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

-----

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, March 22, 2020

Is A Pandemic a God-Sent Plague or Something Else?




Theodicy (noun) 

from Greek theos, “god”; dikē, “justice”

explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty,
and all-knowing God permits evil

the vindication of God's divine goodness and providence
in view of the existence of evil.


* * * * * * * * * * * * *


Concrescence (verb)

the coalescence or growing together of parts originally separate

a relational, interactive, interconnective evolving of parts to the whole

the consequent nature of God interacting with the world, prehending fully every
single actual occasion in the world, upon its concrescence to thus preserving
the past, affect the present, and produce greater generative networks of
wellbeing and novelty

Process philosophers characterize God's relation to the world as one of
mutual transcendence, mutual immanence, and mutual creation.


* * * * * * * * * * * * *


Is A Pandemic a God-Sent Plague
or Something Else?

by R.E. Slater
March 22, 2020
rev. July 31, 2020


When it comes to plagues and disasters a church may chose the loving God approach (my preference) or, as many will do, chose the condemning God approach. One seeks restoration. The other blame. One seeks communion. The other seeks disunity and division.

If theology is any good at all then a bible centered on God's love is the more meaningful, helpful, and easily transportable path to healing and peace. Good things come out of it like forgiveness, mercy, and fellowship.

The uglier approach of surmising God as a vengeful, condemning God but creates communities i) of fear, ii) rules-based faiths and formulas for legalism, and iii) ascetic living (trying to be holy by personal or social restrictions, a set of stoicisms, a self-harming form penitence, and so forth). This kind of God-perception withholds goodness and love, excludes many of God's children for many made-up religious reasons, is always sharply critical of everything, preaches guilt and unworthiness, and justifies its gospel of fear on every occasion.

Why Do Bad Things Happen?

As to why bad things happen in this world is a question of theodicy. I've been asking it for a very long time. For myself, as well as for many others, it is the simple observation that we live in a freewill creation which God doesn't control but rather guides by partnering where He can with man and nature.

Our restless and brooding souls are not unlike the whirlwind or troubling seas. But when hearing the Lord's words of peace and goodwill we must chose either by saying "Yea, Lord, I hear you," or, "Be gone from me and let me have my own way." This is the nub of an indeterminate freewill creation and sentient life.

The Agency of a Freewill Creation
Choices, as they can be made, blending with divine guidance and goodness, where it can be made possible, lived out in a cosmos boiling with restless energy yearning for life, is often expressed in ways of unbecoming rather than in ways of nurturing becoming.
Believing God to be in control is hopeful, but it is using the wrong word. God is never in control of a freewill creation with an open, undetermined future. Yet through loving guidance He seeks a kind of control in what can better be described as a fellowship or a partnership. A fellowship which guides, allowing the fullest of creation's energy to create, imagine, and become all it can be under a fulfilling divine guidance.

A virus, illness, natural disaster, or suffering is the unfortunate result of a freewill creation exercising un-nurturing agency. Within this environment - as God can - He will deliver and guide, but when not, He will always be present with us in all of life's events in a deeply personal communion.

Does God Damn and Condemn?

In this sense then, our sins do not force God away towards condemnation and judgement as many will say. As a God who is always loving and filling life with goodness, He cannot be a God of damnation. It is our own sins which fill us with grief and feelings of cursedness, not God. This, He would take away in an instant, as we let Him, filling our lives in times of harm or in times of fullness, replacing condemnation with mercy, unforgiveness with love, feelings of hurt and harm with forbearance, wisdom, and deliverance.

More simply said, God's compassion is present with all His creation. There is nothing with may separate us from God's love. And though the bible narrates stories of judgment believed by the ancients as God-sent it would be more accurate to say that these events of suffering, hardship, ruination, disaster, were more in line with how a sin-marred creation operates. Not as acts of a loving God but as acts of agency from a creation willfully exhibiting itself.

How Does God Act in a Freewill Creation?

Once an initiating process bubbles forward it may bubble for good or bad releasing succeeding bubbles of goodness or badness. This is the essence of process theology. Through these bubbling consequences God is there throughout its process doing what He can within and without a freewill creation. This is not to speak of God as limited, but as a fully sovereign God guiding creation without coercing creation.

The easiest idea is to speak of God as determining and controlling creation. But if so, creation is not open, nor free, to become in its own way. Process thought will say that creation has an open and not determined future; and that its is not controlled by God but free to become what it was initial given in its essence... that of becoming like the image of God. That is, God poured God's Self into creation. In its bones, or DNA, is the strong yearning to exercise generative bubbles of goodness, nourishment, and wellbeing for all beings. To creative novel bubbles of relationships amid thriving continuity.

Sadly, with sin came a marring of creation. It is neither wholly good or wholly evil. But it is in need of redemptive atonement which God gave through His own sacrifice on the Cross. An atonement which has placed the path of creation back towards fellowship with its Creator. Empowering it from an old creation to a new creation.

Process theodicy does not need to defend God for the evil humanity or creation groans under. It states that any judgment type of events in life testifies to the struggle of creation to either give in to itself or to God. God is not sinful or evil. Nor is He powerless or weak. God has spawned God's Self into a process that will never end which He may have eternal fellowship with.

And like Himself it has agency. And with agency it has opportunities to move from being to becoming. From being what it is to becoming all that it might be in the image of God exhibiting deep fellowship not only with God but with itself. Between these tensions of being and becoming will be a titanic history of redemptive struggle.

Our Response in Time of Evil

We might incorrectly call these times of God's judgment but in actuality these will be times of opportunity through crisis to regain what was lost at Eden. Times of challenge to meet devastation with compassion, wisdom, mercy and love. To take loss of life, or loss of social justice, or loss of personal freedoms and rights to remake a crisis into a good thing rather than to perpetuate its evil.

In terms of today's coronavirus, to find effective vaccines, to double down on helping each other, in rebuking - or not encouraging - views of scapegoating, hatred, or slandering talk of the whys and hows and wherefores of the crisis being experienced. Of refusing lies by speaking truth. Of refusing racism by embracing the other. Of withstanding voices or churches or faiths which speak death to society by speaking life and love and wisdom.

Our responses may be like the effervescing bubbles of creativity, novelty, life-changing goodness by praying forth newer, more whole societies of healing, helping, and affecting responses. Perhaps an ecological society in place of a capitalistic or communist society with all the associative ills these have presented to the history of the world.

We may lean into the atoning sacrifice of God that His redemptive power bubbles forth new communities of healing, new ecologies of restoration, new personages of embracing multi-ethnic pluralistic cultures of strength. When such earthly "judgments" come our way we repent, we change our course in life, we mend broken fences, and lean into God even more to teach us wisdom and love.

These are times of restoration. Not loss of heart. Time of Courage. Not sobbing and worry as the lost world does. These times will want for vision. This then is our challenge... to be women and men of courage, vision, love, and healing. Go forward in God's empowering power. Raise up new generations of concrecsing beauty and imagination.

R.E. Slater
March 22, 2020
rev. July 31, 2020


PS...

The link here will graphically illustrate how traditional Christianity has
interpreted bad events through fear and judgment. I submit, there is
another way as expressed above when we change our idea of God.





* * * * * * * * * * * * *















What Is a Virus? How Does it Work?




How Viruses Work - Molecular Biology Simplified (DNA, RNA, Protein Synthesis)



Learn or review basic molecular biology to understand how viruses work with illustrations from Dr. Seheult of https://www.MedCram.com. See our first 25 videos on the novel coronavirus outbreak that started in Wuhan, China:

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 25: Vaccine Developments, Italy's Response, and Mortality Rate Trends: https://youtu.be/UImSVhLLeGY 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 24: Infections in Italy, Transmissibility, COVID-19 Symptoms: https://youtu.be/UImSVhLLeGY 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 23: Infections in Kids & Pregnancy, South Korea, Spillover From Bats: https://youtu.be/JGhwAGiAnJo 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 22: Spread Without Symptoms, Cruise Quarantine, Asymptomatic Testing: https://youtu.be/OqpHvK0XADY

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 21: Antibodies, Case Fatality, Clinical Recommendations, 2nd Infections?: https://youtu.be/9BYaywITXYk

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 20: Misinformation Spread, Infection Severity, Cruise Ship, Origins: https://youtu.be/Ka48UZDDzLY 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 19: Treatment and Medication Clinical Trials: https://youtu.be/4HK9QEy1KJ8 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 18: Cellphone Tracking, Increase in Hospitalizations, More Sleep Tips: https://youtu.be/vE4pBkslqS4 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 17: Spike in Confirmed Cases, Fighting Infections with Sleep (COVID-19): https://youtu.be/wlbM6VVkVZM 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 16: Strengthening Your Immune Response to Viral Infections (COVID-19): https://youtu.be/qqZYEgREuZ8 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 15: Underreporting, Prevention, 24 Day Incubation? (COVID19) https://youtu.be/o804wu5h_ms 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 14: Hospital spread of infection, WHO allowed in China, N-95 masks: https://youtu.be/pDnmHu8x9C4 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 13: Li Wenliang, nCoV vs Influenza, Dip in Daily Cases, Spread to Canada: https://youtu.be/0UgrPgJdzp0 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 12: Unsupported Theories, Pneumonia, ACE2 & nCoV: https://youtu.be/GT3_A1bf9pU 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 11: Antiviral Drugs, Treatment Trials for nCoV (Remdesivir, Chloroquine): https://youtu.be/pfGpdFNHoqQ

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 10: New Studies, Transmission, Spread from Wuhan, Prevention (2019-nCoV): https://youtu.be/gPwfiQgGsFo 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 9: Fecal-Oral Transmission, Recovery vs Death Rate: https://youtu.be/8Hjy3UfaTSc 

- Coronavirus Outbreak Update 8: Travel Ban, Spread Outside of China, Quarantine, & MRSA: https://youtu.be/GpbUoLvpdCo

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 7: Global Health Emergency Declared, Viral Shedding: https://youtu.be/nW3xqcGidpQ

- Coronavirus Outbreak Update 6: Asymptomatic Transmission & Incubation Period: https://youtu.be/UGxgNebx1pg 

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 5: Mortality Rate vs SARS / Influenza: https://youtu.be/MN9-UXsvPBY 

- Coronavirus outbreak, transmission, and pathophysiology: https://youtu.be/9vMXSkKLg2I

- Coronavirus symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment: https://youtu.be/UCG3xqtcL3c 

- Coronavirus Update 3: Spread, Quarantine, Projections, & Vaccine: https://youtu.be/SJBYwUtB83o 

- How Coronavirus Kills: Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) & Treatment: https://youtu.be/okg7uq_HrhQ

-----------------------------------------------------------

Speaker: Roger Seheult, MD
Clinical and Exam Preparation Instructor
Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine.

MedCram.com has videos on over 60 medical topics including the 2019 novel coronavirus in china, asthma, COPD, virology, hypertension, virology, microbiology, amino acids, 2019 ncov, coronavirus California, coronavirus prevention, coronavirus misinformation, antiviral drugs, wuhan virus outbreak, 武汉 肺炎, CDC, infectious disease, corona virus updates, severe influenza infections, immune system explained. Please check out our lectures on COVID-19, MERS, SARS, infectious diseases, sleep hygiene, Wuhan coronavirus, sleep apnea, and world health organization.  

Visit our Website! https://www.MedCram.com
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Produced by Kyle Allred, PA

Please Note: MedCram medical videos, medical lectures, medical illustrations, and medical animations are for medical education and exam preparation purposes, and not intended to replace recommendations by your doctor or health care provider.

#Howviruseswork #microbiology #COVID19

Caption author (English)
Jacob Preciado



Saturday, March 21, 2020

Index - Process Philosophy & Theology





The Index provided here on Process Thought is not exhaustive. To date there are 80+ articles listed in this index by category out of many, many more which could have been listed from this website which are still remaining to be tagged. To these articles other possible related subjects (found in the topical column on the right side of the website) could have been listed, such as open and relational (process) theology, process-based: divine sovereignty, providence, eschatology, sin, ecotheology, evolution, quantum sciences and technologies, life applications, faith applications, and on and on as the subject of Whiteheadian process thought is very deep. Yet this new index at least gives the novice and intermediate lay person familiarity with process thought in its religious, humanitarian, and ecological outreach and direction with enough educational acumen to continue exploring the subject capably on one's own.

Not so long ago I found stagnancy in the classical expression of my Reformed (Baptist) faith as it began to clash with what I had been taught as the "only-and-truest fundamentals of the Christian faith and its doctrine". Specifically, that Jesus is the standard around which all Christian beliefs and ethos practices revolve. Anything less is a prevarication of the Christian faith as it is understood through God's love and salvation. I had belatedly come to realize a decade or two back that those "fundamental ideas and teachings" of my past needed to be "fundamentally" re-envisioned through the lenses of a contemporary cultural, and societal, Christian expression (but importantly without Christian legalism and religiosity). Curiously, when undertaking this complex endeavor to re-appropriate my ancient creedal faith, I didn't expect to lose the gospel of Jesus as I began to intentionally re-actualize Christianity into contemporary societal terms applying post-structural ideas to the subject matters of God, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, sin or the future. On the contrary, by carefully deconstructing Christianity's modernity teachings - then reconstructing Christianity's postmodernity expressions back again - the gospel became clearer than before. It's surprising how cleaning up one's theologic windshield of bug-guts and splattered mud can help the weary driver see the Jesus-road before him so much more clearly!

Certainly, when undertaking this daunting task I realized it would upend all of the old creeds of the church and doctrines as I applied newer, more relevant, theologic language, concepts, and contemporary perspectives to traditional Christianity. The result of this singular vision which the Holy Spirit had years ago burdened my soul to move through was a very long, complex, and rigorous application of redefining my fundamental baptist and later, conservative-evangelical faith heritage, with an updated emergent (progressive) faith stream which I am much more at ease with in its substance and Christian direction than I would've been as a youth just starting out. Lastly, into all of this I am now adding a new Christian foundation known as Process Philosophy and Theology to give all substance and structure. Age and maturity goes a long ways to re-envisioning one's faith. Inasmuch as doubt and uncertainty have properly led my postmodern explorations of faith and the bible I believe those same attitudes used in the formation of scientific theory will continue to assist in leading me forward towards more relevant and missional ideas of the love of God, His divine will for our lives, and how Christ's atoning work is bringing all back together in a fundamental restructuring of mankind and creation. Enjoy. This has not been an easy task of sorting out or rebuilding.

R.E. Slater
April 13, 2020




Index to Process Philosophy & Theology

Alfred North Whitehead


A General List of Process Articles




Recent Process Articles

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Wednesday, March 30, 2022



Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Friday, March 12, 2021

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Friday, April 17, 2020


Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

    
        
Jay McDaniel
Thomas Jay Oord



  
    
        
Robert Mesle

Monica Coleman


Introduction to Process Philosophy

















Alfred North Whitehead


Alfred North Whitehead's Process & Reality

October 9, 2021



















John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, IV Lecture

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

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, V Lecture

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

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, VI Lecture

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


Critiques of Whitehead & Process Philosophy






John Cobb, Jr.


Process Theologican - John Cobb, Jr.

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021


Saturday, July 10, 2021



Charles Hartshorne


Process Theologian - Charles Hartshorne

Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - The Life and Philosophy Of Charles Hartshorne

Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - Review of Charles Hartshone

Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - SEP: Charles Hartshorne

Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - SEP:Process Theism


Philip Clayton
Catherine Keller


Meet the Process Theologians


Thursday, May 27, 2021




The Future of Process Philosophy

Catherine Keller - Process, Poetry & Post-Structuralism

Bruce Epperly - The Future of Process Theology


Is Process Theology Postmodern?


Seeking a Postmodern Re-definition of Classic Theism





What Is Process Theology? by Robert B. Mellert

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 1 & 2

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 3 & 4


Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 5 & 6

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 7 & 8


Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 9 & 10

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 11 & 12




Bruce Epperly

Tripp Fuller


Intersection Process Philosophy with Process Theology
*Related Topics: Open & Relational Theism; Sovereignty; Providence; Evolution

Catherine Keller - On Entanglement, Interconnectedness & Synchronicity


How Panentheism Differs from Other Theistic Systems of God + Creation


Describing Relational, Process-based, Panentheism


Thomas Jay Oord - Process and Wesleyan Theologies

Thomas Jay Oord - Where Do Open and Process Theologies Blur?

Thomas Jay Oord - What Does a God-in-Process Mean in relation to Providence?

Bruce Epperly - The Process Theologian's "Bonhoeffer"


Process Theology - "Divine Action, Indeterminacy, and Dipolarism"




Critiques of Process Theology

Roger Olson - Can Relational Theism Overcome the Ills of both Process Theology and Classical (Evangelic) Dogma? Part I of 2


Roger Olson - Can Relational Theism Overcome the Ills of both Process Theology and Classical (Evangelic) Dogma? Part 2 of 2


So what’s wrong with panentheism?


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


Philip Clayton's talks about Process Theology - "No One Gets to Capture the Flag Around Here"



Tripp Fuller


Contemporary Process Theology & Social Justice

Process Theology & Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jay McDaniel - Why the God of Process Theology is Like Marian Anderson's Courageous Voice Crying in the Wilderness


Why Process Philosophy Might Present a Better Form of a Liberal Democracy or Socialism


Jay McDaniel - Process Pluralism as an Antidote to Hate




Contemporary Process Theology & EcoTheology


R.E. Slater - The Holy Trilogy: Process Theology, EcoTheology & TheoPoetics


​Ecotheology and Ecological Civilizations: An Overview of Ideas and Practices




Contemporary Process Theology for Contemporary Living

Process Theology: The Peace of Uncertainty

x




Process Science & Evolution

John B. Cobb - Understanding Whitehead





Whitehead’s Process & Reality

Probing Process & Reality – “Why Whitehead?”

by John B. Cobb

Claremont Institute for Process Studies
January 27, 2020

"Probing Process & Reality" is a six-week course by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Tripp Fuller. They provide an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's masterpiece. This video may be found at the end of this post. In introductng the course, Dr. Cobb responds to the question of why Whitehead's work is worth exploring today.

Alfred North Whitehead (ANE) presented at the Gifford Lectures where he systematizes his ideas. Six hundred attended the first night. Six came back the next. His metaphysics is a very difficult subject to comprehend but well worth the effort if given a chance. So then, “Why Whitehead? And why process and reality?”


Question 1.

Philosophers each add to another philosopher’s perspective. Schools of philosophy conceive of different problems and topics from different perspectives.

ANE’s philosophy is one of cosmology. But why be interested in cosmology? It is seldom spoke of in most philosophy departments and has left a large hole in our education. Cosmology attempts to answer the nature of reality and the place of humanity in it; whether our lives are determined; what is freewill; how do we relate to the cosmos and the cosmos to us; how we might understand that natural world and fit within it; of the nature of reality; the human place in that reality; whether we have responsibility in that reality; what is the purpose of living; connectedness; interrelatedness; values; goals; and so forth. This use to be a very popular subject up to the 18th century.

The natural sciences have brought these questions all back to the fore because of their relevance to our questions about cosmology and the metaphysics/ontologies within it. Science and cosmology go together. To speak of one is to speak of the other. As example, the quantum physicist Steven Hawking in his book, “A Brief Period in Time,” brought this subject up when examining evolution and cosmology.

Hawking’s questions helped revive the discussions from ages past providing relevancy to the contemporary eras of today. To be a philosopher or theologian in the realm of cosmology must require a familiarity with science, math, and physics, without which the two streams of thought cannot intersect. Why? As each discipline will inform the other and consequently making each application of insight sharper.

Whitehead’s cosmological explorations between science and philosophy occurred when his very subject had faded from the mainstream of history. But lately it has come back into force with science’s many complex quantum discoveries of the universe linked around the fundamental questions of Darwinian evolution and its meaning for us today.

Question 2.

Why do we need a new cosmology? Its reflection is light of the many new discoveries that earlier ascetics did not have. The Greeks. The early church philosophers. The Enlightenment or even early modern prodigies. All these have left us with the Cartesian world of materialism without answering the question of consciousness nor that of the quantum world which had yet to be discovered.

A sensory, classical world does not understand today’s scientific idea of causality. The Greek’s thought of causes as fourfold:

  • An efficient cause
  • A material cause
  • A formal cause, and
  • A final cause (purpose).

The early modern world freed itself of final causes or purposeful causes. It concluded there was no teleology to a natural world of random, chaotic evolution. Yet perhaps a cosmologist will question these modern day reflections by looking into whether there is a teleology in process within creation. Whether science’s cosmological answers may be insufficient in this area which had dismissed final/purposeful causes to be antithetical to the real world and arbitrarily delimiting the area of scientific study and conjecture.

Many years ago the philosopher David Hume had concluded that purpose should be excluded empirically, and yet, the philosopher Immanuel Kant stated that in terms of metaphysics this cannot be done even in relationship to the known empirical data of that time. That the objective world was not on a par with the hidden the natural world. That what was understood as reality may be hiding a far deeper world of reality under philosophy’s pseudo-understanding.

As such, cosmology was given up only to be retaken by Whitehead in redefining it in newer, more relevant ways. Phenomology (e.g. the appearance of a phenomenon, aka Heidegger) describes human experience which was never noticed before. It’s sub-discipline, existentialism, is closely related to phenomenology. And yet, neither answer the question of what lies behind the reality of the appearance of phenomena? This is the greater question. To find, or see, the real world beyond its patches of color or sound. To refuse to exclude this hidden world of reality. This then is the realm of cosmology which has been left out of philosophical discussions for the past two centuries until science has revived its relativity.

Science then drives many newer questions of the natural world and what may lie behind it than what we had earlier understood in the nascent days of scientific research and discovery. Its strange anomalies have driven us to explore the evolutionary worlds of the very large and the very small beyond that which we had once assumed we knew and could explain. Of worlds which are deeply interconnected belying non-conscious chaotic motion and energy always surging forwards from inorganic to organic life and the many worlds of that life which have spawned in its ever widening wake.

Dualistic concepts of the world such as the ones religion espouses do not fit within these newer evolutionary categories. For example, neuroscience affirms non-binary sentient concepts from nonlinear complex inorganic to deeply interconnected organic lifeforms. The study of cosmology then revives the entire science of evolutionary beginnings and processes-with-unending-endings with perhaps the more relevant questions of whether there is a purposeful evolution - which the very name of evolution itself seems to hint at as it has been taken up since Darwin.

So then, “Why Whitehead?” Because process philosophy looks at the natural world and sees the many processes of evolutionary evolvement especially from the newer scientific perspective of the strange new quantum worlds of chaotic particles and dimensional structure. Beyond a bare cosmology, a theologian might therefore approach process philosophy from a more relevant theistic viewpoint created from the subdomain of process theology as it relates to evolutionary cosmology and philosophy. Much of the heavy lifting in this area has already been begun since Whitehead’s first questions. And yet, there will certainly be many more insights to come related to naturalistic consciousness, mechanism, and the quantum world of the unseen as approaches bring more relevant, open-ended discussions of life and world, God and teleology to light. Process and reality then is by far the best philosophical approach for science and theology to proceed.

John B. Cobb
Edited by R.E. Slater
March 1, 2020




SCHEDULE

March 16 - Session I:  xi-xv and pp. 3-17
o   Part I, Chapter 1 - Speculative Philosophy

March 23 - Session II:  18-36
o   Part I, Chapter 2 - The Categorical Scheme
o   Part I, Chapter 3 - Some Derivative Notions

March 30 - Session III  39-60
o   Part II, Chapter 1 - Fact & Form

April 7 - Session IV  61-82
o   Part II, Chapter 2 - The Extensive Continuum

April 14 - Session V  83-109
o   Part II, Chapter 3 – The Order of Nature

April 21 - Session VI
o   Session I-VI Wrap Up



Additional References

Saturday, August 12, 2017