relda,
I agree with what you wrote, including admitting that Teilhard’s vision is not completely off the track. Classical theology speaks of the transcendent and immanent features of God, and where we might differ (though I am still not sure) is that - as much as we both agree that too much emphasis used to be placed on the transcendent - I do not believe (the Christian idea of) God could be reduced to the immanent, i.e. what I referred to as the Sagan option. (It is then irrelevant whether you call Him/It, God, Nature, Cosmos.) Again, Polkinghorne explains this succinctly:

“it's very important to maintain the classical Christian distinction between the Creator and creation. Of course, we don't want the rather remote God of classical theology who was much too transcendent and whose immanence was really rather understated. We want an even-handed balance between transcendence and immanence, but I think the distinction between Creator and creation remains crucial for two reasons. One is that, if we don't, the problem with evil, and God's relation to evil, becomes more intense. And secondly, a God who is too caught up with creation cannot be the ground of hope for a destiny beyond death both for creatures and the whole of creation.” (http://www.crosscurrents.org/polkinghorne.htm).

Or this random quote from Peacocke “an understanding of the one God as triune in his character, as personally transcendent, personally incarnate and personally immanent” (Theology for a Scientific Age, Fortress 1993, p. 98) which does not seem to put him in the same boat as Sagan.

To summarize, I can accept all that you, Tillich, and many others, write about God, emphasizing His immanent, “this-worldly” dimension (the material world accessible through senses, instruments, scientific or humanitarian theories and mathematics) as long as it does not go with an explicit denial of His transcendent dimension. So I am perhaps a panentheist rather than a pantheist as seem to be those, including some Christians, who profess the above reducibility. (Neither am I a deist, who reduces God to his transcendent dimension: created the world and then disappeared from our horizon).

George,

“Transcendence” and “immanence” are dualistic concepts, and I find they lack coherence for an understanding or grasp of Reality–even if, as concepts, they’re perhaps quite valid.

I’ve found Stanley Sobottka (Emeritus Professor of Physics) helpful where he says that conceptualisation always results in inseparable pairs of concepts (polar, or dual, pairs) because every concept has an opposite. Reality, he says, is apparently split into polar (dual) pairs by conceptualisation. However, he says, “no concept is real since Reality cannot be split”.

The suggestion (by Sobottka) that the belief in free will depends on our perception of an inner-outer duality within us, I found a little profound. Without the perceived separation of ourselves into an inner object that controls and an outer object that is controlled, we could not have this belief, and free will would not be a concept that would ever arise. “True freedom is pure subjectivity and is an intrinsic property of pure consciousness. Freedom as pure subjectivity is not the same as freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is an illusion.” There is something of the Schrödinger cat paradox here where I observe the cat in either the live state or the dead state, not both. The absence of an objective reality is summed up in Bohr's statement, "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum description."

I find it interesting that traditional idealism holds that consciousness is the primary reality, and all objects, whether material or mental, are objects within consciousness. However, it does not explain how the individual subject or ‘experiencer’ in the subject-object experience arises. Traditional monistic idealism, however, states that the consciousness of the individual subject is identical to the consciousness that is the ground of all being – perhaps reminiscent of Tillich. The sages claim that the sense of separation that we feel is an illusion, and say that separation does not exist in reality. Ignorance of our true nature gives us the illusion of separateness, and this sense of separateness is the basis of all of our suffering. Life’s deepest crises (potentially) remove our abstractions.

You know, if tomatoes were horses, we'd all be having pumpkins for breakfast.

"You know, if tomatoes were horses, we'd all be having pumpkins for breakfast." - Yes. Quite probably.

Ah, I thought so.

After 62 pages, what strikes me most forcibly is that every time we attempt to define 'God' we "(re)create Him in our own image".
Hardly a credible way to prove the objective existence of an entity.
Bugsy, if tomatoes were horses;
1. they would be self fertilising
2. it would be more difficult to define myself as a vegetarian
3. Horse races could become truly Darwinian events. We could just add the losers to a salad.
Dunno about the pumpkins, but.