morosoph wrote today at 8:24 AM
infinitemonkey saidUntrue. God can create Nature in the sense of a parent, yet maintain that connection of having Nature be within and part of God. The two need not be entirely separate.As a simple, basic example, you create new parts of yourself all the time, even if you aren't aware of it. New cells. Not a terribly useful parallel to God and the Universe, but still, you get the idea. "Pantheism" means that (one believes that) Nature and God are essentially synonymous; that God is in, and beyond the universe is a common belief, but Pantheist wouldn't be the term for someone who believed this.I believe that the universe has emergent intelligence, or at the very least, there is intelligence other than that exhibited by neurons. Natural selection is an example of this, as is the simultaneous arrangement of atoms in a quasicrystal, which cannot be done with classical "sticklebrick" chemistry.I agree that the universe's intelligence could be a small part of an intelligence beyond what we call universe, but that intelligence would itself need a medium in order to operate; ie. we initially defined our universe too small.With respect to Nietzsche, I will certainly give you that the bulk of his writing is against the Protestant faith, but surely his conception of nobility is incompatible with pretty much any faith which is more than just a belief about the universe.