At first glance, it looks as though atheists can’t be pantheists.
The word “theism” is in both words, and the atheist denies theism, saying there’s no theos or divinity anywhere, while the pantheist says there’s divinity everywhere. That seems like a flat contradiction, so atheism must conflict with pantheism, meaning that if one is right, the other must be wrong.
But the conflict becomes less clear when we consider that divinities, deities, or gods have hardly been conceived of in only one way in history.
As I argue elsewhere, the kind of divinity that’s central to pantheism is supreme creativity, not the positing of any tyrannical personage. Creativity can be personal, as in the case of our intelligent design of artifacts, or it can be impersonal, as in nature’s evident evolution of its many forms, from molecules to galaxies. And it’s the latter that pantheism entails.
The pantheist’s gods aren’t persons, or at least they needn’t be alive, intelligent, moral, or concerned with our welfare. The pantheist’s deity needn’t respond to our prayers or judge our lives and reward or punish us in an afterlife. This deity needn’t guarantee a happy outcome for our species or life in general. All the pantheist’s deity must do is be the supreme creator.
And so far, pantheism is quite consistent with atheism since the atheist, too, denies all those theological personifications. Moreover, atheists typically admire science, and it’s science that informs us of the processes by which nature evolves its many forms. Thus, nontheistic science proves the pantheist’s chief contention, that nature is the supreme creator of forms, and that creativity is practically everywhere. It’s all around us and within us, and it came before us and will persist long after we’re all gone.
Far from conflicting with each other, to that extent, methodologically atheistic science is pantheism’s building block. To the extent that the atheist is a philosophical naturalist whose worldview incorporates scientific findings, atheism entails that centerpiece of pantheism.
Yet that’s typically not all pantheism includes, and here we turn to a potential conflict between them after all. Nature’s supreme creativity is a question of fact. If some species were able to create more than nature has created, such as other universes, then nature would no longer be the supreme creator, so the pantheist could no longer say that the supreme creator is everywhere. Rather, that title would be reserved for that prolific species.
But pantheism usually has an evaluative component too, the point being not just that nature has in fact created the most stuff, but that that fact is awesome, that our attitude towards nature should therefore be religious in some sense.
This evaluation of nature can be positive or negative, although the positive one may be more familiar. The affirmation of nature’s creativity is found in environmental movements, New Age practices, Wicca, and the like, in which the practitioners revere natural forces and cycles. Nature’s worshipped instead of a personal god.
The negative evaluation, though, is based on the opposite emotional reaction, one of horror, disgust, and dread rather than gratitude and admiration. The reason for the discomfort is just that nature’s creativity is indeed impersonal and therefore alien to the kind that’s intuitive to social mammals like us.
Although we can track nature’s creativity with scientific models, we can’t fully understand it because it’s counterintuitive. To understand the existential fact that nature creates despite being nonliving and mindless would require that we dehumanize ourselves, that we abandon our intuitions, and stretch our minds to encompass the inhuman scale of cosmic creativity.
Now, whether atheism conflicts with either evaluative side of pantheism depends on the atheist’s culture and character. Some atheists are averse to revering anything to the point of showing great humility in worshipping it since these atheists might be committed to humanism, which takes pride in human accomplishments and disapproves of how cults and religions have exploited the urge to submit in worship.
Then again, some atheists might prefer the positive or the negative reaction to the fact of nature’s supreme creativity, depending, as I said, on certain psychological and social factors. Perhaps the atheist is upbeat and optimistic and prefers not to stew in angst, deeming that negativity counterproductive. Or perhaps the atheist happens to be melancholy and views the negative evaluation to be more honourable, given our existential position in the impersonal cosmic wilderness.
The negative evaluation seems more consistent with humanistic pride since that pride spurs the technological humanization of nature, that is, the replacement of the wilderness with civilization.
Either way, we’re not dealing here with a conflict between atheism itself and pantheism. The denial that miracles or personal gods exist is logically consistent with either emotional reaction to nature’s creativity. You can believe there are no personal deities and either admire or be revolted by the philosophical implications of scientific knowledge.
The conflict is more cultural or personal since the evaluation of nature is largely emotional and subjective, and thus dependent on who’s reacting to the natural facts.
Thus, atheists can be pantheists, but should they be?
One advantage of the pantheistic assessment of nature is that it could unify secular cultures around a sacred enterprise, something other than the profane pursuits of money, pleasure, or social power. It’s a question of ensuring that atheism is part of an honourable worldview or life project.
Do atheists reckon well with their existential condition? What should we be doing, given our ultimate position in life, of being persons who evolved within impersonal nature? How should we resolve our inevitable alienation?
Pantheism in either of its varieties has a role to play in that elaboration of atheism.