Quotes & Sayings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Good Friday Message - God Is Love




After a brutal night
begun on capture, then
purgerous inquisition,
Jesus was scourged,
marched wounded
under his cross
up Jerusalem's
stony steeps.

His visage marred,
spit upon by haters,
bearing broken body,
wounded and despised,
hailed as Lord a week
before, mercilessly led
up Golgotha' s
weeping Hill.

Crucified mid-morning,
crowned in thorns,
jered and mocked,
hung creation's Savior
forsaken, forgiving,
dying mid-afternoon,
wept by mom, and
disciples forlorn.

Jesus dead body
was taken down,
cleansed, dressed,
and laid in another's
cold tomb three days,
until Sunday morning
met an atoning dawn
and empty tomb.

- r.e. slater
April 12, 2020
*Isaiah 52.13-53.12

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved







ISAIAH 52.13 - 53.12

The Exalted Servant

13 Behold, My servant will prosper,
He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.
14 Just as many were astonished at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred more than any man
And His form more than the sons of men.
15 Thus He will sprinkle many nations,
Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;
For what had not been told them they will see,
And what they had not heard they will understand.

The Suffering Servant

53 Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through
for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off out of the land of the [s]living
For the transgression of my people,
to whom the stroke was due?
9 His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

10 But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the Lord
will prosper in His hand.
11 As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the booty with the strong;
Because He poured out Himself to death,
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.




 



1 And straightway in the morning the chief priests
with the elders and scribes, and the whole council,
held a consultation, and bound Jesus,
and carried him away,
and delivered him up to Pilate.

2 And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews?
And he answering saith unto him, Thou sayest.

3 And the chief priests accused him of many things.

4 And Pilate again asked him, saying, Answerest thou nothing?
behold how many things they accuse thee of.

5 But Jesus no more answered anything; insomuch that Pilate marvelled.


6 Now at the feast he used to release unto them one prisoner,
whom they asked of him.

7 And there was one called Barabbas, [lying] bound with them that had
made insurrection, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

8 And the multitude went up and began to ask him
[to do] as he was wont to do unto them.

9 And Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I
release unto you the King of the Jews?

10 For he perceived that for envy the chief priests had delivered him up.

11 But the chief priests stirred up the multitude,
that he should rather release Barabbas unto them.

12 And Pilate again answered and said unto them,
What then shall I do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?

13 And they cried out again, Crucify him.

14 And Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done?
But they cried out exceedingly, Crucify him.

15 And Pilate, wishing to content the multitude,
released unto them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus, 
hen he had scourged him, to be crucified.


16 And the soldiers led him away within the court,
which is the Praetorium; and they call together the whole band.

17 And they clothe him with purple, and platting a crown of thorns,
they put it on him;

18 and they began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!

19 And they smote his head with a reed, and spat upon him,
and bowing their knees worshipped him.

20 And when they had mocked him, they took off from him the purple,
and put on him his garments. And they lead him out to crucify him.

21 And they compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene,
coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, 
to go [with them], that he might bear his cross.

22 And they brought him unto the place Golgotha,
which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull.

23 And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not.

24 And they crucify him, and part his garments among them, 
casting lots upon them, what each should take.

25 And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.

26 And the superscription of his accusation
 was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

27 And with him they crucify two robbers;
one on his right hand, and one on his left.

28 [And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith,
 And he was reckoned with transgressors.]

29 And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads,
and saying, Ha! Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest 
it in three days,

30 save thyself, and come down from the cross.

31 In like manner also the chief priests mocking [him] among themselves
with the scribes said, He saved others; himself he cannot save.

32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from 
the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were
crucified with him reproached him.

33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness
over the whole land until the ninth hour.

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

35 And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said,
Behold, he calleth Elijah.

36 And one ran, and filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed,
and gave him to drink, saying, Let be; let us see whether
Elijah cometh to take him down.

37 And Jesus uttered a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.

38 And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom.

39 And when the centurion, who stood by over
against him, saw that he so gave up the ghost, he said,
Truly this man was the Son of God.

40 And there were also women beholding from afar: among whom
[were] both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James
the less and of Joses, and Salome;

41 who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;
and many other women that came up with him unto Jerusalem.

42 And when even was now come, because it was the Preparation,
that is, the day before the sabbath,

43 there came Joseph of Arimathaea, a councillor of honorable estate, 
who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly
went in unto Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.

44 And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him 
the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead.

45 And when he learned it of the centurion, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

46 And he bought a linen cloth, and taking him down, wound him
in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out
of a rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.

47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the [mother] of Joses
beheld where he was laid.



Best Easter Songs 2020 - HE IS RISEN - 
Nonstop Easter Sunday Songs




Easter Day Message - Now A Green Blade Rises





The crucifixion was Empire's NO to justice;
and it's YES to domination and repression.

The resurrection is God's YES to liberation and goodwill;
and God's NO to Empire.



Now The Green Blade Riseth



Hallelujah! Jesus is Risen! These grand words we speak to one another today were words but spoken in private among Jesus' followers as religious leaders of Israel's temple backed by Rome's dutiful legates searched for Jesus' seditious followers daring to question the faith institute and rule of their day. 

We know through the gospels Jesus' ministries to be one of reversals. Wherever corruptible faith and religious injustice thrived Jesus stood against it. His kingdom was both spiritual and challenged the faith leadership of his day. His was the upside down kingdom which called out sin, hypocrisy, lies, and corruption. For that He was silenced and crucified. Sinful man did not want to hear what God's love would require of them. 




But the God who loves could not be silenced. Jesus arose from the dead to speak through those whose voices asked with Him, "Whom will you chose? The god of mammon or Me? The god of hypocrisy or Me? The god of lies and corruption or Me?" If it seems like we live in the times of Jesus it means that man has not changed either in his religious arrogance or his hypocritical rule. It is still corruptible, still full of wind and fury, still darkened by lies and folly. To be a Jesus follower is as difficult today as it always has been, even though we describe this post-Jesus era as the Age of the Church.

Yet the church is as corruptible now today as Israel's religion was back then. Ever era seems to go through its own "End Times" even as our Lord experienced in His life and death. Yet, God's faithful still raise the banners of God's love, hope and mercy though these same banners are despised and cast down by those goats who cry "Lord, Lord, when did we ever do such a thing?" In reply, the hosts of God will say, "When love was needed and you showed none; when aide and effort required words of hope your hearts were shut; when forgiveness cried mercy and you offered none. Your words and your works are your judgment."


The religious of Jesus' day were as darken then of understanding as they are today having thrown in their lots with the Empire of its era. Who, having declared a gospel of violence and judgment, find it fallen upon their own head though they decry their innocence. On this Easter morning, to give witness to Jesus' resurrection is to stand against the powers and principalities of the world of today. Including its empire preachers and rulers bespeaking their greatness and sanctimonious holiness while clothed in rags of self-righteousness, legalism, pride, and deception.

Yes, Jesus has risen indeed! But no longer stand ye at the tomb and weep. Nor wait in the Upper Room to be called forth by the Holy Spirit. For the God of love has risen, and cries out with clarion voice to arise and be counted as one of His crucified faithful. That the gospel of Christ demands confessing our prejudices, hatreds and anger; to repent of our sins; to love the stranger around us; and be willing to forgive, to seek, and to serve the despised and forgotten till He comes again as Lord of Lords over all empires of this world whether religious or not.




What Does Easter Mean, by Gordon Sharp








Saturday, April 11, 2020

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, Part III - Class Discussions





I would like to thank Jay McDaniel for his many insights which are shared here as he has shown diligence to share with John Cobb's class on Process & Reality. His rich experiences and insights have helped through Whitehead's at times obscure material in relating it helpfully to our present context. Thank you Jay, and to many others in class for their helpful insights. - R.E. Slater


The Many Become One and are Increased by One

Interpreting Whitehead's phrase "the many become one and 
are increased by one" in the context where it appears.

WHITEHEAD VIDEO SERIES
Lesson Nine



Lesson Nine considers selected passages from six paragraphs in a section of Whitehead's Process and Reality called The Category of the Ultimate.  One of the most important ideas presented in these passages is that Creativity is, in Whitehead's words, "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matters of fact."

His idea is that every actual fact in the universe -- every actual entity -- is a "production of novel togetherness." This means that an entity is not simply "one" but also "many." It is the many becoming one.

The video uses the example of a child's relationship to her parents to illustrate the point.  Her parents are part of who she is, and in her very inclusion of them within her own life, she is more than them. Always she is becoming herself, and the self who becomes at any given moment becomes part of a many which influence her in the future.  - Jay McDaniel


* * * * * * * * * 


Whitehead's Relevance to 2020's
Global Coronovirus Pandemic

Introduction by Jay McDaniel

I think of two struggles. Millions of people are struggling with the new situation, the pandemic, and how to respond to it in a deep and constructive way. A small sub-group are simultaneously struggling to understand Whitehead’s Process and Reality through an online course offered by John Cobb through the Cobb Center for Process and Practice and Homebrewed Christianity.

The first struggle is by all means the most important; in many ways the second struggle is but a distraction. Why should anyone care if the world is composed of events, not things, be they morning light or a frightening virus? Why should anyone care if, in addition to an Eternal Companion to the world’s joys and sufferings, namely God, there is also a creative abyss – a creativity – of which the self-creativity of all things, God included, are expressions?

In The Face of the Deep, the theologian Catherine Keller offers a way of seeing why some might care. Building upon Whitehead’s idea that God is the Face of the Deep, but also that there’s more to the Deep than God, I am offered a way of reminding myself that God does not create or even will the sadness, but that God within us as a steadfast love who gives us strength to endure and the courage to respond, each in our all-togetherness. Yes, nothingness is real. And so is love.


God as the Face of the Deep

Amazon Link

First published in 2003, Catherine Keller's Face of the Deep proposes that God is the face of the deep and also that the deep is more than God. 

As I read her work, the deep is akin to Whitehead's idea of creativity and to what Wallace Stevens calls the nothingness from which the earliest single light adds itself to the evening sky. 

If you have Buddhist leanings, you might imagine the nothingness as that creative abyss, sunyata, from which all things create themselves in response to inherited situations. Or to the godhead of which some Christian mystics speak, Meister Eckhart and Jakob Bohme, for example.

​The deep is not the personal God in whom Jesus placed his faith: the Eternal Companion to the world's joys and sufferings. It is not a still small voice within the heart luring toward wisdom, compassion and creativity. It is not the One who seeks to creatively transform and thus redeem all that happens in the world. It is, I suggest, the self-creativity of each and every actuality, God included.

​ A unique feature of Whitehead's work is that, in his view, the nothingness is real in its way, and God is real in God's way. Catherine Keller offers a perfect metaphor for thinking about God. God isn't the whole of the deep, but God is the face of the deep.

In our pandemic age, it may be tempting to think that viruses are created by God. I think they create themselves, as do we, as does God. I find comfort and courage in the idea that God isn't the deep as a whole, but the face of the deep who seeks the well-being of each and all, who is a healing presence, and whose steadfast love endures forever. And I am grateful to Catherine Keller for giving me the language.

- Jay McDaniel, April, 2020



* * * * * * * * * 




FROM AN EARLIER POST:



What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 11




Lesson Eleven
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 39
Key Idea: There are two kinds of reality: actuality and potentiality.

In Whitehead's philosophy something is "real" if it can be experienced as an object of one sort or another and thus, as an object, make a difference in experience. Lesson Eleven introduces the idea that some objects of experience are possibilities rather than actualities. They are real but not actual, because they do not feel or prehend their surroundings and do not make decisions. The most abstract of these objects are what Whitehead calls eternal objects. They are pure potentials which may be actualized in some universe or cosmic epoch, even if not our own. These objects are similar to Plato's Forms, and Whitehead was indeed influenced by Plato. The lesson concludes with remarks concerning the creative and performing arts and the natural sciences, suggesting that they are ways of exploring and presenting potentialities.


What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 12



Lesson Twelve
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 23
Key Idea: Propositions are not simply statements of belief; they are lures for feeling.

Lesson Twelve discusses Whitehead's idea of a proposition -- or lure for feeling -- showing how propositions are means by which novelty enters the world. By way of illustration, this segment plays some of the music of the jazz musician, John Coltrane, and presents propositions in light of the innovative spirit of jazz. Whitehead proposes that, at every moment of our lives, we are improvising responses to given situations, adding our own voice to the very history of the universe. Other creatures are doing this, too. We live in an improvisational universe, in which indeterminacy is as real, and as important, as determinacy. Thus, for Whitehead, the future is always open, and the future is never entirely pre-determined by the past or the present. This is the case even for God, who knows what is possible in the future, but not what is actual until it becomes actual.


What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 13



Lesson Thirteen
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 51.
Key Idea: Prehensions are the means by which entities are present in others. 

Lesson Thirteen introduces two of the most important ideas in Whitehead's philosophy: prehensions and subjective forms. . Every actual entity, every moment of experience, consists of acts of experiencing or prehending many realities which "become one" in the act of experiencing them. The realities can be other actual entities or pure potentialities, or combinations of them. Prehensions may be conscious or unconscious; in human life most are unconscious. Consciousness is but the tip of the experiential iceberg. Prehensions are the most fundamental element in actual entities, the means by which the universe is held together and things are present in one another. Lesson Thirteen takes a conversation between a mother and her daughter as a way of illustration prehension and their complementary notion: subjective forms.


What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 14



Lesson Fourteen
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 34.
Key Idea: Reality is thoroughly social. Molecules and atoms, planets and stars are societies, too. There are no self-contained facts.

Lesson Fourteen introduces the ideas of nexus and society to readers. Most of the macroscopic objects that we perceive around us are not single actual entities, but rather aggregates of actual entities unified by their prehensions of one another (nexus) and perhaps also by a common characteristic which they inherit from predecessors in the the nexus, thus giving them more specific definition (society). There are many kinds of societies.  A human being is a society too. She is a personally-ordered society who consists of many moments of experience (many actual entities) in succession, each inheriting from the predecessors with special intimacy. There is no single person who underlies the change; there are many subjects in succession. The idea is very Buddhist: "No thinker thinks twice and no experiencer experiences twice." Lesson Fourteen ends by offering the idea that perhaps the universe as a whole is gathered into an ongoing Life, too. This is what Whitehead means by the consequent nature of God.


What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 15



Lesson Fifteen
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 81.
Key Idea: The body plays an essential role in human life: the withness of the body.

Lesson Fifteen introduces three ideas that are important to Whitehead in Process and Reality: the withness of the body, experience in the mode of causal efficacy, and experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. Experience in the mode of causal efficacy is visceral experience. It occurs when we feel affected or influenced by bodily states and by realities outside our bodies in direct, energetic ways. It is an important part of bodily experience and serves a perpetual reminder that, in our daily lives, we are with our bodies and our bodies are with us. Whitehead calls it the withness of the body. This does not mean that our minds are precisely identical with our bodies; we can have attitudes toward our bodies which are healthy or unhealthy, and these attitudes occur in our minds. But our bodies are marvelously intricate and complex systems of energy which nourish us, give us a sense of direction, offer us wisdom, and connect us with the world. And ultimately, says Whitehead, the whole world is like a body to us. Even God -- if God exists-- is embodied. The universe is God's body.


What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 16




Lesson Sixteen
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, page 43
Key Idea: Decision is the very meaning of actuality

Lesson Sixteen focuses on Whitehead's idea that the very meaning of actuality lies in the notion of decision. In Whitehead's philosophy a decision is not a "conscious" decision, but rather a subjectivity activity -- conscious or unconscious -- in which some possibilities for responding to a given situation are excluded or cut off, while others are then actualizes. A woman climbing a mountain, movement by moment, is making conscious decisions which constitute her very actuality in the moment at hand. And so, thinks Whitehead, are the energy-events within the very depths of atoms. Understood in this way, decision is one of the primary expressions of the ultimate reality of the universe: creativity. Decisions may be wise or unwise, productive or destructive, violent or graceful -- whatever their nature, they are the very reason why things unfolds as they do. From Whitehead's perspective the universe is not simply an unfolding of abstract ideas. The world is not the outcome of mathematical formulas. It is the outcome of decisions.


What Is Process Thought? - Lesson 17



Lesson Seventeen
Key Text: Process and Reality, pages 48-51.
Key Idea: Every moment of human experience is a concrescence of the universe.

Lesson Seventeen offers the most systematic summary of Whitehead's idea of experience available in this series of videos. The diagrams were created by a student at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, USA. There is a danger in diagrams, insofar as they can lead people into overly-static and linear ways of looking at the world. Whitehead's philosophy is more holistic and dynamic. This means that, when we think of experience, we need to hold onto diagrams with a relaxed grasp, fully aware that experience is always more than images. Nevertheless, the diagrams may help viewers more fully understand Whitehead's concept of experience. In the narrative the experiencing subject is imagined as a human being, but it is important to remember that, in Whitehead's philosophy, there is subjectivity everywhere: in the infinitely small and the infinitely large. Even in the depths of atoms, and even in the depths of God, there is something akin to what is depicted in the diagrams: prehending, subjective form, and decision. However, in God, as Whitehead understands God, there is no perishing of immediacy. God is the inclusive and everlasting act of concrescence who shares in all finite moments such as those depicted above. (See Lesson Nineteen.)



Friday, April 10, 2020

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, Part III






I've been thinking, everything I've been working on since 2011-2012 has been pointing towards this direction. That the non-process Western philosophies I grew up with, and the Continental philosophies I recently have learned, were not revealing a process-based world shown to us in quantum physics, the neurosciences, the postmodern arts, and so many other disciplines. It took a process-driven cosmology that knows how to dip its toes into the paradoxical realms of metaphysics and ontologies of the natural and spiritual worlds to do this. Like the many layers of an onion, the more you peel the onion the deeper its layers go down until there is nothing left. And in its nothingness you've missed the whole. Process says the reality was the relationship of the onion to itself in its parts, to its whole, and including the exploration of the observer and his/her/its connection to the cosmos. A dualistic, or binary, concept of today's postmodern world is no longer relevant. We must turn to nonlinear complex processes to better explain the world of the unseen, the hidden, and the sublime structures and purposes driving nature and man. - re slater


PART III - DISCUSSIONS AND APPLICATIONS 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I. Fact and Form 39

  • I. Appeal to Facts, European Tradition; Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant; Intrinsic Reasonableness; Footnotes to Plato; This Cosmology Platonic; Participating Forms; Divine Ordering; Ontological Principle; Facts the only Reasons; Facts are Process; Prehension, Satisfaction. 
  • II. Rationalism a Faith, Adventure of Hope; Limits of Theory, Givenness, Professor A. E. Taylor on Plato; Decision, the Ontological Principle; Entities and Process, Actual Entities and Decision; Stubborn Fact. 
  • III. Platonic Form, Idea, Essence, Eternal Object; Potentiality and Givenness; Exclusiveness of the Given; Subject-Superject, Becoming and Being; Evaporation of Indeterrnination in Concrescence, Satisfaction Determinate and Exclusive; Concrescence Dipolar; Potentiality, Givenness, Impossibility; Subsistence. 
  • IV. Actual Occasions Internally Determined, Externally Free; Course of History not Necessary, No Perfection; Efficient Causation and Final Reaction; God's Primordial Freedom; Each Concrescence between Definite Free Initiation and Definite Free Conclusion, the Former Macrocosmic, the Latter Microcosmic. 
  • V. Universals and Particulars, Unsuitable Terms with False Implication; Illustration from Descartes, also Hume; Descartes' Alternative Doctrine, Realitas Objective, Inspectio, Intuitio, Judicium; World not Describable in Terms of Subject and Predicate. Substance and Quality, Particular and Universal; Universal Relativity. 
  • VI. Locke's Essay, Agreement of Organic Philosophy with It; Substitute 'Experience for Understanding'; Ideas and Prehensions; Locke's Two Doctrines of Ideas, Ideas of Particular Things; Representative Theory of Perception; Logical Simplicity and Genetic Priority not to be Identified; Substance, Exterior Things, Societies; Solidarity of the Universe. 
  • VII. Locke's Doctrine of Power, Power and Substance; Causal Objectification and Presentational Objectification; Change Means Adventures of Eternal Objects; Real Essence, Abstract Essence; Doctrine of Organism and Generation of Actual Entities. 

Chapter II. The Extensive Continuum 61

  • I. Continuum and Real Potentiality, Atomized by Actual Occasions; How the Continuum is Experienced, Presentational Immediacy, Sensa; Real Chair and Chair-Image; Complex Ingression of Sensa. 
  • II. General Potentiality and Real Potentiality; Standpoints of Actual Occasions, Determined by Initial Phase of Subjective Aim; Extensive Relationships; The Epochal Theory of Time, Zeno, William James. 
  • III. Newton's Scholium.
  • IV. Newton's Scholium, Comparison with Philosophy of Organism and with Descartes; 'Withness of the Body,' Status of the Body in the Actual World; Ontological Status of Space for Newton, Descartes and the Organic Philosophy.
  • V. Undifferentiated Endurance and the Passivity of Substance, Source of Errors. 
  • VI. Summary.






STUDIES WITH JOHN B. COBB
Alfred North Whitehead, Process & Reality

Notes from Session 3

*Disclaimer. These are my notes from reading and listening to
John Cobb which may not truly reflect his learned positions or sentiments
built over a lifetime of study and interaction with historic material.


CHAPTER III - SOME DERIVATIVE NOTIONS

God & Eternal Objects
pg 31 ff

Observation by John Cobb:
Everything has to be somewhere. The whole realm of
pure potentials must include all creation somewhere.

Thus begins a brief discuss of God & Eternal Objects.



Eternal objects are ordered for the sake of influencing creation to make possible an increase of value in creation.


We tend to think of the world as a static thing without novelty. But this type of thinking would be incorrect. There does exists real novelty in the world. And it is by this observation the "process of organism" or "process of philosophy" begins its trajectory towards metaphysics and ontology.

Observation by John Cobb:
To exclude God from the world is to exclude novelty.
Atheism has a very difficult time affirming novelty.

Let's go further. God is like all other actualities. But God is also unlike all actualities. In one sense God is a "creature" or "organism." But in another sense God is neither creaturely nor organic. What we're driving at here is that God has real connectivity to the world.


Further, God is the only Actual Entity which is NOT an Actual Occasion unless it be in Himself. Though all creatures and aspects of creation "come-and-go," that is, they are perishable, it is God who is the everlasting Entity and Occasion. There is no other Entity or Occasion before Him.

There are three categories of "The Ultimate":
1 - Temporal ~ Creation
2 - Eternal Objects ~ Not real entities but a "category"
3 - Everlasting ~ an Entity or Process which is not momentary
The notion of the "Ultimate" usually is understood as something, or some ideal, which is inert, inactive, (im)passive, or distinct from the cosmos/creation/world. This would be the Aristotelian sense of the word.

In Process Philosophy the notion of the "Ultimate" speaks to something which is active - not inert nor (im)passive. Something which is integrally connected to the world. Something which moves towards novelty and creativity:


God / Being ----> Creativity / the Act of Being

Creativity implies activity vs. Inert, passive objects of inactivity

Process Philosophy vs. Aristotelian Philosophy


In the Whiteheadian sense of the Ultimate, God cannot be divorced neither from Himself nor from His creation nor from His act of creativity. He is the ultimate explanation of physical phenomena as He participates in all of it at every moment everlastingly.






* * * * * * * * * * *


NOTHING EVENTS

pg 82, last Paragraph

This conception of an actual entity in the fluent world is little more than an expansion of a sentence in the Timaeus: "But that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is." Bergson, in his protest against "spatialization," is only echoing Plato's phrase "and never really is."

John Cobb - Opinion without Reason is always something that "never really is." This latter phrase indicates the characteristics of something whether it is ever really "spiritual, liberating, despairing, or distressing." If the reality of an Actual Event (AE) or Actual Occasion (AO) ever really is then there will be valuative outcomes by its concrescence. If not, "it never really was, is, or ever will be" anything but a potential prehension.

Process Philosophy (and by congruence, Process Theology) share a lot in common with the Asian Culture in its nominative verb structure of the language, thought processes, and lingual agreements. As example, in Buddhism, the idea of "NOTHINGNESS" is not something reality will cling to. As such, neither should we (even though existentially we never could, if something is nothing).

Nothingness, used in the perishing sense, says that neither you, nor I, are things we may cling to. That we are always in the process of transition, of becoming, and then perishing, and then becoming, and then perishing, eternally while we live. In this sense, this idea of becoming ever more than we are might free us from the stress and anxiety of never amounting to much, or having lost out in earlier stages of life of missed opportunities. It actually releases us to the idea of freedom and compassion to others as well as to ourselves that we may elect to become even as we have been becoming all our lives in one sense or another. That we might release our being into the hands of the God of process to be used in reflective ways which has congruency to our being-of-becoming seeking remission and efficacy in relationships and personal/societal/ecological valuation.

---

As God is, who was the Primordial God of eternity past, and is the God of the Present, the God of the Now, who is the God of the Becoming Past, and the God of the Becoming Future, so God is the Prehending Ultimate. These statements then are multiple sides of the same coin, or orb, or whatever shape a multiple prehending Ultimate might be described as. But in process terms, the immediate present is so slim a thing and so transitory a momentary event that is is nearly always eclipsed by the preceding past and incoming/becoming future meshing and molding together with its present state.

Stepping out of time as a process one might imagine that the only process state we have to live in is the state of the present, the ever living now, the becoming moment where we receive our past, meditate on it, and release it into the future without allow our present to be lost in the flows of our many lives. Our value is in the now, which is never static. In our acts of the moment which determine who we are, where we are going, what we're about, and how we might think and act. What process gives to the present is the gift of connection, wholeness, relationship to the All which surrounds us, encompasses us, enmeshes, enfolds us, holds us, influences us, and abides with us. - res

Our present is perpetually perishing as it presses forward from eventful occasions of our past pushing us onwards towards an enmeshing future which I once spoke of in one of my poems as a "membrane" or "BRAN" (in the quantum mathematical expression of the concept) of becoming (cf. poem, School Days). Succinctly, all our past, all our perishable moments of our reflective being, are scooped up and accumulated into the everlasting Presence-and-Being of the God of our unforgettable moments of ourselves. In God we never really perish but are an "everlasting are" of many moments held in one everlasting essence of God. The God of process then is the God who is our timeless Keeper.

---

Descartes describes man's reality by the static statement of "I think, therefore I am." Whereas Whitehead describes man as an always actuating "Am" who never perishes but always moves forward moment by moment as an "everlasting becoming." (sic, "I am, therefore I become").
Contra Plato re his thoughts on the perishable object, Whitehead describes a creation in which everything perishes with continuing influence upon a future filled with existential consequentiality.
If nothing endures then what's the point of life? Of living? But in God all is PRESERVED.



THE NATURE OF A STONE
AND CHAOS

pg 78 ff

We may describe a stone by its whole or by its parts. If by its parts we might describe it by color, weight, shape, appearance, relationship to the terrain and topology, its geography, or its regional location on this planet or another; or by its crystalline molecules, or its molecular structure, or by its quantum states, or even by its dimension quantum string states epitomized by its dimensional vibratory structure (sic, how it "sings" or "sounds" to the quantum universe around it).

One part of the process of description might grow from the stone itself upwards to include an ever-expanding universe of inclusion. That is, how it might relate from itself to the universe. Another way of describing the stone was within itself in a cascading sequence of ever-descending worlds of the small. And finally, we might describe the stone in all its parts and its wholeness as a thing in flux, movement, and chaos with the rest of creation. That even in its seeming structure of eternality there are interior and exterior forces without, and within, which will affect its balance and harmony of the now, the present, the moment. Who knew there was so much going on with that stone!

So much so then with living things, a living cosmos, or transitioning inorganic matter! All of creation "sings, claps its hands, shouts for joy, or roars its thunder" throughout its rhythms and motions. This is its nature. It is a nature in process with itself. It is the restless nature of God given to creation to order its chaos into new chaoses of being and becoming through event and occasion.

Chaos in itself is not evil if structured with an evolving, valuative process of concrescence. But chaos can and does become evil dependent upon how it disrupts the valuative concrescing processes of living things. Rains may become floods; fires destructive; breezes become gales; fresh water too briny; and so forth. Chaos is how creation runs. It is part of creation's evolving structure. Without it there can be "normative" growth. No "novelty, wonder, or creativity."

Chaos is a good thing which ever orders itself as a quality which is shared with its Creator. A Creator who orders chaos to become move than it is. It involves both life and death. Chaos has its cycles. But, being indeterminate, it may also create bad disrupts instead of good disruptions. The nature of God is not bad but the freewill agency He has granted to creation may devolve as well as evolve. With non-living, inorganic matter, it goes where it pleases.

But if left alone, as exampled by nature in its evolving stages, it always moves towards wholeness, balance, harmony, and rhythm. It can settle out and be mitigated by sources of life spring up everywhere underneath its forces (biblically, "wings"?) which lend stability to its times of fury and fickleness. Green landscapes have the power within itself for such mitigation. The winds die down, the water is tamed and made healthy, the light of the sun finds fields to feed and trees which offer shade. Rhythm and harmony. These are valuative consequences of concrescing processes.





The integration process of pragmatic constructivism. | School of ...



LANGUAGE: OBJECT (noun)
or EVENT (verb)?

HOW WE THINK IN A LANGUAGE DEFINES
OUR UNIVERSE, BELIEFS, AND METAPHYSICS

pg 79

The simple sentence consists of a noun or pronoun, a verb, and an actionable event:

Noun/Pronoun + Verb --> Event

If the language of a society is highly visual, then its "world" or "metaphysics" or "beliefs" are prejudiced towards objectifying what it sees. If a language of a society is shaped towards actions, events, hearing, or narrative, then that language is prejudiced towards actionable events or occasions. This latter is where process philosophy/theology lives. Actual Entities (or Occasions) which are always transitioning towards something.

In English, and the Indo-European languages, both have roots in the Latin and Greek languages of the ancient world where nature and life were objectified. We see all around us in a material sense and wish to then reduce its components into orderly consequences of finally states. This is the science of empiricism. It is the basis of modern science.

It grows out of a visual world of many types of enduring objects and actions. It is what drives Western philosophy; and it has also been produced in parts of Continental Philosophy as it breaks metaphysics down into worlds of idealism, phenomena, existentialism, dialectic, etc. Such societies inform themselves of their universe by predominantly their visual experiences hidden within the sublime sensory organ of vision over all other sensory organs and conceptualized perceptions.

In Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese these languages differ. They concentrate on the "VERB" of the responding event where all is in motion with itself. Such motion-based languages "hear" the wind, the trees, the mountains and valleys. They write of its narratives in a flowing majesty of resplendent living life bounding across a universe of joy and gladness. Its stories are stories of harmony, flow, rhythm, and balance. There is no object, no substance, in its attitudes as all have become one and the one the many. Its language informs its speakers of another kind of world which non-Semitic and non-Oriental worlds cannot "hear" very well.

Language then may express a succession of event without a need for an objectifying that event as a substance. When one listens to a symphony one does not easily hear the entirety of the notes or the musical phrases which for the sections of that symphony. It is very hard to do. Like ourselves, a symphony of sound washes our us, our feelings, our being. It is very difficult to try to remember a symphony's collection of tonalities and phrases while hearing the symphony itself. It is very hard to take a fluid, liquid language of succession and objectify it.

If we focus on its moments we cannot hear the score. If we hear the score we cannot focus on the notes. This kind of processional language involves not seeing but feeling. Even processional language has a hard time describing poetically what it hears, feels, senses in its being. Consequently, if we are to "tune in" to a process universe than we will need another kind of language even beyond that dominated by verb structures. We'll need a language which cannot be spoken, written down, perhaps even scored. One may call it the language of the trees or the universe, but I suspect even those languages will not be enough to hear the many tonal forms of a process creation.

---

Of note, when Alfred North Whitehead wrote his process philosophy he did not consider any other language than his own, English. Hence, his philosophical "empirical breakdown" of its conceptual components is very Continental-like. It has its good insights and its problems or restrictions. Perhaps a new endeavor might take Continental Philosophy's process-based parts, mix it up in a verb-based societal language, and try re-writing it in the new world of quantum science. But to do that will require a cross-discipline between a competently versed quantum theoretical physicist, a thorough-going abstract Continental philosopher, and contemporary processed-based orthodox theologian. As such, there are very, very few of these types around. So, I will expect many different forms of process philosophy/theology to result over the years to come as searches are made to better express the kind of metaphysical cosmology we live in.

---

We see the world through ourselves. The ever dominant "I". In Whitehead, the I is different in every moment of its being while affecting a new future which hadn't existed before the I had entered into it. In a process world, the I is called into being the best it can be as a valuative component moving from one future to the next towards best possible outcomes.

(As an aside, I personally wonder if a disruptive form of bad chaos might be helpful here in the sinful world of men. But then again, bad may seem good though it never seems to engender good through bad means. Thus, if we change the disruptive form of bad chaos to good chaos, here we might better obtain a formative sequencing where good may birth good. However, other freewill agents might just as will resist such positive choices to continue and perhaps enhance bad outcomes. The point is, it is still the onus placed upon the individual to move towards a future of every hour and every day with greater resolve against a persisting state of disruptive processes resulting from non-valuative choices.)


Microgenesis of perception according to Whitehead (up-arrow)read ...


CAUSAL EFFICACY &
PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY


With the terms of causal efficacy (CE) and presentational immediacy (PI) we must now ask the question as to how the past shapes the present with effect and causality. According to Whitehead, the past is represented in the present as the present's initial phase. The diagram of light helps to demonstrate light's journey from past to immediate past to present to immediate future to future futures.

Again, Whitehead thinks that a causal past is how we might prehend our contemporary world before either we or the world enter into a relationship of presentational efficacy. But once we do than at that moment the prehended past becomes a concrescing present pressing forward even as it quickly perishes. Therefore, any discussion of immediacy will also show how dependent it is on the past. 

Too, presentational efficacy involves both sensory and non-sensory organs. Not only the eyes et al but the mind which conjectures, rationalizes, reasons, and speculates. The wall in a room presents itself with color to our eyes and a solid surface to our touch but to our mind it projects itself as a barrier we shelter behind or must go around to get pass.

As causal efficacy occurs and presentational immediacy takes place, by extension, time and distance projects the causal efficacy into the past so that presentation immediacy may create its own causal efficacy on a future occasion.

---

Whitehead's categories organized in Peircean triads The physical ...

Whitehead's categories organized in Peircean triads The physical categories on the left represent what Whitehead (1929) called "the ultimate facts of immediate actual experience." The three categories Whitehead defined for actual entities, prehensions, and (societal) nexûs make up a triad of physical categories characterized by the Kantian triad under Relation: Inherence, Causality, and Community.


AE/AO ---> derivations / extensions ---> AE / AO


There are three or four kinds of prehensions:

1 - Physical
2 - Conceptual
3 - The Intermixture of both 1 with 2 and 2 with 1
4 - The Strain of Experience and Extension

As time and displacement take place as a continuum from the experience moment a new process begins. The process world of reality is thereby "extended" beyond what it was into another world of becoming. But not as independent realities but as collective realities joined together, though perhaps not affecting one another because of displacement between its remote organs in relation to nearer organs (e.g., process philosophy is also a philosophy of "organism").

For example, a star is born, lives, and dies and yet we may see or not see its light because of its remoteness, time and distance between us, and the brevity of life we bear. This discussion then might enter into discussions of spacetime and how objects move in relationship to one another:

A moves through ST ---> In respect to B's causality

B moves through ST ---> In respect to A's causality

And yet, time and space are never fixed. They are fluid and move relatively to one another. Things that move within this world or spacetime such as light or radiation contort with its gravitational effects among other factors creating a unique kind of "extensive continuum".

Newton's Substance Reality (Materialism) ---> Is replaced by Einstein's Motion / Event

In Relativity Theory anything can be used as a spacetime reference point where each "organic event" moves relative to another "organic event".

I --> Others
Others --> I

Earth --> Stars
Stars --> Earth

The Sun's Solar System --> Milky Way
The Milky Way --> The Sun's Solar System

The Milky Way --> Nearby Galaxies
Nearby Galaxies --> The Milky Way

etc


As example, current quantum theory states that the Big Bang resulted from a compressed chaotic state of one-dimensional plasmic space we might think of as a "spatial void." A void where time and infinity are lost within this spatial state of timeless dimension consisting in a "liquid" plasmic state where there is no time as there are no reference points. Only energetic radiation bound to itself through intense gravitational forces forming an "unobservable" spatial void.

When birthed, this spatial void began an everlasting birthing process which changes with the varying spacetime dimensions it has created. Now weather the Big Bang was borne from the collision of one uniquely separate universe with one or more uniquely separate universes; or whether in itself, it began the very process of everlastingly bubbling multi-verses we may never know. What we do know is that cosmic evolution tells of a process-based evolution allowing for all parts of process formature as underlying themes to our present cosmic context.



HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY


Plato's Naturalistic Realism evolved in the 17th Century as British Empiricism forming the basis of modern science. Descartes, Hume, and Locke spoke of final and efficient causes where our observations tell us what the world is like. Hume said that causality is fundamental to science. That is,

cause A-->led to cause B-->led to C--> led to D.

Then one day he asked an unthought question... "What is Cause?" If it is not visible, or able to be empirically testable, then what is cause in the metaphysical sense? With this observation Hume effectively ends British Empiricism.

At which point Immanuel Kant awakens from his dogmatic slumbers and proposes a philosophical Transcendentalism. Having assumed experience gave us reality he noticed immediately upon Hume's observation that with the inability to perceive cause one cannot know from the study of Science its causal relationships. These are hidden from us as observers empirically. Therefore, it is the Mind! Reason! Which is the ultimate causality. Which give necessary ordering to the multiplicity of observed data.
Data --> Mind ---> Organizes Data

In effect, Kant says to forget the empiricism of data to concentrate on the empiricism of the mind. Pure reason. Thus, was birthed the Age of German Idealism into which Hegel next responded. And with Hegel began the course Continental Philosophy in its many directions to contemplate the unseen, the untestable, the unthought. An Age of Critical Thinking. And it was into this era which A.N. Whitehead, being American, and living in a Western tradition, responded. But because he wasn't considered to be a "critical thinker" the worthies of German Idealism were not impressed by his metaphysical theories on cosmogony while they were concentrating on the metaphysical suborders within cosmogony. Here then was an impasse. The parts of the whole were the subjects of study rather than the whole itself, which Whitehead deigned to discuss, and conjecture, as a superseding whole to all other suborder discussions.

This is not to throw Continental Philosophy under the bus. In many ways it has enlivened philosophy for contemporary undertakings of the universe and how things work. But in another sense, Process Philosophy is becoming the conceptual bridge over which both Western Philosophy and Continental Philosophy might find agreement with one another as each concentrates on an aspect of a reality deemed important to their discipline.

Beginning then with Kant, we move from Kantian Dualism (sic, noumenal worlds of reality we cannot understand) to Descartes' Cartesian Dualism (sic, Mind v Body Dualism) which states that mental phenomena are non-physical, and that metaphysical/ontological matter exists independently of the mind (which can or cannot be known). In all of this, what Whitehead wished to do was to restore to nature its mystery by incorporating its causality into the experiential world of processes which are no longer mechanistic, material-based objects that could be measured or determined.


To rely on mystery as an explanation is not sufficient for a coherent theology of God, nature or man. Conversely, one may never state with absolute certainty a surmise in an ever-evolving cosmogony between God and creation. The best we can do is to approximate reality that it sufficiently explains pain and loss, joy and passion. In this might a theology be described as coherent but never static as a dynamically evolving system. - re slater