In his book, Omniscience, Parmenides contends that there are three fundamental differences between pantheism and humanism. Pantheism upholds that there is no “God” and everything is a meaningless combination of atoms and protons in a cosmic vacuum. It also maintains that religion, morality, and ethics are merely concepts based on abstract universal realities. While many atheists take part in the worship of objects such as rocks, stars, and crystals, pantheists believe that these things are immaterial and are therefore not capable of having any effect on the actions of human beings. Thus, they believe that ethics and morals are ultimately illusory since nothing actually dictates how humans act or feel.
According to another school of thought, Parmenides was the first to articulate the three different theories of life: idealism, skepticism, and pantheism. Idealism maintains that reality is pure thought, and that everything is composed of thought – including the world and its perceived world, the reality of which is only the product of abstract thoughts. Skepticism maintains that reality is a logical combination of possible perceptions; the reality of which can be objectively verified through scientific methods; and pantheism believes that all things are composed of essential elements that are eternal and thus have no relationship to the perceived world.
The term “acosmism” is derived from the word “acous,” which means “not fixed” – an idea that is closely related to concepts of infinity and pantheism, which both deny the reality of time and the concepts of distance. Although some scholars dispute the exact connections between Parmenides and his teacher Plato, most agree that both were highly creative philosophers who had a profound influence on the western civilization. Both Pantheism and Parmenides are often referred to as the “fathers of modern thought,” and their works have been greatly influenced by the classics such as Lucretius, Seneca, and Aristotle. In the modern era, most education textbooks still associate the concepts of Parmenides and his teachings with neo Socrates’ skepticism that reached its climax in Athens around the 4th century BC with the rise of Plato’s Academy.