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

Friday, November 8, 2013

N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Jesus' Story is God's Promised Fulfillment to Israel

What did it mean to call Jesus “God”? NT Wright
If Paul must have been aware that he was reaffirming the classic Jewish monotheism of his day, he must equally have been aware of the fact that he had redrawn this monotheism quite dramatically around Jesus himself. This bold claim will be made good in what follows (644).
NT Wright develops his Christology in this discussion with many proposals, including Moule, Dunn, Hurtado, but especially Richard Bauckham. Bauckham’s proposal is simple and striking:
that the highest possible Christology – the inclusion of Jesus in the unique divine identity – was central to the faith of the early church even before any of the New Testament writings were written, since it occurs in all of them. 
Nor did this require any backing away from ancient Jewish monotheism: 
. . . this high Christology was entirely possible within the understanding of Jewish monotheism we have outlined. Novel as it was, it did not require any repudiation of the monotheistic faith which the first Christians axiomatically shared with all Jews. That Jewish monotheism and high Christology were in some way in tension [with one another] is one of the prevalent illusions in this field that we must allow the texts to dispel. 
Jewish Monotheism, [Bauckham] here clarifies, has three aspects: creational, eschatological and cultic. God is the sole creator; he will at the last establish his universal kingdom; and he, and he alone, is to be worshipped. This launches Bauckham into a detailed, and necessarily technical, account of Paul’s language about Jesus, from which he concludes that Paul, like the rest of early Christianity, unhesitatingly ascribed to Jesus precisely this triple divine identity. He is the agent of creation; he is the one through whom all things are reconciled; he is to be worshipped. 
With all of this I am in agreement. But there is one thing missing, and it is the burden of my song in this chapter to propose it and explain it. And it seems to me that when we do so all kinds of other evidence comes back into the picture to make an even larger, more comprehensive and satisfying whole (652-653).
Wright continues on the same page, after observing that the method is backwards — namely wondering if Judaism had other figures about whom they said divine-type things, thereby making it Jewish to do what Christians did:
But to raise the question in this way is, I believe, to start at the wrong end. If the phenomenon to be explained is the fact that from extremely early on the followers of Jesus used language for him (and engaged in practices, such as worship, in which he was invoked) which might previously have been thought appropriate only for Israel’s God, why should we not begin, not with ‘exalted figures’ who might as it were be assimilated into the One God, but with the One God himself? Did Judaism have any beliefs, stories, ideas about God himself upon which they might have drawn to say what they now wanted to say about Jesus?
Which story? Here is Wright’s proposal:
Central to second-temple monotheism was the belief we sketched in chapter 2: that Israel’s God, having abandoned Jerusalem and the Temple at the time of the Babylonian exile, would one day return. He would return in person. He would return in glory. He would return to judge and save. He would return to bring about the new Exodus, overthrowing the enemies that had enslaved his people. He would return to establish his glorious, tabernacling presence in their midst. He would return to rule over the whole world. He would come back to be king (653).
Here we go because the way to ask the deity question is to ask if the story about God was the story about Jesus — and I would agree with NTW on this and would also say it is the way forward in so many discussions of christology. What is the story about God? What is the story about Jesus?
Notice, though, even at this stage, what follows. Whereas in the modern period people have come to the New Testament with the question of Jesus’ ‘divinity’ as one of the uppermost worries in their mind, and have struggled to think of how a human being could come to be thought of as ‘divine’, but for Jesus’ first followers the question will have posed itself the other way round. 
It was not a matter of them pondering this or that human, angelic, perhaps quasi-divine figure, and then transferring such categories to Jesus in such a way as to move him up (so to speak) to the level of the One God. It was a matter of them pondering the promises of the One God whose identity, as Bauckham has rightly stressed, was made clear in the scriptures, and wondering what it would look like when he returned to Zion, when he came back to judge the world and rescue his people, when he did again what he had done at the Exodus. 
Not for nothing had Jesus chosen Passover as the moment for his decisive action, and his decisive Passion. It was then a matter of Jesus’ followers coming to believe that in him, and supremely in his death and resurrection – the resurrection, of course, revealing that the death was itself to be radically re-evaluatedIsrael’s God had done what he had long promised. He had returned to be king. He had ‘visited’ his people and ‘redeemed’ them. He had returned to dwell in the midst of his people. Jesus had done what God had said he and he alone would do. 
Early christology did not begin, I suggest, as a strange new belief based on memories of earlier Jewish language for mediator-figures, or even on the strong sense of Jesus’ personal presence during worship and prayer, important though that was as well. The former was not, I think, relevant, and the latter was, I suggest, important but essentially secondary. The most important thing was that in his life, death and resurrection Jesus had accomplished the new Exodus, had done in person what Israel’s God had said he would do in person. He had inaugurated God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. Scholars have spent too long looking for pre-Christian Jewish ideas about human figures, angels or other intermediaries. What matters is the pre-Christian Jewish ideas about Israel’s God. Jesus’ first followers found themselves not only (as it were) permitted to use God-language for Jesus, but compelled to use Jesus-language for the One God (654-655).
So now to this:
All these themes, then, lead into one another, spill over into one another, presuppose one another, interact with one another: Exodus, redemption, tabernacle, presence, return, wisdom, kingship (655).


Continue to Index -
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

List of Open Universities: Some Fun, A Little Humor, & Tongue-in-Cheek Introductions


From Ancient Greece to quantum mechanics,
or what a Chinese room and a cat have to do with infinity.

From the fine folks at the Open University comes 60-Second Adventures in Thought,
a fascinating and delightfully animated series exploring six famous thought experiments.

omes from Ancient Greece and explores motion as an illusion:




The Grandfather Paradox grapples with time travel:




Chinese Room comes from the work of John Searle,
originally published in 1980, and deals with artificial intelligence:




mathematician David Hilbert, tackles the gargantuan issue of infinity:




The Twin Paradox, first explained by Paul Langevin in 1911,
examines special relativity:




Schrödinger’s Cat, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger
in 1935, is a quantum mechanics mind-bender:




For more such fascination and cognitive calisthenics, you won’t go wrong with

More...

Religion as social control - 60 Second Adventures in Religion (1/4)




Religion as ritual - 60 Second Adventures in Religion (2/4)




Religion as a mother - 60 Second Adventures in Religion (3/4)




Religion as a virus - 60 Second Adventures in Religion (4/4)






The Open University (OU) is a distance learning and research[5] university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom. The university is funded by a combination of student fees, contract income, and allocations for teaching and research by the higher education funding bodies throughout the UK. It is notable for having an open entry policy, i.e. students' previous academic achievements are not taken into account for entry to most undergraduate courses. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off-campus, but many of its courses (both undergraduate and postgraduate) can be studied off-campus anywhere in the world.[6] There are a number of full-time postgraduate research students based on the 48 hectare university campus[7][8] where they use the OU facilities for research, as well as more than 1000 members of academic and research staff and over 2500 administrative, operational and support staff.[9]

The OU was established in 1969 and the first students enrolled in January 1971.[10] The University administration is based at Walton Hall, Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, but has regional centres in each of its thirteen regions around the United Kingdom. It also has offices and regional examination centres in most other European countries. The University awards undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, as well as non-degree qualifications such as diplomas and certificates, or continuing education units.

With more than 250,000 students enrolled, including around 32,000 aged under 25[11] and more than 50,000 overseas students,[12] it is the largest academic institution in the United Kingdom (and one of the largest in Europe) by student number, and qualifies as one of the world's largest universities. Since it was founded, more than 1.5 million students have studied its courses.[12] It was rated top university in England and Wales for student satisfaction in the 2005,[13] 2006[14] and 2012 [15] United Kingdom government national student satisfaction survey, and second in the 2007 survey.[16] Out of 132 universities and colleges, the OU was ranked 43rd (second quartile) in the Times Higher Education Table of Excellence in 2008, between the University of Reading and University of the Arts London; it was rated highly in Design, Art History, English, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Computer Science, Development Studies, Social Policy and Social Work, and Sociology.[17] It was ranked overall as a nationally top forty, and globally top five hundred university by the Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2011, as well as being ranked 247 for citations of its academics.[18]

The Open University is also one of only three United Kingdom higher education institutions to gain accreditation in the United States of America by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education,[19] an institutional accrediting agency, recognized by the United States Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.[20]


* * * * * * * * *

Khan Academy - http://www.khanacademy.org/ (scroll down to see K-College courses)

From Wikipedia -

In 2009, the Khan Academy received the Microsoft Tech Award for education.

In 2010 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill Gates endorsed the learning resource, calling it "unbelievable" and saying "I've been using [Khan Academy] with my kids".

In 2010, Google's Project 10100 provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, to allow for translation of the Khan Academy's content, and to allow for the hiring of additional staff.

* * * * * * * * *


Khan Academy is a non-profit[3] educational website created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. The stated mission is to provide "a free world-class education for anyone anywhere".

The website features 700 micro lectures[1] via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare, medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and computer science.[4] Khan Academy has delivered over 300 million lessons.[5][6]


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Complete List of BBC Topics - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/



Never underestimate the power of a new haircut.

Watch This Incredible Timelapse Of What Happens When You Give A Homeless Veteran A Makeover
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/watch-this-incredible-timelapse-of-what-happens-when-you-giv

Ryan Broderick BuzzFeed Staff
posted on November 7, 2013 at 11:15am EST

 
 
Homeless Vet Gets Awesome Makeover
 
 
 

1. Meet Jim. He agreed to let the nice people at Dégagé Ministries, Design 1 Salon & Spa, and Rob Bliss Creative give him a makeover.

2. After leaving the service, Jim has struggled with alcohol and homelessness. They wanted to show Jim that a respectable guy was still underneath all that scruff.



3. So they decided to give him a booster shot of confidence.





5. And after a proper shave…



 

7. And a stylish haircut…





9. And a sharp-looking suit…



10. Jim realized things weren’t so grim after all.



11. According to Dégagé Ministries, after the video was shot, Jim decided for the first time to enter Alcoholics Anonymous and now has his own housing.





 

Carrie Underwood and Vince Gill Sing, "How Great Thou Art"


Carrie Underwood with Vince Gill How Great thou Art

2016

Includes Intro

File this one under "gives me chills," Carrie Underwood's voice is absolutely
gorgeous singing "How Great Thou Art" in this emotion-filled duet with Vince Gill.

I have goose bumps all over just simply amazing.

Brings tears to my eyes every time I watch!!!!

Amazing I just love that Song!!!
And yes it brings tears to my eyes.

Amazing Grace it so describes how I truly feel about my God and savior!!





Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Pacifism's Ideals Against "Just War" and "Measured Response," Part II

Last week I was working through the several ideas of pacifism and its counterparts of "Just War" theory (sic, there are no "just wars," just "just causes") and "Measured Responses" (meet all oppression with appropriate delegation and determination before launching reciprocating policies that become locked into place without budge or move). Those ideas may be found in the post, Pacifism's Ideals Against "Just War" and "Measured Response."
 
Today, Roger Olson presents a post of expediency which I think is basically a re-hash of my earlier post from a week ago. It is built upon common sense and a sensible response to evil and cruelty through judicious remediation, open and honest communication, and a willingness to investigate all truths (or untruths), before forming a solidifying opinion. In a sense, an equitable court of public opinion is presented over an inequitable one filled with mistaken impressions, wrongful lies and slander, biased or prejudicial stereotypes, inaccurate media reports, and/or public fears and political pandering to those fears. Hence, no public policy should be formed without first during the hard work of validating both the wrongs committed, and the ethical dilemmas they may further present, if any further action is undertaken.
 
One further note is Olson's reluctant use of measured force while retaining his idea of being a Christian "pacifist" along the lines of Jesus' commands. Even so, I applaud his version of this idea of pacifism, though another definition of it would see all abandon to any force used to the protection of life, liberty, and freedom. As such, I would much more align with Olson's brand of pacifism in defense of the weak and innocent than I would by not doing anything at all. I suppose this would be more in line with the idea of "American Justice" as we see it exploited by Hollywood. (And no, I don't equate "American Justice" with the judicious response to biblical rightness... rather, I use it as a cultural pejorative, if I understand and am using the term correctly).
 
However, there is a far greater sin than the one of reacting to evil, and that is the one of taking no action at all. It is the sin of cowardice in the face of evil. Or the sin of no response by allowing evil to harm another. Or the sin of pride in dying for one's belief's when they affect another's will to live. Each is a study of reflection and human socio-psychology. In Bonhoeffer's case, look at how many German citizens willing allowed evil its corruption without preventing its rise by turning a blind eye to the concentration camps, or the evils suffered by their Jewish (and minority) neighbors. It takes far greater courage to break from public perception and will than it is to go against the crowd by acting singularly, bravely, and without help, towards the humanitarian debt of necessary prevention and cessation.
 
Lastly, how many times to we read of each reaction in the Old and New Testaments. One for ethical rightness (OT), and the other for judicious judgment (NT). It's an ancient problem and not one to go away anytime soon. Whether at home, in our communities, nationally, or globally. It started with the weak-minded parenting of Adam and Eve in provoking jealousy and animosity and doesn't end when reading of Paul's missionary church's arguing between themselves. However, it behooves us all to use common sense, a biblical sense, coupled with self-examination, humility, grace, and forgiveness. Hard choices to be sure. But then again, living this life in a Jesus-centered fashion is hard in itself. May God give us wisdom.
 
R.E. Slater
November 6, 2013
 
* * * * * * * * * *
 
Right, Wrong, and Necessary

Monday, November 4, 2013

The Science Behind "Creatio Continua" versus "Creatio Ex Nihilo" (Process v. Classical Thought)


Multiverse Timeline


Introductory Questions

  • Can humans manufacture matter from nothing?
  • Can light be turned into matter?
  • What Does the First Law of ThermoDynamics have to do with all this?

Observations

The First Law of ThermoDynamics says, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed."

Then Albert Einstein came along and theorized that "Energy" and "Matter" can be interchangeable.

E = M   or   M = E


Atoms, of course, is matter on a quantumtative scale. A molecule is made up of many atoms.

What is light? Light consists as quantum units of energy called "photons." Thus light is composed of photons which we call light (another term for this energy is "radiation").

When two photons are smashed together they produce "quarks" and "gluons." A quark is a unit of quantum matter; and a gluon is a unit of quantum energy. Thus, smashing two photons together produces both matter and energy.

2 Photons --->  Smashed Together

produces

Quark(s) + Gluon(s)   =   Matter + Energy

Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed. What is changed are the matter/energy states. Thus retaining the First Law of ThermoDynamics (in theological terms this is known as creation ex continua in Latin, meaning "creation from something").


Big Band Timeline


This event was massively demonstrated in the early history of the primordial universe when it consisted entirely of primordial quantum energy. Within this intense energy a quantum state existed in which "time" was liquefied into a spatial mass giving a maximum of 3 dimensions, and more probably, 2 dimensions - not the 4 or more dimensions that we live in today (sic, string theory requires at least 11 dimensions). And since only space existed, and not time, there existed an infinity of time without reference to itself until released in the Big Bang explosion. At this moment, in the merest fraction of a second, energy violently expanded outward, time was released, and the universe was birthed. And as the universe expanded (known as inflation) it rapidly cooled over an intervening period of several hundreds of thousands of years. And as it cooled it formed into units of quantumtative matter which created the universe we now live in today leaving behind "time islands" of hot mass (stars, galaxies, etc.) amid a much larger lattice of massless cold and darkness known as dark matter and dark energy. Taken together, all the stars and galaxies form 5% of the visible universe. Leaving 27% of it as dark matter which cannot be explained. And a remaining 68% as dark energy (cf. link here) which also cannot be explained.

We can express this event in a simple formula:

Light   --->   Matter

Now what is matter? Matter consists of a paired combination of quantum particles arranged as "matter and anti-matter."

By smashing matter particles with anti-matter particles we may reverse the process and produce light.

2 paired particles   --->   Matter + Anti-Matter  --->  Light

And, as discussed, light consists as a pair of quantum energy particles known as photons.

Light = 2 photons

Thus, from light we may produce matter by smashing two photons together. And, from matter we may produce light by smashing a unit of matter with a unit of anti-matter to get light.


"Can we manufacture matter?" - Epic Science



Published on Oct 18, 2013
Is it possible to make matter out of nothing? What about matter out of energy?
Learn more about matter/energy in this video from Stuff to Blow Your Mind.


Quantum Conclusions

So, yes, humans can manufacture matter from light; and turn light into subatomic matter particles. But this process is not creatio ex nihilo but creatio continua. We have neither created something from nothing nor made that something disappear to nothingness. According to the First Law of ThermoDynamics, all energy must be retained, and can neither be created nor destroyed. It is simply transferred between quantum states of energy, or matter, according to Einstein's theory of General Relativity. More simply, energy and matter may be interchanged, exchanged, or rearranged, as transitional quantum states between one another.

Theological Conclusions

From the outset, "creatio ex nihilo" (sic, Latin for "creation from nothing") becomes a moot point to the scientific discoveries of quantum physics.... Meaning there is no "creatio ex nihilo" to be created from because the universe has already been shown by quantum physics to have a beginningless mass where time was non-existent because of (infinitely) dense gravitational forces (for more on this see, The Quantum Evolution of the Universe, amongst other articles).

If anything, we might more accurately describe creation as "creatio ex continua" (creation from something that always was) as Wolfhart Pannenberg did in his theologic writings many years earlier. (You may find this argument here on a previous article I wrote, Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern, Quantum Age, in the third section down under the title "My Postmodern, Quantum Response: to Craig's Modern Epistemic Apologetics").

Thus answering how God created. And if we go with a multiverse state of physics than God created from something... not nothing. This is the Process Model of Theism. However, as a matter of philosophical argument, we might suppose that "God would not be God if He couldn't create from nothing" as Classical Theists posit. And in the long run of things, given the nature of each theistic system, it has been demonstrated that the process model holds the upper hand re scientific proof, but that the classical model may be retained without demoting our idea of God being God based upon philosophic arguments one way or another.

"[In Process Theology] it is an essential attribute of God to be fully involved in, and affected by, temporal processes, an idea that conflicts with traditional forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal, immutable, and impassible, but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in other respects temporal, mutable, and passible."  - Wikipedia

"... process philosophical thought paved the way for open theism, which sits more comfortably in the [progressive] Evangelical Christian camp." - Wikipedia

More simply said, let us move on from our favorite predilections and learn to see relevant, newer theologic systems as more helpful than we first thought. Process wants a God who is here... One who is with us, who is experiencing our experiences. However, Christian classicism saw a God who was out there, away from us, up in the heavens, who was sometimes with us, but more generally removed from our human experiences as a heavenly being, speaking to us as He would a Job, unmoved and unfeeling. This is the Greek-Hellenistic side of Medieval Christianity which the church has inherited through its traditions and cultures.

All rhetoric aside, the argument becomes moot in Jesus as classicism must now adjust its dogmas by virtue of God's incarnation. Who, in His holy Being, doeth now bear mankind's humanity with us. More specifically, God can no longer stand wholly apart from our humanity, nor remain dispassionately unmoved (or stoical) from our physical sufferings and ethical dilemmas, by reason of His experience as a man (even though the philosophical argument could be made that God was never dispassionate even in His eternal state regardless of classicism's speculated need for His incarnation by some, God being God and all). Even so, by Jesus' incarnation all philosophies may drop away as to whether God was impassive, or passionate, towards man's humanity with the historical occurrence in time and space of His incarnation as fully God and fully man (cf. hypostasis). And because of God's incarnation amongst mankind, He passionately understands us now as our Creator-Redeemer (though we suspect that He knew this subject intimately even before His incarnation). Which is what process theology is plainly stating.

As to the charges of panentheism, they are true. God and the cosmos are one. But not ontologically, as some process theologians would state, for God is the Creator of the cosmos, and not the created of the cosmos.

Nor is God "the All" so popularized by Oprah Winfrey, whose philosophy wanders into pantheism (not pan-en-theism, as stated above) where God and the universe are an ontological oneness. Yes, God is "the All" but He is also greater than "the All." Even distinguished from "the All" as separate from "the All" as its Creator-Redeemer.

Nor is God dependent upon His creation even though He has intricately (and mysteriously) bound Himself to it by decree, by incarnation, by His death, and redemption of it. Each phase of this process should be necessarily understood as relational processes whereby God is creation's Creator, Sustainer, Nurturer, Provider, Savior, and Redeemer. As such, God is shown to be deeply involved with His creation (even as ancient Judaism proclaimed, though it now denies God's incarnation in Christ Jesus). Nor is God impassively separated from His experience of creation's groans and sufferings against the early claims of the church's more classical doctrines erroneously based upon the predominant philosophies of Greek Hellenism.

This then is the position of Relational Theism, which is the halfway-house between the two competing positions of process theology v. classical Christian thought (or theism). The idea of Relational Theism (which we have worked on here quite a bit at Relevancy22) would meld both systems into one synthetic soup, making the waters even murkier than they were before... but hopefully clearer as well. As purists, neither side likes a synthesis of their positions, do they not? But then again, the extremes of any position are fraught with their own special dilemmas when not taking into account the other's arguments and observations.

For myself, the process model bears relevancy over the classic model for the postmodern age that the church now lives within. Even as we have developed it here as a synthesis between two competing positions, which have been described as relational-process theism. A theism that is neither fully classical, nor fully process. That stumbles over each other when trying to assert (or deny) ex nihilo creation. Where in the end we mince about words rather than seeing the reasonableness of either view.

Life is messy. And so is doctrine. Let us learn to open our spirits to believing that we are not alone in this world. Nor this wide, and amazingly complex (multi)universe. No. Within it, around it, about it, is our Creator-Redeemer God who is truly with us in all that He is and was and will be. Whose everywhere-bound-presence should be our comfort and help, our hope and deep knowledge that we are not abandoned. Nor alone. Nor left to ourselves, whatever trials and tribulations come. To know that God is there as He has always been there. That He is - and has become - our Titanium. Amen.

(For more discussion on these matters, simply go to the sidebars to the right under "theism." Thank you.)

R.E. Slater
November 4, 2013



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5 Cheat Sheets with Michio Kaku | Mysteries of The Universe


Michio Kaku Explains String Theory




Michio Kaku: Is God a Mathematician?


"How does a mathematician read the mind of God? The Mind of God is read through cosmic music.
It is the music of strings, resonating through eleven dimensional hyperspace of supersymmetry. The
latest renaissance of mathematics." - Dr. Michio Kaku



From Universe to Multiverse




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Light Changed to Matter, Then Stopped and Moved
Also reported at PHY.org - http://phys.org/news90077438.html

 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 8, 2007 -- By converting light into matter and then back again, physicists have for the first time stopped a light pulse and then restarted it a small distance away. This "quantum mechanical magic trick" provides unprecedented control over light and could have applications in fiber-optic communication and quantum information processing.


Harvard University professor Lene Hau explains how she stops light in one place then retrieves and speeds it up in a completely separate place. (Photo: Justin Ide/Harvard News Office)


In quantum networks, information optically transmitted over the network is converted into matter, processed, and then converted back into light. The physicists at Harvard University hope that their discovery could provide a possible way to do this, since matter, unlike light, can easily be manipulated. Their findings were published this week in the journal Nature.

"We demonstrate that we can stop a light pulse in a supercooled sodium cloud, store the data contained within it, and totally extinguish it, only to reincarnate the pulse in another cloud two-tenths of a millimeter away," said Lene Vestergaard Hau, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.



In a "quantum mechanical magic trick" devised by Harvard University physicists, a light pulse is extinguished in one ultracold atom cloud (purple), converted to matter and then revived in another before being allowed to exit the second cloud in its original state. (Image courtesy of Sean R. Garner)


This marks another milestone for Hau in light manipulation. In 1998, she slowed light, which travels in free space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second, to just 38 miles per hour in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Einstein and others have theorized that the speed of light in free space can't be changed. Two years later, she stopped light completely in a similar cloud, then restarted it without changing its characteristics. She received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (so-called "genius grant") for these experiments.

In her latest work, Hau and her co-authors, Naomi S. Ginsberg and Sean R. Garner, found that the light pulse can be revived, and its information transferred between the two clouds of sodium atoms, by converting the original optical pulse into a traveling matter wave which is an exact matter copy of the original pulse, traveling at a molasses-like pace of 200 m (600 ft) per hour. The matter pulse is readily converted back into light when it enters the second of the supercooled clouds -- known as Bose-Einstein condensates -- and is illuminated with a control laser.

"The Bose-Einstein condensates are very important to this work because within these clouds atoms become phase-locked, losing their individuality and independence," Hau said. "The lock-step nature of atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate makes it possible for the information in the initial light pulse to be replicated exactly within the second cloud of sodium atoms, where the atoms collaborate to revive the light pulse."

Within a Bose-Einstein condensate -- a cloud of sodium atoms cooled to just billionths of a degree above absolute zero -- a light pulse is compressed by a factor of 50 million, without losing any of the information stored within it. The light drives some of the cloud's roughly 1.8 million sodium atoms to enter into "quantum superposition" states, with a lower-energy component that stays put and a higher-energy component that travels between the two clouds.


Diagram showing the time line for the Harvard research. (Image courtesy of Naomi S. Ginsberg, Sean R. Garner and Lena V. Hau)


The amplitude and phase of the light pulse stopped and extinguished in the first cloud are imprinted in this traveling component and transferred to the second cloud, where the recaptured information can recreate the original light pulse.
The period of time when the light pulse becomes matter, and the matter pulse is isolated in space between the condensate clouds, could offer scientists and engineers a tantalizing new window for controlling and manipulating optical information; researchers cannot now readily control optical information during its journey, except to amplify the signal to avoid fading. The new work by Hau and her colleagues marks the first successful manipulation of coherent optical information.

"This work could provide a missing link in the control of optical information," Hau said. "While the matter is traveling between the two Bose-Einstein condensates, we can trap it, potentially for minutes, and reshape it -- change it -- in whatever way we want. This novel form of quantum control could also have applications in the developing fields of quantum information processing and quantum cryptography."

This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

For more information, visit: www.harvard.edu