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Friday, 4 November 2011

Pantheism and the cosmic nautilus (N)

Aristotle's prime mover is the source of all knowledge and is unaware of our existence only thinking of itself. This is a problem for philosophers because it begs the question 'if it only thinks of itself then how can it create us?'. However this problem only applies to the theists that believe in a separation from god and the universe, or a transcendent god. For pantheists (like me) this is not an issue.

Pantheism is the belief that 'god is whole' or 'the whole is in god' i.e god essentially IS the universe and so the prime mover can be explained that it still 'thinks of itself'. However it can still know of us as 'itself' is now 'all of existence'. To put it in a different metaphor inside us are contingent beings that are 'born' and die' these are the various cells of our bodies. This can be compared to how we live and die in the universe. We are the cells in the body of a universe.

Now what about the nautilus thing? Its mainly an artistic expression to personify the universe. To think of a being that contains our 
whole universe and isnt a specific 'form' as we would know it is difficult, So the symbol of pantheism on wikipedia inspired me 'The symbol for Pantheism is the spiral as seen on the curves of the nautilus shell, or the spiral 
arms of a galaxy, showing the link between the vast (hundreds of light years) and the small.' The spiral represents a variety of things, it means evolution, eternity, spirituality, growth and above all it is fantastically Lovecraftian.

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