Pantheism
Pantheism is the theory that nothing exists outside of God or--in a logical if not intuitive equivalent--that no God exists outside the world. This includes a vast range of ideas, from (1) seeing the universe as thought in the mind of God to (2) seeing it as a mechanistic system of matter and energy that evokes reverence. The first is theistic idealism, the second science overlaid with awe--what Richard Dawkins mocks as "sexed up Atheism" ( The God Delusion , 2007, p. 40). Between these extremes, a cafeteria of flavors is outlined by Michael Levine in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ("Pantheism"). I recommend that article but will only consider a few flavors. George Berkeley, an Irish bishop (1685-1753), uses his scientific theory of vision to argue that what we experience as the phenomenological world is merely a set of mental constructs, ideas existing solely in our minds. We construct a world of three-dimensional things from an amorphous field...