Why it matters
Every individual counts
Use the name pantheism wherever possible.
Register for the new Scientific Pantheist Organization.
Form a local group.
Spread the message across the net.
Web activists needed for newsgroups and mailing lists.
Expert collaborators needed
Translators of core material needed
Famous patrons needed
Help financially the effort to spread pantheism
Why it matters.
A modern, scientific pantheist can practice their religion anywhere, just as Moslems can pray on a mat in the remotest desert. Unlike believers in religions of faith, they don’t need to convince themselves by converting others. Pantheism requires no faith: it is based on what you see before your eyes, and what science discovers, and what you feel in your heart about nature and the universe.
So why spread the message? Why does it matter?
It matters because we have to celebrate the earth and save the earth. Since pantheism regards this earth and its life forms as sacred, it provides the strongest possible religious backing for environmental concern and action.
Spreading pantheism also matters because reason and openness to evidence are our only guarantees of social harmony and progress. Too much of human life is dominated by the irrational. Racial and social prejudice, crude injustice, brutal repression – all these are driven by the same kind of irrational thought processes, the same kind of deafness to evidence that are fostered by religions of faith.
Pantheism is the only religion for which respect for nature and openness to evidence are part of the creed. It will help to spread sanity to all spheres of life.
Top.
Every individual counts
The ultimate hope is to build up pantheism into an explicit religion on the same footing as others, and to spread the message as widely as possible by every possible channel. Pantheism should become the religion of the Third Millennium.
Traditional religions, which teach that this world is secondary to the life to come, put huge resources and manpower into spreading their messages through every channel. Against these battalions pantheism will at first be only a small voice.
That’s why every individual counts. Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism all began as a tiny bunch of people.
Help to spread the message of pantheism. It needs your help.
Use the name pantheism wherever possible.
Every little helps, and this step is not so little.
The name pantheism is not widely known. Some people confuse it with “pantheon” and believe it means belief in many gods. Others have simply not heard of it. Many Christians, for example, may be moving towards a nature-based pantheism – yet they might not think of calling themselves pantheists. Many humanists and atheists have pantheist feelings which they will not call pantheism because they think it is a type of belief in a personal god. Most Pagans are pantheists, yet they call themselves pagans in opposition to established religion.
Spreading the name pantheism with a short description of what it means will give many more potential pantheists the chance of clarifying their own beliefs.
Join the new Scientific Pantheist Organization.
We are in the process of forming a new religious charity to spread the ideas of the Pantheist credo and to help people form local groups with leaflets and other resources.
You can pre-register for this now. When the organization is incorporated, we will send you subscription and other details.
REGISTER NOW FOR THE NEW SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM ORGANIZATION.
Form a local group.
You may think you are alone, but there are probably millions of true pantheists in the world – people who respond more powerfully to the beauty of nature and to the mystery of the universe, than to the idea of an invisible creator.
It is important for pantheists to know that there is a long tradition behind them, and to have a home that is their own, where they can talk freely about their religious feelings and feel they are among friends.
Local groups are essential for social support, compatible friendships, community action and much more. It is not so hard to form a local group. Join your local Unitarian Universalist church – many of them are pantheists. Post a notice on their noticeboard describing pantheism and calling people who are interested to a meeting. Try the same with pagan groups, or environmental groups, and post notices at local health stores and alternative bookshops.
When our new organization is up and running, we will be able to provide much more guidance and resource material for people wishing to form local groups. In the meantime, for ideas about what to do in the group, see What might pantheist “churches” be like?
Spread the message across the net.
The Web is ideal for spreading ideas. There are no editors or publishers to say no to controversial or non-commercial ideas. The Web links people right across the globe and can short-circuit the long process of face-to-face dissemination. The Web allows direct communication through mail references.
But the Web too responds to sheer mass, and at the moment pantheism of any kind is poorly represented. On July 21, 1996, for example, an Excite search reported only 1464 pages with the word pantheism – against 11,405 with the word atheism. Mentions of “atheist” outnumbered “pantheist” by thirty six to one. “Christian” outnumbered “pantheist” by 1830 to one. Even “satanist” outnumbered pantheist by more than five to one. (for full results see Religions on the Web.)
This is a situation which demands to be remedied. We must increase the critical mass of pantheism on the Web.
To improve the situation refer to pantheism and being a pantheist on your own home pages.
Pages with many links get accessed many more times than pages with few links, so:
- Include links in your own pages to the scientific pantheism index page. Make sure your own pages are submitted to the main Web indexes and directories.
- If you have free web space, mirror the scientific pantheism index page and the basic principles page by downloading text and image and uploading it to your own site.
- Nominate the scientific pantheism site for web indexes, catalogues, cool site lists and awards (for a listing see Yahoo’s page of awards.)
Web activists needed for newsgroups and mailing lists.
- Newsgroups: We need activists who will spread the pantheist message across any newsgroups and chat groups they belong to, and who will join other newsgroups for the same purpose. See Spreading pantheism via Newsgroups.
- Mailing lists: We need activists who will advance the arguments of pantheism in mailing lists and bulletin boards they belong to, and/or join other mailing lists for the same purpose.
Volunteers may contact Paul Harrison, e-mail:. for a list of relevant newsgroups and listservs.
Expert collaborators needed
Pantheism needs a solid backing of science to address the major challenges to a pantheistic or realistic world view.
We need physicists, astronomers, biologists, neurologists, psychologists, mathematicians, philosophers and experts in the aesthetics of artistic and natural forms.
We need artists, musicians, poets, dramatists, novelists to spread art forms that will underline the beauty of nature and the cosmos.
We need activists to develop and spread natural religious ceremonies and natural forms of burial.
We need environmentalists to strengthen the links between pantheism and the environmental movement.
Translators of core material needed.
The Net is still Anglo-centric. If we are to reach people with other languages, the core material for pantheism needs translating into the major languages of the world: Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, French, German, Swahili, Italian.
Any volunteers to undertake a translation of the Index and Basic Principles pages into any of these languages should contact Paul Harrison, e-mail:.
Famous patrons needed
If you are a pantheist and famous in any area – arts, music, writing, entertainment, science, politics, media, sport, science etc – or know of famous people who are pantheists, we need a growing list of well-known pantheists. If we get enough names we will produce a list of famous pantheists.
People who spot any reference to pantheistic beliefs of the famous should forward this information together with quotes and source to Paul Harrison, e-mail:.
Help financially the effort to spread pantheism.
SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM
SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM reveres the universe as the only real divinity,
and nature as a sacred temple.
It fuses religion and science, and concern for humans with concern for the earth.
It provides the most solid basis for environmental ethics.
It is a religion that requires no faith and no revelation,
only open eyes and a mind open to evidence,
It has no guru other than your own self.
For an outline, see the Scientific Pantheism site. Top.
If you would like to spread the message of scientific pantheism please include a link to Pantheist pages in your pages.
| REGISTER NOW FOR THE NEW SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM ORGANIZATION. |
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Pantheist pages: index.
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Suggestions, comments, criticisms to: Paul Harrison, e-mail:
© Paul Harrison 1996. May 1, 1997.
