What does the WPM say about . . . . ?

    The only official statement of the WPM's beliefs is its credo which is deliberately kept short and succinct. Matters not mentioned there, and matters of interpretation or detailed application of the credo, are matters on which the WPM has no official position.
    Below are some typical answers to typical questions people ask us.

Sexual Preferences

    Individual choices about private personal behaviours are matters for personal choice. The major criterion is whether physical or psychological harm is done to other people, especially vulnerable people (eg children), or to animals.
    The WPM does not condemn, nor does it favour, any such preferences or behaviours where they do no harm to others (eg, between freely consenting adults). The choice is up to the individual conscience in the light of local legislation. We regard it as absurd for religious bodies to become involved in dictating private personal behaviour that does no harm.

Drugs and alcohol

    Our position here is the same as for sexual preferences: the WPM does not condemn, nor does it favour, use of any recreational susbtance. The choice is up to the individual conscience in the light of local legislation. In general, self-harm is not consistent with a pantheist viewpoint, but what constitutes self-harm is open to wide interpretation.

Vegetarianism

    We do not have any official position on this, because it is possible to argue a pantheist case in favour of vegetarianism, or in defence of meat-eating. We have members who are vegetarian or vegan and members who are not. We have an egroup just for vegetarian issues. We are almost all agreed that farming methods should be humane and environmentally friendly and should respect animals' rights to a natural life

Sexism, racism, homophobia

We are opposed to all forms of discrimination.

Politics

We are a religious non-profit body. We do not endorse any particular political party or policy and we have members from both ends of the political spectrum and the middle. We do have some basic social and environmental ideals, and these are laid out in the credo clauses three and four.

The afterlife

    The credo does not support belief in a conscious personal individual afterlife but envisages that our elements merge back into nature while our memories live on in living people through kindnesses, actions, creations, descendants and so on.

The supernatural

    The WPM takes a naturalistic and scientific position. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There may be anomalous phenomena that are as yet unexplained, but if  these are proved to be real, they must be the result of natural physical processes.

Page posted  2000.                                  Contact us: info@pantheism.net