The Spirits' Book

Allan Kardec

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Pantheism

14. Is God a distinct being, or as some believe, or as some believe, the result of all the forces and intelligences of the universe combined?
“If it were the former, God would not be God because the work of creation would be an effect and not the cause. God cannot be both the cause and effect.”
“God exists. You cannot doubt this, and that is a crucial point. Do not try to go beyond it. Do not get lost in a labyrinth from which you will never fnd an exit. Trying to go farther will not make you any better; instead, it would only increase your pride by causing you to believe that you know something, while in reality you know nothing. Cast aside all these systems. You have enough to worry about that directly affects you, beginning with yourselves. Study your own imperfections so that you may shed them. This will be far more useful to you than any attempt to penetrate the impenetrable.”



15. What about the concept that all of nature, beings and worlds of the universe are parts of the Divinity, and they are in their entirety Divinity itself, i.e. the Pantheistic Doctrine? “Human beings cannot be God. Upon recognizing this, they want to, at least, be a part of God.”


16. Those who support this doctrine claim to fnd some of God’s attributes in it. As there are an infnite number of worlds, then God is infnite. As vacuum or nothingness is nowhere, God is everywhere. Since God is everywhere and everything is an integral part of God; God gives an intelligent purpose to all natural phenomena. How can we oppose this reasoning?
“Reason. Think long and maturely about the assumption in question and you will have no trouble fnding its irrationality.”


This doctrine makes God a material being who, despite being endowed with supreme intelligence, would only be a large scale version of what we are. However, as matter is incessantly transforming, God would have no stability if this theory were true. God would be subject to all the instabilities and needs of humanity. God would lack one of the essential attributes of Divinity, the quality of being unchangeable. The properties of matter cannot be attributed to God without lowering divinity in our thoughts, and all the subtleties of sophism fail to solve the problem of God’s essential nature. While we do not know all that God is, we know what God cannot be and the theory stated above directly contradicts God’s essential attributes. It mistakes the Creator for the creature, as if one were to consider a clever machine to be a vital part of the engineer who designed it. God’s intelligence is revealed in the work of creation, as an artist in his or her canvas. God’s works are no more part of God than the canvas is the artist who painted it.

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