The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast · Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, Rose de Castellane, Gregory Mill

Episode 152, 'God, Consciousness, and Fundamental Reality' with Philip Goff, David Godman, and Miri Albahari (Part I - The Debate)

February 8, 2026·41 min·3 clips

Philip Goff argues that fine-tuning points to a mind with goals, but suffering suggests God has limited power.

1. The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast episode 152 centers on the question 'What is God, and what is our relationship with this being?' featuring Philip Goff, David Godman, and Miri Albahari. 2. Philip Goff is professor of philosophy at Durham University, known for panpsychism and his recent book 'Why? The Purpose of the Universe'; David Godman is a leading authority on the Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi; Miri Albahari is senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia specializing in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta metaphysics. 3. The episode is structured with each panelist delivering an opening statement before open debate, and is framed as the second of two episodes on alternative conceptions of God, supported by the John Templeton Foundation's Panpsychism and Pantheism Project. 4. Goff grounds his view in two sources: mystical experiences across traditions — which he treats as genuine insights rather than psychological episodes — and philosophical arguments including fine-tuning. 5. Fine-tuning, he explains, is the finding that many physical constants of the universe had to fall in a very narrow range for life to be possible, making it 'wildly improbable' that life exists by chance — strong evidence, he argues, that ultimate reality is a mind with goals. 6. Against classical theism, Goff cites the existence of horrific suffering and the mechanism of natural selection, which he says is incompatible with an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good creator. 7. His synthesis is a 'good God of limited power who has made the best universe they can' — a position inspired by Eastern Orthodox Christianity with what he calls a 'heretical twist,' rejecting both Protestant original-sin theology and classical divine omnipotence. 8. Godman opens by advocating for the Advaita Vedanta position, explaining that 'advaita' means 'not-two' — a view derived from direct experience that duality is illusory and that Brahman, pure consciousness, is the only reality. 9. He distinguishes Brahman (the ultimate, attributeless substratum) from Ishwara (a God who creates and runs the world but is not ultimate — an emergent phase of Brahman that disappears when manifestation is absent). 10. In Advaita, individual souls are illusory: 'One knows it by being it, not by becoming one with it — there is no soul who unites with Brahman.' 11. Albahari largely agrees with Godman and contributes a phenomenological argument: consciousness is always present, neutral between sense modalities, unified, and 'alive' — characteristics suggesting it is 'a here beyond space and a now beyond time' that never itself arises or passes away with its objects. 12. Goff raises the central objection to Advaita: if Brahman alone exists and is blissful consciousness, where does ignorance, duality, and suffering come from? 13. Albahari responds with the dream analogy: within a dream, suffering and a subject are both real relative to the dream, but on waking, neither ever really existed — liberation in Advaita is exactly that kind of waking, achievable in this lifetime. 14. Godman adds that this dream analogy dates back 2,500 years in Upanishadic philosophy, and that 2,800 years of sages have corroborated the original findings, yet it remains a 'neglected corner of Western philosophy.' 15. Albahari concedes that why ignorance or manifestation arises in the first place is 'a million-dollar question' without an answer — a brute fact — and that from within the illusion, it may not even be a legitimate question. 16. Godman draws the sharpest contrast between the two traditions: Advaita holds that the human being is fundamentally pure, complete, and already what they are trying to attain, while Christianity begins with original sin — a premise he argues locks Christians into a framework of suffering before offering solutions. 17. Goff defends Eastern Orthodox Christianity against this characterization, arguing that the sin-guilt framework is largely a Protestant Reformation construction (Calvin, Luther, Augustine) and that Orthodox Christianity teaches humans can 'become gods' through full participation in the divine nature — closer to Advaita than Godman acknowledges. 18. Both Godman and Albahari describe arriving at their views not through argument but through direct experience: Godman came to India in 1976 after reading a book on Ramana Maharshi that 'put me into a fundamental state of silence,' and describes sitting with successors who transmit that state by proximity — 'like sitting in front of someone sneezing.' 19. Goff describes his own spiritual practice as daily meditation during insomnia, currently finding meaning in the 13th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart's image of God as a boiling pan of energy and creativity, and says 'the journey never has to be over.' 20. The episode is best suited to listeners with some interest in philosophy of religion, Eastern spirituality, or consciousness studies who want to hear three expert positions debated with genuine disagreement and personal stakes.

As heard by us

A patient discussion of whether consciousness, suffering, and the divine belong to one underlying reality.

The Panpsycast frames classical theism and Advaita as rival ways of answering a hard metaphysical question: what sort of reality can hold consciousness, suffering, and the divine together?

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Want to watch classical theism and Advaita press on suffering, consciousness, and the Supreme Being? Press play.

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