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 from 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

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Index - Reality & Cosmology Series



Index - Reality & Cosmology Series

A Processual Exploration of the Universe

by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

This series is not the result of a fixed construction process, but of a personally evolving exploration developed over the past several months. It will continue to unfold as new material is encountered and interwoven into the ongoing question of what reality might be like.

Its direction and organization were neither foreseen nor predetermined at the outset, but have emerged through a series of writing projects offering insight and reflection through the lens of process philosophy and theology into contemporary cultures.

Looking back, a natural pattern is beginning to take shape. The Master Contents list below represents an effort to gather and arrange these essays in a way that offers clarity, coherence, and accessibility for the reader, while still honoring the developmental nature of the work. As such, the numbering and grouping of the mini-series within this body of work will not correlate cleanly with a finished work. Hence, this present outline.

As with the subject of reality itself, this present exploration is best approached not as a finished system, but as a living process - one that will continue to deepen, expand, and be refined in the months ahead. The essays to date are but an evolving imagination of reality’s continuous becoming.

- R.E. Slater
Though this series may be read linearly, but it is best understood recursively -
using each layer to deepen and reinterpret the essays before it.


COMPOSITION  OF NARRATIVE

Story → Philosophy → Ontology → Cosmology →
Consciousness → Meaning → Theology → Ethics


WHAT IS REALITY?

Metaphysics asks: Why must reality be process?
Ontology answers: What must reality be to exist?
Cosmology shows: How reality unfolds
Consciousness reveals: How reality feels
Ethics embodies: How reality should be lived


COROLLARY REFERENCE INDEXES
These will also come under review and
refinement in the months ahead




Master Contents Index
New readers may wish to begin with Section I (Orientation) and then proceed sequentially through each succeeding section. However, each section may also be read independently from the other sections.

This index will continue to evolve alongside the work itself.

One Composition in Three Movements
When exploring reality we might move from "question, to structure, to lived expression." Or, from "questioning reality, to describing its structure, to living within its unfolding."
- R.E. Slater
  • Movement I – Inquiry: The Question of Reality
    • Orientation (Section 1)
    • Metaphysics (Section 2)
  • Movement II – Structure: The Ontology of Reality (EPR)
    • Ontology I–V (Sections 3-8)
  • Movement III – Expression: Reality Lived and Interpreted
    • Cosmology (Section 9)
    • Theology (Section 10)
    • Ethics (Section 11)

I. Orientation - Entering the Question of Reality

Gateway essays introducing the question of reality
👉 Use of narrative, imagination, and existential framing as introduction to reality series.
II. The Metaphysical Question - What Is Reality?

Why process is a philosophical necessity
👉 These essays establish a philosophical ground floor.
III. The Emergence of Embodied Process Realism (EPR)

Movement from the question of reality towards a constructive framework of reality
👉 EPR is introduced as a lived, interpretive framework - without being fully formalized. What next follows marks the transition from questioning reality to describing its structure.
IV. Ontology I - The Structure of Reality

Developing an Ontology of Reality:
Relation → Coherence → Integration → Embodiment → Persistence

Result: The emergence of Embodied Process Realism
👉 These essays serve as the conceptual core of the entire series.
V. Ontology II - Cosmology and the Physical Universe

Reality is expressed at the cosmic scale
👉 Quantum Physics becomes intelligible within an ontology of embodied process reality.
VI. Ontology III - Consciousness and Interiority

Movement from ontologic structure to ontologic experience
👉 An important distinction is made between consciousness and mind:
Ontology → coherence of consciousness
Metaphysics → panpsychism (mind)
VII. Ontology IV - Life, Evolution, and Meaning

Integration of biology, emergence, and teleological direction into EPR
👉 Bridges science and teleology to philosophy.
VIII. Ontology V - Identity, Value, and Meaning

Developing a grammar for reality
👉 These final essays provide a forward trajectory to the conclusion of the reality series.
IX. A Process Cosmology - What Kind of Universe Do We Live In?

Reading the universe through EPR
👉 This is where ontology becomes cosmological vision.
X. Theological Expansion - The Sacred Cosmos

Reading the universe through theology
👉 Places theology inside cosmology - not above it.
XI. Ethics & Culture - Living Reality

Living out Reality As It Is
👉 This is the lived consequence of EPR.

Illustrated Diagrams




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