Pandeists are occasionally accused by adherents of certain sects within
monotheism of seeking to avoid the "
accountability" those believers believe to be inherent in their faiths. It is perhaps important that this objection did not originally arise as one against
Pandeism, but against
Atheism. The atheist, it has been asserted, with no set of rules sent down from above, and with no
afterlife of
consequences for violating such rules, is without moral ground. The failure to believe in the sweet treat is a dodge. An effort to avoid consequences by denying their existence.
This is what could generously be called the
Santa Claus theory of accountability. Children who misbehave (or perhaps who
behave perfectly well but don't
believe in Santa Claus), they get a lump of
coal in their stockings, instead of
candy. The coal, whence
fire is made, is representative of the consequence of
Hell, just as a toy workshop at the
North Pole is the equivalent of a
Heaven in the sky. Mind you, though, receiving a sock full of coal during a coal
shortage amidst a cold
winter might be considered quite a
boon; and receiving the candy, however heavenly, might not be the best thing for the child's
health. But back to the
magical thinking underwriting Santa Claus-style accountability. The fundamental ideas at play here are that, firstly, we simply will not be able to know which things are right and wrong without some overarching rule-writer setting forth rules about, for example, whether or not to kill our
neighbors, how harshly to beat our
slaves and how long to keep them in captivity, whether or not to stone people to death for being
homosexual or of another tribe or just too outspoken, and whether to make a
garment of mixed
fabrics. Secondly, all these prohibitions are thought meaningless if there isn't some
punishment to back them up (and, conversely, some
reward to entice the would-be-good towards goodness).
And so, it is somewhat odd that this objection is leveled against Pandeism. Granted, Pandeism does not incorporate a set of especially
scriptural regurgitations of previous moral codes, nor the arbitrary biases of ancient times codified by their gate keepers as divine command. But Pandeism does specifically allow for the possibility of an
afterlife. And indeed of one wherein the conduct of an individual in life rebounds on them in their experience of the afterlife.
But, as has been pointed out at many points in human history, the rightness or wrongness of an act does not hinge on whether the act is rewarded or punished. Desperate despots need to reward the cruelty of their minions, and punish efforts to secure essential freedoms. As
Socrates demonstrated early on, if the gods were just, then they would wish to reward what is inherently good because it is inherently good, irrespective of whether they are claimed to be the arbiters of what is good. A wide body of philosophical work has emerged over the past several centuries to determine what is good from first principles of logic, through ideologies such as deontological theory and consequentialism.
Here, Pandeism offers a unique
perspective and
incentive for discovering universal and non-arbitrary rules of goodness. The principle which arises in Pandeism arises from its core proposition that are universe is as it is because our Creator has become it in order to share in the experiences of it. If this is considered as a possibility, then it is possible that everything we do to another person, we do to an aspect of our Creator. And because we are ourselves an aspect of our Creator, we are in turn doing this to ourselves. Imagine, then, if we were all Pandeists, and so, loved and respected our fellow humans as if they were lost fragments of our Creator, and extensions of our very selves. Imagine the rules of conduct which we would choose to live by, whether required by law or not, whether claimed in scripture as the decreed commands long imagine has sent from above. Fully appreciating the weight of the situation makes it impossible to avoid the recognition of the very, very deep level of accountability which must be the experience of the person who sees the world in this way, who sees the obligation to maximize the positivity of the experience of the creator of which they are part by maximizing his positivity for the world around them through right and loving conduct at every possible juncture.