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

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Speaking Out - Learning to Distinquish the Differences Between Islam and Islamism


Amazon source link

Book Description

Eye-opening accounts of heroic resistance to religious extremism.

In Lahore, Pakistan, Faizan Peerzada resisted being relegated to a “dark corner” by staging a performing arts festival despite bomb attacks. In Senegal, wheelchair-bound Aissatou Cissé produced a comic book to illustrate the injustices faced by disabled women and girls. In Algeria, publisher Omar Belhouchet and his journalists struggled to put out their paper, El Watan (The Nation), the same night that a 1996 jihadist bombing devastated their offices and killed eighteen of their colleagues. In Afghanistan, Young Women for Change took to the streets of Kabul to denounce sexual harassment, undeterred by threats. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Abdirizak Bihi organized a Ramadan basketball tournament among Somali refugees to counter the influence of Al Shabaab. From Karachi to Tunis, Kabul to Tehran, across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and beyond, these trailblazers often risked death to combat the rising tide of fundamentalism within their own countries.

But this global community of writers, artists, doctors, musicians, museum curators, lawyers, activists, and educators of Muslim heritage remains largely invisible, lost amid the heated coverage of Islamist terror attacks on one side and abuses perpetrated against suspected terrorists on the other.

A veteran of twenty years of human rights research and activism, Karima Bennoune draws on extensive fieldwork and interviews to illuminate the inspiring stories of those who represent one of the best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide.




Why Bill Maher and Ben Affleck Are Both Wrong
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karima-bennoune/bill-maher-ben-affleck-islam_b_5937838.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051&ir=Religion

Karima Bennoune | UC Davis law professor, author of “Your Fatwa Does

Posted: 10/06/2014 10:18 am EDT Updated: 10/06/2014 10:59 am EDT


When I watched Bill Maher -- with whom I agree about many other issues -- talk about Islam on his show "Real Time" last Friday night, I felt as though my father's life story was being erased.

According to Maher, no one in Muslim majority countries openly denounces fundamentalism. "They are afraid to speak out." Such claims deny heroic battles waged by many people of Muslim heritage against extremism. For example, Mahfoud Bennoune, my dad, was an Algerian anthropologist who risked his life throughout the 1990s jihadist violence in his country. He taught evolution despite a classroom visit from the head of the so-called Islamic Salvation Front (dad threw the guy out!).

Though later forced to flee his apartment, Mahfoud Bennoune remained in his country despite death threats. He went on to repeatedly denounce terror and the extremist ideas that underlie it. For four years, every time he went out, he did not know whether he would come home again. But he never, ever shut up because of that.

My father believed the jihadists "trample Islam underfoot in the name of jihad." A free-thinker and secularist, he remained proud of the positive aspects of his religious heritage, such as Muslim historical contributions to science, even while being honest about the dangers both radical and conservative interpretations pose. Armed only with pen and voice, he fought back. He was just one of thousands of Algerian democrats to do so then, and today thousands of others from Afghanistan to Somalia continue the same fight.

As Michael Steele -- not someone I often agree with -- correctly noted on Maher's Friday show, people like these do not get significant Western media coverage. Have you heard much about the stalwart Iraqi human rights advocate Samira Saleh Al Naimi recently killed by ISIS in her hometown Mosul after publicly excoriating their brutality? Even when they pay with their lives, people like her are often forgotten by the world.

So, I want to challenge Bill Maher -- who is right about the need to ardently defend liberal principles -- to start supporting those who do, but whose stories are untold. Suggesting the fundamentalists somehow represent Islam, as Maher did, overlooks people like Al Naimi, but also acquiesces to the claims of the repulsive ISIS would-be "Caliph" Baghdadi who wants that to be true.

In fact, many liberals and progressives in Muslim majority contexts are fighting back. While writing my book, "Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism," I interviewed nearly 300 of them from 30 countries -- traveling from Pakistan to Mali -- to hear how they continue to resist.

I think of Raif Badawi who faces 1000 lashes in a Saudi jail for running the Saudi Arabian Liberals website. Or those I saw protesting on the streets of Lahore against blasphemy death sentences, despite being told suicide bombers would turn up. Or the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq that runs a shelter for women fleeing ISIS, while simultaneously denouncing the group's misogynist atrocities (like its reported "concubine market" in Mosul).

These people deserve better than for Muslims to be painted as mainly being a bunch of fundamentalists or Islam seen as inherently extreme. For example, on Friday's show atheist writer Sam Harris opined shockingly that "Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas." How does one begin to respond to such an anti-humanist assertion?

On the same HBO program, Ben Affleck passionately defended Islam and accused both Harris and Maher of bigotry. "It's gross, it's racist... You are painting the whole religion with the same brush," he insisted. I am sincerely grateful to him for expressing the outrage many of us feel over such negative stereotypes.

However, Western liberals also make me nervous when they downplay the gravity and the scope of the challenge posed to people of Muslim heritage themselves by fundamentalism and jihadism, even as a rejoinder to discriminatory portrayals of the faith. I do agree with Maher that many Westerners in the liberal camp have been reticent to openly critique Muslim fundamentalism and have failed to grasp the desperate need to defeat it.

"ISIS couldn't fill a double-A ballpark in Charleston," Affleck suggested. Sadly, this is not true. Despite denunciations by countless laudable Muslim groups and individuals, ISIS could pack Madison Square Garden with a well-armed, and small but significant minority -- including young recruits from the West. The Pakistani Taliban have pledged allegiance to ISIS as have some jihadist groups across North Africa. Gulf governments -- that have long been supported by the U.S. -- have for years poured money into some of these same groups.

While Affleck was right to note that the U.S. has wrongfully waged wars against Muslim majority countries like Iraq, killing many more than the Westerners who have been killed by Muslim extremists, the real issue in the debate about Muslim fundamentalism is not the West vs. Islam. It is the huge number of people on the ground being slaughtered by the fundamentalists, from Afghanistan to Nigeria.

Liberals and progressives of Muslim heritage face a very grave crisis indeed, both in terms of violence and the ideology that promotes it. We need both Bill and Ben to rethink. We do not need either stereotypical generalizations, or minimizing responses to fundamentalism, however well-intentioned. What we need is a principled, anti-racist critique of Muslim fundamentalism that pulls no punches, but that also distinguishes between Islam (the diverse religious tradition) and Islamism (an extreme right wing political ideology.) We need support, understanding and to have our existence recognized.

One final notable feature of the Maher v. Affleck debate is that no women and no Muslims were on the show. New rule -- when debating what Muslims supposedly think about fundamentalism, you ought to have some people of Muslim heritage at the table.


past related articles -







Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Right to Die - Fighting Death On Its Own Terms


Brittany Maynard with her Great Dane, Charlie | Courtesy Dan Diaz



Brittany Maynard with terminal cancer fights for right to Die




Terminally Ill 29-Year-Old Woman: Why I'm Choosing to Die on My Own Terms
http://www.people.com/article/Brittany-Maynard-death-with-dignity-compassion-choices

by Nicole Weisensee Egan
October 6, 2014

For the past 29 years, Brittany Maynard has lived a fearless life – running half marathons, traveling through Southeast Asia for a year and even climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. 

So, it's no surprise she is facing her death the same way.

On Monday, Maynard will launch an online video campaign with the nonprofit Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy organization, to fight for expanding death-with-dignity laws nationwide.

And on Nov. 1, Maynard, who in April was given six months to live, intends to end her own life with medication prescribed to her by her doctor – and she wants to make it clear it is NOT suicide.

"There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die," she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. "I want to live. I wish there was a cure for my disease but there's not." 

Maynard has a stage 4 glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor.

"My glioblastoma is going to kill me, and that's out of my control," she says. "I've discussed with many experts how I would die from it, and it's a terrible, terrible way to die. Being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying."

The campaign's six-minute video includes interviews with Brittany as well as her mother, Debbie Ziegler, and husband, Dan Diaz, 42.

"My entire family has gone through a cycle of devastation," she says. "I'm an only child – this is going to make tears come to my eyes. For my mother, it's really difficult, and for my husband as well, but they've all supported me because they've stood in hospital rooms and heard what would happen to me."

Maynard was a newlywed when she started having debilitating headaches last January. That's when she learned she had brain cancer.

"My husband and I were actively trying for a family, which is heartbreaking for us," she says in the video. 

Three months later, after undergoing surgery, she found out the tumor had grown even larger and was told she had, at best, six months to live.

After researching all her options after her diagnosis, Maynard, who was living in San Francisco at the time, decided aid in dying was her best option.

Her entire family moved with her to Portland earlier this year so she could have access to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, which has been in place since late 1997. Since then, 1,173 people have had prescriptions written under the act, and 752 have used them to die.

Brittany Maynard and husband Dan Diaz,
Courtesy Tara Arrowood

Four other states – Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico – have authorized aid in dying. Compassion & Choices has campaigns in place in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

In mid-October, Maynard will videotape testimony to be played for California lawmakers and voters at the appropriate time.

"Right now it's a choice that's only available to some Americans, which is really unethical," she says.

"The amount of sacrifice and change my family had to go through in order to get me to legal access to death with dignity – changing our residency, establishing a team of doctors, having a place to live – was profound," she says.

"There's tons of Americans who don’t have time or the ability or finances," she says, "and I don't think that's right or fair."

This is why she's using the precious time she has left to advocate for everyone to have the same choice she does.

"I believe this choice is ethical, and what makes it ethical is it is a choice," she says. "The patient can change their mind right up to the last minute. I feel very protected here in Oregon."

But Maynard doesn't think she will change her mind. The date she picked was carefully chosen.

"I really wanted to celebrate my husband's birthday, which is October 30," she says. "I'm getting sicker, dealing with more pain and seizures and difficulties so I just selected it."

Maynard says her exhaustion has "increased a lot" recently.

"I still get out and take a walk with my family everyday," she says. "I try not to hold onto the dogs anymore because the past few weeks I've fallen a few times."

Her pain has increased, too, but so far she's been managing it with medications from her doctors.

"I was in the hospital two weeks ago after two seizures," she says. "Immediately after, I lost my ability to speak for a few hours. So it's scary, very frightening."

Which is why she knows she's making the right decision.

When Maynard passes on Nov. 1, she will do so in the bedroom she shares with her husband. By her side will be her mother, stepfather, husband and best friend (who is also a physician).

"I'm dying, but I'm choosing to suffer less," she says, "to put myself through less physical and emotional pain and my family as well."


CNN Report: Terminally ill 29-year-old to end her life






Is "Left Behind" Really A Christian Movie? (podcast)






Rapture Rhapsody: Is 'Left Behind' Really A Christian Movie? (PODCAST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/03/all-together-left-behind-_n_5926750.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051

Huffington Post | By Paul Brandeis Raushenbush
October 3, 2014



Welcome to the HuffPost Religion Podcast All Together hosted by Executive Religion Editor Rev. Paul Raushenbush. All Together offers a unique perspective into spiritual and religious individuals, communities and ideas that are shaping our world.

This week’s show is called Rapture Rhapsody and examines the 31 million dollar blockbuster movie ‘Left Behind’, staring Nicolas Cage, that will hit 1,750 theaters across the country. The film is based on the 'Left Behind' books by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim Lahye, who made millions on this apocalyptic story.

In addition to making money, the hope of the producers is that the film will be an opportunity for people to be introduced to Christianity, with the potential for conversions. As "Duck Dynasty" star Willie Robertson declared in a promotional video about the film, "Opening the door to unbelievers has never been this much fun."

But (1) how do the ideas behind the Left Behind franchise square with mainstream Christian theology and (2) what influence do popular movies like Left Behind have on the way the wider public – both Christian and non-Christians - understands the Christian religion?

Raushenbush speaks with Princeton University religion professor Elaine Pagels, Biblical Scholar Craig Keener, and Film and Religion expert Prof. John Lyden who explain where the ‘Left Behind’ ideas came from and why they might be leading viewers of the new film astray.


RAPTURE RHAPSODY: IS LEFT BEHIND REALLY A CHRISTIAN MOVIE?
LISTEN TO EARLIER ALL TOGETHER SEGMENTS BELOW
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT MEDITATION?
GREEN SPIRIT vs CLIMATE CHANGE 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Redefining Faith By Forward Movement: Process Thought & Panentheism




Ideology and Relationships

What's in a definition? Apparently everything, for some. For others it is just a beginning place of tensive exploration into plurality and non-simplicity. An originating point that must start somewhere without necessarily settling upon its start as its final end (or explanation).

This was how I felt some many long years ago (though it has been but only a few years) when I first came to the idea of process thought and panentheism not understanding how they wove in-and-about each other as separate threads attempting interlocation (centering) and interlocution (dialogue).

But to that end each now is more plain for being more separate from the other in their distinctions while at other times each has become more tightly bound to the other within their corollary (or contemplative) systems.

That is, one does not give birth to the other, nor may one presuppose the destiny of the other from its supposed twin. Each are their own identities even as each may partner in some form with the other within descriptive inter-distances from the other.

At once we should begin with the idea of reductionism. Recognizing philosophy's and theology's insistent need to reduce the complex must spring ideas of reductionism as counter-revolutionaries to each other's spins and orbits. Baldly, it is an academic attempt to reduce the seemingly irreducible. Or to explain the seemingly unexplainable by means and method, event and circumstance.

Which theoretically is the usual route undertaken unless, of course, if with the reduction comes with an even vaster set of complexities and irreducibilities. As an example, consider the quantum mysteries behind classical mechanics as time and motion are re-described in relation to one another until another theory comes along that breaks each down to an even greater complex of questions and perturbations on a quantumtative scale).

Some see the task of description as self-serving (or, perhaps, self-organizing) and when attempting such a feat alas settle upon some conceptual level that becomes teleologically self-contemplative, or personally self-satisfying, as to drive the question no longer forward as it was once passionately compelled and conceived.

Others may step back and refuse the process altogether after first studying the process for years-and-years to then see a new set of questions arising from one's formulations to the questions themselves. In essence, either birthing a whole new set of ideas and questions that would study the articulations around the process which in this case is that of relationships to another.

These relationships may be Time Studies, Casual v. Acausal studies, Set Completion Theories, Telic or Teleological Studies, and so forth. But in one instance or the other, the epistemologic foundations for the earlier studies now must be re-composed, re-thought, or re-derived, in order to step away from the originating ideas towards a new and different light.


Process Thought and Panentheism

Thus with process thought and panentheism. One may think that the proper direction to go with panentheism is through process thought. But though classical Christian orthodoxy does also go this way it also begins to separate itself through newer postmodern ideas surrounding open theism (where an open-ended future is declared for both God and creation on the basis of volitional free will). Of course open theism's polar opposite is that of Reformed Calvinism's pre-determined future and mechanistic universe denying indeterminacy to creation and volitional freewill to holy creatures (otherwise known as election and pre-destination). And it is at this latter point that does show the clearest distinctions between all systems involved in a time-motion study of relational ideologies.

Moreover, confusion has arisen about panentheism as to whether Christian orthodoxy partakes of these waters. On the one hand if it doesn't then the choices are deism or pandesim (see select references further below near the end of this article). Each of which are unacceptable in their own ways. The problem here is that when panentheism refuses open theism than the only choice is to move more strictly forward torwards process thought that then begins to deny the historical veracities and truths of orthodox Christianity.

And so, through the years we have argued for a halfway house between both process thought and panentheism. And have found it in an ameliorating position from yet another theological concept known as relational theism, which emphasizes God's love in relationship to His creation as both Creator-Redeemer. As versus His divine implacability and impassibility that would drive His holy judgement in divine austerity and callousness (sic, Calvinism's main points).

That process thought to a point has very acceptable ideas until it begins to deny God's self-limitation of His volition and power. In essence saying that God had no choice and is now become something other than He was. Which statement is both true and not true. True in that God's act of creation has changed its Creator in many fundamental ways. But untrue to think that God was helpless to the task and usurped by the task when opening Pandora's box as "Creator-Created." At which point it begins to wander away from both traditional Christian orthodoxy and its newer counterpart of postmodern orthodox Christianity emphasizing the newer discoveries of 21st century sciences and disciplines.

Which gets us back to the big picture that to reduce Christian theology to its parts and components can necessarily remove its synenergy and composition. Much like grammatically diagramming the plot-points of a narrative story, the story's constitution itself can quickly be lost within the details of the examination. That the balance is ever between the small and the large, and the large to the small, in eventful relationship each to the other, without losing the compositions of the main storylines and ideas.


Conclusion

Thus and thus theology today rests on the ever spinning wheel of ideology versus intractable tradition. To wisely know how to re-interpret and update church traditions so that it may speak again to contemporary ages of lost and searching mankind finding Christian convention and orthodoxy outdated and outmoded. While on the other hand bringing those same Christian and non-Christian cultures along the hairpin turns and bleak ridges of their dogmatic ideologies and pagan institutions forbearing re-inumeration and circumvention, even as they feel uncomfortably frail and without a certain future less despair rules the day.

To be willing to read contemporary, postmodern theology and hold it in tension with older philosoophical/theological thoughts and ideas until at some future point in time today's Christian disciple understands why s/he must move forward lest one's faith becomes stillborn in the dusts of time and mission.

And to alas, allow the Lord Himself to dis-settle our conventions and mores of Himself and His Word just enough to leave open-ended the movement of His Spirit upon our ever searching hearts and minds (unless, of course, one is brain dead and comatose in one's faith). To not despair of the journey nor lose faith in the Author of our faith through Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.

Living by faith is the simplest and hardest task to do. And yet, without forward movement one's faith becomes lukewarm and without meaning to one's self as well as to others who journey with us along the paths of faith and redemption. Peace.

R.E. Slater
October 7, 2014






Note: Select references from Wikipedia follows. These references are partial
selections from the topic itself as found within Wikipedia.



* * * * * * * * * *

1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The study of a complex system or complex systems
Complexity theory and organizations, the application of complexity theory to strategy
Complexity economics, the application of complexity theory to economics
Complex adaptive system, special case of complex systems
Chaos theory, the study of the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions
Computational complexity theory, a field in theoretical computer science and mathematics
Algorithmic information theory

See also




* * * * * * * * * *

2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reductionism is a philosophical position which holds that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.[1] This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanation, theories, and meanings.[2]

Reductionism strongly reflects a certain perspective on causality. In a reductionist framework, the phenomena that can be explained completely in terms of relations between other more fundamental phenomena, are called epiphenomena. Often there is an implication that the epiphenomenon exerts no causal agency on the fundamental phenomena that explain it.

Descartes held that non-human animals could be
reductively explained as 
automata — De homine, 1662.

Reductionism does not preclude the existence of what might be called emergent phenomena, but it does imply the ability to understand those phenomena completely in terms of the processes from which they are composed. This reductionist understanding is very different from that usually implied by the term 'emergence', which typically intends that what emerges is more than the sum of the processes from which it emerges.

Religious reductionism generally attempts to explain religion by boiling it down to certain nonreligious causes. A few examples of reductionistic explanations for the presence of religion are: that religion can be reduced to humanity's conceptions of right and wrong, that religion is fundamentally a primitive attempt at controlling our environments, that religion is a way to explain the existence of a physical world, and that religion confers an enhanced survivability for members of a group and so is reinforced by natural selection.[3]Anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer employed some religious reductionist arguments.[4] Sigmund Freud held that religion is nothing more than an illusion, or even a mental illness, and Marx claimed that religion is "the sigh of the oppressed," and the opium of the people providing only "the illusory happiness of the people," thus providing two influential examples of reductionistic views against the idea of religion.


Ontological reductionism

Ontological reductionism is the claim that everything that exists is made from a small number of basic substances that behave in regular ways (compare to monism). Ontological reductionism denies the idea of ontological emergence, and claims that emergence is an epistemological phenomenon that only exists through analysis or description of a system, and does not exist on a fundamental level.[13]

Ontological reductionism takes two different forms: token ontological reductionism and type ontological reductionism. Token ontological reductionism is the idea that every item that exists is a sum item. For perceivable items, it says that every perceivable item is a sum of items at a smaller level of complexity. Token ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is generally accepted.

Type ontological reductionism is the idea that every type of item is a sum type of item, and that every perceivable type of item is a sum of types of items at a lower level of complexity. Type ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is often rejected.[14]

Michael Ruse has criticized ontological reductionism as an improper argument against vitalism.[15]


Free will and religion

Philosophers of the Enlightenment worked to insulate human free will from reductionism. Descartes separated the material world of mechanical necessity from the world of mental free will. German philosophers introduced the concept of the "noumenal" realm that is not governed by the deterministic laws of "phenomenal" nature, where every event is completely determined by chains of causality.[24] The most influential formulation was by Immanuel Kant, who distinguished between the causal deterministic framework the mind imposes on the world—the phenomenal realm—and the world as it exists for itself, the noumenal realm, which included free will. To insulate theology from reductionism, 19th century post-Enlightenment German theologians moved in a new direction, led by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl. They took the Romantic approach of rooting religion in the inner world of the human spirit, so that it is a person's feeling or sensibility about spiritual matters that comprises religion.[25]

The anti-reductionist takes this position as a minimum requirement upon the reductionist: "What is unclear is how the pre-theoretical intuitions [for example, of free will] are to be accommodated theoretically within favored analyses... At the very least the anti-reductionist is owed an account of why the intuitions arise if they are not accurate."[26]


Alternatives

The development of systems thinking has provided methods for tackling issues in a holistic rather than a reductionist way, and many scientists approach their work in a holistic paradigm.[27] When the terms are used in a scientific context, holism and reductionism refer primarily to what sorts of models or theories offer valid explanations of the natural world; the scientific method of falsifying hypotheses, checking empirical data against theory, is largely unchanged, but the approach guides which theories are considered. The conflict between reductionism and holism in science is not universal—it usually centers on whether or not a holistic or reductionist approach is appropriate in the context of studying a specific system or phenomenon.

In many cases (such as the kinetic theory of gases), given a good understanding of the components of the system, one can predict all the important properties of the system as a whole. In other systems, emergent properties of the system are said to be almost impossible to predict from knowledge of the parts of the system. Complexity theory studies systems and properties of the latter type.

Alfred North Whitehead set his metaphysical thinking in opposition to reductionism. He refers to this as the 'fallacy of the misplaced concreteness'. His scheme set out to frame a rational, general understanding of things, that was derived from our reality.

Sven Erik Jorgensen, an ecologist, lays out both theoretical and practical arguments for a holistic approach in certain areas of science, especially ecology. He argues that many systems are so complex that it will not ever be possible to describe all their details. Drawing an analogy to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, he argues that many interesting and relevant ecological phenomena cannot be replicated in laboratory conditions, and thus cannot be measured or observed without influencing and changing the system in some way. He also points to the importance of interconnectedness in biological systems. His viewpoint is that science can only progress by outlining what questions are unanswerable and by using models that do not attempt to explain everything in terms of smaller hierarchical levels of organization, but instead model them on the scale of the system itself, taking into account some (but not all) factors from levels both higher and lower in the hierarchy.[28]

Criticism

Fragmentalism is an alternative term for ontological reductionism,[29] although fragmentalism is frequently used in a pejorative sense.[30] Anti-realists use the term fragmentalism in arguments that the world does not exist of separableentities, instead consisting of wholes. For example, advocates of this position hold that:

The linear deterministic approach to nature and technology promoted a fragmented perception of reality, and a loss of the ability to foresee, to adequately evaluate, in all their complexity, global crises in ecology, civilization and education.[31]

The term "fragmentalism" is usually applied to reductionist modes of thought, frequently with the related pejorative term of scientism. This usage is popular amongst some ecological activists:

There is a need now to move away from scientism and the ideology of cause-and-effect determinism toward a radical empiricism, such as William James proposed, as an epistemology of science.[32]

These perspectives are not new and in the early twentieth century, William James noted that rationalist science emphasized what he termed fragmentation and disconnection.[33] Such views also underpin many criticisms of the scientific method:


The scientific method only acknowledges monophasic consciousness. The method is a specialized system that focuses on studying small and distinctive parts in isolation, which results in fragmented knowledge.[33]

An alternative usage of this term is in cognitive psychology. Here, George Kelly developed "constructive alternativism" as a form of personal construct psychology, this provided an alternative to what he saw as "accumulative fragmentalism". In this theory, knowledge is seen as the construction of successful mental models of the exterior world, rather than the accumulation of independent "nuggets of truth".[34]


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3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Monism is the philosophical view that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance.[1] The wide definition states that all existing things go back to a source which is distinct from them (e.g. inNeoplatonism everything is derived from The One).[2] A commonly-used, restricted definition of monism asserts the presence of a unifying substance or essence.[2]

One must distinguish "stuff monism" from "thing monism".[3] According to stuff monism there is only one kind of stuff (e.g. matter or mind), although there may be many things made out of this stuff. According to thing-monism there exists strictly speaking only a single thing (e.g. the universe), which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.[4][not in citation given]


The term monism originated from Western philosophy,[5] and has often been applied to various religions.


Religious monism

Philosophy is a part of religion, but religion also entails religious practices, ethical guidelines, and social rules and behaviour to direct one's life and experience.[24] According to Momen, religious experience is a central aspect of religion.[25] Critics have pointed out that the centrality of religious experience is of recent origin.[26][27][28]


Pantheism, panentheism and pandeism

There are pantheists, panentheists and pandeists in:

Hinduism (particularly in Advaita and Vishistadvaita)
Judaism (panentheism is especially found in Kabbalah and Hasidic philosophy[citation needed])
Islam (among the Sufis, especially the Bektashi)


Pantheism
Main article: Pantheism

Pantheism is the belief that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God,[29] or that the universe (or nature) is identical with divinity.[30] Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god, but believe that interpretations of the term differ.

Pantheism was popularized in the modern era as both a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza,[31] whose Ethics was an answer to Descartes' famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate.[32] Spinoza held that the two are the same, and this monism is a fundamental quality of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance.[32] Although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate.[33]

Following a long and still current[citation needed] tradition H.P. Owen (1971: 65) claimed that:

Pantheists are ‘monists’...they believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.[34]

Pantheism is closely related to monism, as pantheists too believe all of reality is one substance, called Universe, God or Nature. Panentheism, a slightly different concept (explained below), however is dualistic.[35] Some of the most famous pantheists are the Stoics, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza.


Panentheism
Main article: Panentheism

Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) "all"; ἐν (en) "in"; and θεός (theós) "God"; "all-in-God") is a belief system which posits that the divine (be it a monotheistic God, polytheistic gods, or an eternal cosmic animating force), interpenetrates every part of nature, but is not one with nature. Panentheism differentiates itself from pantheism, which holds that the divine is synonymous with the universe.[36]

In panentheism, there are two types of substance, "pan" the universe and God. The universe and the divine are not ontologically equivalent. God is viewed as the eternal animating force within the universe. In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn "transcends", "pervades" or is "in" the cosmos.

While pantheism asserts that 'All is God', panentheism claims that God animates all of the universe, and also transcends the universe. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God,[36] like in the concept of Tzimtzum. Much Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.[37][38] Hasidic Judaism merges the elite ideal of nullification to paradoxical transcendent Divine Panentheism, through intellectual articulation of inner dimensions of Kabbalah, with the populist emphasis on the panentheistic Divine immanence in everything and deeds of kindness.

Such a concept is more compatible with God as personal while not barring a bridge between God and creation.[citation needed] Paul Tillich has argued for such a concept within Christian theology, as has liberal biblical scholar Marcus Borg and mystical theologian Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest.[note 4]


Pandeism
Main article: Pandeism

Pandeism or pan-deism (from Ancient Greek: πᾶν pan “all” and Latin: deus meaning "god" in the sense of deism), is a term describing beliefs coherently incorporating or mixing logically reconcilable elements of pantheism (that "God", or a metaphysically equivalent creator deity, is identical to Nature) and deism (that the creator-god who designed the universe no longer exists in a status where it can be reached, and can instead be confirmed only by reason). It is therefore most particularly the belief that the creator of the universe actually became the universe, and so ceased to exist as a separate entity.[39][40]

Through this synergy pandeism claims to answer primary objections to deism (why would God create and then not interact with the universe?) and to pantheism (how did the universe originate and what is its purpose?).


Christian Monism

Creator-creature distinction

Much of Christianity strongly maintains the Creator-creature distinction as fundamental. Many Christians maintain that God created the universe ex nihilo and not from His own substance, so that the creator is not to be confused with creation, but rather transcends it (metaphysical dualism) (cf. Genesis). It is, however, within Him, as Saint Paul says in Acts 17:28, "in him we live and move and are." Even the more immanent concepts and theologies are to be defined together with God's omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience, due to God's desire for intimate contact with his own creation (cf. Acts 17:27). Another use of the term "monism" is in Christian anthropology to refer to the innate nature of humankind as being holistic, as usually opposed to bipartite and tripartite views.


Rejection of radical dualism

While some might say the Christian metaphysics are dualistic in that they describe the Creator's transcendence of creation, they reject radical dualism such as the idea that God is eternally struggling with other equal powers such asSatan (cf. Gospel of John 14:30). In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine argued, in the context of the problem of evil, that evil is not the opposite of good, but rather merely the absence of good, something that does not have existence in itself. Likewise, C. S. Lewis described evil as a "parasite" in Mere Christianity, as he viewed evil as something that cannot exist without good to provide it with existence. Lewis went on to argue against dualism from the basis of moral absolutism, and rejected the dualistic notion that God and Satan are opposites, arguing instead that God has no equal, hence no opposite. Lewis rather viewed Satan as the opposite of Michael the archangel. Due to this, Lewis instead argued for a more limited type of dualism.[84] Other theologians, such as Greg Boyd, have argued in more depth that the Biblical authors held a "limited dualism", meaning that God and Satan do engage in real battle, but only due to free will given by God, for the duration God allows.[85]


Theosis

In Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, while human beings are not ontologically identical with the Creator, they are nonetheless capable with uniting with his Divine Nature via theosis, and especially, through the devout reception of the Holy Eucharist. This is a supernatural union, over and above that natural union, of which St. John of the Cross says, "it must be known that God dwells and is present substantially in every soul, even in that of the greatest sinner in the world, and this union is natural." Julian of Norwich, while maintaining the orthodox duality of Creator and creature, nonetheless speaks of God as "the true Father and true Mother" of all natures; thus, he indwells them substantially and thus preserves them from annihilation, as without this sustaining indwelling everything would cease to exist.


Christian Monism

Some Christian theologians are avowed monists, such as Paul Tillich. Since God is he "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Book of Acts 17.28), it follows that everything that has being partakes in God. Dualism with regard to God and creation also barred the possibility of a mystical union with God, as John Calvin rejected[citation needed], according to Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Such a dualism also leads to the problematic position of positing God as a particular being the existence of which can be argued for or against, failing to recognize God as the ground and origin of being itself, as in Acts 17, or in the Hashem, YHWH, meaning "He causes to come into being." Such a view was called by Tillich panentheism: God is in all things, neither identical to, nor totally separate from, all things.



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4

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pandeism (or pan-deism) is a theological doctrine which combines aspects of pantheism and deism.[1] It holds that the creator deity became the universe and ceased to exist as aseparate and conscious entity.[2][3][4][5] Pandeism is proposed to explain, as it relates to deism, why God would create a universe and then abandon it,[6] and as to pantheism, the origin and purpose of the universe.[6][7]

The word pandeism is a hybrid blend of the root words pantheism and deism, combining Ancient Greek: πᾶν panall” with Latin: deus which means "god". It was perhaps first coined in the present meaning in 1859 by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal.[8]


From medieval times to the Enlightenment

Weinstein examines the philosophy of 9th century theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who proposed that "God has created the world out of his own being," and identifies this as a form of pandeism, noting in particular that Eriugena's vision of God was one which does not know what it is, and learns this through the process of existing as its creation.[25] In his great work, De divisione naturae (also called Periphyseon, probably completed around 867 AD), Eriugena proposed that the nature of the universe is divisible into four distinct classes:

1 – that which creates and is not created;
2 – that which is created and creates;
3 – that which is created and does not create;
4 – that which neither is created nor creates.

The first stage is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second is the world of Platonic ideals or forms; the third is the wholly physical manifestation of our Universe, which "does not create"; the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns to completeness with the additional knowledge of having experienced this world.

A contemporary statement of this idea is that: "Since God is not a being, he is therefore not intelligible... This means not only that we cannot understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of divine effort by God to understand himself, to see himself in a mirror."[26]


Twenty-first century developments

More recently, pandeism has been classed as a logical derivation of German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's proposition that ours was the best of all possible worlds.[65] In 2010, author William C. Lane contended that:

If divine becoming were complete, God's kenosis--God's self-emptying for the sake of love--would be total. In this pandeistic view, nothing of God would remain separate and apart from what God would become. Any separate divine existence would be inconsistent with God's unreserved participation in the lives and fortunes of the actualized phenomena."[65]:67

Acknowledging that American religious philosopher William Rowe has raised "a powerful, evidential argument against ethical theism," Lane further contended that pandeism offers an escape from the evidential argument from evil:

However, it does not count against pandeism. In pandeism, God is no superintending, heavenly power, capable of hourly intervention into earthly affairs. No longer existing "above," God cannot intervene from above and cannot be blamed for failing to do so. Instead God bears all suffering, whether the fawn's[66] or anyone else's.

Even so, a skeptic might ask, "Why must there be so much suffering,? Why could not the world's design omit or modify the events that cause it?" In pandeism, the reason is clear: to remain unified, a world must convey information through transactions. Reliable conveyance requires relatively simple, uniform laws. Laws designed to skip around suffering-causing events or to alter their natural consequences (i.e., their consequences under simple laws) would need to be vastly complicated or (equivalently) to contain numerous exceptions.[65]:76–77

In 2011, social scientist Niall Douglas wrote that in pandeism, "God is growth, God is structure/knowledge, God is everything and nothing simultaneously. And, rather heretically for the Abrahamic religions, to perceive i.e. to cognate i.e. to be of matter i.e. to be structured energy generating a gravimetric field is an aspect of God relating to another aspect of God through light, which is of course God. In this, the underlying metaphysics are most definitely Pandeist."[67] Alan Dawe's 2011 book The God Franchise, though mentioning pandeism in passing as one of numerous extant theological theories,[4] declines to adopt any "-ism" as encompassing his view, though Dawe's theory includes the human experience as being a temporarily segregated sliver of the experience of God.

This aspect of the theology of pandeism (along with pantheism and panentheism) has been compared to the Biblical exhortation inActs 17:28 that "In him we live and move and have our being,"[68] while the Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia had in 1975 described the religion of Babylon as "clearly a type of pan-deism formed from a synthesis of Christianity and paganism".[69] Pandeism has also been described as one of the "older spiritual and religious traditions" whose elements are incorporated into the New Age movement,[70][71] but also as among the handful of spiritual beliefs which "are compatible with modern science."[72] In 2013, Australian religious studies scholar Raphael Lataster proposed that "Pandeism could be the most likely God-concept of all."[1]