Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Andrew M. Davis - 10 Ideas in Whiteheadian Thought

"We Put Process Philosophy to Work"
Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr


IDEAS IN PROCESS
10 Whiteheadian Transitions

Partners in Process, on Tuesday, August 23, 10 am PDT, Andrew Davis will share with John Cobb & Friends Ideas in Process–Ten Whiteheadian Transitions.

Dr. Davis, Program Director of the Center for Process Studies, is sharing a presentation he made for Tom Oord’s ORTCON conference in July.

Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian, and scholar of world religions. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology (CST).

He is a poet, aphorist, and author or editor of four books including How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere: An Anthology of Spiritual Memoirs (2018, with Philip Clayton); Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (2019, with Roland Faber and Michael Halewood); Depths as Yet Unspoken: Whiteheadian Excursions in Mysticism, Multiplicity, and Divinity (2020, with Roland Faber); and Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (Lexington, Nominated for the International Society of Science and Religion 2022 Book Prize).

For more about Andrew’s work and research interests, visit his website at andrew davis.

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TITLES BY ANDREW M. DAVIS


$8.49

How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere captures for a general audience the spiritual shift away from a God “up there” and “out there” and towards an immanent divine right here. It’s built around the personal journeys of a close-knit group of prominent contributors. Their spiritual visions of immanence, sometimes called “panentheism,” are serving as a path of spiritual return for a growing number of seekers today. Contributors include Deepak Chopra, Richard Rohr, Rupert Sheldrake, Matthew Fox, and Cynthia Bourgeault.

$38.00

Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy is an investigation into the nature of ultimacy and explanation, particularly as it relates to the status of, and relationship among Mind, Value, and the Cosmos. It draws its stimulus from longstanding “axianoetic” convictions as to the ultimate status of Mind and Value in the western tradition of philosophical theology, and chiefly from the influential modern proposals of A.N. Whitehead, Keith Ward, and John Leslie. What emerges is a relational theory of ultimacy wherein Mind and Value, Possibility and Actuality, God and the World are revealed as “ultimate” only in virtue of their relationality. The ultimacy of relationality—what Whitehead calls “mutual immanence”—uniquely illuminates enduring mysteries surrounding: any and all existence, necessary divine existence, the nature of the possible, and the world as actual. As such, it casts fresh light upon the whence and why of God, the World, and their ultimate presuppositions.

Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (Contemporary Whitehead Studies) Nov 13, 2019
by Roland Faber, Michael Halewood, Andrew M. Davis, James Burton, Brianne Donaldson, Diego Gil, Susanne Valerie Granzer, Matthew Goulish, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Andrew Murphie, Timothy Murphy, AJ Nocek
$90.48

How do we make ourselves a Whiteheadian proposition? This question exposes the multivalent connections between postmodern thought and Whitehead’s philosophy, with particular attention to his understanding of propositions.

Edited by Roland Faber, Michael Halewood, and Andrew M. Davis, Propositions in the Making articulates the newest reaches of Whiteheadian propositions for a postmodern world. It does so by activating interdisciplinary lures of feeling, living, and co-creating the world anew. Rather than a “logical assertion,” Whitehead described a proposition as a “lure for feeling” for a collectivity to come. It cannot be reduced to the verbal content of logical justifications, but rather the feeling content of aesthetic valuations. In creatively expressing these propositions in wide relevance to existential, ethical, educational, theological, aesthetic, technological, and societal concerns, the contributors to this volume enact nothing short of “a Whiteheadian Laboratory.”

Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy (Palgrave Perspectives on Process Philosophy) Dec 13, 2021
by Andrew M. Davis, Maria-Teresa Teixeira, Wm. Andrew Schwartz
$100.87

This book newly articulates the international and interdisciplinary reach of Whitehead’s organic process cosmology for a variety of topics across science and philosophy, and in dialogue with a variety historical and contemporary voices. Integrating Whitehead’s thought with the insights of Bergson, James, Pierce, Merleau-Ponty, Descola, Fuchs, Hofmann, Grof and many others, contributors from around the world reveal the relevance of process philosophy to physics, cosmology, astrobiology, ecology, metaphysics, aesthetics, psychedelics, and religion. A global collection, this book expresses multivocal possibilities for the development of process cosmology after Whitehead.

Nature in Process: Organic Proposals in Philosophy, Society, and Religion Feb 28, 2022
by Andrew M. Davis, Maria-Teresa Teixeira, Wm. Andrew Schwartz
Paperback
$24.00
More Buying Choices
$23.80 (10 Used & New offers)





by Roland Faber, Andrew M Davis
Hardcover - $62.00
More Buying Choices - $50.86 (10 Used & New offers)
Paperback - $34.92
More Buying Choices - $26.69 (19 Used & New offers)






* * * * * *



0:27 / 59:28
Ideas in Process: Ten Whiteheadian Transitions
by Dr. Andrew Davis |  Cobb Institute
September

Sep 6, 2022Presenter: Andrew Davis Recording Date: August 23, 2022 Introduction: 00:00:00 - 00:02:35 Presentation: 00:02:36 - 00:59:28

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COMMENTARY by LISTENERS


From María Guadalupe Llanes to Everyone 01:02 PM
hi Jay. 😊

From Meijun/CPS & IPDC to Everyone 01:04 PM
hi prof. gunna, glad to see you here.

From Thomas Jay Oord to Me (Direct Message) 01:05 PM
Good to "see" you, Russ!

From Russ Slater to Thomas Jay Oord (Direct Message) 01:05 PM
You too Tom!

From Richard Livingston / Cobb Institute to Everyone 01:11 PM
Check out our full vision statement with 14 transformations here: https://cobb.institute/about/

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 01:16 PM
So serious as a young man! Who knew Norm McDonald is such a deep thinker?!

From dennis hargiss to Everyone 01:22 PM
Nietzsche considered such abstract thought and “the emptiest concepts” as “the last smoke of evaporating reality.”

From dennis hargiss to Everyone 01:50 PM
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of Epektasis (the doctrine of unceasing evolution in eternal happiness and the unceasing love of God).

From Ronald Hines to Everyone 01:51 PM
We’ll follow your chat comments and “raised hands" to carry forward a conversation in response to Andrew’s presentation.

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:06 PM
Beautiful Andrew!! So compelling!

From Mary Elizabeth Moore to Everyone 02:07 PM
Andrew, that was an exceptional presentation. Thank you!

From Howard Pepper to Everyone 02:07 PM
Great presentation... organization and concepts, etc.

From Douglas Tooley to Everyone 02:07 PM
A waterfall of verbs

From Pates to Everyone 02:07 PM
This was a beautiful presentation! Thank You!

From Ellen Livingston to Everyone 02:07 PM
encouraged

From bruce hanson to Everyone 02:08 PM
You provide a wonderful opening and invitation to a creative life. Many Thanks!

From Al Gephart to Everyone 02:08 PM
Whitehead clarified

From Jeanyne Slettom/Process Century Press to Everyone 02:08 PM
brilliant

From Lupe to Everyone 02:08 PM
great presentation! thank you!

From Eliyas Reddy Kasu to Everyone 02:08 PM
Presentation is Creative and definitely Novelty has burst forth

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:08 PM
Inspiring!

From Betty Hale to Everyone 02:08 PM
beautiful

From marcus ford to Everyone 02:08 PM
Andrew, thank you so much for this stimulating presentation

From Timothy Eastman to Everyone 02:08 PM
A brilliant summary of key process concepts - congratulations! An enhancement of possibility for all!

From Daryl Anderson to Everyone 02:08 PM
eye-opening thoughts on christianty

From Michael Witmer to Everyone 02:08 PM
Advance to decadence in the realm of aging

From dennis hargiss to Everyone 02:08 PM
Inspiring! 💓

From John Fahey / Claremont CA USA to Everyone 02:08 PM
Andrew makes Whitehead accessible

From Rolla Lewis to Everyone 02:08 PM
Great presentation. Fantastic references. Can we have them? Thank you.

From Bill McClellan to Everyone 02:08 PM
Andrew has polished the jewel, the facets shine

From George Strawn to Everyone 02:08 PM
Excellent

From David Stoney to Everyone 02:08 PM
Marvelous coalescence

From Jeff Brockman to Everyone 02:08 PM
Summary

From Zhihe Wang -IPDC to Everyone 02:08 PM
Terrific lecture !

From Richard Saville-Smith to Everyone 02:08 PM
basileau du thou

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:09 PM
With a great future ahead of him!!

From John Pohl to Everyone 02:09 PM
Thank you for the wonderful lecture.

From iPhone to Everyone 02:10 PM
I appreciate the idea of creativity in this context, and find it motivating both philosophically and artistically.

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:11 PM
I'd love to hear more about what the evidence is saying may be true, other than the Big Bang.

From Pates to Everyone 02:12 PM
Is this lecture and power pt going to be available somewhere? Thanks.

From Ronald Hines to Everyone 02:16 PM
Today’s presentation will be accessible in our "meeting recordings” YouTube channel.

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:16 PM
Great! I'll want to let Doug King take a listen in preparation for our class together!

From Al Gephart to Everyone 02:16 PM
On the surface some of the transitions appear to be value-less. Even creativity and possibilities can be understood as outside of value. How do you see value in the becoming of the universe? Ilia Delio speaks of love as the dynamic lure of evolution / becoming. How do you understand value, in particular love, in the flow of the universe

From Richard Livingston / Cobb Institute to Everyone 02:17 PM
Pates, the recordings of our meetings are typically made available here: 

From Mary Elizabeth Moore to Everyone 02:21 PM
Andrew, do you think Whitehead, in Aims of Education, is bifurcating wisdom and knowledge, as in applying (or doing) knowledge, or something more nuanced?

From Richard Saville-Smith to Everyone 02:24 PM
Andrew, How far do you think of the 10 transitions as manifestation of one state of consciousness or experiential journey?

From Jay McDaniel to Everyone 02:24 PM
John Cobb on Whitehead's Theory of Value:

From Mary Elizabeth Moore to Everyone 02:24 PM
Andrew, I also appreciated your nuances in relation to the transitions from, e.g., coercion and passivity. How do you see the nuances as important to public policy and social-ecological activism, e.g., in relation to ecological or racial justice?

From Betty Hale to Everyone 02:24 PM
I call myself a "pancompassionist" : )

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:25 PM
I like that Betty! Maybe from meaninglessness to value?

From bruce hanson to Everyone 02:29 PM
Brilliant work Andrew! I am particularly struck by the role of solitude in organism. Perhaps the fear and responsibility spurs us forward and provides dynamism? I would love to hear more about the roles of seemingly negative phenomena in the life in process.

From Howard Pepper to Everyone 02:31 PM
We need some new, organic and interconnected structures in our governance processes... from local to national (ultimately international)

From Howard Pepper to Everyone 02:37 PM
... continued from above.... structures OF process... that of informed deliberation with the aim of coming to concensus on solving of all kinds of problems. This is done somewhat here and there already. But there is a distinct "movement" toward this called "deliberative democracy". The core elements of it are involved in the vision expressed at:

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:37 PM
Peace, Harmony, Beauty

From Al Gephart to Everyone 02:39 PM
I just finished The Book of Joy, about the last coming together to the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu, and facilitated by someone who describes himself as a secular Jew. A non-theist and a theist affirming joy as a fundamental reality / possibility within all human "becomings”.

From David Stoney to Everyone 02:42 PM
I wonder how appropriate it is to meld the God concept to mental capabilities of the most successful hominid species, Homo erectus? I believe that their radically participatory mode of consciousness integrally interconnected them to the creative heart of the universe, but I’m not at all clear that they would have had a notion of a high God, even if God is indeed the aboriginal source of creativity.

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:43 PM
One of the reasons Whitehead thought God was necessary is that he saw God as ordering possibilities for actualization, making possibilities relevant to each particular moment as it arises. If God is not doing that, what is?

From Eliyas Reddy Kasu to Everyone 02:49 PM
possibilities provided by Creativity?

From Howard Pepper to Everyone 02:55 PM
Cheri, on God as "ordering possibilities..." It does seem we need SOME name or title for that aspect of ultimate oneness. without it, we have pantheism, seems to me.

From Daryl Anderson to Everyone 02:57 PM
To tie Sheri's question to Eliyas's observation... is god not the "force" or source of the ordering of possibilities ?

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:57 PM
Exactly Howard. That function is also interested in every moment's highest good, and so is "personal" in that sense.

From Andrew Davis to Everyone 02:58 PM
Friends, I would love to stay in touch with all of you: andrewmdavis.info

From Johnny to Everyone 02:59 PM
In Unificationism also God is fellow sufferer, with the fundamental impulse to give love and the sorrowful frustration of love not received-and=passed-on.

From Sheri D. Kling to Everyone 02:59 PM
Dennis, I LOVE that little guy!!

From Rolla Lewis to Everyone 02:59 PM
Thank you very much. This was lovely.

From Meijun/CPS & IPDC to Everyone 03:01 PM
Here: Everyone is equal in the face of GOD. In China: All things are equal in the face of Dao.

From Jay McDaniel
Six ways to think about God in Whitehead, offered by the Cobb Institute:

From Timothy Eastman to Everyone 03:02 PM
In my work Untying the Gordian Knot (2020), I hypothesize two fundamental logical orders (indeed, metaphysical orders that underly the 'world’) based on the quantum physics distinction of Boolean logic (of actualization) and non-Boolean logic (of potentia, or possible relations). In turn, as I argues (along with semiotics, systems thought, physics, etc.) here is a route to re-thinking these fundamental questions, and tying in with Whitehead's discussion of aesthetics, values and meaning, inter-being, wholism, etc. This philosophic approach can also be used to re-think the difficult God question. Tim Eastman

From dennis hargiss to Everyone 03:02 PM
What a wonderful presentation! So thankful to be a part of this community! Thank you, Andrew, and thank you all! 🙏🏼

From Russ Slater to Everyone 03:03 PM
Thank you Andrew and all in attendance for their thoughtful comments.


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