34 | Panentheism, Quantum Entanglement, Empathy and the Problem of Suffering and Evil

Welcome to the Cow Behind the Barn: A podcast exploring humanity, the world, and the divine, as experienced and interpreted by an artist. I’m Kevin Caldwell, a Co-Finder of the Table Collective.

I am going to open this Episode with an attempt at a summary of everything so far in one or two word bytes. I could add to each of these “IYKYK” (If You Know You Know):

Butterfly Effects 

Where

Cosmic 

Entanglement 

When 

Time 

Relativity 

No “Now”

I

Consciousness 

Multi-dimensional 

Self

Empathy 

Evil

Suffering

Atheism

Polytheism

Monotheism

Pantheism 

Panentheism 

 

Or, put another way: I see my life as part of an entangled cosmos in which places and times and people and things and events are not isolated individual entities or realities. In this cosmos Empathy and Reality are intrinsically connected, and Empathy is somehow “personal.” I believe in the divine, as mysterious as that is. But it is also a cosmos laced with stunning beauty and threaded with astonishing suffering. And I don’t know how to explain the latter in light of my convictions about Empathy, Reality, and the divine. 

It took me 33 Episodes to conclude that panentheism is the only theism that enables me to hold all of that together in one bundle. Which still leaves me with the question about suffering and evil. To clarify, that question is really two-fold: how and why did it ever begin, and why is it allowed to continue?  

I will circle back to the first question about “origins” later. I will first look at how my understanding of panentheism might respond to the question: “if empathy is an aspect of ultimate reality then why is evil and suffering allowed to continue? 

That requires me to look more deeply at panentheism.

 

But First, Empathy Revisited

But let me start by restating my definition of empathy and especially big E Empathy.

“Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, essentially "walking in their shoes". It involves both cognitive understanding of another's perspective and an emotional response to their feelings. True empathy goes beyond simply acknowledging someone's feelings; it involves connecting with them on a deeper level and feeling what they are experiencing.”

So, empathy is connective, and inherently collective. Empathy connects my “self” deeply with other selves. Empathy collects other selves with my “self”.

That is why I think that quantum theories of entanglement may be a way to describe the empathy in the language of science, empathy and entanglement, the essence of all reality, in a cosmic sense. Empathy  as a reality both in physics, and as a psychic reality. 

I frequently reflect on how this view of reality leads me to wonder at the beauty and mystery and goodness and love I observe and experience. But again, what about evil and suffering?

My wife, Susan, recently crafted a poetic prose reflection which, though she was not connecting it to my podcast, I think profoundly expresses this dual reality of beauty and brutality, goodness and suffering, love and cruelty. As a result, I think her poetic prose channels something of the sort of empathy I have been talking about.

So, I asked her if she would read her reflection,  “You Are as Close to Me as My Tears”.

 

You Are as Close to Me as My Tears

You are as close to me as my tears 

Tear by teardrop You are with me,

As the fullness courses down my cheeks,  courses across my heart.

My heart full to exhaustion from carrying  so much heartbreak.

Trying with poor success to ease my ache through kettle chips and canned Pina colada.

To carry the weight of my people on these frail shoulders is too 

much.

Daughters and their disappointments, precious grandchildren, my own failings, no guaranteed outcomes.

All too much.

Drowning in sorrow, sorrows.

Is there enough strength in me, in these aged bones to keep on stepping forward, one step at a time?

After a lifetime of sorrows?

And yet, the sorrows are entangled with joys. 

I must not, must not forget the joys.

The joys have been beyond words, beyond the sorrows, beyond the tears.

These joys have names and faces that are engraved on my heart and soul, seared with fire and tears and love. 

I would not exchange the sorrow for the joy—-if one must be so the other can be, then so be it. 

My heart is as a plate of tangled noodles, sorrow and joy and longing and hope, all existing alongside one another, each somehow dependent upon the others.

Mysteries, Miracles, all are Mine.

How to distinguish between tears of sorrow from tears of joy?

They course down my cheeks and across my heart just the same.

Tears that are as close to my heart as You

Susan’s way of expressing an empathy that embraces everything expresses how I also see divine empathy. But I am, as often is the case, getting ahead of myself. 

Back to panentheism.

 

Panentheism in Review

First, I offer a quick review, and then more detail about panentheism.

As I have mentioned before, the term is constructed by combining several Greek terms: “pan” (all), “en” (en, not in), and “theos” (God). Thus, pan-en-theism, or “all-in-god-ism.” Panentheism works the other way too: “theos-en-pan-ism,” or, “god-in-all-ism.”  

Panentheism is the view that the cosmos is in God and God is in the cosmos. For some, this is a way of combining pantheist and monotheist worldviews. 

In monotheism God and the cosmos are ontologically distinct, both really exist. The “beingness” of God is external to the “beingness” of the cosmos. 

In pantheism God and the cosmos are ontologically identical, only the divine really exists. The “beingness” of one is the “beingness” of the other. God and the cosmos are not ontologically entangled. They are, to repeat, ontologically identical. 

Panentheism holds together the beingness of the cosmos and the divine in a different way. The beingness of the cosmos and the beingness of the divine are not external to each other, nor are they identical with each other, they are interconnected, entangled, in such a way that it is better to speak of the “interbeingness” of both.

Now I need to dig deeper to prepare for the implications of all this for the questions about suffering.

 

Panentheism and My Questions

The theisms dance between the absence of the divine (atheism), the transcendence of God (monotheism), and the divine immanence (pantheism). Panentheism says yes to both: immanence and transcendence.

At the ontological level, “isness”, the cosmos and the divine exist in “interbeingness”. 

At the existential level, the level of what I would call the divine experience and of interbeing, panentheism leads to questions as to whether the divine is influenced by, even changed by, whatever connection there may be between “natural and spiritual” reality. That question does not arise for the other theisms. 

Obviously in atheism there is no divine being for the cosmos to influence. In pantheism, the evolving, changing emergent world is not affecting the divine being, it is the divine being simply being itself. In monotheism, the divine being is external to the processes of the cosmos, and exists in its own unchanging, immutable, self.  Monotheism also assumes some form of divine plan which determines the course of things. 

In the prior Episodes I have already explained the problems that both the pantheist and monotheist views present when answering why suffering and evil continue. In summary, because in both the divine is ultimately responsible. I won’t repeat all of that here, but will focus on how panentheism differs.

Panentheism, similar to monotheism, affirms that the divine is not equivalent to, or coterminous with, the natural world. The divine being is “itself.” In keeping with pantheism, panentheism says that the divine is also immanent within the natural world. The divine is present in the cosmos, and the cosmos present in the divine, and this is true to such an extent that the divine is affected by, even in some way changed by, what happens in the natural world and in the decisions of sentient beings.

Quantum theory in physics resulted in a shift from understanding the cosmos as a mechanism to seeing the world as a complex, entangled, emergent process. In panentheism, God is always working from within the processes of the cosmos: entangled, connected, in union, responding, creating. 

Panentheism affirms the interbeingness of divine and cosmos, and that implies some form of interdependence between God and the world.

It is this latter point which for me is the aspect of panentheism that suggests a way forward relative to how I can face the reality of evil and suffering while continuing in my convictions about big E Empathy being an aspect of  big R Reality. That is not an obvious conclusion, so I need to say more.

 

How Does That Work?

In an earlier Episode I presented texts from the Christian heritage as examples of a religious approach compatible with panentheism. I will refresh some of what I described at the time, and add more detailed comments as well.

There are several  portions from the Christian sacred texts we could examine, for example from several of the letters of Paul. For this Episode, I will focus on a few portions from the Gospel of John.

The first portion is from the opening verses of John. I will present my translation of the Greek text of chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. I will present it first clause by clause, both Greek and English, and then the full sentence: 

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος: in the beginning was the word 

καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν: and the word was towards God

καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος: and God was the word 

οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν: this one was in the beginning towards God.

Putting that together as one sentence in English:

In the beginning was the word, and the word was towards God and God was the word which is the one that was in the beginning towards God.

 

John is describing the inner being of the divine, and it is an “interbeing.” There is a towardsness in the very nature of the divine according to John, a word (left mysterious and undefined) that is towards God, and yet God is that word that is towards God. Or, I think it is fair to conclude that John sees the divine nature as “interbeingness.”

 

The wider context of John’s writings provides more texture. For example his statement that “God is love” suggests that the “towardsness” we have noted is another way of speaking of divine love as an ontological reality, as an aspect of the “isness” or “beingness,” the “interbeingness”, of the divine. Big R Reality is in essence towardsness, love, and also big E Empathy. If empathy is defined as experiencing the experiences of another as if I am that other, then empathy is also the experience of interbeingness.

This is the “theism” part of panentheism, the God part. What about the pan, the “all” part? John goes on to say:  

πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο: All things came to be through him (i.e., through this God who is the word towards God).

So we have the “theism” and the “pan” parts of panentheism. What about the “en” part?

Ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν: “in him was life.” 

Life, all of life, life itself, the nature of what it means to be alive, is “in” the God who is the word which is towards God. Life is in the interbeingness of the divine, life is in the divine love, according to John. 

John would have assumed a “creation event,” a starting point in which, as John says, “all things came to be.” Yet the reference to life being “in him” suggests that John sees life as an ongoing unfolding of the life that is in the divine interbeing. 

That is “pan” and “en” and “theism”.

A few verses later John says that the God which is the word that was towards God, quote, “became human and lived among us.”

John does not say “became a human” in the singular. But became “flesh,” became embodied, entered into a state of interbeing with “flesh,” with physical reality. 

This means, when we take the texts together, that all of life, the life of the cosmos, is in the God which is the word that is towards God, and the God that is the word towards God became in the cosmos through the process of dwelling in physical, human reality.

John’s subsequent story does focus on one specific human, Jesus. But early Christian thinkers recognized a universality precisely in this specificity. In the words of Athanasius, God took humanity, not just a human, into God’s being.

Which is where I see the divine empathy and the experience of suffering enter the picture, for as the story unfolds within the life of this one person, the historical experiences of Jesus, the suffering of the world is also experienced in various ways. According to the Gospels:

+there is early childhood trauma as a refugee fleeing their homeland under fear of being searched out and killed

+there is grief and loss, tears, at the death of a loved one

+there is the pain of betrayal by a close friend

+there is the pain of denial and abandonment by another close friend

+there is the pain of false accusations and lies

+and finally there is the pain of being falsely convicted, tortured, and killed in a brutal and painful execution

 

All experienced by a human being, but also experienced by the divine in the reality of the mysterious interbeingness of the divine and humanity.

It seems to me that one obvious implication of what John is saying about the embodying of the divine is that God experiences suffering, not second hand, not as compassion or sympathy, but from the inside, as God’s own pain. In the divine interbeingness shared with us, and with the cosmos for all of life is in the divine, and is experienced by the divine. 

Big E Empathy.

There are still some big questions.

 

Will Suffering Ever End?

If panentheism is true, then the divine being is not external to the cosmos, controlling it inexorably towards a pre-determined end. Panentheism suggests that the future is not pre-determined in that way. For if the divine is entangled with the cosmos, and experiences evil and suffering, and is interconnected with the ongoing cosmic process of change and becoming, then the future “open” and any number of possible outcomes or scenarios may come to fruition. If the divine is intertwined with the entire cosmic process of emergent unfolding development is there any hope that evil and suffering will ever end in any final and ultimate sense? On what basis might we have hope for a better future?

My own answer to this has two sides to it. 

 

First, the “pre-ternity” of the divine:

I made up that word by combining “pre” and “eternity.” With monotheist heritages I believe that the divine being exists “prior” to the cosmos, and thus that the divine nature, including Empathy, pre-dates the cosmos as it were, and so although the divine is cosmically entangled in an emergent cosmos the pre-ternity of the divine provides an ontological grounding for the essential nature of all that exists, an essential nature characterized by, among others things, empathy. 

This suggests to me that ultimately things will become what they truly are.

 

Second, the “post-ernity” of the divine:

I made that term from “post” and “eternity” and I use it to indicate that the ontological reality of the divine is never ending, and thus if the divine nature is essentially big E Empathy, this suggests to me that nothing out of keeping with that divine nature will continue forever.

This seems like a good place to try to express all this as an artist. I set one of my poems to music some time ago, titled “Starting Again.” It expresses the hope for a transformed world in the future, and though written quite a bit prior to this podcast, it weaves together the human and divine as “actors” in the process of transformation.

 

Starting Again

I have heard that long ago you promised never to ruin this world in rain

And I have read that before the rainbow 

All the world’s dreams had drowned in vain

When I see the world we have made I can’t help wonder if that is true

Then maybe it’s time for a different way 

For you to start it all again?

 

We’ve soaked the dust with blood, shed the blood of children in their schools, 

Painted with blood on the canvas of human skins,

Written our history in blood dripping from a million hands, 

A million faces in leering grins 

Blood crying from the ground asking 

When the time will come for you to start it all again?

 

I have heard the dream that someday a city with streets that burn like gold

Will drop down from heaven

And drive away this aching cold

With leaves of healing and a river of life that swells and flows

Though the dream doesn’t tell us how or when 

We will awake to find that You’ve begun to start it all again.

 

I wonder what if, instead of us waiting for the dream, 

It is the dream that has been waiting for us, 

Waiting down all the broken shadowed years for all of us 

To come awake and start it all again.

 

Perhaps that last stanza brings together the way that a panentheist view of an entangled cosmos, in which the divine and human are in a real sense co-actors, can finally result in a new future. 

 

Meanwhile, What Difference Does it Make?

To summarize, panentheism means that:

1- The divine is not defined by and equated with the evil and suffering I see (ie, pantheism’s answer)

2- The divine is not external to it all, allowing it to continue even though able to intervene (i.e., monotheism).

3- The divine being shares in the experience of the suffering and evil that we experience. And that means that meanwhile, suffering and evil continue. And they continue in the process of an entangled cosmos in which the thoughts and actions and emotions of one affect the thoughts and actions and emotions of others. There are butterfly effects, both good and bad. Panentheism suggests that the divine being is also “in” this, it is all entangled with the interbeing of everything including the divine. 

So what difference does this make?

Two things, as I see it.

First, in panentheism the divine being experiences the suffering with the cosmos, with us, with me. While this does not provide me with answers as to “why,” it at least portrays a divine being that is not detached or removed from and untouched by our suffering. Honestly, knowing that some version of divine interbeing, interconnection, shared life, and union with the suffering that exists is the only way I can hold on to theism at all at this point. That makes a difference to me.

Is that all?

There is a second way that a panentheist view makes a difference to me.

I suggested above that the “pre-ternity” and “post-ernity” of the divine Empathy gives me hope for a transformed cosmos in the future. I will add one more element to that.

Going all the way back to Episode 1, and butterfly effects, and the difference that even human empathy can make cosmically, I am convinced about how much more this is true of divine Empathy. There is a sense in which, by taking suffering into Empathy we all participate in the cosmic process of transformation. There are Buddhist ways of speaking of this, and there are ways rooted in the New Testament. The latter suggests there are divine butterfly effects, and a divine way of metabolizing evil and suffering, a divine way we participate in. Or can.

And so, I have hope that through the cultivation of empathy, in connection with big E Empathy, ultimately everything will existentially become what its ontological nature is.

In other words, I have hope for a future in which empathy and love will “win.”

 

How Do I Know?

How did I become persuaded about all this? Why do I believe this? 

It is not through a pure process of deduction and logic, I will say that at the outset. In fact I doubt there is such a “pure” objective process. We know things and know the world and know each other and know ourselves and know place and time and consciousness through many different “instruments.” 

Western philosophy, and science, both depend in my view on a far too narrow spectrum for the colors of knowing and truth. 

My conclusions are the result of experiences and intellectual reflection and imagination and intuition. I am more and more beginning to think that hope is also a way of knowing. Hope involves the imagination, and hope often flows from deeper sets of values, things we wish were true of our world, and of ourselves. All of these ways of knowing get mixed together, and sometimes they combine to corroborate each other, sometimes to correct or challenge each other.

I know my explanation for how I know what I know won’t satisfy everyone. It does not satisfy me everyday either! But as of today, this is where I stand.

 

That Other Question

I asked early on in this Episode the question about the origins of evil and suffering. Every religious heritage has a way of understanding both the nature of evil and suffering, and also aspects of the origins or sources:

Ignorance and delusion

Craving and desire

Rebellion and disobedience

Self-centered hubris

Non-human, intelligent evil

I have found wisdom and insight and value in each religious heritage’s views of all this. But, none of them actually answer the how and why of the origins of evil and suffering. To give one example for the sake of brevity, western religious traditions all refer in some way to a personal evil spiritual reality that tempts and incites others to evil, and causes evil, and thus is involved in proliferating suffering. Why was such a force allowed the freedom to choose to act in those ways? There really is no answer offered. 

I see all the heritages in a similar way relative to the question “why” things are set up to allow all this suffering.

I said at one point a few Episodes back that I would end up saying “I don’t know” and, well, this is that point: I don’t know.

 

Now What?

My reference just now to how different religious heritages offer answers speaks to a topic I have been wanting to cover even before I began the podcast. I have been wanting to talk about how I view the religious heritages of the world. What I gain and glean and appreciate. What I question or even reject.

I say in every introduction to the podcast that this is an exploration of humanity, the world, and the divine. I am coming to the end of that journey, at least the end of the road that I think this podcast will cover. There is a lot more to explore, and I plan to continue to do so in several different venues and formats. But I plan for the next Episode to be the final installment of this journey.

I will say more about that, and also explain my approach to religions…next time.