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Pandeism, or pan-deism, is a theological doctrine that combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism. Unlike classical deism, which holds that the creator deity does not interfere with the universe after its creation, pandeism holds that such an entity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate entity.
Pandeism (as it relates to deism) purports to explain why God would create a universe and then appear to abandon it, and pandeism (as it relates to pantheism) seeks to explain the origin and purpose of the universe.Various theories suggest the coining of pandeism as early as the 1780s. One of the earliest unequivocal uses of the word with its present meaning was in 1859 with Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal.
In his 1910 work Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature"), physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein presented the broadest and most far-reaching examination of pandeism written up to that point.
Some pantheists identify themselves as pandeists as well, to underscore that "they share with the deists the idea that God is not a personal God who desires to be worshipped".Alex Ciurana, M.T.S., "The Superiority of a Christian Worldview", ACTS Magazine, Churches of God Seventh Day, December 2007, Volume 57, Number 10, page 11 It has also been suggested that "many religions may classify themselves as pantheistic" but "fit more essentially under the description of panentheistic or pandeistic", or that "pandeism is seen as a middle path between pantheism and deism".Ross Thompson, Ten Ways to Weave the World: Matter, Mind, and God, Volume 2: Embodying Mind (2023), p. 30. Here it is noted as well that "some authors also distinguish 'panendeism', whereby only part of God becomes the universe".
Pandeism falls within the traditional hierarchy of Monism and nontheistic philosophies which address the nature of God. It is one of several subsets of deism:José M. Lozano-Gotor, "Deism", Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions (Springer: 2013). "Deism takes different forms, for example, humanistic, scientific, Christian, spiritual deism, pandeism, and panendeism".Mikhail Epstein, Postatheism and the phenomenon of minimal religion in Russia, in Justin Beaumont, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity (2018), p. 83, n. 3: "I refer here to monodeism as the default standard concept of deism, distinct from polydeism, pandeism, and spiritual deism". "Over time there have been other schools of thought formed under the umbrella of deism including Christian deism, belief in deistic principles coupled with the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and Pandeism, a belief that God became the entire universe and no longer exists as a separate being". What Is Deism?, Douglas MacGowan, Mother Nature Network, May 21, 2015.
Bruner, Davenport and Norwine, alluding to Victorian scholar George Levine's suggestion that secularism can bring the "fullness" always promised by religion, observe that "for others, this 'fullness' is present in more religious-oriented pantheistic or pandeistic belief systems with, in the latter case, the inclusion of God as the ever unfolding expression of a complex universe with an identifiable beginning but no teleological direction necessarily present". They suggest that pandeism, within a general tendency of postmodernity, has the capacity to "fundamentally alter future geographies of mind and being by shifting the locus of causality from an exalted Godhead to the domain of Nature".
In the 2013 edition of their philosophy textbook, Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments, Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn define "pandeism" as "the view that the universe is not only God but also a person".Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn, Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments, 5th Edition (Springer, 2013), p. 506, Section 6.3, "Faith and Meaning: Believing the Unbelievable", subsection, "Thought Probe: James and Pandeism": "The view that the universe is not only God but also a person is called "pandeism". Do you agree with William James that viewing the universe as a person would help give meaning to your life?" Travis Dumsday, in his 2024 Alternative Conceptions of the Spiritual, writes that the emergence of consciousness in panspiritism is what "distinguishes panspiritism from pandeism, since, according to the latter, the physical cosmos emerges (by a process of becoming) out of an ontologically prior divine conscious subject". He goes on to describe that in pandeism, "God became the universe at the Big Bang, and the resultant cosmos may (depending on the version of pandeism on offer) inherit some or all of His divine characteristics".Travis Dumsday, Alternative Conceptions of the Spiritual (2024), ASIN: B0D6NPK7F4, p. 98.
The 6th century BC Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon has been described by some scholars as a pandeistic thinker.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 231. Weinstein wrote that Xenophanes spoke as a pandeist in stating that there was one god which "abideth ever in the selfsame place, moving not at all" and yet "sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over". Weinstein also found elements of pandeism in the ideas of Heraclitus, the Stoicism, and especially in the later students of the 'Platonic Pythagoreans' and the 'Pythagorean Platonists.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 233–34. He specifically identified 3rd century BC philosopher Chrysippus, who affirmed that "the universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul",Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i. 15 as a pandeist.
Religious studies professor, F. E. Peters found that "what appeared ... at the center of the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism that is the legacy of the Milesians".
Historian of philosophy Andrew Gregory thought that, of the Milesians, "some construction using pan-, whether it be pantheism, pandeism or pankubernism, describes Anaximander reasonably well", although he questions whether Anaximander's view of the distinction between apeiron and cosmos makes these labels technically relevant at all. (Gregory defines a "pankubernist" as "someone who believes that everything steers"). Gottfried Große in his 1787 interpretation of Pliny the Elder's Natural History, describes Pliny, a first-century figure, as "if not a Baruch Spinoza, then perhaps a Pandeist".
The first stage is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second is the world of Platonic ideals or forms; the third is the wholly physical manifestation of our Universe, which "does not create"; the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns to completeness with the additional knowledge of having experienced this world. A contemporary statement of this idea is that: "Since God is not a being, he is therefore not intelligible... This means not only that we cannot understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of divinity effort by God to understand himself, to see himself in a mirror". Genest, Jeremiah, John Scottus Eriugena: Life and Works (1998). French journalist Jean-Jacques Gabut agreed, writing that "a certain pantheism, or rather pandeism, emerges from his work where Neo-Platonic inspiration perfectly complements the strict Christian orthodoxy".Jean-Jacques Gabut, Origines et fondements spirituels et sociologiques de la maçonnerie écossaise, 2017 Eriugena himself denied that he was a pantheist.O'Meara, John J., "Introduction", The Mind of Eriugena, (John J. O'Meara and Ludwig Bieler, eds.), Dublin: Irish University Press 1973.
Weinstein thought that 13th-century Catholic thinker Bonaventure—who championed the Platonic doctrine that ideas do not exist in rerum natura, but as ideals exemplified by the Divine being, according to which actual things were formed—showed strong pandeistic inclinations.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 303. Bonaventure was of the Franciscan school created by Alexander of Hales and in speaking of the possibility of creation from eternity, declared that reason can demonstrate that the world was not created ab aeterno. Robinson, Paschal. "St. Bonaventure". The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 2 July 2019 Of another Catholic, Nicholas of Cusa, who wrote of the enfolding of creation in God and the unfolding of the divine human mind in creation, Weinstein wrote that he was, to a certain extent, a pandeist.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 306. He held a similar view of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, who had written A Cabbalistical Dialogue (Latin version first, 1677, in English 1682) placing matter and spirit on a continuum, and describing matter as a "coalition" of monads.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 338.
Several historians and theologians, including Weinstein, found that pandeism was strongly expressed in the teachings of Giordano Bruno, who envisioned a deity which had no particular relation to one part of the infinite universe more than any other, and was Immanence, as present on Earth as in the Heavens, subsuming in itself the multiplicity of existence.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 321. This assessment of Bruno's theology was reiterated by others, including Discover editor Corey S. Powell, who wrote that Bruno's cosmology was "a tool for advancing an animist or Pandeist theology".Corey S. Powell, " Defending Giordano Bruno: A Response from the Co-Writer of 'Cosmos' ", Discover, March 13, 2014: "Bruno imagines all planets and stars having souls (part of what he means by them all having the same "composition"), and he uses his cosmology as a tool for advancing an animist or Pandeist theology".David Sessions, " How 'Cosmos' Bungles the History of Religion and Science", The Daily Beast, 03.23.14: "Bruno, for instance, was a 'pandeist', which is the belief that God had transformed himself into all matter and ceased to exist as a distinct entity in himself". The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger notes that Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope, was in particular "critical of ... Bruno's pandeism". Daniel Cardó, Uwe Michael Lang, Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger (2023), p. 266. Lutheran theologian Otto Kirn criticized as overbroad Weinstein's assertions that such historical philosophers as John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury, Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Moses Mendelssohn, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing all were pandeists or leaned towards pandeism.Review of Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") in Emil Schürer, Adolf von Harnack, editors, Theologische Literaturzeitung ("Theological Literature Journal"), Volume 35, column 827 (1910): "Dem Verfasser hat anscheinend die Einteilung: religiöse, rationale und naturwissenschaftlich fundierte Weltanschauungen vorgeschwebt; er hat sie dann aber seinem Material gegenüber schwer durchführbar gefunden und durch die mitgeteilte ersetzt, die das Prinzip der Einteilung nur noch dunkel durchschimmern läßt. Damit hängt wohl auch das vom Verfasser gebildete unschöne griechisch-lateinische Mischwort des 'Pandeismus' zusammen. Nach S. 228 versteht er darunter im Unterschied von dem mehr metaphysisch gearteten Pantheismus einen 'gesteigerten und vereinheitlichten Animismus', also eine populäre Art religiöser Weltdeutung. Prhagt man lieh dies ein, so erstaunt man über die weite Ausdehnung, die dem Begriff in der Folge gegeben wird. Nach S. 284 ist Scotus Erigena ein ganzer, nach S. 300 Anselm von Canterbury ein 'halber Pandeist'; aber auch bei Nikolaus Cusanus und Giordano Bruno, ja selbst bei Mendelssohn und Lessing wird eine Art von Pandeismus gefunden (S. 306. 321. 346.)". Translation: "The author apparently intended to divide up religious, rational and scientifically based philosophies, but found his material overwhelming, resulting in an effort that can shine through the principle of classification only darkly. This probably is also the source of the unsightly Greek-Latin compound word, 'Pandeism'. At page 228, he understands the difference from the more metaphysical kind of pantheism, an enhanced unified animism that is a popular religious worldview. In remembering this borrowing, we were struck by the vast expanse given the term. According to page 284, Scotus Erigena is one entirely, at p. 300 Anselm of Canterbury is 'half Pandeist'; but also Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, and even in Mendelssohn and Lessing a kind of Pandeism is found (p. 306 321 346.)".
In Italy, Pandeism was among the beliefs condemned by Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (also known as il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano; 1759–1829) in volumes of his sermons published posthumously in the 1830s.Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano), in Sermons and Panegyrics of the Father Filippo Nani of Lojana, Giovanni Silvestri, publisher, 1834, p. 284, Sermon XVIII: Miracles: "Ma questa religione predestinta col taumaturgo segnale si trova ella nel mondo i' Dove? in qual gente? in qual lido? Nelle sinagoghe giudaiche, o nelle meschìte dell l'Asia? Nelle pagoda cinesi, o nella società di Ginevra? Giudei, Maomettani, Gentili, Scismatici, Eretici, Pandeisti, Deisti, geni torbidi, e inquieti". ("But this religion predestined by the thaumaturgist signal, where in the world is she? in which people? on which shores? In Jewish synagogues, or mosques of Asia? Pagoda in Chinese, or in society in Geneva? Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Schismatics, Heretics, Pandeists, Deists, and troubled, restless spirits".) Nannetti specifically criticized pandeism, declaring, "To you, fatal Pandeist! the laws that create nature are contingent and mutable, not another being in substance with forces driven by motions and developments".Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano), in Sermons and Panegyrics of the Father Filippo Nani of Lojana, Giovanni Silvestri, publisher, 1834, p. 286, Sermon XVIII: Miracles In 1838, an anonymous treatise, Il legato di un vecchio ai giovani della sua patria ("The Legacy of an Old Man to the Young People of his Country"), was published, in which the author, discussing the theory of religion presented by Giambattista Vico a century earlier, speculated that when man first saw , "his robust imagination recognized the effects as a cause, then deifying natural phenomena, he became a Pandeist, an instructor of Mythology, a priest, an Augur". Il legato di un vecchio ai giovani della sua patria (1838) ("The Legacy of an Old Man to the Young People of his Country"): "Il selvaggio Nomado ex lege arrestato nelle spelonche dallo spavento, e dall'ammirazione con l'imponente spettacolo delle meteore, per la prima volta rivolse sopra se stesso lo sguardo della debole ragione, conobbe un potere fuori di lui più colossale della sua erculea brutalità, e per la prima volta concepì un culto. La robusta immaginazione gli fe ravvisare gli effetti come causa, quindi deificando i fenomeni naturali divenne un Pandeista, un istitutore della Mitologia, un sacerdote, un Augure". ("The wild nomad (who lived outside the law) stopped in the caves with fear and admiration at the impressive meteor shower, for the first time saw that reason was powerless, experienced a most colossal power outside himself of his Herculean brutality, and for the first time he understood worship (or conceived of a cult). His robust imagination recognized the effects as a cause, then deifying natural phenomena, he became a Pandeist, an instructor of Mythology, a priest, an Augur".). In the same year, phrenologist Luigi Ferrarese in Memorie Riguardanti la Dottrina Frenologica ("Thoughts Regarding the Doctrine of Phrenology") critically described Victor Cousin's philosophy as a doctrine which "locates reason outside the human person, declaring man a fragment of God, introducing a sort of spiritual pandeism, absurd for us, and injurious to the God".
Literary critic Hayden Carruth said of 18th-century figure Alexander Pope that it was "Pope's rationalism and pandeism with which he wrote the greatest mock-epic in English literature"
Pandeism (in Chinese, 泛自然神论) Definition of 泛自然神論 (泛自然神论, fànzìránshénlùn) from CEDICT, 1998. "Pandeism, theological theory that God created the Universe and became one with it". was described by Wen Chi, in a Peking University lecture, as embodying "a major feature of Chinese philosophical thought", in that "there is a harmony between man and the divine, and they are equal".
Zhang Dao Kui (张道葵) of the China Three Gorges University proposed that the art of China's Three Gorges area is influenced by "a representation of the romantic essence that is created when integrating rugged simplicity with the natural beauty spoken about by pandeism". Literary critic Wang Junkang (王俊康) has written that, in Chinese folk religion as conveyed in the early novels of noted folk writer Ye Mei (叶梅), Abstract of writer 叶梅 (Ye Mei). "the romantic spirit of Pandeism can be seen everywhere". Wang Junkang additionally writes of Ye Mei's descriptions of "the worship of reproduction under Pandeism, as demonstrated in romantic songs sung by village people to show the strong impulse of vitality and humanity and the beauty of wildness". It has been noted that author Shen Congwen has attributed a kind of hysteria that "afflicts those young girls who commit suicide by jumping into caves-"luodong" 落洞" to "the repressive local military culture that imposes strict sexual codes on women and to the influence of pan-deism among Miao people", since "for a Hypersexuality, jumping into a cave leads to the ultimate union with the god of the cave". Nature, Woman and Lyrical Ambiguity in Shen Congwen's Writing, Jiwei Xiao, Rocky Mountain Review, Volume 67, Number 1, Spring 2013 pp. 41-60, 55. Weinstein similarly found the views of 17th century Japanese Neo-Confucianism philosopher Yamazaki Ansai, who espoused a cosmology of universal mutual interconnectedness, to be especially consonant with pandeism.Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 235.
According to literary critic Martin Lüdke, early Twentieth-Century Portugal poet Fernando Pessoa expressed a pandeistic philosophy, especially in the writings made under the pseudonym of Alberto Caeiro.Martin Lüdke, "Ein moderner Hüter der Dinge; Die Entdeckung des großen Portugiesen geht weiter: Fernando Pessoa hat in der Poesielberto Caeiros seinen Meister gesehen", ("A modern guardian of things; The discovery of the great Portuguese continues: Fernando Pessoa saw its master in the poetry of Alberto Caeiros"), Frankfurter Rundschau, August 18, 2004. "Caeiro unterläuft die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Schein und dem, was etwa "Denkerge-danken" hinter ihm ausmachen wollen. Die Dinge, wie er sie sieht, sind als was sie scheinen. Sein Pan-Deismus basiert auf einer Ding-metaphysics, die in der modernen Dichtung des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts noch Schule machen sollte". Translation: "Caeiro interposes the distinction between the light and what "philosopher thoughts" want to constitute behind him. The things, as he sees them, are as they seem. His pandeism is based on a metaphysical thing, which should still become a school of thought under the modern seal of the twentieth century". Brazilian journalist and writer Otávio de Faria, and British scholar and translator of Portuguese fiction Giovanni Pontiero, among others, identified pandeism as an influence on the writings of mid-Twentieth-Century Brazilian poet Carlos Nejar.Otávio de Faria, "Pandeísmo em Carlos Nejar", in Última Hora, Rio de Janeiro, May 17, 1978. Quote: "Se Deus é tudo isso, envolve tudo, a palavra andorinha, a palavra poço o a palavra amor, é que Deus é muito grande, enorme, infinito; é Deus realmente e o pandeismo de Nejar é uma das mais fortes ideias poéticas que nos têm chegado do mundo da Poesia. E o que não pode esperar desse poeta, desse criador poético, que em pouco menos de vinte anos, já chegou a essa grande iluminação poética?" Translation: "If God is all, involves everything, swallows every word, the deep word, the word love, then God is very big, huge, infinite; and for a God really like this, the pandeism of Nejar is one of the strongest poetic ideas that we have reached in the world of poetry. And could you expect of this poet, this poetic creator, that in a little less than twenty years, he has arrived at this great poetic illumination?"
Pandeism was examined by theologian Charles Hartshorne, one of the chief disciples of process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. In his process theology, an extension of Whitehead's work, Hartshorne preferred pandeism to pantheism, explaining that "it is not really the theos that is described".
Calvinism scholar Rousas John Rushdoony sharply criticized the Catholic Church in his 1971 The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy, writing, "The position of Pope Paul came close to being a pan-Deism, and pan-Deism is the logical development of the virus of Hellenic thought", and further that "a sincere idealist, implicitly pan-Deist in faith, deeply concerned with the problems of the world and of time, can be a Ghibelline pope, and Dante's Ghibellines have at last triumphed".Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy (1971 2007), Ch. VIII-7, p. 142-143. Adventist Theologian Bert B. Beach wrote in 1974 that "during the Vatican Council there was criticism from WCC Circles" to the effect that "ecumenism was being contaminated by 'pan-Deist' and syncretistic tendencies".Bert Beverly Beach, Ecumenism: Boon Or Bane? (1974), p. 259 (quoting George H. Williams, Dimensions of Roman Catholic Ecumenism (1965), p. 31-32). Science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein raised the idea of pandeism in several of his works. Literary critic Dan Schneider wrote of Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land that Jubal Harshaw's belief in his own free will, was one "which Mike, Jill, and the Fosterites misinterpret as a pandeistic urge, 'Thou art God!Dan Schneider, Review of Stranger In A Strange Land (The Uncut Version), by Robert A. Heinlein (7/29/05). Heinlein himself, in the "Aphorisms of Lazarus Long" from Time Enough for Love, wrote: "God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good—and is no sillier than any other theology".Robert A. Heinlein, Aphorisms of Lazarus Long, in "Time Enough for Love" (1978 1973), page 216.
In a 1990 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Lakers coach and sometime-spiritual author Phil Jackson, describing his religious views, said "I've always liked the concept of God being beyond anything that the human mind can conceive. I think there is a pantheistic-deistic-American Indian combination religion out there for Americans. That rings true to me".Phil Jackson interviewed on religion by Michael Hirsley for the Chicago Tribune, "For Bulls coach, God is no game", April 27, 1990, Section 2, Page 8. Jim Garvin, a Vietnam veteran who became a Trappist monk in the Holy Cross Abbey of Berryville, Virginia, described his spiritual position as pandeism' or 'pan-en-deism', something very close to the Native American concept of the all- pervading Great Spirit". Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, November 11, 1995, B-10.
Pastor Bob Burridge of the Geneven Institute for Reformed Studies wrote that: "If God was the proximate cause of every act it would make all events to be 'God in motion'. That is nothing less than pantheism, or more exactly, pandeism".Bob Burridge, " Theology Proper: Lesson 4 – The Decrees of God", Survey Studies in Reformed Theology, Genevan Institute for Reformed Studies (1996). Burridge rejects this model, observing that in Christianity, "The Creator is distinct from his creation. The reality of secondary causes is what separates Christian theism from pandeism". Burridge argued that "calling God the author of sin demands a pandeistic understanding of the universe effectively removing the reality of sin and moral law".
Acknowledging that American philosopher William Rowe has raised "a powerful, evidential argument against ethical theism", Lane further contended that pandeism offers an escape from the evidential argument from evil (a.k.a. the "problem of evil"):
Social scientist Sal Restivo similarly deems pandeism to be a means to evade the problem of evil.
Cartoonist and pundit Scott Adams has written two books on religion, God's Debris (2001), and The Religion War (2004), of which God's Debris lays out a theory of pandeism, in which God blows itself up to see what will happen, which becomes the cause of our universe.
In 2010 Germans astrophysicist and popular scientist Harald Lesch observed in a debate on the role of faith in science:
Alan Dawe's 2011 book The God Franchise, though mentioning pandeism in passing as one of numerous extant theological theories, declines to adopt any "-ism" as encompassing his view, though Dawe's theory includes the human experience as being a temporarily segregated sliver of the experience of God. This aspect of the theology of pandeism (along with pantheism and panentheism) has been compared to the Biblical exhortation in Acts 17:28 that "In him we live and move and have our being",
while the Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia had in 1975 described the religion of Babylon as "clearly a type of pan-deism formed from a synthesis of Christianity and paganism".Also in 2011, in a study of Germany's Hesse region, German sociologist of religion and theologian Michael N. Ebertz and German television presenter and author Meinhard Schmidt-Degenhard concluded that "Six religious orientation types can be distinguished: 'Christians'—'non-Christian theists'—'Cosmotheists'—'Deists, Pandeists and Polytheists'—'Atheists'—'Others'“.Michael N. Ebertz and Meinhard Schmidt-Degenhard, Was glauben die Hessen?: Horizonte religiösen Lebens (2011; republished 2014), p. 82. Pandeism has also been described as one of the "older spiritual and religious traditions" whose elements are incorporated into the New Age movement,
In the 2020s, pandeism has been described as one of the better possible theological models to encompass humankind's relationship with a future artificial intelligence.
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