Panentheism

[Robyn Banks]

"When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all."
- Paul, 1 Corinthians 15.28

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"Pantheism says, There is one egg...scrambled. God
and the World are one. PanENtheism says, there is
the Divine Egg and within it is the yoke, the
world, which is within it."
--Christine Robinson, Minister, First Unitarian
Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, "Theological
Options for Unitarian Universalists" (1996)

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"This universe is an embryo of God, and active
intelligent beings are forming its nervous system.
A fully formed God at the end of time reaches
backward in time to bring about what's needed for
its fullfilment, even as far back as causing its
own beginning."
--Roy Roebuck, Director of Information
Technology, TranTech, Inc.

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". . . . pan-en-theos means "all-in-God" - that
is, the universe is contained within God, not
God in the universe. Panentheists believe in a
God who is present in everything but also extends
beyond the universe. In other words, God is
greater than the universe. Often they also believe
that this God has a mind, created the universe,
and cares about each of us personally."

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"Panentheism holds that the universe is part of
God. Unlike pantheism, however, it does not say
that the universe is identical to God; it
maintains that there is more to God than just the
universe."

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"The universe can be defined as 'everything that
exists'. This however causes problems in some
statements, such as 'God created the universe'.
Thus a better definition of universe might be the
space-time continuum which exists, and all the
matter and energy contained therein. This
definition would allow for the existence of
entities (such as God or gods) outside the
universe."
--Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (2001)

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"Panentheism (Greek, 'everything in God') is the
precisely opposite view to pantheism. Instead of
God being in everything, panentheism says that
everything exists (that is, has reality) because
it exists in God."
--E. M. Jackson, PhD, Lecturer in Religious
Studies, St Martin's College, Lancaster,
_Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought_ (1993)

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"My brand of panentheism (i.e., modal structural-
ism to be precise) supports logic in that logic
and math are just modal structures that we see
evident in the universe. It is not above logic
since logic is part of the whole panenthetic
structure."

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It should be noted that while God (as eternal,
abstract, essential self - identity) is
independent of any particular state of affairs in
the world, he (even as abstract self - identity)
still requires that a world (of some sort or the
other) exist. We may explain as follows. God as
supreme cause refers to God's eternal, abstract,
essential self - identity which is presupposed by
every event in the world. But that which is
eternal and abstract is deficient in actuality and
can exist only as an element in a larger whole
which is temporal and concrete. Thus God's
eternal, abstract, essential self - identity
exists only as an element in the temporal,
concrete, complex reality which is God in his
completeness. But God can be temporal, concrete,
and complex only if there are contingent states of
affairs to which he is related. These states of
affairs are the world (which is included in God).
These states of affairs are accidental (as opposed
to essential) qualifiers of God's character. Thus
God even as eternal, abstract, essential self -
identity requires some world to exist, without
requiring any particular world to exist. . . .
In Whitehead's metaphysics the basic building
blocks of the universe are called actual entities.
Actual entities are units of energy / experience.
Electrons, rocks, stars, and people are composed
of actual entities. For Whitehead, God is a
single, everlasting (but continually developing)
actual entity. . . .
--S. T. Franklin, "Panentheism : Advanced
Information"

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PANENTHEISM VS. PANTHEISM
The following is an excerpt from New Thought: A
Practical American Spirituality, pp. 89-92.

Pantheism and Panentheism

This universal arrangement is not pantheism (all
is God), but panentheism, a term devised by Karl
C. F. Krause (1781-1832) to describe his thought.
It is best known for its use by Charles Hartshorne
and recently by Matthew Fox. Panentheism says
that all is in God, somewhat as if God were the
ocean and we were fish. If one considers what is
in God's body to be part of God, then we can say
that God is all there is and then some. The
universe is God's body, but God's awareness or
personality is greater than the sum of all the
parts of the universe. All the parts have some
degree of freedom in co-creating with God. . . .

Panentheism gives all that one could want: an all-
encompassing, growing, perfect God, everywhere
present and containing everywhere within himself;
and the reality of oneself and others, freely
deciding within God, responding to God's overtures
in the process of co-creation. Theism denies that
the world (including us) shares in God's being.
Panentheism recognizes that everything shares
God's being (or becoming) but that God's being
operates from innumerable relatively freely-
choosing centers or perspectives of existence.
God and the world, which is God's body, are
interdependent. To be is to be free, to be
choosing, and to be enjoying (slightly or greatly,
positively or negatively) the process of selecting
from among competing influences. To be doing this
is to be alive. To be doing it with the
complexity of performing these tasks self-
consciously, rationally, purposefully is to be
doing it as a person. To have perfect awareness
of all this, perfect memory, love, and
preservation of it, and to be giving perfect
guidance to the others who are involved in the
process is to be the only perfect person, God.

. . . . Hartshorne explains that God is a whole
whose whole-properties are distinct from the
properties of the constituents. While this is
true of every whole, it is more so of God as the
supreme whole. . . . The part is distinguishable
from the whole although within it. The power of
the parts is something suffered by the whole, not
enacted by it. The whole has properties too which
are not shared by the parts. Similarly, God as
whole possesses attributes which are not shared by
his creatures. . . .

All unity is a unification of the many, and the
many are meaningful only in relation to unity. In
Hebrew, the word achad means united one, and is
used to refer to God. The alternation of the one
and the many is essential to the process of co-
creation. E pluribus unum (out of many, one)
appears on the Great Seal of the United States.

All this co-creating happens so quickly that we
are unaware of the separate experiences, which are
like the separate frames of a motion picture.
Similarly, we are unaware of the separate cells of
our bodies, to say nothing of the molecules and
atoms that constitute them. We are unaware of
most of what is going on within and around us, let
alone throughout the universe. We don't need to
know the subatomic structure of a kitchen table in
order to put groceries onto it, but that doesn't
mean that there is no such structure. So it is
with the experiential nature of the world.
Although we may not be able to focus on the
individual frames of our lives, God does; and it
is only in relation to them, one by one, that God
can give or receive anything. We call this
moment-by-moment, cumulative, personal existence
serial selfhood. . . .

--Alan Anderson (9 Feb 1997, rev. 23 June 23 1998)

[garthoverman]

As a pantheist myself, I think that the distinction between it and panENtheism comes down to how one regards the universe. To me "universe" means "everything that exists." We can then speak about subsets of everything that exists like the real universe, the physical universe, the natural universe. All of these are subsets of the all-encompassing entity the universe, and they are not necessarily identical to eachother. So, since it is impossible for there to exist something outside the of everything that exists, I am a pantheist. If you wan't to assert that "the universe" means "the physical universe" then I am a panentheist since I do believe that non-physical things exist (although not in the same sense that physical things exist).

The way I see it, it is impossible for All That Is to me more than Itself, hence pantheism.

Yours,
Garth

[Robyn Banks]

garthoverman:
As a pantheist myself, I think that the distinction between it and panENtheism comes down to how one regards the universe. To me "universe" means "everything that exists." We can then speak about subsets of everything that exists like the real universe, the physical universe, the natural universe. All of these are subsets of the all-encompassing entity the universe, and they are not necessarily identical to eachother. So, since it is impossible for there to exist something outside the of everything that exists, I am a pantheist. If you wan't to assert that "the universe" means "the physical universe" then I am a panentheist since I do believe that non-physical things exist (although not in the same sense that physical things exist).

The way I see it, it is impossible for All That Is to me more than Itself, hence pantheism.

Yours,
Garth
But God does not 'exist'. God is not a being alongside other being(s). God is Being. God is the Pattern of Being. God is what gives 'ground' or 'possibility' to the actuality of Being.

Robyn Banks

[garthoverman]

Yesterday @ 10:33 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=149803#post149803)
Robyn Banks:


But God does not 'exist'. God is not a being alongside other being(s). God is Being. God is the Pattern of Being. God is what gives 'ground' or 'possibility' to the actuality of Being.
Your statements confuse me. You say "God is being" and "God does not 'exist'". From that I can only deduce that you must believe "Being doesn't 'exist'," and I am perplexed by that. Can you clarify further?

In anticipation of that, I also don't see clearly how this relates to what I wrote or contradicts it in any way. The question between pantheism and panentheism is "Is God more than the Universe?" My point was that it depends on how you regard the universe. If the universe is "All That Is," then God is identical to the universe since it is impossible to BE more than, or outside of, All That Is. If the universe is "All That Is Physical," then I would say portions of God exist outside this set, and therefore I am a panentheist.

Yours,
Garth

[Robyn Banks]

garthoverman:
Your statements confuse me. You say "God is being" and "God does not 'exist'".
God is not being. God is the Being of being.

Panentheism can be viewed as 'between' pantheism and dualism.

If we say against pantheism that God and the world are different, this statement is radically misunderstood if interpreted dualistically. “The difference between God and the world is of such a nature that God establishes and is the difference of the world from himself.” The difference between God and world is antecedent to the difference between categorical objects. “Pantheism could therefore be called a sensitivity to (or better, the transcendental experience of) the fact that God is the absolute reality, the original ground and the ultimate term of transcendence. This is the element of truth in pantheism.”

A primitive dualism which understands Gods difference from the world in categorical terms doesn’t grasp what God really is, “because it understands God as an element within a larger whole, as a part of the whole of reality.” But God “is experienced in our original, transcendental experience.” God is not a reality alongside other realities. “Both atheism and a more naïve form of theism labor under the same false notion of God, only the former denies it while the latter believes that it can make sense of it.”



garthoverman:
From that I can only deduce that you must believe "Being doesn't 'exist'," and I am perplexed by that. Can you clarify further?
'Being' is the condition for being.

“We do not know God by himself as one individual object alongside others, but only as a term of transcendence."



garthoverman:
In anticipation of that, I also don't see clearly how this relates to what I wrote or contradicts it in any way. The question between pantheism and panentheism is "Is God more than the Universe?"
God is infinitely more than the Universe. That is not to posit a dualism, as God is also the sum of reality. But he is not real as an object for us as subjects. He is unapproachable and ineffable.




garthoverman:
My point was that it depends on how you regard the universe. If the universe is "All That Is," then God is identical to the universe since it is impossible to BE more than, or outside of, All That Is.
God cannot experience himself as defined in relation to another or limited by another.

“For the ground does not appear within what is grounded.”




garthoverman:
If the universe is "All That Is Physical," then I would say portions of God exist outside this set, and therefore I am a panentheist.
God does not exist. A pantheist is not a panentheist.

Hope that helps

Robyn Banks

[Solly]

PanENtheism says, there is the Divine Egg and within it is the yoke, the world, which is within it."
--Christine Robinson

But what will this world (universe?) be?

"This universe is an embryo of God, and active intelligent beings are forming its nervous system. A fully formed God at the end of time reaches backward in time to bring about what's needed for its fullfilment, even as far back as causing its own beginning."
--Roy Roebuck

Ahh, someone has been reading the Dorsai novels. But how much illogicality can somepass off as wisdom before others notice?

". . . . pan-en-theos means "all-in-God" - that is, the universe is contained within God, not God in the universe. Panentheists believe in a God who is present in everything but also extends
beyond the universe. In other words, God is greater than the universe. Often they also believe that this God has a mind, created the universe, and cares about each of us personally."

Oops, contradiction; this universe is the embryo of God, it just said, but now the universe is in God. God is greater than the universe it says, but we have just been told God is in embryo, growing to birth. God created the universe we are told here, despite just being told the universe is "creating him".

"The universe can be defined as 'everything that exists'. This however causes problems in some statements, such as 'God created the universe'. Thus a better definition of universe might be the space-time continuum which exists, and all the matter and energy contained therein. This definition would allow for the existence of entities (such as God or gods) outside the universe."
--Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (2001)

This has no bearing, since you are not arguing for a God or gods who exists apart from the universe, however much extended beyond it he is.

"Panentheism (Greek, 'everything in God') is the precisely opposite view to pantheism. Instead of God being in everything, panentheism says that everything exists (that is, has reality) because it exists in God."
--E. M. Jackson

Yet all that is exists in the divine egg as a yoke, and that yoke contains a prenatal god. Hmm.

It should be noted that while God (as eternal, abstract, essential self - identity)

he is a self? But self is also a communal term: selfs exist in relationship, not as monads. What happens to people who are isolated? yet this self is unknowable, and doesn't come to know or be known.

is independent of any particular state of affairs in the world,

despite growing in it as a chick in an egg

he (even as abstract self - identity) still requires that a world (of some sort or the other) exist. We may explain as follows. God as supreme cause refers to God's eternal, abstract, essential self - identity which is presupposed by every event in the world. But that which is eternal and abstract is deficient in actuality and can exist only as an element in a larger whole which is temporal and concrete. Thus God's eternal, abstract, essential self - identity exists only as an element in the temporal, concrete, complex reality which is God in his completeness. But God can be temporal, concrete, and complex only if there are contingent states of affairs to which he is related. These states of affairs are the world (which is included in God). These states of affairs are accidental (as opposed to essential) qualifiers of God's character. Thus God even as eternal, abstract, essential self -
identity requires some world to exist, without requiring any particular world to exist. . . .

So, god as sheer potentiality, requitres actuality that he might know he exists. ow can what is potential claim any identity at all?

In Whitehead's metaphysics the basic building blocks of the universe are called actual entities. Actual entities are units of nergy / experience. Electrons, rocks, stars, and people are composed of actual entities. For Whitehead, God is a single, verlasting (but continually developing) actual entity. . . .
--S. T. Franklin,

But that is not what is said above, since the requirement was that God is potential; that being in the egg, he does not really exist yet, except as some space-time continuum distorting being who works back in hsitory. And you criticise our God?.

PANENTHEISM VS. PANTHEISM
The following is an excerpt from New Thought: A
Practical American Spirituality, pp. 89-92.

Panentheism gives all that one could want: an all-encompassing, growing, perfect God, everywhere present and containing everywhere within himself; and the reality of oneself and others, freely deciding within God, responding to God's overtures in the process of co-creation.

--Alan Anderson (9 Feb 1997, rev. 23 June 23 1998)

And yet, never laying a single obligation on anyone, because this is an ultimately amoral view, and the murder of a child is as much a part of god as a nobel peace prize. It is a meaningless universe, since you cannot know this god, cannot gain direction from him, cannot love or respond to him. It is a contradictory view, since we are to believe that he is at the same time in embryo in reality, yet also greater than reality, and yet unknowable at all stages. So unknowable, that all that has been said here is sheer contradction and fiction

Today @ 10:40 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=150831#post150831)
Robyn Banks:
God is infinitely more than the Universe. That is not to posit a dualism, as God is also the sum of reality. But he is not real as an object for us as subjects. He is unapproachable and ineffable.

Then how do you know "he" exists if he is unapproachable and ineffable - what knowledge can anyone gain of him? How do you know "he" is a "he" - unless that is just grammatical convention; but gender is usually subscribed to things that exist as objects.
How do you know he is infintely more than the universe? How do you know he is the sum of reality? Isn't this just unitarianism in its last gasp, disappearing into a Hegelian fog?

Hope God helps

slly5

[seer]

How do you know he is infintely more than the universe? How do you know he is the sum of reality? Isn't this just unitarianism in its last gasp, disappearing into a Hegelian fog?

Correct Solly, or the last stop to functional atheism. A ,unknowable, amoral "it" that makes no demands on behavior or conscience - how convenient. This of course is not the God of Christ Jesus, who is a moral being with genuine moral preference. That is why the attack has shifed to Christ (as Robyn has done).

As CS Lewis noted a number of years ago:

A Revolt Against Christ

In the earlier history of every rebellion there is a stage at which you do not yet attack the King in person. You say, ' The King is all right. It is His Ministers who are wrong. They misrepresent him and corrupt all His plans - which I' am sure, are good plans if only the Ministers would let them take effect.'

And the first victory consists in beheading a few Ministers: only at a later stage do you go on and behead the King Himself.

In the same way, the nineteenth century attack on St. Paul was really only a stage in the revolt against Christ. Men were not ready in large numbers to attack Christ Himself. They made the normal first move - that of attacking one of His principal ministers.

Everything they disliked in Christianity was therefore attributed to Paul. So the first victory was won - St. Paul was impeached and banished and the world went on to the next step - the attack on the King Himself...

[Heathen Dawn]

God is a personal being, not a mystical force. He is awfully transcendent, other than His creation, as well as immanent in His creation. He is holy above all His creation.

People who have come back from an NDE tell of a Loving Light Being who is other than themselves.

If God is just a mystical, impersonal force, then He isn't really God. We are not God either. The path to enlightenment is twofold: one, to know that there is a God, and two, to know that you are not Him. If God were the same as His creation, He wouldn't be God. Those who say God is one with His creation aren't letting God be God. What makes Him God is His otherness from His creation, His awful holiness.

[garthoverman]

Today @ 02:40 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=150831#post150831)
Robyn Banks:

God is not being.
Yet in the post before this you said quite plainly "God is being." I hope you'll appreciate why I'm still confused. Essentially in two sequential posts you've asserted "God is A" and "God is ~A."


God is the Being of being.
This is either tautologous or non-sensical, and I can't decide which.

Panentheism can be viewed as 'between' pantheism and dualism.
That much I understand and agree with.

If we say against pantheism that God and the world are different, this statement is radically misunderstood if interpreted dualistically. “The difference between God and the world is of such a nature that God establishes and is the difference of the world from himself.” The difference between God and world is antecedent to the difference between categorical objects. “Pantheism could therefore be called a sensitivity to (or better, the transcendental experience of) the fact that God is the absolute reality, the original ground and the ultimate term of transcendence. This is the element of truth in pantheism.”
Where are you getting these quotations? (not that I disagree with them -- just curious)

A primitive dualism which understands Gods difference from the world in categorical terms doesn’t grasp what God really is, “because it understands God as an element within a larger whole, as a part of the whole of reality.” But God “is experienced in our original, transcendental experience.” God is not a reality alongside other realities. “Both atheism and a more naïve form of theism labor under the same false notion of God, only the former denies it while the latter believes that it can make sense of it.”
No problem here.


'Being' is the condition for being.
I do apologize, but you're going to have to be more explicit because, again, this seems to be either tautologous or non-sensical.

“We do not know God by himself as one individual object alongside others, but only as a term of transcendence."
No problem here.


God is infinitely more than the Universe.
I think it would help if you were explicit in regard to how you mean "the Universe" in the context above. What would you call the set of all that exists? I would call it "the Universe," but I get the feeling you would not.


That is not to posit a dualism, as God is also the sum of reality. But he is not real as an object for us as subjects. He is unapproachable and ineffable.
I disagree. I think God is quite approachable, just not reachable.


God cannot experience himself as defined in relation to another or limited by another.

“For the ground does not appear within what is grounded.”
I think the whole "ground of being" approach is misled, honestly. Being just is, and I don't believe it needs to be grounded in anything.

God does not exist.
Then who are you talking about throughout the above?

A pantheist is not a panentheist.
Again, that depends on how you regard the universe.

Hope that helps
I wish I could say that it did.

Yours,
Garth

[Solly]

Today @ 05:25 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=151022#post151022)
garthoverman:

This is either tautologous or non-sensical, and I can't decide which.


Thankyou for saying that; i thought it was just me.

Have some pearls.

[Robyn Banks]

garthoverman:
Where are you getting these quotations? (not that I disagree with them -- just curious)
Karl Rahner. The most influential twentieth century theologian on Christendom. The most 'orthodox', too.



garthoverman:
What would you call the set of all that exists?
The Universe.

"If the word "God" means anything, it must mean nothing. God is not a fact. A fact is an object in the field of time and space, and image in the dream field. God is no dream, God is no fact - "God" is a word referring us past anything that can be conceived of or named."
- Joseph Campbell



garthoverman:
Being just is, and I don't believe it needs to be grounded in anything.
Does a Pattern exist? Say, a triangle.

Robyn Banks

[seer]

"If the word "God" means anything, it must mean nothing. God is not a fact. A fact is an object in the field of time and space, and image in the dream field. God is no dream, God is no fact - "God" is a word referring us past anything that can be conceived of or named."
- Joseph Campbell

Of course that is pure assumption. Christ on the other hand presented a knowable, moral, interactive God. God as Fact,God as Mind. And as much as I liked Mr. Campbell in the past, I now find his views unoriginal and cold. Like I said R.B., this is functional atheism - why not just throw off the concept of God altogether?

[garthoverman]

Yesterday @ 10:04 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=151732#post151732)
Robyn Banks:


Karl Rahner. The most influential twentieth century theologian on Christendom. The most 'orthodox', too.
Interesting. I am pretty certain that a pantheistic concept of God is far from orthodox, but apparently some have managed to reconcile them.


The Universe.
Then that which is outside the set of all that exists does not exist. Panentheism is thus defeated.

"If the word "God" means anything, it must mean nothing. God is not a fact. A fact is an object in the field of time and space, and image in the dream field. God is no dream, God is no fact - "God" is a word referring us past anything that can be conceived of or named."
- Joseph Campbell
Ooooooooooookay. I would say that God is "the field of time and space" and "the dream field."


Does a Pattern exist? Say, a triangle.
Abstractly, yes.

Yours,
Garth

[Robyn Banks]

garthoverman:
Interesting. I am pretty certain that a pantheistic concept of God is far from orthodox, but apparently some have managed to reconcile them.
Pantheism is heresy. Panentheism, at least in some forms, is orthodox.




garthoverman:
Then that which is outside the set of all that exists does not exist. Panentheism is thus defeated.
God does not 'exist' as being amongst beings.




garthoverman:
Abstractly, yes.
'Abstractions' are not in reality. Abstraction is in the mind. Abstraction is non-existent.

You confuse ideas in the mind with reality. This is insane.

Hope that helps.

Robyn Banks

[Robyn Banks]

Joseph Campbell:
"If the word "God" means anything, it must mean nothing. God is not a fact. A fact is an object in the field of time and space, and image in the dream field. God is no dream, God is no fact - "God" is a word referring us past anything that can be conceived of or named."
seer:
Of course that is pure assumption.
It is assumption. And it is fact.



seer:
Christ on the other hand presented a knowable, moral, interactive God.
Of course that is pure assumption.



seer:
as much as I liked Mr. Campbell in the past, I now find his views unoriginal and cold.
Neither originality nor warmth is an indicator of Truth.



seer:
Like I said R.B., this is functional atheism
Nonsense - it is mutually exclusive of atheism.

"Panentheism"


seer:
why not just throw off the concept of God altogether
Whim. I neither believe there is no God, nor not believe in God.

And God is a fact.

Robyn Banks

[garthoverman]

Today @ 10:04 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=152221#post152221)
Robyn Banks:


Pantheism is heresy. Panentheism, at least in some forms, is orthodox.
If you say so. I'm not, nor care to be, an expert on orthodoxy.


God does not 'exist' as being amongst beings.
Irrelevant. The point is that nothing exists outside of the set of all that exists, which you have identified as the Universe. If the universe is all that exists, then the most that God can be is that.


'Abstractions' are not in reality.
Abstractions are not in objective reality.

Abstraction is in the mind. Abstraction is non-existent.
My subjective experience of reality also exists in my mind. Would you have us believe that my subjective experience thus does not exist? If so, I can be quite certain you are wrong.

You confuse ideas in the mind with reality. This is insane.
I confuse nothing. I understand properly the relationship and distinction between objective and subjective reality. Both exist, only in different contexts.

Yours,
Garth

[Robyn Banks]

garthoverman:
Irrelevant. The point is that nothing exists outside of the set of all that exists, which you have identified as the Universe. If the universe is all that exists, then the most that God can be is that.
God does not "be" or "exist". God transcends the Universe.



garthoverman:
Abstractions are not in objective reality.
God is not in objective reality. God is not an object amongst objects.



garthoverman:
My subjective experience of reality also exists in my mind. Would you have us believe that my subjective experience thus does not exist? If so, I can be quite certain you are wrong.
Ideas do not exist. Your mind does not exist. Your brain exists, as well as everything required to 'create' ideas.



garthoverman:
I confuse nothing. I understand properly the relationship and distinction between objective and subjective reality. Both exist, only in different contexts.
God may well be the Ultimate Meme.

Robyn Banks

[garthoverman]

Today @ 02:44 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=152466#post152466)
Robyn Banks:

God does not "be" or "exist". God transcends the Universe.
I am quite certain that for something to transcend something else, that transcendant thing has to exist first. I fail to see how it is meaningful to speak of "transcending existence." It reads to me to be as meaningful as speaking of the geography north of the north pole.


God is not in objective reality. God is not an object amongst objects.
God is reality. The second statement I agree with.


Ideas do not exist.
Sure they do. They are simply not physical.

Your mind does not exist.
I beg to differ.

Your brain exists, as well as everything required to 'create' ideas.
I think you and I are talking about two different senses of the "exist." For me, abstract things exist, as well as concrete things, yet they are obviously existent in different contexts. It seems that to you, things only exist if they are concrete. Does that mean you are a radical materialist?

God may well be the Ultimate Meme.
I would really appreciate it if you would take the time to write out a much more involved and explicit response so that I can be much more certain about your meanings. If you are unable or unwilling to do that, then perhaps we should simply desist altogether -- though I have to wonder why you started the thread in the first place....

Yours,
Garth