IS MONISM MADNESS OR SANITY? 

A spirit means a being without parts. It is something that is totally one. It is indivisible.

There have been many people who believed that all things are God, the one spirit. This is the doctrine of monism and it is taught by many of the Hindus. It makes the rat the same being and spirit and mind as the poison it eats. And murder is made the same act as giving life. The senses and reason prove to us that this theory is untrue and is complete lunacy. (This thinking can also be seen in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia, under the Monism entry). If you and I were the same mind we know what it would be like. There would be only one mind. We wouldn’t be conscious of the kitchen table and the saltshaker on it if all were one. There would be only one consciousness and one thing to be conscious of: oneself. It is a problem saying that something finite like a stone is God who is infinite.

The doctrine of God implies that God has infinite power for he made all things from nothing. The difference between something and nothing is infinite or unlimited. So God must have infinite power to make things. If God is infinite then there is no power but his. He is his own power for he is spirit. Religion says this. So there is no power but his and all things are made of him.

Monism is often not based on correct logic but on mystical experience. But an experience can be misleading so you need reason. Logic says that monism is wrong so its authority supersedes the mystical experience of those who say they have magically experienced the unity without diversity.

Pantheism is monism. Pantheism says that God is everything instead of God being distinct from all things. This God however is made of bits and pieces despite its calling him a spirit or the Great Spirit. Flowers and bodies and stones and everything else make up God. This “fragmented” God cannot be personal so Pantheism is not theism but so-called theism. In truth, it is just a batty brand of Atheism or Atheism that longs for the fleshpots of Egypt or theism. How more batty can one get when one accepts that the pig that eats the turnips is the turnips it eats for all is one spirit. What would God want to be eaten for?

Apologists for Pantheism say:

 “We say all things are just manifestations of the supreme spirit, God. Critics say this means that the absurdity of the lion being the same entity as the man he eats is true. What they say looks plausible at first glance. But it is open to the reply that if a spirit made us it will have several powers that are incompatible, like intelligence and the power to make things while if it is spirit it would seem that it cannot have separate powers but only one power. But intelligence and the power to make things are not one and the same power. So if God can be creative power and be consciousness which are two separate powers the man can be the lion that eats him.”
 
This reply is perfectly valid and correct in its conclusion that belief in God answers the only real objection to Pantheism. It shows that if you believe in God and deny that he is the same being as his creation you cannot use the objection to Pantheism it discusses for your own doctrine is just as silly whether you know it or not. It has intelligence and the power to create as one and the same thing! So belief in God sanctions the silliness of Pantheism for it holds that God is entirely justice and also entirely intelligence while he cannot be both for they are distinct powers. It gives you no reason to say that a cat cannot be a dog or that something cannot come out of nothing for it is as reasonable to believe that a cat is a dog as it is that something can come out of nothing.

The apologists then say, “Pantheism has been used as an excuse for saying all things are illusions and that science is therefore worthless but common-sense says that the universe is real to us and we have to live in it and treat it as real and learn about it for the knowledge is still useful.”

But if all is God’s will and we are God and if we feel no impulse to follow science then we are not doing wrong by neglecting science. Moreover, it is not what feels real that counts but only what is real and if all that is real is one God then who cares if somebody deliberately drives over a cliff believing it is not real?

Pantheism is prohibited by the biblical injunction that we must adore God and not the stars of Heaven. The Bible frequently says that the creature is not the creator (Romans 1). This does not speak in favour of the Bible but shows how ridiculous it is for God has to be his creation.
 
Finally
 
Monism and Pantheism and belief in God are threats to science and logic and in that they are threats to us all. For them the is is the ought.  If the baby dies it ought to die.  If the baby is murdered then it ought to be.