ABSTRACT
Merotheism is the view that God is a proper part of nature. Monopsychism is the view that there is exactly one mind or subject of consciousness. This chapter explores the idea of combining these two views. Resulting position “panpsychotheism”. According to panpsychotheism, human and other animal minds are each identical to a single universal subject of experience. Panpsychotheism will appear implausible to most philosophers because it rejects the widely accepted view that human and other minds are products of brains or nervous systems. One interesting philosophical implication of panpsychotheism is that it provides a novel corrective answer to the hard problem of consciousness—the problem of how the brain produces consciousness. Panpsychotheism is not just philosophically rich, but religiously rich as well. For starters, it fits well with certain cross-cultural religious experiences. It fits well, for example, with the reports of mystics from a variety of religious traditions.
