Glad to see there are more people inspired by Paul Harrison's website to exchange views on pantheism. As a professional academic philosopher, I have felt the challenge to see what might be done to provide detailed arguments for the position. I have prepared an essay, The Case for Pantheism, which I plan to give as a talk in May at the local Unitarian Fellowship, of which I was just elected Vice President. (More work than honor.) Unitarians are such a diverse group--we have feminists, pagans, humanists, someone raised in the oldest continuous branch of Christianity, etc. etc.

But I digress. Pantheism describes what I THINK better than the label of Unitarian, which really refers to a branch of Christianity that denies the divinity of Jesus, but as a denomination it long ago outstripped that label and is now essentially a home of all sorts of religious and areligious seekers who are supportive and tolerant of each other.

But Pan- theism--das heisst denken (that provokes thinking), as Heidegger might have said. Anyway, if anybody would like a copy of my talk "The Case for Pantheism," I'll see if I can e-mail it to you, whole or in install- ments. Just send your e-mail address.

I am also working on a more rigorous piece, in which I try to present a rigorous proof--or in any case, label my premises, etc. so that the logical structure of the argument is clear--to reach the conclusion that the universe is divine.

I don't recall that anyone has ever done that before. But if Charles Hartshorne can develop an apparently rigorous argument for his panentheist deity, we ought to be able to come up with an equally or more rigorous argument for the divinity of the universe.

I am thinking that part of the key to constructing such an argument is the notion of an absolute value--one which is not relative in any of the following ways: it is not subjective (valid only from a limited point of view), merely a means to some other end, nor merely a practical good. I call a value which is not merely a practical one an ontological value--and I think the key towards proving that the universe has that kind of value is beauty.

But one must respond to the challenge that since the most gorgeous pictures of nature (such as the Hubble pictures Harrison has so effectively used) are partially the result of applying very deliberate methods and highly complex technological devices to what would otherwise be very faint and blurring signals from afar, we are actually "making up" this beauty much as the hagiographer makes up the flawless or saintly character of the founder of his religion.

In other words, pantheism is a religious live option, but there is work to be done in clarifying what it means and establishing its intellectual credentials.