Quote: Without delving too deep into the thread at the moment I understood pantheists as more the universe as manifestation of God. Not personnel God or anything else as such, although I imagine their are different flavours.
It depends on the pantheist you ask. God or manifestation of god? Thinking, reactive god or unthinking/passive god? There are as you imagine, different flavours.
The trouble with pantheism (Trouble only in the sense it makes it hard to get a grip on what pantheism is) is that it's a belief system that doesn't have a system. All that's required is belief.
Quote: It would almost be a sort of nature worship on a grand scale as the universe is God, but not a traditional monotheistic or polytheistic god. In that case it would almost be immaterial if the thing itself as the impact that it has in the universe (or itself) is constant and measurable and behaves by rules that would fall under naturalism either way.
Yes, it really does seem to me to be an evolution of the older religions where trees, rocks, streams etc all had spirits or gods.
Quote: I agree that it is not athiesm, which would cut out the middle man and ask why assume that such a thing needs to exist anyway. An agnostic would probably say such a god may exist but the end result is the same.
Right.
Quote: In many respects it is similar to deism with the first cause being God, but not much after. Again, not atheism, but little is attributed to the God and the question again is why assume they exist if you do not have to do so, as the simpler explanation would be naturalistic and assume nothing.
Right again.
Quote: Oddly, some of the beliefs almost seem to me like something described by Lovecraft or similar writings of cosmic horror.
Yes, I see that too.
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