, a realization of one's identity with, or sameness with, God. The result may be happiness and joy, but more likely it will be more along the lines of a thoroughgoing peace of mind or sense of being truly home. Most pantheists deny the possibility that they will survive death in some conscious form, so they aren't seeking personal immortality through their religion. They tend to believe that whatever happens must happen in this lifetime and with no help from God or a messiah. For them, death is regrettable because it deprives us of experience and the possibility of doing further good on this earth.
Other characteristics of pantheism that shed light on Pierce's Cosmotheist beliefs include:
It needs to be underscored that most pantheists are not monists. They aren't saying All is One. They aren't contending that there is only one Being and that all reality is either identical with it or modes of it. They are pluralists. That is to say, they believe that there are many kinds of things. They don't regard the existence of real, finite entities as inimical to unity. As pluralists, these pantheists don't see just one human nature but various human natures. Pierce carries this idea over to race. Where some would see one human race, he sees a number of human races.
In line with this pluralist mentality, pantheists don't believe that there is just one way to live in accordance with the Unity. They don't insist on one lifestyle or set of activities for everyone. They believe that personal well-being and the welfare of the whole will be best attained by people living within parameters dictated by their own essential natures. The idea is to do what is natural to you given the reality of the whole of which you are a part. Pierce, for instance, doesn't contend that the rural, dig-your-own-well-and-cut-your-own-wood way of life he has chosen to live is right for everybody. In his view, his way is not the only way to be happy, and it is not the only way to serve the Life Force or the Creator, his terms for God. Along this same line, pantheists don't hold up any one human attribute above the others as automatically being on a higher plane than the others. A good mind, for example, can be positive and it can be negative depending on the use to which it is put. In fact, one picks up a coolness toward intellectual prowess in pantheism; or anyway, that it is not essential to a good life, and may actually interfere with it.
Pantheists are critical of humanism. They reject the secularized, human-centered world view. In their eyes, humanism sets man up as the sole concern, as being all important. Humanists, the pantheists contend, have substituted worship of man for the worship of God. This contradicts the pantheistic view of man as a part of nature, and pantheism's contention that the meaning and purpose of life cannot, should not, be made with reference to human beings alone.
Pantheists disagree with an existentialist posture that would have man simply choose the meaning of his life. There are dictates inherent in man's being and in his context, pantheists hold, that place obligations on him and limit the scope of his freedom to choose his path in life. Man is what he is and is a part of everything, and these realities direct how one should live. Man should not, say the pantheists, be viewed as an end in himself.
Pantheists are critical of a reliance on science as the source of answers to the questions of existence. There is more to the world than can be accounted for by the natural sciences and their ways of coming to know things, contend the pantheists. Pantheists don't claim to know all there is to know about the Divine Unity. They admit that they still have questions about creation, immortality, and the meaning and purpose of life, but they don't believe that science has the answers to them either.
Pantheists usually believe in free will. Most often, they aren't determinists. They don't believe man's actions and fate are determined by either God's will or earthly circumstances. They believe in the power of choice and moral responsibility. They derive their concept of morality from the nature of the Divine Unity, not from the nature of a personalized God and His word. A person's conduct cannot be assessed apart from his overall context, pantheists believe. Pantheists judge the goodness of an individual act, and a total life, with reference to the individual's relationship to the Unity. Pantheists believe living in harmony with the Unity is morally good, and living in discordance with It is morally bad.
As might be expected, pantheists tend to love nature and seek to establish a relationship to things natural. They tend to believe that if one doesn't contact nature, one is less likely to come to the pantheistic world view. If one never hikes in the wilderness or gazes at the sunset or sails on the water, if one never gets out of his own little orbit, he is less likely to see the pantheistic truths. Pantheists live more in an ethical than mystical relation to nature. They perceive that living in proper relation to nature presupposes its preservation and protection. They tend to be environmentalists. They tend to see urban life as adverse to both personal well-being and the well-being of the Unity. They tend to be of a mind that technology despoils the environment and separates people from It. At the same time, however, they tend to think of pantheism as an approach to life that can be lived out in any locale, including urban settings.
Pantheists regard organized churches and religious leaders with suspicion. They doubt whether the life that pantheism seeks to attain can be facilitated by hierarchically organized, clergy-centered, empire-building religions.
Pierce says he can't remember where he got the term Cosmotheism. I did some investigating and found that the English Romantic poet, critic, and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge used the term in the early nineteenth century. In Coleridge's writings, cosmotheism referred, in one instance I came across, to an identification of God with the universe and, in another, to the worship of the world as God. 5 So Pierce may have picked it up from his reading of Coleridge. Another possible source of the term can be found in Pierce's Sunday evening talk of July 24th, 1977 called “Cosmotheism: Wave of the Future.” 6 Early in that talk, Pierce quotes the writer D.H. Lawrence as saying "We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast living body of which we are all parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve center from which we quiver forever. All this is literally true, as men knew in the great past, and as they will know again." So it could be that reading Lawrence was Pierce's inspiration. But it was a long time ago, and Pierce doesn't remember, so this will have to remain speculation.
In the “Cosmotheism: Wave of the Future” talk, Pierce puts Cosmotheism in its historical and philosophical perspective. He describes Cosmotheists as people who are bearers of the Creator's purpose or, another way to state it, bearers of the Universal Will. He says that many people over the course of history have understood parts of Cosmotheism, and he lists a number of examples, among them ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, northern European pagan philosophers, Romantic writers such as Wordsworth and Pope, and the European philosophers Fichte and Hegel.
Pierce says in his talk that the pantheistic tradition is central to the history of the white race in Europe. Before Christianity was exported to Europe by the expanding Roman Empire, he asserts, European religions stressed the oneness of God and man. He says that this emphasis contrasted with the Christian church's dichotomous conception which emphasizes God and man's distinction and separation from each other.
Pierce argues that the twentieth century is congenial to the pantheistic perspective. Modern science, he tells his audience, has moved us from a static to a dynamic view of the universe, and pantheism is more in alignment with that paradigm than is the church's conception of the world as a finished creation. Since Darwin, Pierce points out, the world has come to be viewed as undergoing a continuous and not-yet-finished change or evolution. Pantheism is more congenial to this perspective, he asserts, than are theistic religions such as Christianity. To be sure, Pierce acknowledges, Christian doctrine with its static view of the universe is still accepted by many people. However, he notes, very few of the leading thinkers of our time buy into the Christian conception of the world.
Cosmotheism, Pierce tells his audience, differs from most other religions with their dependence on truth as revealed through revelation or as passed down by authority. It also departs from pure rationalism. Cosmotheism is grounded in a synthesis of objective and subjective knowledge, says Pierce. Cosmotheism is the union of the Creator's immanent consciousness, what our reason and senses tell us about ourselves and the world, and the findings of science. In addition, offers Pierce, Cosmotheism is in accord with the truth that comes from deep within us if we are willing to attend to it, from our genes, from our collective race-soul.
The problems Cosmotheism faces in being accepted in this culture do not stem from its validity, Pierce contends. A major problem Cosmotheism confronts is that the mass of people will never have the chance to accept or reject it on the basis of its merits, because they will never learn about it in the first place. Those who control the public discourse in America— the news and entertainment and publishing industries and the schools— do their best to censor and malign anything like Cosmotheism, claims Pierce. Plus, if people do manage to learn about the tenets of Cosmotheism and accept them as valid, they still face the tough challenge of manifesting them in their lives. Given the religious and ideological orthodoxies of the moment, Pierce declares, it requires a good measure of personal independence and strength of character to stand up to the rejections, pressures, and sanctions that result when people think the "wrong" things or act in the "wrong" ways. The best way around that state of affairs, says Pierce, is to break our isolation from one another and to form a community of “consciousness and blood.”
It appears to me that Cosmotheism is basically an elaboration of the pantheistic perspective George Bernard Shaw articulated in Man and Superman, the play that made such a strong impression on Pierce when he was a graduate student at Caltech. 7 Pierce modified what Shaw put forth, changed nomenclature in places, punched up certain ideas in Shaw and played others down, extrapolated from what Shaw offered, and added some new things of his own, especially around how people can organize themselves to realize the Cosmotheist ideal. A shorthand way of describing the end result of Pierce's formulations is that Cosmotheism is essentially what Shaw had to say in Man and Superman with a National Socialist twist to it.
While Shaw wrote of Life, or the Life Force, Pierce's Cosmotheism talks about the Creator. By and large, the Life Force and the Creator are synonymous concepts, with Pierce's idea of the Creator perhaps carrying a bit more of a divine or sacred connotation than Shaw's idea of the Life Force. And while the Creator, like the Life Force, is essentially immanent, I pick up more of a transcendent, "other," dimension in Pierce's concept than the Shavian one has. If one can draw the distinction between a philosophy and a religion, it seems to me the Creator in Cosmotheism has more of a religious feel to it than Shaw's Life Force. Of course, we are talking about Pierce of twenty years ago here. In my dealings with him I have never heard him refer to the Creator— it has always been the Life Force, serving the Life Force. My guess is that twenty years ago and up to his move to West Virginia in the mid-1980s, Pierce had more of a religious orientation than he has today. His current use of "Life Force" language and the absence of "Creator" talk may reflect a reversion back toward the Shaw influences that began it all over forty years ago.
As with Shaw's Life Force, there is a dynamic quality to the concept of the Creator in Cosmotheism. The Creator more than just is, more than just exists, more than just began it all and now watches and judges or selectively intervenes in earthly affairs; the Creator is a force and is definitely going someplace. Pierce uses the term Urge to get at that dimension of the Creator. The direction the Urge is seeking to travel in Cosmotheist doctrine is the same as Shaw's Life Force: toward self- consciousness, self-understanding, and self-completion. And as in Shaw's formulation, there is a dynamic quality in Cosmotheism to man's relationship with the Creator. It isn't simply a matter of being with the Creator or integrating with It; it is a matter of doing with the Creator. And again as in Shaw, that doing takes the form of serving the Creator by being Its brain and taking action to further Its process.
There is the idea in Cosmotheism that man can make the choice of whether or not to serve the Creator. However, I pick up more of a sense in Cosmotheism than in Shaw that this kind of service is not only a good thing to do, you really ought to do it.
Cosmotheism agrees with Shaw that there isn't just one way to serve the Life Force or Creator. What is important, both orientations hold, is to get a grasp of the big picture, how it all works, and then to find the way to support the Life Force/Creator's process that is natural to you and most effective.
Cosmotheism makes salient the pluralistic outlook of pantheism and uses it to serve a racial agenda. Cosmotheist doctrine stresses that the parts of the whole are as fundamental a reality as the unity of all things, and that we can't ignore the differences among the parts, including their qualitative differences. All to say, from the Cosmotheist perspective individuals are different in nature from one another and some are better than others, and the same thing holds true for races. According to Cosmotheism, individuals can be measured against what they were and did in the past and what they can become and create in the future, and so too can races.
Shaw in Man and Superman alluded to breeding the race into a higher form of being as a goal of the Life Force, but he muted that point to a large extent. Cosmotheism, on the other hand, puts that process center stage and in bold print, as it were. And Cosmotheism makes it clear even though it is not stated explicitly (as it wasn't in Shaw either) that race does not refer to the whole human race, all of mankind, but rather to the white race. Cosmotheism is at its core a white racialist world view. The pantheist concept of world -soul becomes in Cosmotheism the race -soul.
Therefore, when Cosmotheists talk about serving the Creator, they are referring to improving the white race, their race. There is the tacit assumption in Cosmotheism, as there well may have been in Shaw, that this is a religion, philosophy, whatever to call it, that applies to the white race only. It is about the white race and for the white race. As it was in Shaw, improvement of the race in Cosmotheism is conceived in Nietzschean terms, that is to say, as the movement toward the ideal of the Superman. And grounded in the evolutionary perspective it shares with Shaw, Cosmotheism assumes that that improvement will most likely involve struggle and peril.
Both Shaw and Cosmotheism see modern life in general as working against the improvement of the race. (Shaw equated modern life with Hell.) And while it is obliquely hinted at in Shaw (the Devil in his play is a Jew), it is very clearly written between the lines that Cosmotheism considers Jews to be an impediment to the fulfillment of the fundamental impulse and destiny of the race.
One difference between Shaw and Cosmotheism lies in what is expected of the servant of the Life Force/Creator. With Shaw, there is a mix of "ivory tower" and "social work" expectations That is, what the individual— Don Juan, say— would best do is go up in the ivory tower, i.e., back off enough, get enough distance from day-to-day existence, to be able to reflect and become informed and wise enough to be the philosopher's brain the Life Force needs. As well, Don Juan or someone else who would go this route, informed by the knowledge and wisdom he has acquired, would take on the role of the Life Force's social worker, that is, help It move in the proper direction. In all of this, however, there is a "backed off," personally-removed quality inherent in this approach to life: I got the sense from the play that Don Juan was talking about them, other people, and it, Life, and what they were like and what they were becoming. But he wasn't talking about himself and what he was becoming.
When I read the Cosmotheist material Pierce put together, there are, to be sure, the ivory-tower and social-work aspects, as I am calling them, but there is more. There is the idea in Cosmotheism that the Creator includes you and me. We are a part of the world and not just looking on and critiquing and stepping in to help things along. We— you and I— do more than merely point the way and pave the way, as important, as crucial, as those things are. We have the responsibility to become the way, to create in our own beings and in our own lives the exemplification of the upward unfolding of the race.
A last difference between Shaw's and Pierce's formulations: In Shaw you get the impression that Don Juan's search for Heaven is an individual quest. He was going to get there by himself. With Cosmotheism, in contrast, this search is to be a shared, communal endeavor. The message comes through in Cosmotheism that it is not likely that you or I will ever get there on our own. It is going to take the support of other people, and a supportive social context, for us to travel upward toward greatness.
Now to the three pamphlets, or booklets, on Cosmotheism that Pierce put together in the 1970s and early 1980s. The Path, the first one, printed, in 1977, sets out the basic tenets of Cosmotheism. 8 It describes the Creator, the Urge, the Path of Life and the way that individuals embark on the Path successfully, and the Cosmotheist Community.
Man and the world and the Creator are not separate things, but man is a part of the world, which is part of the Whole, which is the Creator. The tangible Universe is the material manifestation of the Creator. All the blazing suns of the firmament; the formless gas between the stars; the silent, frozen mountain peaks of the moon; the rustling trees of the earthly forests; the teeming creatures of the dark ocean depths; and man are parts of the Creator's material manifestation. 9
The Urge lies at the root of all things and is manifested in the relations among all things.... The Urge is in the tenuous gases of the void, for they have a purpose, which is the flaming suns and all the planets which form from them. The Urge is in the earth, for it has a purpose, which is the realm of plants and animals which flourish on it. And the Urge is in man, for he has a purpose, which is higher man. And the purposes of all these things are steps on the Path of Life, which leads to the One Purpose, which is the Self-Realization of the Creator: the Self- Completion of the Self-Created. 10
Those who attain Divine Consciousness will ascend the Path of Life toward their Destiny, which is Godhood; which is to say, the Path of Life leads upward through a never-ending succession of states, the next of which is that of higher man, and the ultimate that of the Self-Realized Creator. 11
True reason will illuminate the Path for them and give them insight; it will be a mighty aid to the Creator's Urge within them...True reason seeks to guide man's actions in accord with the immanent consciousness of the Whole, while false reason does not.... The man or woman of true reason seeks order in all things, and he shuns chaos. He is pleased by a harmonious relationship between all the elements of his life and the world. He rejects that which clashes and does not fit, that which is alien. He is happy in the knowledge that what was true and good yesterday will be true and good tomorrow. Through order and harmony he seeks true progress, which is the ascent of the Path of Life; but he shuns frivolous change, which destroys the harmony between the past and the future. He loves truth, and he hates falsehood. He loves beauty, and he hates ugliness. He loves nobility in all things, and he hates baseness. And all these predispositions of the man or woman of true reason are like rays thrown out by the Divine Spark which burns in his soul. And this Divine Spark is the immanent consciousness of the Whole. It is the presence of the Creator's Urge in him. 12
The gathering of those who would become members of the Community of Divine Consciousness is called the Cosmotheist Community; it is the Community of those who would become People of the Rune. And the People of the Rune are known for these four things: knowledge, consciousness, discipline, and service.... By knowledge is meant understanding of the Truth.... By consciousness is meant the awakened state of those who have gone beyond knowledge and have partaken of the immanent consciousness of the Whole which resides in their innermost souls.... Discipline comes from within and without. From without it is imposed on the members of the Cosmotheist Community. By being so imposed it brings forth the growth of discipline from within. Without discipline there is no mastery, and he who has not mastered the chaos of conflicting forces within himself cannot render full service. But discipline imposed and discipline which grows from within together give those who have attained knowledge and consciousness mastery over their own forces, so that those forces may serve the Creator's Purpose.... The members of the community of Divine Consciousness, the Awakened Ones, the People of the Rune, serve in a new way, which is the way of higher man, the way of true reason. They are conscious agents of the Creator's Purpose.... Through their service they resume the ascent toward their destiny, which is Godhood. 13
The second pamphlet, On Living Things, describes the measure of a man, the dangers that must be overcome in creating the higher man, and the responsibilities that the Community as a whole and each individual member within the Community must accept. 14
[The qualities one uses to judge the value of a man] are the trueness of his inner sense of direction, the soundness of his constitution, and the purity of his blood. 15
[The two greatest dangers that must be overcome in creating the higher man] are the corruption of the spirit and the corruption of the blood. First comes the corruption of the spirit, through the presence of alien race soul. Alien values and attitudes become intermixed with the values and attitudes of higher man's stock who are not yet conscious of their identity and mission. And then follows the corruption of the blood of those whose values are confused; they can no longer follow their inner sense of direction, and in their confusion they mix their blood with that of alien stocks; and they and their offspring become abominations, spreading further corruption among the stock from which higher man arises. 16
They must become conscious of their identity and their mission; they must seek and discover the values of their own race-soul, putting aside all values which have come from alien race-souls; and they must remove from their midst all who have become abominations and all who are of alien blood.... 17
He must take into his own hands those forces which change the seed of all living things from generation to generation, and must use those forces under the guidance of an awakening consciousness to lift his stock over the threshold which separates man from higher man, the realm of immanent consciousness from that of Divine Consciousness. 18
The third, and last, booklet Pierce produced on Cosmotheism was On Society. 19 Actually, the booklet wasn't about society as a whole but rather about the Cosmotheist Community itself— although there may be a tacit hope embedded in the title of this document that someday all of society will operate in the way the Cosmotheist Community does. On Society describes the integration of the religious and secular in Community life (Community is capitalized because Pierce is referring to the Cosmotheist Community) and discusses four main social institutions: the family, the school, the military, and the government. Pierce is an admirer of the social and political arrangements put forth by Plato in his treatise The Republic 20 and, ironically, the way the Catholic church organizes itself, and this is revealed in what he writes in this pamphlet.
The Community is both church and state, and it does not separate these two aspects of its being. It does not separate guidance in striving for knowledge from guidance in raising consciousness or building character. It does not separate religious and moral training from other training. It guides each member toward knowledge, consciousness, and discipline through the same institutions. 21
[The four essential institutions of the Community] are the family, by which the Community breeds and builds itself; the academy, by which it trains itself and grows in knowledge; the corps of guardians, by which it defends itself; and the hierarchy, by which it governs and guides itself. 22
The community honors each man who is a father and each woman who is a mother, and the family in which the two are united, in a measure corresponding to the value of the children they engender; and this value is measured both by the qualities inherent in the children at their birth and the development and strengthening of their qualities through proper nurture. 23
In the Academy, the children receive a uniform grounding in language, history, music, and the other elements of their cultural heritage; they are made conscious of the spiritual basis of their existence and of the Cosmotheist truth; and they begin the lifelong process of building will and character through discipline. 24
The corps of guardians is the institution by which the Community defends itself against its enemies, both within and without: against those who would harm any of the things upon which the life of the Community depends, both its physical life and its spiritual life. The men of the community who are chosen to become guardians shall...come only from those ordained to a life of service to the One Purpose, and they shall be only the best of those. 25
The hierarchy is the institution by which the Community orders itself. It is a community of priests....In structure it is a series of steps leading upward....As he advances in knowledge, in consciousness, in discipline, and in service, he is judged by those above him; and according to their judgment, he may progress upward, from step to step, throughout his life. 26
The hierarchy guides and judges. It shapes, structures, and makes or changes rules, when those things are needed; otherwise it preserves what it has made. It looks to the future, foresees the needs of the Community, and strives to fulfill those needs. Above all else, the hierarchy keeps the community moving ever upward: toward new knowledge, higher levels of consciousness, greater strength and discipline, more effective service of the Creator's Purpose. 27
"I wasn't always clear about what you meant by some of the things you said on the tape and in the pamphlets you gave me,” I said to Pierce. “When you talk about 'bearers of the Creator's purpose' and 'the perfect union of the Creator's immanent consciousness and our race soul'—"
"Back then I was trying to get things sorted out in my head,” Pierce interrupted, “and I may have expressed myself in airy ways. I think I could do it more precisely and clearly now. It was just that when I first read Shaw I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck. I felt it was true and an insight into reality that few people have, and even fewer people can express things as well as he did. It was about this process— this purpose, this primeval urge toward higher consciousness— that was trying to continue. Shaw put things in a different light for me. I now could examine things in this light. Did this square with what I know about history, human nature, and so forth? And when I did that, things did make sense. If they hadn't, I would have rejected it."
"Is this right, that what you are trying to get at in using terms like ‘divine spark' is something more than what we think of as the biological unfolding of evolution?"
"Yes, what I'm talking about is more than that, or at least it is a different way of looking at evolution. It is the development of a certain kind of self-consciousness. It seems to me that there is a Life Force reaching out in the darkness, trying to develop a more sensitive and refined tool for understanding itself. There is this feeling we have— or, I should say, the best of us have— in the presence of beauty, truly fine art let's say. It's the basis for the respect we have for the great philosopher. This is more than just a recognition of ethical or moral principles; it's being drawn to what is finest; it's being drawn to genius, to what is really best. It is that part of us that knows that accomplishment in the sense of money-grabbing, getting to be a CEO, or becoming a celebrity by telling jokes isn't really worthy of respect. That sensibility, if you want to call it that, doesn't have survival value as far as I can see, but nevertheless, even though it is submerged in so many people given the world as it is, it has evolved as a part of our nature along with all the other things. I'm trying to get at this impulse in people, which isn't part of evolution as we usually think about it."
"When you talk about self-consciousness here, you mean— "
"I mean by that more than an understanding of who I am in its popular psychological meaning, or some kind of political or social self-understanding. What I am talking about transcends that kind of thing. It is, in the most fundamental sense, who I am relative to everything around me and where things have come from and where they are going— the really big picture, I guess you'd say. It is a higher consciousness."
"And when you say things like, 'My destiny is godhood'..."
"That is where Nietzsche fits in. If this process of which I am a part continues as we would hope, the result will be the emergence of what Nietzsche calls the Superman. It is a type of being that very few of us can get our minds around. And the Superman may be a step toward an even higher being. If one extrapolates indefinitely, the very end result— and we can only begin to imagine it— I call godhood. We need to be the agents of this process. We need to serve it."
"And I hear you saying in the material I have reviewed that each of us has a choice of whether to serve— or retard, or be indifferent to— the Life Force, that fundamental process."
"Historically, only a small number have made the choice to serve the Life Force. But fortunately for us, in Europe there was an influential minority who saw this larger reality and moved our civilization in a positive direction. The mass of people followed along. Now the choice is with us: are we going to accept responsibility for being the conscious and willing agents of the Life Force or are we not? The future of the new millennium depends on our answer."
“When you came out here to West Virginia in 1985, it was at least to some extent to move the Cosmotheist Church here and form the kind of community you'd been talking about in Arlington, is that right?”
"Yes. I took the money I had accumulated and bought this land in the name of the Cosmotheist Community Church. After I got here, I found out that there is a law that limits how much property a church can hold. If there wasn't a limit, churches would accumulate larger and larger amounts of property and not pay taxes on any of it, and the government wouldn't get any revenue. This kind of law came out of the experience in England, where the church had acquired a substantial percentage of the landscape. Henry the Eighth solved it by simply confiscating the church's land, but that was a short-term solution, and they came up with these laws. In West Virginia the limit is sixty acres, so I put that amount in the name of the Cosmotheist Community Church and the rest in my name.
"It turned out that the church never really went anywhere here in West Virginia. The other people didn't move out here, and I really didn't have the time to build up a church here— I had to keep the Alliance alive. If you are a one-man band as I have pretty much been, you are limited in what you can accomplish. And then there was a big fight with the IRS which I lost. They said that we weren't a church. They were obviously under pressure to take away the tax exemption we had. The IRS sent some agents out here to check us out. I still have the report they wrote. It had things like the road out here was very rough and not conducive to people getting to the services, and that we didn't have enough chairs and where were people going to sit, and there was no central heating system and so there couldn't be services in the winter— a bunch of baloney."
(The IRS revoked Pierce's church status and the revocation was upheld in court. Pierce thinks the IRS was responding to pressure applied on it by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. While the vast majority of people view the ADL in a positive light, as an opponent of bigotry and intolerance, Pierce sees it as a Jewish instrument of thought control and the abridgment of freedoms. He contends that the ADL seeks to harm or even destroy anyone or anything that gets in the way of the Jewish agenda for this country, which includes him and his organization.)
"You think your racial views were the real reason the IRS got on your case?"
"If I had been preaching a doctrine that didn't irritate the Jews they would have left us alone. There are all kinds of snake-handling cults and everything else up here in these hills, and the IRS lets them call themselves a church and doesn't bother them. It is no big drain on the federal budget, and the IRS stays in good graces generally by not bothering people more than it has to. But in our case they were determined to get us, and it was strictly because of what I was teaching on racial and Jewish matters."
"Did they ever say that was why they were coming after you?"
"They are never going to say you can't be a church because you don't have the right doctrine, so they measure potholes and count chairs. But the truth of the matter is that they were out here because we didn't preach the right things.” "
SOME BEAR CROSSES OF TRUTH
Indeed, the "right" things ONLY being what was Politically correct for his time, due to the irrational bigotry and emotional hatred and censorship of any such dogmatic and lying and hypocritical or Personal Theisms, (see the "Mosaic Distinction" by Jan Assman) and their selfish ilk. This tragedy has been repeated for many centuries and it has only cost us hundreds of years of real progress for Humanity as a Whole. As today, as thousands of years ago, and for very much these very same reasons and just as in the murder of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_of_Alexandria Hypatia of Alexandria], and of Jesus, beforehand, and of many others, by all such similar ignorance and selfish bigotry-PV
PS-Some bear crosses of TRUTH, whilest some others just bear false witness: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=5&u=/ap/20040430/ap_on_re_us/court_demjanjuk
Some Famous and Historical Cosmotheists/Pantheists of note:
Anaximander (611-547 B.C.E.) - Greek philosopher and astronomer who conceived of the essential unity of the universe, arising from one primordial substance.
Xenophanes (c.560-478 B.C.E..) - Greek philosopher who supplanted the many Olympic gods for one god immanent in Nature. He identified divinity with the living physis (Nature).
Heraclitus (c.535-c.475 B.C.E.), Empedocles (c.495-c.435 B.C.E.), and Democritus (c.460-370 B.C.E.) - These famous Greek philosophers held varying conceptions of the unity of body and spirit, Nature and God.
Zeno of Citium (c.334-c.262 B.C.E.) - Greek philosopher who founded Stoicism (from the ‘stoa poikile’ or ‘painted porch’ in Athens where he lectured). Zeno and later followers, including Cleanthes (331-232 B.C.E.), Chrysippus (280-207 B.C.E.), and Epictetus (55-135), formed the first pantheistic school of philosophy. They identified God with Nature and viewed everything as composed of one substance (fire or energy), condensed into the various elements of the physical world. The universe formed the condensation of God “in whom we live and move and have our being.” (later St. Paul of Tarsus borrowed this Stoic saying and applied it to Christianity). The Stoics saw history as pre-determined cycles in which the world was eventually consumed by fire, and then renewed, in endless repetition. The calm acceptance of this divine natural order brings happiness. “Ask not that events should happen as you will,” said Epictetus, “but let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have peace.”
Lucretius (c.99-55 B.C.E.) - The Roman poet and philosopher advanced a theory that the universe came into being through the working of natural laws in the combining of atoms.
Marcus Aurelius (121-180) - Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher. Aurelius believed “All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy...for there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one common reason in all intelligent animals, and one truth.” He also said “every part of me will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on forever.”
Plotinus (204-270) - Neo-Platonist mystic philosopher identified as one of the giants of western spirituality. Plotinus describes reality as a string of divine hierarchies or hypostases, with a tendency to condense the Absolute (God) into a singular ultimate reality from which all things emanate. His student Porphyry (c.232-c.305) further refined his mentor’s pantheistic outlook.
Proclus (412-485) - A poet, scientist, philosopher, and one of the last teachers of the Platonic Academy in Athens. Proclus affirmed a pantheist neo-platonist view in writing on Nature: “...Nature generates, augments and nourishes all things... An animal is from Nature; a stone, wood, a tree, and the bodies which you see are from Nature and her maintaining. Nature is the blood of the elements, and the power of mixing which brings to pass the mixtures of the elements in everything in this sublunary world.... Nor is Nature of any color, yet a partaker and efficient of all colors: also of no weight, nor quality, but finally the fruitful parent of all qualities and things. What is therefore Nature? God is Nature, and Nature is God: understand it thus: out of God there arises something next to him. Nature is therefore a certain invisible fire, by which Zoroaster taught that all things were begotten, to whom Heraclitus the Ephesian seems to give consent."
Pseudo-Dionysius (c.500) - Also known as ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’ (with ‘Pseudo’ indicating the uncertain attribution of his works), a 5th/6th century Syrian monk considered the founder of Christian mysticism. Borrowing ideas from the Neo-platonists Proclus and Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius envisioned God as the ‘Divine Nothing,’ beyond Being and form, radiating throughout the world as a kind of energy. Johannes Scotus Erigena translated the monk’s writings and incorporated them into his Christian Pantheism.
Johannes Scotus Erigena (c.810-877) - Scholastic philosopher, born in Ireland, who’s major work, On the Division of Nature, declared "Ultimately, God and creation are one in the same....Since Nature, the Creator of the whole universe, is infinite, it is confined by no limits above or below. It encompasses everything itself, and is encompassed by nothing." ‘John the Scot’s’ views, remarkable for the time, were condemned by the Church as heresy.
Mansur Al-Hallaj (c. 858-922) - One of the foremost Islamic Sufis (named for “suf”[wool] garments worn by disciples of Abu Sayyid, a forerunner of Sufism) who expressed ecstatic love for God, conceived as a unity of man/nature/cosmos. He was put to death for proclaiming "Enel Hak" (I am God), identifying himself, and everything else, with Allah.
Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) - Spanish rabbi, poet, philosopher, and mathematician. Ibn Ezra wrote an influential textbook, The Book of Number, and popularized the symbol Zero. Scholar Doron Zeilberger notes that “he was an extreme pantheist and neo-Platonist, who influenced Spinoza in his abstract conception of God.”
Averroes (1126-1198) - Spanish-Arab philosopher, jurist, and physician also known as Ibn Rushd. His works set forth rationalism, pantheism, and the denial of immortality. Scholar Jacques Maritain writes “All things in reality are one because all things in reality are God. This was Averroistic pantheism. Because all things are one in the mind of God, followers of Averroes concluded that the one intellect of all men was the intellect of God, and thus the distinction between God and his creatures soon vanished.”
David of Dinant (12th century) - A Belgium-born pantheistic philosopher who fled to France after his "Quaternula" (Little Notebooks) were condemned by the Church in 1210. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "David was a pantheist. He identified God with the material substratum of all things." This substratum consisted of material, intellectual, and spiritual elements having one-in-the- same essence, called God.
Amaury of Bene (d.1207?) - This French professor taught that "God is identical with all that is, even evil...there is no other life, and man's fulfillment, therefore, must be in this life alone," according to religious scholar James Thrower. Amaury's followers formed a sect known as the Amalricians, condemned by Pope Innocent III for "insanity rather than heresy." Church officials had Amaury's bones exhumed and cast onto unconsecrated ground, while some of his adherents burned at the stake for their beliefs.
Ibn Al-'Arabi (1165-1240) - Spanish Sufi mystic poet who voiced pantheist/panentheistic concepts. He said “God is essentially all things… The existence of all created things is His existence... God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.” Arabi choreographed divine dancing (whirling dervishes) and inspired Rumi, the famous Persian poet.
Rumi (1207-1273) - The Persian mystic Jalal-e-Din Mohammed Molavi Rumi authored numerous love poems, sayings, and the “Mathnavi,” called the Koran of Sufism, which contains 24,660 couplets in seven books. The Mathnavi discusses metaphysics, religion, ethics, and other topics, with a focus on achieving union with the divine. He subscribed to the belief that matter, man, and God compose basically a single entity and essence. Historian P.N.K. Bamzai refers to Rumi as “the greatest Pantheistic writer of all ages.”
Yunus Emre (ca.1241-1320) - Turkish literary figure renowned for his poetry intertwining Sufism, Humanism, and Pantheistic ideas. An article on the Republic of Turkey web site states, “As a pantheist, Yunus Emre believed that God is immanent in the universe. He is not independent of, apart from or above the cosmos, but inclusive of it and identical with it. To him, all matter is imbued with spirit or consciousness, and acquires higher values only through love.” Emre wrote “Whoever has one drop of love/ Possesses God's existence,” and “The universe is the oneness of Deity/ The true man is he who knows this unity/ You better seek Him in yourself/ You and He aren't apart-you're one." Johannes Eckhart (c.1260-1327) - German theologian, known as Meister Eckhart, considered one of the greatest theorists of mysticism. He voiced panentheistic and pantheistic ideas. Author Thomas Casey refers to Eckhart’s “emphatically pantheistic writings.” Eckhart declared “God is the innermost part of each and every thing. All things are contained in the one.” He considered gratitude the primary religious response, declaring “if the only prayer you every say is ‘thank you’ it will be enough.”
Nicholas Cusanus (1401-1464) - A German philosopher who bridged the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Churchman 'Nicholas of Cusa' held a pantheistic concept of deity, describing God as "the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things, the center and circumference of all that is..."
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) - The Italian painter, engineer, musician, and scientist has been called a supreme example of Renaissance genius, possessing one of the greatest minds of all time. Although da Vinci painted religious subjects, like "The Last Supper," priests accused him of heresy and flagrant anticlericalism. Biographer Serge Bramly observes that da Vinci believed in a God "...though not perhaps in a very Christian God; rather one closer to the ideas of Aristotle or the German theologian Nicholas of Cusa, and prefiguring the God of Spinoza. He discovered this God in the miraculous beauty of light, in the harmonious movement of the planets, in the intricate arrangements of muscles and nerves inside the body, and in that inexpressible masterpiece the human soul."
Hamzah Fansuri (16th century) - A famous Sumatran Sufi poet, the first to pen mystical pantheistic ideas into the Malay language. Fansuri’s Pantheism derived from the writings of the medieval Islamic scholars. He perceived God as immanent within all things, including the individual, and sought to unite one's self with the indwelling spirit of God.
Michael Servetus (c.1509-1553) - An early Spanish Unitarian theologian burned at the stake for his beliefs. Religious scholar Robert Corrington writes that Servetus implicitly embraced “a pantheism that found god to be coextensive with nature...(and) laid the groundwork for a universalist pantheism, which rejected a transcendent, sovereign, deterministic and punitive God.”
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) - An Italian philosopher imprisoned for eight years and then burned at the stake for his pantheistic beliefs. He described a "unity that embraces all, which is the infinite universe itself, or God." H.J. Birx writes, " Bruno professed a pantheistic view of reality, espousing the idea that the supreme single necessary substance is God or nature, which encompasses every particular object, relation , and event that exists potentially or actually in the universe...Since God is totally immanent for Bruno, his pantheism challenged and superseded the medieval belief in a personal God who transcends the world, as well as all later beliefs in deism and panentheism."
Giulio Cesare Vanini (c.1585-1619) - Also known as Lucilio Vanini and Pompeo Uciglio, the Italian Carmelite friar, and later teacher, aristocrat, and government official, imprisoned and killed for his pantheistic ideas. Author Lynne Schultz states “For Vanini, natural law was the divine. He rejected the idea of an immortal soul and was one of the first thinkers to view nature as (an entity) governed by natural laws. He also suggested that humans evolved from apes.” Vanini spurned Christianity as a fiction invented by rulers and priests to secure their power, a stance that forced him to flee from place to place to avoid Catholic authorities. Vanini wrote a book in 1616 entitled “De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis” (“of the marvelous secrets of the queen and goddess of the mortal ones, nature ") which held that divinity could not be rationally conceived outside of Nature. The book triggered his condemnation and savage execution in Toulouse at age 34, just 19 years after Bruno’s martyrdom. Persecutors removed his tongue before they strangled and burned him to death at the stake. Vanini displayed incredible courage to the end-- he pushed back a priest assisting the torturer and exclaimed “I’ll die as a philosopher!” Described as a charismatic man with verve, irreverence, and charm, who ‘collected patrons like flies around honey,’ many mourned his death.
Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) - Renowned Dutch philosopher and perspicacious proponent of Pantheism. Many scholars consider his great work, Ethics, the clearest and most rigorous exposition of a pantheistic religious position in all philosophic literature. He conceived the universe as a single substance, which he called alternately God and Nature, capable of an infinity of attributes. American philosopher George Santayana described Spinoza as "one of those great men whose eminence grows more obvious with the lapse of years. Like a mountain obscured at first by it foothills, he rises as he recedes."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) - German writer and poet who Lord Bryon called 'the monarch of European letters." Goethe identified himself with Spinoza's pantheistic view of reality and declared "he who rises not high enough to see God and nature as one knows neither."
Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) - The German musical genius universally recognized as one of the finest composers of all time. Joseph McCabe states “The great musician was reared a Catholic but quit the Church and adopted Goethe's Pantheism. Although he composed a Catholic mass (Missa solemnis) which an authority described as ‘perhaps the grandest piece of musical expression which art possesses’ he remained a Pantheist to the end.”
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) - A celebrated English poet and a leading exponent of the romantic movement. Wordsworth often evoked rhapsodic pantheistic feelings in his works. He saw outward natural forms as visible expression of the spiritual force in Nature:
"To every Form of being is assigned... an active Principle:--howe’er removed From sense and observation, it subsists In all things, in all natures; in the stars Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks..." (The Excursion, Book IX)
Caspar David-Friedrich (1774-1840) - Noted German Romantic landscape painter fascinated by megaliths (neolithic burial stones). Art critic Robert Rosenblum relates that Friedrich sought to picture “the experience of divinity in a secular world with his landscapes. For him there were no boundaries between the natural and the spiritual...(his paintings) invite an almost religious contemplation of a divine and pantheistic world.”
Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) - A Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that magnetic needles deflect at right angles to conductors of electric current, thus establishing a link between magnetism and electricity which initiated the study of electromagnetism. Oersted related pantheistic beliefs in his two volume work Aanden i Naturen(1849).
Victor Cousin (1792-1867) - French educator and philosopher. A translation of Cousin’s work, “Elements of Psychology...” became first book in English with the word ‘psychology’ in its title. “One of the leading French thinkers of the early 19th century,” according to Joseph McCabe, “a member of the Academy and Minister of Public Instruction, and translator and editor of the works of Plato, Proclus, Descartes, and Abelard (27 volumes). In his own 18 works he is eclectic and a Pantheist as regards religion.”
Pierre Henri Leroux (1797-1871) - French social reformer and philosopher. He claimed the invention of the term ‘socialism,’ and served as a leading voice of early socialist utopians who fostered egalitarian ideas such as the emancipation of women. According to the 1911 Encyclopedia, “his religious doctrine is Pantheistic.” Leroux spoke of “a mystical bond of divine life linking persons through time and space” and described a trinity of family, country, and property. He believed the institution of private property, through a sense of ownership, encouraged closer communion with nature.
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) - English-born American painter, who “embraced a pantheistic view” inspired by Wordsworth and Byron, according to art critic Deborah Bulter. Cole led the Hudson River School of artists in a style called ‘Luminism,’ which sought to depict the the spirituality of nature. “There are spots on this earth,” said Cole, “where the sublime and beautiful are united . . . when the lips are sealed in reverence, but the soul feels unutterably."
Jonas Hallgrimsson (1807-1845) - Icelandic writer and natural scientist considered the best loved and most admired poet of modern Iceland. Author Halldor Laxness describes the poet’s “invocations to a pantheistic god.” A strong current of pantheism runs through Hallgrimsson’s work, notably in ‘Lay of Hulda’ and ‘Journey’s End,’ the latter called the nation’s most beautiful poem.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) - One of the first to call for female equal rights in America, Stanton devoted her life to freeing women from legal constraints and superstition. She described her conversion from orthodoxy to freethought as "like suddenly coming into the rays of the noon-day sun, after wandering with a rushlight in the caves of the earth." Editor Annie Gaylor noted "in one of her last manuscripts Stanton turns religious dogma on its head. God is nature: 'The sun moon & stars the constellations the days & nights, the seasons...the centripetal & centrifugal forces, positive & negative magnetism, the laws of gravitation cohesion attraction are all immutable and unchangeable one & all moving in harmony together.'" Stanton also stated "God was to us sunshine, flowers, affection, all that is grand and beautiful in nature."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) - American author and naturalist considered one of the leading figures in American thought and literature. When a publisher complained about his "defiant Pantheism," Thoreau retorted that it couldn’t be avoided "...since I was born to be a pantheist-if that be the name of me, and I do the deeds of one." He expressed varying religious views, yet biographer Robert Richardson, Jr. observes "If a pantheist is one who worships nature, because nature is life, and life is all there is that matters, then Thoreau was a pantheist."
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) - One of America's greatest poets, and a Pantheist, who's masterwork, Leaves of Grass, celebrates Nature, self, democracy, brotherhood, and death as a process of life. Whiteman writes "We are Nature--long have we been absent, but now we return...We are snow, rain, cold, darkness--we are each product and influence of the globe."
John Tyndall (1820-1893) - An Irish-born scientist and philosopher who made major contributions to fields as varied as physics and glaciology. Eloquent and outspoken, Tyndall employed "pantheistic pyrotechnics," according to a biographer, to promulgate evolutionary theory in the face of strong clerical opposition to Darwinism "The universe is the blood and bones of Jehovah," proclaimed Tyndall. With his friend Thomas Huxley, "Tyndall led the pantheistic hymns and Huxley preached hell-fire warnings about the unpardonable sin of faith."
Ludwig Buchner (1824-1899) - A German physician and philosopher. His influential book, Force & Matter,went through 21 editions. An early proponent of Monism, the view that force and matter, mind and body, are a unity. Buchner’s thinking influenced Ernst Haeckel’s expression of Pantheism.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) - The Russian author and philosopher whose famous novels, including “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” place him among the world’s greatest writers. He supplanted early affluence with a lifestyle of simplicity, charity, and nonviolence, inspired by the Gospels. The Brothers Heuss observe that “no prose writer, unless it be Thoreau, was so wholly under the spell of Nature as Tolstoy... he frequently brings his heroes into touch with Nature, and endows them with all the innate mysticism of his own temperament, for to him Nature was ‘a guide to God’”. Russian religious scholar N. A. Berdyaev calls Tolstoy’s view of God “a peculiar form of pantheism...God is not a being, but rather a law, diffused through everything as a divine principle. Thus for him there does not exist a personal god, just as there does not exist any personal immortality. His pantheistic consciousness does not permit the existence of two worlds--the world of nature, immanent, and a world of the divine, transcendent. Such a pantheistic consciousness presupposed that the good, i.e. the Divine law of life, is to be realized by a naturo-immanent path, without grace, without the emergence of the transcendent into this world.”
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) - This gifted German scientist coined the word ‘ecology,’ popularized evolution, and propagated Pantheism in several books, notably The Riddle of the Universe, translated into over 20 languages. God, wrote Haeckel, "is everywhere identical with Nature itself, and is operative within the world as ‘force’ or ‘energy.’" Haeckel founded the Monistic Association 1906; membership rose to 5,000 in 40 local chapters, until it was banished by the National Socialists in 1933, with whom he had some complicity.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) - American naturalist, author, and plain-spoken Pantheist. In Accepting the Universe, Burroughs elaborates his pantheistic beliefs. "When we try to grasp, or measure, or define the power we call God," he writes, "we find it to be another sky, sheltering, over-arching, all-embracing....Not a being, not an entity is God, but that which lies back of all being and all entities."
John Muir (1838-1914) - Scottish-born American conservationist and writer. One of America’s most eminent naturalists, Muir often expressed a pantheistic point of view . Biographer Thurman Wilkins states that in his youthful religious position Muir held "the manifestations of nature as the words, thoughts, or vestments of God; but when speaking as a pantheist, his more mature position, he made nature synonymous with God." Muir often equated God with Beauty: "When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."
Bertha Freifrau von Suttner (1843-1914) - An Austrian novelist and pacifist who became the first woman awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, in 1905. Her book, Lay Down Your Arms,and her friendship with Alfred Nobel influenced him to establish the Nobel Prizes. Suttner's reading of Darwin and Haeckel led her to adopt a Pantheistic creed.
William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879) - British scholar and mathematician. Dr. Charles Milligan, describes Clifford as “...a pantheist and surely one of the greatest intellects of British philosophy and mathematics, despite his death at age thirty-three. He was extremely opposed to the religious establishment and orthodoxy, yet personally devout. As one of his critics put it, ‘He found escape in worship of the universe, and stood in reverent awe before its marvelous order and regularity.’”
Naim Frashëri (1846-1900) - An Albanian poet educated in both Oriental and Occidental literature and traditions. Scholar and translator Robert Elsie notes Frasheri “is nowadays widely considered to be the national poet of Albania....As he grew in knowledge, so did his affinity for his pantheistic Bektashi religion...Frashëri hoped that liberal Bektashi beliefs to which he had been attached since his childhood would one day take hold as the new religion of all Albania. Since they had their roots both in the Muslim Koran and in the Christian Bible, they could promote unity among his religiously divided people.”
George John Romanes (1848-1894) - English biology professor, and a friend of Charles Darwin, who encouraged Darwin to apply the theory of natural selection to mental evolution and psychology. Romanes works include Darwin and after Darwin, and Mind and Motion and Monism (1895), in which he expounded pantheism.
Ellen Karolina Key (1849-1926) - A progressive Swedish author and teacher who addressed many social issues and won a wide following in Scandinavia. She called herself a monist and wrote for Haeckel’s Monistic Association journal.
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - A British-born composer whose lyrical compositions combine romanticism and impressionism. A biographer states “Delius was a pantheist: He worshipped nature. Occasionally, human drama enters his music, but for much of the time its energy springs from the landscapes, climates and wildlife that he knew and loved.” Delius stated that he believed only “...in Nature and in the great forces of Nature...Nothing is so wonderful as elemental feeling; nothing is more wonderful in art than elemental feeling expressed intensely.”
George Santayana (1863-1952) - Spanish-born professor of philosophy at Harvard University, regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. Biographer David Carter observes "Although Santayana did not believe in any religion literally, his life was a sustained meditation on the truths of religion, and given his beliefs about nature, he was very sympathetic to pantheism, which identifies God with the natural world." Santayana greatly admired Spinoza and his "true piety toward the universe." Santayana asks "Why should we not look on the universe with piety? Is it not our substance? Are we made of other clay? All our possibilities lie from eternity hidden in its bosom. It is the dispenser of all our joys. We may address it without superstitious terrors; it is not wicked,...and since it is the source of all our energies, the home of all our happiness, shall we not cling to it and praise it, seeing that it vegetates so grandly and so sadly...? Where there is such infinite and laborious potency there is room for every hope."
Ruben Dario (1867-1916) - Spanish-American poet who greatly influenced Hispanic literature. He pioneered modernism in works like Azul [Blue] and Poema del otono [Autumn Poem]. Octavio Paz writes that in many poems Dario “...expresses his vitalist affirmations, his pantheism, and his belief that he was, in his own right, the bard of Latin America as Whitman was of Anglo-America.”
Franz Marc (1880-1928) - German painter whose expressionist and abstract portrayals of animals in works such as Blue Horses (1911) evoked nature mysticism. “I am attempting to enhance my sensibility for the organic rhythm that I feel in all things,” said Marc, “and I am attempting to feel pantheistically the rapture of the flow of ‘blood’ in nature, in the trees, in the animals, in the air.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) - French evolutionary scientist and Catholic mystic who held panentheistic and pantheistic ideas. Ordained as a priest in 1913, his belief in evolution and his rejection of dogma led to ecclesiastical expulsion. Writer Charles Henderson states that Teilhard found “the primary source of religious truth...in the material world rather than in the magisterium of the Church. “Evolution,” said Teilhard, “is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow, and which they must satisfy if they are to be thinkable and true," In his view, after the successive emergence of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, came the “noosphere” (from the Greek ‘nous’ meaning ‘mind’), with the evolution of human consciousness. Through collective consciousness, he envisioned humanity in spiritual union with the universe. In 1954, shortly before he died, Teilhard wrote to a friend, "I am essentially pantheist in my thinking and in my temperament."
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) English author considered to be one of the primary molders of 20th century fiction. Lawrence wrote "There is no god / apart from poppies and the flying fish, / men singing songs, and women brushing their hair in the sun." He decried humankind’s detachment from Nature: "Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his union with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! That is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut of from the earth and the sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from it stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) - An eminent British historian and major interpreter of Western Civilization in the 20th century. His monumental 12 volume series “A Study of History” examined and compared 26 different civilizations, relating their origin, growth, and reasons for decline. In 1972, near the end of his life, Toynbee’s sweeping perspective on human history led him to affirm a Pantheist world view: "If I am right in my diagnosis of mankind's present-day distress, the remedy lies in reverting from the Weltanschauung of monotheism to the Weltanschauung of pantheism, which is older and was once universal. The plight in which post-Industrial- Revolution man has now landed himself is one more demonstration that man is not the master of his environment-- not even when supposedly armed with a warrant, issued by a supposedly unique and omnipotent God with a human-like personality, delegating to man plenipotentiary powers. Nature is now demonstrating to us that she does not recognize the validity of this alleged warrant, and she is warning us that, if man insists on trying to execute it, he will commit this outrage on nature at his peril."
Guo Moruo (1892–1978) - Chinese writer and scholar. He composed studies of Chinese archaeology, history, and literature. Free verse poetry like The Goddesses (1921) brought him fame. In "Pantheistic Ideas in Guo Moruo's The Goddesses and Whitman's Leaves of Grass" (Ed Folsom, ed., Whitman East and West, University of Iowa Press, 2002) Ou Hong cites Walt Whitman’s pantheism as a significant influence on his thought. In the poem Three Pantheists (1919) Moruo wrote: “I love my country’s Zhuangd/Because I love his pantheism/Because I love his making straw sandals for a living./I love Holland’s Spinoza/Because I love his pantheism/Because I love his grinding lenses for a living./I love India’s Kabir/Because I love his pantheism/Because I love his making fishnets for a living.” China’s impoverished masses led Moruo to support dialectical materialism and serve as influential government official from 1949 until his death.
Jean Giono (1895-1970) - A French novelist who held seminars on ecology and pacifism, and according to writer John Ardagh, expressed his pantheism in books such as ‘Regain,' which depicts country peasants closeness to the earth and their nature spirituality.
Karin Boye (1900-1941) - Swedish writer and novelist. Boye rejected orthodoxy early in her life, taking a religious path that went from agnosticism to Buddhism and ultimately to pantheism. She favored socialism and the Nazi party until she learned of its execrable activities
Robert C. Pollock (1901-1978) - Scottish born American philosopher and professor who taught for three decades at Fordham University. The Roman Catholic scholar celebrated religious tolerance, pluralism, and Pantheism. Pollock emphasized the mystical tradition in medieval thought. According to writer Thomas W. Casey, “There are constant references to pantheism” in his taped lectures. “Central to understanding Pollock's mind and hence his interpretation of the Western and American intellectual traditions is the need to grasp its pantheistic and mystical elements.... At one point in these tapes Pollock, in a moment of heightened enthusiasm, bursts forth with the claim that "God Himself is a pantheist!”
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) - American photographer and conservationist. His popular black and white photographs stirred feelings for the natural world. Adams encouraged "a vast impersonal pantheism--transcending the confused myths and prescriptions that are presumed to clarify ethical and moral conduct."
David Brower (1912-2000 ) - Celebrated American conservationist. Writer John McPhee refers to Brower as the Archdruid who often spoke of "drawing people into the religion," and who believed conservation should be "an ethic and conscience in everything we do, whatever our field of endeavor." Brower stated "This religion is closest to the Buddhist, I suppose," although he later expressed his belief using a good working definition of Pantheism: "To me, God and Nature are synonymous."
Bernard Loomer (b. 1912) - American professor and theologian. A longtime Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School and a leading proponent of Process Theology, Loomer wrote “The world is God because it is the source and preserver of meaning; because the creative advance of the world in its adventure is the supreme cause to be served; because even in our desecration of our space and time within it, the world is holy ground; and because it contains and yet enshrouds the ultimate mystery inherent within existence itself. . . . The world in all the dimensions of its being is the basis for all our wonder, awe, and inquiry.” Loomer decried theological certainty and delighted in the wonder of existence: “Final answers are not to be trusted. We are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery."
A response by Moby, David Gerard's Sock puppet?
"I try not to waste too much of my time dealing with extremely bigoted and obtuse fanatics of any persuasion, but occasionally there excesses will prompt me to some action, even if it is only to comment."
"Archaic and little known but valid definition: cosmotheism = pantheism. ACCEPTED."
That has already been factually cited as being true.-PV
Absurd and appallingly ill illogic:
cosmotheism + bigoted, "racialist", solipsistic nonsense = Cosmotheism, AND THUS cosmotheism = Cosmotheism, and THUS EQUALS the ultimate representative of all "True" pantheists, and is THUS justified in appropriating all manner of dignified and well heralded names of any philosopher or thinker past, present or future to its "Holy" cause.
"Absurd and appallingly ill illogic:", I could not agree more! LOL! :D That is really only MOBY's own "absurd and appallingly ill illogic", and not mine nor any true Cosmotheists' own reasoning. "Strawman arguement", MOBY.-PV
That it is plainly not the dominant view of all "right-thinking" individuals is only because of nefarious "ZOG" conspiracies, and the like.
LOL! :D There is always some TRUTH in such HUMOR! :D-PV
I AM ENLIGHTENED! My Holy Universe! How could I not see it before! PV has the ultimate POV of GOD! ALL HAIL his stupendous genius! — since I am not deranged I do not ever say such things save with wearied mockery.
Indeed. What could be more ENLIGHTENING than actually realizing that "GOD is the impersonal COSMOS and the COSMOS is a impersonal GOD"?-PV
Some people seem to have far more time to disrupt genuine progress in the world than to make any attempt at actually understanding it.
LOL! :D No arguement there!-PV
The catalog of great thinkers who were NOT "Cosmotheists" in the particular sense is an interesting and yet invalid appeal to claiming that everyone who doesn't embrace "Cosmotheism" is an incompetent moron, and the dupe of "Zionist" conspiracies.
"Absurd and appallingly ill illogic:", yet again! LOL! :D But, many that can't actually understand Cosmotheism are incompetent morons, and many that wouldn't embrace it, even if they weren't morons, are only either lacking in factual knowledge, personal integrity, intellectual honesty, or moral courage, and no more and no less. What else isn't new?-PV
Even with the wide range of nonsense that exists in the world, I don't think too many people are going to get hooked on PV's particular form of it. Thank the KOSMOS!
I do completely agree! True Cosmotheism only banishes the "drug" of those "hooked on SSEE delusions" of only those that have the real strength of character, or the actual personal integrity to uphold it.-PV
By the way PV, I'm not "David Gerard's" "sock-puppet", and to my remembrance I have not as yet had any form of dialog with him anywhere.
Sure, David Gerard, sure. You may as well as be, if not in fact. -PV
As in many other things you seem to be a bit overconfident in your assessments of what is likely, what is real, what is true, and what is rational.
Hardly. I do trust my own judgements. More often than not I am correct.-PV
I assert that despite my irritation at your obstinacy, and your being an insulter of most people's intelligence, and an accuser of anyone who disagrees with you of being pathologically narcissistic (try and see beyond yourself and actually think about that diagnosis a bit), in your being a nuisance to a lot of other people, I have no ill-will towards you, and truly hope you someday come to know the true joy of really understanding that not everyone in the world who is inclined to disagree with you on anything is a total idiot. ~ Moby 22:45, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
More Psychological projection, MOBY, but, I do harbor no real ill will towards anyone, personally, either. Unfortunately, most people that I have found that are "emotionally inclined" to "irrationally" disagree with me are only either quite "rationally-challenged" dogmatists and bigots, if not just total idiots, or they just lack any actual personal integrity. So be it.-PV
Best regards,
Paul Vogel