My First Chats with the Internet using OpenAI's CHATGPT

We’ve trained an artificial intelligence model called ChatGPT to interact in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. - Open AI

My first question to the Internest using OpenAI's CHATGPT:

#1 Explain how Whiteheadian Process Theology is relevant to the subject of Christology - R.E. Slater, January 28, 2023

"Whiteheadian Process Theology is a philosophical theology that emphasizes the ongoing, dynamic nature of reality and the ongoing, creative activity of God in the world. In terms of Christology, Whiteheadian Process Theology emphasizes the ongoing, dynamic nature of the relationship between God and humanity, and the ongoing, creative activity of God in the world through the person and work of Jesus Christ. This understanding of Christology emphasizes the ongoing, transformative power of Christ's life and teachings, rather than seeing him as a static, historical figure. Additionally, Whiteheadian Process Theology emphasizes the idea that Christ is not only the revelation of God, but also the means by which God continues to reveal and transform the world." - The Internet, seconds after asking my question

#2 Explain how process theology is different from traditional theology - R.E. Slater, January 28, 2023

Process theology is a theological perspective that emphasizes the ongoing evolution and change in the nature of God and the universe. It views God as a constantly changing and evolving being who is in a process of becoming, rather than as a fixed, unchanging entity. This is in contrast to traditional theology, which often portrays God as a fixed, unchanging being who is outside of the universe and not affected by it.

Process theology also emphasizes the importance of the universe's processes and the role of human beings and other entities in shaping the world and the divine.

It also emphasizes the idea that God is not all-knowing and all-powerful, but rather limited in his knowledge and power. - The Internet, seconds after asking my question

 

*My response to Statement 3 is why review of CHATGPT's statements is required. My revised statement here is that when speaking of God in process terms we speak to God's "self-limitation" by divine fiat not of God's inabilities. However, a truer reply is that my statement is false and that God's love allows for all kinds of responses from a freewill creation. That God created by love before God did by fiat - that God's fiat is always subservient to God's love.

As a freewill Being, God imputed God's Self into creation, and by this imputation came God's freewill love. Hence, God's Self- limitations are not limitations at all but how love works. It does not control. It does not demand. It does not direct.

Further, God's Love flows as an energizing force throughout creation and as an inner divine force, "just is". "Is" doesn't require any qualifications. "Is" is God and "Is" is us.

Love is as Love does... and Love does as Love is. - res

And remember, passion is the other half of Love's coin. By passion we can do evil things: individuals, nations, churches, communities, organizations, businesses. It is how a processual cosmos behaves in its ontological "becoming" - both its good it's and bad overtures to life's symphony.

R.E. Slater, January 28, 2023

Transforming Old Wineskins...

to New Wineskins...

My Theological Review of

OpenAI's CHATGPT Response

by R.E. Slater

January 28, 2023

Overall, its answers to my two questions were immediate, relevant, and to the point. However, I had asked it a trick question. The first to summarize a fathomless subject. And the second to trip it up. All-in-all I think we time and acuity this can become a very helpful research too. - res

LET'S EXAMINE MY FIRST QUESTION

I hope to utilize Artificial Intelligence more often in the future in my research and reports. When I do I will notate my use of OpenAI's CHATGPT as opposed to my own writings. In doing so I'm hoping to find the pith of relevance between process philosophy and theology with traditional Christianity which sits upon a plethora of non-process paradigms. Paradigms which require deep extraction and expansion.

The idea of God; of God's activities and agendas; of God's intimate participation with creation and our lives; of God's redeeming, loving, atoning actions; and of our many earthy responses to this God, has shown itself to be a complicated historical and present subjective-objective existential array of good-and-bad responses by man to one another and creation itself.

Process theology is based on how our organic world and socio-eco societies work. We see processual cycles and results reflected again and again in the bible though usually unobserved by the bible's own narratives and Western church theologies.

Process is how the world works. A process-based cosmology and metaphysics of ontology attempts to capture the profoundly-formative nature of God and creation into a resulting processual philosophy and theology made the more meaningful to the world we live in, and lying about us, when understanding its rhythms... and seeing its harmonies... as we learn to "go with the flow" of God and creation.

Overall, one might say Whitehead's process thought (originally called the "process of organism") is all about symbiance (cooperative unions) and holism (personal and communal intersections with self, others and nature). Or in the Chinese/Japanese ?Korean parlances of "balance and rhythm" as reflected by their cultures. But it also is far deeper than those simplified observations... which is why the branches of cosmological metaphyics and ontological theologies, among other derivatives, has arisen through the late 20th century and into today's metamodern era.

It provides promise to religious bodies and religious people that we can act more humanely to one another. More charitably and wisely. That the faiths we carry have relevancy in this world and to those around us when leaning into the love-and-peace paradigms of wholeness and being. Of Beings who are Becoming... more than they are... more as intended by God's Self in God's creational manifestations. When doing so we, as a freewill species, and within our internal being, may find deeper resonance with life, the universe, and God's purpose in this world.

SOME CENTRAL IDEAS OF PROCESS THOUGHT

• Process Thought is a very real reality with the deep promise to value all things as they are;

• It's difference as an applied philosophy is to regenerate and rejuvenate all things about us... itself a mirror image of how God and the cosmos themselves work and function;

• That each living community of communities is filled with loving potential and ability;

• That it recognizes value in difference;

• That it seeks to build peace into all relationships around us;

• And to know that what we see-and-feel by a life-generating metaphysic such as a process pholosophic-theology is speaking to the very vibe which moves God to be God;

• A vibe which tells us the becoming of God, and the cosmos, and ourselves, is a natural socio-eco-spirit evolution of life around us;

• That a processual cosmology is a deeply connected and intertwined panrelational, panexperiential, and panpsychic process between the parts and wholes of God's cosmic universe.

In other words, process theology is simply describing the Christ-event of the bible, but when doing so leaning into all processual forms of this cosmically salvific event rather than the traditional Christian forms which emphasis other observations out-of-sync with the nature and being of God and God's cosmos.

A process-metaphysic is no will-o'-the wisp series of Westernized Platonisms, Aristotelian-Scholastic thoughts, or Classic Enlightenment/Modernal philosophies whether European/Continental or American; all of which seem to argue for various forms of stoicism, legalism, isolationalism, or conformal doctrines of a militarised church socially, economically, politically, and ecologically.

And though Whitehead was seeking to recapture the processual propositions of past philosophers from earlier ages as far back as early religions and non-Hellenised Greek thinking, what his student John Cobb saw in it was a process theology for peace, goodness, and life-generating responses to all errant processes which are devolving forms of processual life changes. 

Process theology then seeks to underline the goodness and love of a life-generating God fully involved in life-atoning-and-redeeming all becoming events towards beautify, wholeness, and solidarity back to itself. To essential "come back into tune" with creation's generative teleology.

And though traditional Christianity says its "all these things" we plainly see that it has not been "all these things" to either man nor beast, stream or wood, communities of difference and communities of others. More rather, traditional Christianity has been and continues to become unholistic to the cosmos around us; harmfully deterministic in its exploitation and oppression to all things its comes in contact with; and deeply "unbiblical" in it's propositions of who God is and isn't in it's estimation. Which means like Christian's professed Savior, the church itself must repent and re-confess what it's all about by getting it's practices, attitudes, behaviors, creeds, and dogmas back in tune with the God they attest but do not know.

CONCLUSION

Lastly, process theology reflects Jesus' atonement as it's divine event is reflected back upon itself to the very "Life-giving" nature of our Loving God indwelling all hearts and world about us. God's atoning and redeeming work at Calvary is but part-and-parcel of life's creational beauty and essence. We see in it cute little puppies, babies, hobbies, and projects of unity all around us. The processual revolution of Jesus' Love speaks to the functional revolution going on about us though we see it not nor live it as we should.

The Cross then was a deep signifier by God of what life consists of around us. Divine-Life is the continual renewal and repurposing of the Spirit-life everywhere indwelling as it wrestles with creational freewill and indetermination which confronts a freewill creational every moment of it's existence. By it's very core a freewill creation must chose life and not death. That life will always be a challenge, filled with hardships and suffering against the very things which would devolve life from it's fuller potentials. Whitehead called them profound consequential results with ongoing potentials of life-releasing generative value. The church calls them the grace and peace of Spirit-filled Living when lived in God's Love. Process calls them one-and-the-same.

That divinity sovereignty is best described as God's giving of God's very Self into the very core processes of creation's DNA. That creation - such as humanity - is plagued with choices of good and evil, sin and love. And that it feels the deep drag and pull of creation's processually generative panpsychic Cosmic Being, it's processual organism, as weighing against all within itself which is out-of-sync.

The Christ event reflects as much. We are out-of-tune with God and with ourselves even as creation is fraught with the indeterminancy of it's freewill being. And yet, the Cross of Christ reminds us that God is intimately present with us and creation in actively transforming wayward fait-accomplis back to itself and to the very meaning of restitutional redemptive processes of the God of the cosmos. (*The meaning of FAIT ACCOMPLI is a thing accomplished and presumably irreversible.)

This then is how I would interpret OpenAI's CHATGPT opening answer to my first question. It's sentences were mundane and repeatitive but got to the general point of how we might intersect the old wineskins of Christian thought to the new wineskins of processual Christology when applied to contemporary thinking today.

A very simple request to speak to how process theology might reflect the very heart of the bible's Christ event deemed by the church as the world's mid-point of salvific history. That all which led before the Cross, and all which resulted after the Cross, - in the best of senses of loving becoming - was fully reflective, instrumental, even significantly recharging, of God's Selfhood in active redemptive participation towards God's insolent, and fully becoming partnerships with creation, with ourselves, and with all those apart from ourselves.

The holograms of our universe are but a microcasm of the stated organic whole we participate within physically, spiritually, emotionally, and theistically. God not only saves all... God is fully saving all each and every moment of every day forever and forever.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

January 28, 2022

It's time for Christianity to EVOLVE!

Theologian Keith Ward's "God of Love"

 

Pictured L to R: Peter Enns, Tripp Fuller, Adam Clark, Thomas Oord

Keith Ward and a God of Love

article link

by Thomas J. Oord

October 16th, 2022

I recently wrote a chapter for a book celebrating the work of Keith Ward. My argument is that Ward offers a metaphysics that supports both a conceptual basis for love and a basis to view God as loving.

God is Love

Keith Ward believes an adequate account of love requires an equally adequate account of God. He believes God is the chief exemplar of love and the ultimate Mind making creaturely love possible.

Keith believes a Christian description of God is “guided by the key teaching that ‘God is love.’”[1] But just about every Christian believes God loves.

The way many professional theologians conceive of God, however, does not align with love as I have defined it, as we experience it, or as described in much of sacred scripture. Keith Ward’s concept of God is different; it aligns with love so understood.

God Must Love

Unlike the voluntarist God of some theologies, Keith believes God must love. God cannot freely choose evil.[2] In fact, divine freedom is “necessarily conditioned” by love.[3] To put this in my own terms, Keith believes love comes logically prior in the divine nature to will.

We should reject theologies aligned with ancient Greek philosophical notions of a static God, says Keith. Such theologies consider God a timeless substance rather than a dynamic person. They present God as simple, immutable, and impassible too, which fails to align with the dominant biblical portrayal of God or with the personal piety of believers.[4]

Keith agrees with the majority portrayal of God in the Christian scripture, which portrays God as “a dynamic, creative, and relational reality.”[5] This dynamic God changes but is not in all ways immutable. “A general biblical account of God,” says Keith, “is more sympathetic to the view that God changes in some respects than to the view that God is completely changeless.”[6] A changing God “capable of new creative actions is more supreme than are beings that cannot be other than it is.”[7]

Open and Relational God

Keith Ward is what I call an “open and relational theologian,” because he believes God essentially experiences time analogous to how creatures experience it. God’s experience is temporal, but the divine nature does not change. Keith rejects the classic view of divine simplicity because it undermines the personal and relational aspects of God. God does not have a preordained plan that is worked out in a predetermined and precise way.[8]

A relational God suffers with and knows creatures experientially. God’s “concern for the well-being of creatures implies knowledge of their condition,” Keith says. And it implies “pity if it involves suffering, revulsion if it involves the willful causing of suffering, and action to relieve that suffering where it is possible.”

A God who simply contemplates suffering “is not truly love,” says Keith. “The one who truly loves will do something to help.”[9] God is passible, because “affected by the beauties and sufferings of the created world.”[10]

God’s Creative Love

Love compelled God to create the universe. “One who believes in the existence of God,” argues Keith, “will believe that there is an actual case of supreme goodness that has created the world for the sake of good.”[11] And God had a particular aim in creating: “that autonomous persons can come into existence,” says Keith. These creaturely persons would be able to “shape their own lives freely and creatively, and can find their fulfillment in being united to the divine in love.”[12]

In a certain sense, says Keith, God needs creation. “If God’s love is agape love, love of the other and the imperfect, then that love could not exist without a creation containing possibly imperfect creatures.” This does not mean that the universe created God, however. “Creation in no way brings God into being,” Keith says, “and it depends wholly upon God in order to exist.”[13]

Trinity?

A good number of Christian theologians affirm divine love as necessary among members of the social trinity. But Keith thinks “the idea of God as a sort of society is a bad idea.”[14] Christians should not think God is comprised of three persons, each with distinct centers of consciousness, distinct freedoms, distinct responsibilities, distinct wills, and distinct relations between one another.

This formulation of the Trinity is more tritheistic than monotheistic. Keith believes God is one; God has one mind and will. I’ve reviewed Keith’s book on the Trinity here.

The loving Creator experientially loves and relates with the created world.[15] God’s love is ad extra. “If God is a relational being characterized by love,” Keith reasons, “that relation must be to non-divine persons, and not a sort of secret self-love.”[16] 

We can talk about divine love as in some sense trinitarian, Keith says, if we identify a “threefold form of divine love – as creating finite persons, relating in love to them, and uniting them to the divine life.” This activity “is the manifestation of the supreme goodness of God as creative, self-giving, and universally inclusive love.”[17] “If God is agape love,” says Keith, “this is love of what is truly other than God, not just love of the divine beauty and self.”[18]

God and the Future

God’s “plan” for creation is not a detailed blueprint of all that will occur. God does not entirely determine or even foreknow what the future of the universe will be. But “God wills that creatures cooperate in the work to create new expressions of love and goodness,” says Keith, “and that plan can take many forms.”[19] The love plan Keith says God entertains is neither unilaterally determining nor willy nilly.

Creaturely love is derived from divine love. We “must learn to love,” says Keith, “by learning to share in the divine love.”[20] This learning provides creaturely persons with their purpose. “The highest business of life is to live well in a just and compassionate society,” Keith says, “and to see that living well consists in seeking the true, the good, and beautiful for its own sake.” It involves “realizing as fully as possible our positive human potentialities, and then working for a society and a world in which that is a real possibility for all without exception.”[21]

Love after Death

Loving creatures hope to experience even greater love after death. “For those who believe themselves to experience something of a God of love,” says Keith, “the hope of paradise is the hope of closer knowledge and love of God.”[22] But this closer knowledge and love does not come through divine fiat. God wills that persons “attain their end by their own efforts, in cooperation with the divine…” And “if finite persons are to love and realize themselves in God, there must be more to finite consciousness than the often painful and always inadequate sense of union with the divine that is apparent in ordinary lives.”[23]

This “more” is what many theists call “heaven.” Even “the hope of heaven,” says Keith, “is entailed by belief in a God of love.”[24]

Keith Ward’s theistic metaphysics provides a far more adequate account of love, creaturely and divine, than alternatives. Rather than a materialist metaphysics that denies essential elements of love, such as value, freedom, experience, agency, morality, and more, Keith’s idealistic metaphysics not only accounts for these elements but emphasizes them. Rather than a theistic metaphysics that claims God is impassible, timeless, simple, and in all ways immutable, Keith’s theistic metaphysics portrays dynamic love as the activity of a dynamic God in giving-and-receiving relations with creatures.

Keith Ward’s philosophical vision aligns with a robust account of love.

---

[1] Keith Ward, Christ and Cosmos, 86.

[2] Ibid., 167.

[3] Ibid., 165.

[4] Keith expresses this throughout his book Sharing in the Divine Nature.

[5] Ibid., 72.

[6] Ibid., 61.

[7] Ibid., 73.

[8] Ward, Sharing in the Divine Nature, 77-78.

[9] Ibid., 47.

[10] Ibid., 49.

[11] Ward, Morality, Autonomy, and God, 208.

[12] Ward, Christ and Cosmos, 231.

[13] Ward, Sharing in the Divine Nature, 74.

[14] Ward, Christ and Cosmos, x.

[15] Ibid., 72.

[16] Ibid., 182.

[17] Christ and Cosmos, 62.

[18] Ward, Sharing in the Divine Nature, 77.

[19] Ibid., 77-78.

[20] Ward, Morality, Autonomy, and God, 202.

[21] Ibid., 215.

[22] Ibid., 207.

[23] Ibid., 192.

[24] Ibid., 207.

Process Cosmotheology and the Biological Universe, Part 3 - Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

 Process Cosmotheology and the Biological Universe

Part 1 - Why a Process-based Universe is Essential

Part 2 - A New Philosophic-Theology

Part 3 - Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

Part 4 - Andrew Davis' Response to Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

* * * * * * *

Astrobiology, Cosmotheology, and the Biological Universe:

Implications for Religion and Theology

by Steven Dick

October 4, 2022

An Abstract Presented to the Process Group of "Cobb & Friends"

Recent discoveries in astronomy and astrobiology strongly indicate the need for a transformation of established theologies and suggest possibilities for new cosmically-oriented theologies such as cosmotheology.

• As concerning the Biological Universe, the idea that intelligent life in the universe is common necessitates a reconciliation of this new universe with dogmas of the Abrahamic religions in the same way that Thomas Aquinas tried to reconcile natural philosophy and Christianity in 13th century Europe. [Seemingly,] other religions and their associated theologies will be less affected but still need to incorporate the cosmic perspective.

• In particular, discoveries in astronomy and astrobiology resonate with the dynamism of process theology in the sense that all theologies must take into account cosmic evolution and the possibilities of a biological universe in which life may be part of the very fabric of the universe.

• [Assumption] These discoveries also strongly suggest a denial of supernaturalism, a critical eye toward the epistemological status of revelation, and a rethinking of the nature of God and the sacred in the tradition of religious naturalism. In contrast to traditional theologies, human destiny is most universally couched in cosmic terms.

• The endeavor of transforming current theologies and creating new cosmic theologies is broadly characterized as astrotheology, a new and increasingly robust discipline that embraces the possibility of a more universal theology common to all intelligence in the cosmos.

• Astrotheology and its various flavors such as cosmotheology are part of a restructuring of our worldviews, a necessary endeavor as we internalize the realities of the new universe.

Biography

Steven J. Dick served as the NASA Chief Historian and Director of the NASA History Office from 2003 to 2009. Prior to that he was an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory for more than two decades. He was the 2014 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center. In 2013, he testified before the United States Congress on the subject of astrobiology. From 2011 to 2012 he held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum.

Dicks is the author or editor of 25 books, including most recently Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact (Cambridge, 2018), Classifying the Cosmos: How We Can Make Sense of the Celestial Landscape (Springer, 2019), and Space, Time, and Aliens: Collected Works on Cosmos and Culture (Springer, 2020).

In 2006, Dick received the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize from the American Astronomical Society for a career that has significantly influenced the field of the history of astronomy. He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, and the NASA Group Achievement Award for his work on astrobiology. He has served as President of the History of Astronomy Commission of the International Astronomical Union and as Chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. Minor planet 6544 Steven Dick was named in his honor.

More information at http://www.stevenjdick.com/index.html

* * * * * * *

Publications by Steven J. Dick

 

Stephen J. Dick Cosmotheology

Presented to "Cobb & Friends"

by Steven J. Dick

October 4, 2022

https://cobb.institute/john-cobb-friends/

Cobb & Friends YouTube channel

A Few Notes by RE Slater

*Steven's presentation consisted of reading from his Power Point slides even as Andrew Davis would later do himself the following week. Notes were mostly unneeded because of the thoroughness of each presenter's slides.

*metaphysics = met·a·phys·ics (noun) - the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.

Question:

Would you regard metaphysics as a discipline of a Naturalistic Cosmology?

Response:

Cosmologists would regard the question of the initial conditions for the universe as belonging to the realm of metaphysics or religion and not to the proper study of cosmology. Metaphysics would be considered an abstract theory with no basis in reality.

Question:

What is metaphysics in simple words?

Response:

It is derived from the Greek word meta ta physika ("after the things of nature"); referring to an idea, doctrine, or posited reality outside of human sense perception.

In modern philosophical terminology, metaphysics refers to the studies of what cannot be reached through objective studies of material reality. It is beyond the physics of the observer.

Steven Dick

Oct 3, 2021

This interview is featured as part of a course

available at https://www.arewealone.us/

Video Contents

Are We Alone, 2:05

The Ancient Greeks, 4:03

Aristotle, 5:42

The Condemnation of 1277, 11:56

Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial, 15:04

The Cartesian Tradition, 20:30

Discovery of a World in the Moon, 21:19

Defining Life Does Not Help Us Understand the Origin of Life, 36:28

Has the Concept of Alone Changed over Time, 37:46

The Origin of Life, 38:29

Have You Ever Seen a UFO, 39:27

The Fermi Paradox, 44:17

Objective Knowledge, 46:16

The Astrobiology Debate, 48:28

Altruism, 55:43

Xin Liu on the Three Body Problem, 57:53

What Is the Impact of Finding Life beyond Earth, 1:01:09

Would You Invest in Microscopes to Look for Nano Alien Spacecraft, 1:03:25

The Definition of Life, 1:04:30

How Do You Determine the Artificiality, 1:05:24

Are We Alone in the Universe, 1:12:16

Wikipedia - Astrotheology

Astrotheology, astral mysticism, astral religion, astral or stellar theology (also referred to as astral or star worship) is the worship of the stars (individually or together as the night sky), the planets, and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. In anthropological literature these systems of practice may be referred to as astral cults.

In the 21st century the term astrotheology is used by Jan Irvin, Jordan Maxwell and Andrew Rutajit (2006) in reference to "the earliest known forms of religion and nature worship," advocating the entheogen (drug-induced) theory of the origin of religion:

The evolutionary origin of religions and religious behavior is a field of study related to evolutionary psychology, the origin of language and mythology, and cross-cultural comparison of the anthropology of religion. Some subjects of interest include Neolithic religion, evidence for spirituality or cultic behavior in the Upper Paleolithic, and similarities in great ape behavior.

Books on Astrotheology

As Science developed Astrotheologies gave way

as explanations for the origin of life...

What we know now of our Galaxy

Wikipedia - Astrobiology

Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investigates the deterministic conditions and contingent events with which life arises, distributes, and evolves in the universe. It considers the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists, and if it does, how humans can detect it.

Astrobiology makes use of molecular biology, biophysics, biochemistry, chemistry, astronomy, physical cosmology, exoplanetology, geology, paleontology, and ichnology to investigate the possibility of life on other worlds and help recognize biospheres that might be different from that on Earth. The origin and early evolution of life is an inseparable part of the discipline of astrobiology. Astrobiology concerns itself with interpretation of existing scientific data, and although speculation is entertained to give context, astrobiology concerns itself primarily with hypotheses that fit firmly into existing scientific theories.

This interdisciplinary field encompasses research on the origin of planetary systems, origins of organic compounds in space, rock-water-carbon interactions, abiogenesis on Earth, planetary habitability, research on biosignatures for life detection, and studies on the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in outer space.

Biochemistry may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the Universe was only 10–17 million years old. According to the panspermia hypothesis, microscopic life—distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and other small Solar System bodies—may exist throughout the universe. According to research published in August 2015, very large galaxies may be more favorable to the creation and development of habitable planets than such smaller galaxies as the Milky Way. Nonetheless, Earth is the only place in the universe known to harbor life at this time. Estimates of habitable zones around other stars, sometimes referred to as "Goldilocks zones", along with the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets and new insights into extreme habitats here on Earth, suggest that there may be many more habitable places in the universe than considered possible until very recently.

Current studies on the planet Mars by the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are searching for evidence of ancient life as well as plains related to ancient rivers or lakes that may have been habitable. The search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic molecules on the planet Mars is now a primary NASA and ESA objective.

Even if extraterrestrial life is never discovered, the interdisciplinary nature of astrobiology, and the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives engendered by it, may still result in a range of benefits here on Earth.

Toward a Constructive Naturalistic Cosmotheology

by Steven J. Dick

Excerpt - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-41614-0_13

Cosmotheology is a theology that takes into account what we know about the universe based on science. It is therefore a naturalistic theology in the tradition of religious naturalism.

This [excerpted] chapter takes as its foundational assumption the concept that the supernatural does not exist.

Following this concept, we present six principles of cosmotheology, including the idea that:

• we are not physically, biologically, cognitively, or morally central in the universe;

• that any [unnecessary] concept of God must be grounded in naturalistic cosmic evolution;

• that it must have an expansive moral dimension, an astroethics extending to all life in the universe;

• and that while a human destiny linked to cosmic evolution rather than supernaturalism is a radical departure from the past, it is in the end beneficial and liberating.

Such a worldview resolves many ancient theological problems:

• Bad things happen to good people because the universe is hostile rather than loving.

• Yet the prospect of contact with life beyond Earth leaves open the possibility of interacting with that life, and the idea of a loving and compassionate God can be expressed naturally in the way we treat our fellow humans and other creatures in the universe without resorting to supernaturalism.

Stripped of supernaturalism and other accoutrements, compassion is at the core of all religions, even if the ideal is not always met, and universal compassion is at the core of cosmotheology.

Steven Dicks, Cosmotheologist

Steven Dicks' Seminars, Publications, Forum Discussions, and more...

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SELECT WEEK 1 COMMENTS

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From RE Slater to everyone 01:57 PM [edited]

From what I understand of Whiteheadian Process Philosophy is that:

• It already inhabits Steven Dick's questions... 

• That Whitehead is deeply centered in the cosmo-metaphysical (sic, cosmo-ecological)...

• And by extending any ancient religion's identity of themselves (including the Judeo-Christian faith) that a faith metaphysic is naturally located in the God of the meta-verse et al...

• Further, for many non-processual theologies, such statements will require better responses than they have now.

• By implication I think of all natural theologies of the earth including all sciences and socio-politico categories as inherently and naturally processual (whether admitted or not) as reflecting a naturally processual creation...

• Examples would be the studies of processual evolution, processual quantum sciences, processual Jungian Arche-types, etc and etc. Hence, all creation may very adequately be described in terms of processual Whiteheadian process philosophy and its later development of process theology.

• Finally, the questions being asked are all easily and quite naturally being answered in process philosophy and theology's metaphysics.

From Jay McDaniel to Everyone 02:02 PM

I really appreciate this talk. It seems to me that there are many connections with the process tradition:

• the notion that wherever there is actuality there is something like experience

• the idea that God is a lure within the whole of the cosmos, not the earth alone

• the idea that we humans are part of, not apart from, a larger web of becomings, including galactic becomings

Here's an essay I wrote called "A New Sense of Transcendences: Expanding religious horizons."

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Steven Dicks, Cosmotheologist

Cosmotheology: Steven J. Dick

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by Ted Peters

May 13, 2022

Some books stimulate kairos excitement. Like watching your favorite player hit a home run, I cheered when I first read Steven J. Dick’s Plurality of Worlds: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Dick, 1982). Since its publication in 1982, others such as Michael J. Crowe have similarly documented the story of our terrestrial ancestors thinking about our extraterrestrial neighbors (Crowe, 1988).

Dick’s Plurality of Worlds first substantiated for me how speculations about sharing our universe with off-Earth civilizations has been with us since the birth of our own civilization. Neither the Greco-Roman worldview nor the medieval Christian worldview would find sharing our universe with ET anathema. Dire tabloid predictions that alien contact would allegedly destroy our fragile inherited religious traditions go limp in the face of the kind of knowledge Dick makes available.

That’s history. What about the present?

Steven Dick along with colleagues indefatigably produces the kind of scholarship that prepares us for the societal impact of astrobiology and its dramatic discoveries. His fine volume, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact, is a vivid case in point (Dick, 2018).

Dick is also a constructive thinker. For the last two decades he has been constructing a cosmic centered ethics along with his version of cosmotheology. [1] You can find a cosmotheology manifesto in the book we published at CTNS (Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences) in 2018, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Life. (Peters, 2018, Chapter 14)

Astrotheology, Process Theology, and Cosmic Consciousness

The first week of May found me and some of my favorite colleagues conferencing at Willamette University on “Astrotheology, Exo-Philosophy, and Cosmic Religion.”

This dialogue between astrobiologists and process philosophers was sponsored by the Center for Process Studies, headed by Andrew M. Davis.

The Smithsonian’s Constance Bertka opened with an overview of Astrotheology. She was followed by NASA historian Steven Dick, developing his [naturalistic] Cosmotheology. The process philosophers responded, critiqued, and integrated. Look in the future for a published volume of the proceedings.

Astrotheology as Public Theology

Astrotheology is one form of public theology.

Public theology may be conceived in the church and critically refined in the academy, but public theology's chief feature is that it is offered to the wider public for the sake of the common good.

Steve Dick’s cosmotheology is offered to the wider public for the sake of the common good:

“In a nutshell, public theology (theologica publica) is concerned with the public affairs or institutions of society (res publica) to promote the common good in society” avers Lutheran public theologian Paul S. Chung (Chung 2022, 11).

Or, in the words of South African leader, John deGruchy, “Christian witness in secular democratic society means promoting the common good by witnessing to core values rather than seeking privilege for the Christian religion” (DeGruchy, 2007).

With the common good in mind, I observe that Dick’s cosmotheology is offered to the wider public rather than the church. And, it is offered for the common good of all Earth’s residents.