Definition
The term “pantheism" is derived from Greek words pan (Greek: πᾶν) meaning "all" and theos (θεός) meaning God. The term pantheism was coined by Joseph Raphson in his work De spatio reali, published in 1697. The term was also used by Irish writer John Toland in his 1705 work Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist that described pantheism as the "opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe."
The term "naturalistic" derives from the word "Naturalism", which has several meanings in philosophy and aesthetics. In philosophy the term most frequently means the view that everything there is belongs to the world of nature and can be studied with the methods appropriate for studying that world, i.e. the sciences. It generally implies an absence of belief in supernatural beings.
Read more about this topic: Naturalistic Pantheism
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)