Why I Am a Process-theist, Not an Atheist or Creedal Christian

#1 The existence of Life, that marvelous creative structure of DNA.

I’m not given to anthropomorphizing nature and strongly dislike writing that does that. HOWEVER, despite the fact that non-sentient matter doesn’t have any will or awareness, there does appear to be some sort incredible drive within the natural process of Life itself.

One of Life’s astounding,staggering facts is that while once--more than 2 billion years ago--there was only inert matter and energy, at some point, somehow LIFE came into existence (biogenesis), Life from non-life.

No doubt this extraordinary, stunning change—nonlife to LIFE--came about via the structural creativity and intelligence inherent in reality of which so many brilliant scientists speak of; they sometimes use the word, emergent, to describe this amazing development. And, of course, the 51% of scientists in the United States who aren’t atheists, attribute this spectacular transformation to ultimate reality.

BUT even all of that—LIFE from non-life--isn’t the most staggering fact:
it’s that despite over-whelming odds,
despite the extinction of over 99% of all life forms in deep time;
despite huge natural disasters including large meteors hitting the Earth,
despite the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, etc.
LIFE on planet earth, a couple billion years later
continues to develop,
to expand,
to evolve,
to strongly continue to exist.

Despite the popularity of apocalyptic destruction media and novels, it appears that life will continue to exist and thrive in this universe for at least one more billion years!

After that according to cosmologists, our sun will get hotter and hotter, and boil away Earth’s oceans. Probably the end of life.
But until then...

Life is very stubborn:-)

I see this especially almost daily when my wife and I take hikes and our daily walks. Various plants grow out of places that wouldn’t seem possible. Their stems manage to squeak through narrow cracks in sidewalks, blacktop, masonry, rock faces. Tree roots break thick concrete driveways, uplift heavy slabs.

Heck, there is a series of long twining weeds that have squeezed through one door jam in our garage. They trail up the vertical side of the door and over onto the wall. I absolutely know that they have no sentience, that plants have no awareness, no will, no drive,
YET somehow Life ‘urges’ to exist
and overcomes very difficult circumstances.

Some of plants are so life-driven that they drive me and my wife crazy;-)

We have over-and-over, for the umpteen time, killed all unwanted life-plant forms in our front rock and rose garden;
we’ve laid down thick layers of plastic;
repeatedly I've used weed killer;
my wife constantly pulls weeds, etc.

YET there they are again,
driven up through poison,
up through heavy plastic, up past my wife’s persistent fingers,
more ‘determined’ to live than most anything.

So even small ‘persistent’ survival-persistent weeds astound me.

At 71 years of age, I have almost no energy compared to those thick weeds, skinny small vines, ugly intruders:-).

Here's bit of scientific data on DNA:

“The structure of DNA, an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid, illustrates a basic principle common to all biomolecules: the intimate relation between structure and function. The remarkable properties of this chemical substance allow it to function as a very efficient and robust vehicle for storing information.”

“A major role for many sequences of DNA is to encode the sequences of proteins, the workhorses within cells, participating in essentially all processes. Some proteins are key structural components, whereas others are specific catalysts (termed enzymes) that promote chemical reactions. Like DNA and RNA, proteins are linear polymers. However, proteins are more complicated in that they are formed from a selection of 20 building blocks, called amino acids, rather than 4.”

“The functional properties of proteins, like those of other biomolecules, are determined by their three-dimensional structures. Proteins possess an extremely important property: a protein spontaneously folds into a welldefined and elaborate three-dimensional structure that is dictated entirely by the sequence of amino acids along its chain (Figure 1.6). The self-folding nature of proteins constitutes the transition from the one-dimensional world of sequence information to the three-dimensional world of biological function. This marvelous ability of proteins to self assemble into complex structures is responsible for their dominant role in biochemistry."

"Folding of a Protein. The three-dimensional structure of a protein, a linear polymer of amino acids, is dictated by its amino acid sequence.
How is the sequence of bases along DNA translated into a sequence of amino acids along a protein chain? We will consider the details of this process in later chapters, but the important finding is that three bases along a DNA chain encode a single amino acid. The specific correspondence between a set of three bases and 1 of the 20 amino acids is called the genetic code. Like the use of DNA as the genetic material, the genetic code is essentially universal; the same sequences of three bases encode the same amino acids in all life forms from simple microorganisms to complex, multicellular organisms such as human beings.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22415/
Copyright © 2002, W. H. Freeman and Company.

There “...is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over."
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton, New York, p. 115, 1986

#2 The amazing and intellectually beautiful regularities of the Cosmos (often called the Laws of Physics or Cosmology); Time-Space’s wonder; quantum physics;

The physicist Steven Wineburg wrote that for him the cosmos seems “pointless.”
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (1993), ISBN 0-09-922391-0

But some other professional scientists, (and me, an average literature and writing teacher who has an amateur fascination with studying science on my own) have come to the extreme opposite conclusion:

The more we discover and learn about the cosmos, the more it seems meaningful and pointfull.

This whole area of astrophysics, cosmology, and astronomy often brings in the G-word, for good or ill, often by anti-religious thinkers who castigate all theists as fundamentalists.

The G-word is problematic because it is so ambiguous, so contradictory, so empty-bucket when it comes to its denotative meaning.

Give a hear to the thoughts of the famous astronomer Carl Sagan:

"The word “god” is used to cover a vast multitude of mutually exclusive ideas. And the distinctions are, I believe in some cases, intentionally fuzzed so that no one will be offended that people are not talking about their god.

"But let me give a sense of two poles of the definition of God. One is the view of, say, Spinoza or Einstein, which is more or less God as the sum total of the laws of physics. Now, it would be foolish to deny that there are laws of physics. If that’s what we mean by God, then surely God exists. All we have to do is watch the apples drop."

"Newtonian gravitation works throughout the entire universe. We could have imagined a universe in which the laws of nature were restricted to only a small portion of space or time. That does not seem to be the case....So that is itself a deep and extraordinary fact: that the laws of nature exist and that they are the same everywhere. So if that is what you mean by God, then I would say that we already have excellent evidence that God exists."

"But now take the opposite pole: the concept of God as an outsize male with a long white beard, sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow. Now, for that kind of god I maintain there is no evidence. And while I’m open to suggestions of evidence for that kind of god, I personally am dubious that there will be powerful evidence for such a god not only in the near future but even in the distant future. And the two examples I’ve given you are hardly the full range of ideas that people mean when they use the word “god.”
https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/20/carl-sagan-varieties-of-scientific-experience/
--

I do strongly agree with Sagan that the "concept of God as an outsize male" isn't real, that there is no evidence for such an anthropomorphic god. Indeed, as a small child, I NEVER thought that God was a superhuman man up in the sky, in heaven. On the contrary, I looked at life, existence, and the night sky with awed wonder. My image of God was like of oxygen or some other gas!:-)

God was invisible, everywhere, and necessary for life to exist.

And my own view of the nature of Reality—often called ‘God’ even by famous scientists—is somewhat related to Sagan’s definition: “the sum total” of natural laws.

Only, I think, that Life, reason, ethics, etc. exist inherent within the nature of Reality.

And from Astrophysicist and theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin:

“If I were to ever lean towards spiritual thinking or religious thinking, it would be in that way. It would be, why is it that there is this abstract mathematics that guides the universe? The universe is remarkable because we can understand it. That’s what’s remarkable. All the other things are remarkable, too. It’s really, really astounding that these little creatures on this little planet that seem totally insignificant in the middle of nowhere can look back over the fourteen-billion-year history of the universe and understand so much and in such a short time."

"So that is where I would get a sense, again, of meaning and of purpose and of beauty and of being integrated with the universe so that it doesn’t feel hopeless and meaningless. Now, I don’t personally invoke a God to do that, but I can’t say that mathematics would disprove the existence of God either. It’s just one of those things where over and over again, you come to that point where some people will make that leap and say, “I believe that God initiated this and then stepped away, and the rest was this beautiful mathematical unfolding.” And others will say, “Well, as far back as it goes, there seem to be these mathematical structures. And I don’t feel the need to conjure up any other entity.” And I fall into that camp, and without feeling despair or dissatisfaction.”

--
Here, Levin seems to be disbelieving in the same god that Sagan and many of us non-scientists emphasize there is no evidence for. This is the god of popular superstition and creedal religion.

Many scientists, on the other hand, use the term, god, to refer to ultimate or essential reality, as Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary's first definition: "1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality:"

For example Albert Einstein: “My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit [‘spirit’ meaning the nature of, not meant in the organized religion sense] that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality."

#3 Related to those staggering realities, is the remarkable fact that in this vast, seemingly infinite expanding Time-Space reality, there is on a minor planet in a middling galaxy a finite primate (us), who in historic time only recently became consciously aware, rational, with mental capabilities able to discover these astronomical, cosmological, astrophysical complex theories and facts!

It is humbling true that it appears we human primates have only begun to tap into the whole of Reality; and there may even be a multiverse, beyond the billions of galaxies within our own universe. Like Einstein emphasized we as a species are like a small child who has discovered a vast library far beyond his/her little capabilities. There are billions, trillions of volumes.

Yet, it is so extraordinary that we as a species, with our basic brain, can understand even the barest minimum of Existence.
Various cosmologists, astrophysicists, astronomers, and mathematicians are enthralled by the wonder of it all.

#4 Math; how some mathematicians think that the ultimate nature of Reality is actually mathematical!

I’m a math-light-weight;-) I did make it through algebra, geometry, college math, did fairly well, (mostly B’s) BUT realized that I wasn’t given the brainpower to do heavy lifting when it comes to higher math, so had to give up my childhood dream of becoming a space engineer. However, I still have deep appreciation of math’s amazing complexity in relationship to the cosmos.

Consider the view of math from the perspective of Astrophysicist and theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin:

“I would absolutely say I am also besotted with mathematics. I don’t worry about what’s real and not real in the way that maybe Gödel did. I think what Turing did, which was so beautiful, was to have a very practical approach. He believed that life was, in a way, simple. You could relate to mathematics in a concrete and practical way. It wasn’t about surreal, abstract theories. And that’s why Turing is the one who invents the computer, because he thinks so practically. He can imagine a machine that adds and subtracts, a machine that performs the mathematical operations that the mind performs."

"The modern computers that we have now are these very practical machines that are built on those ideas. So I would say that like Turing, I am absolutely struck with the power of mathematics, and that’s why I’m a theoretical physicist...I love that we can all share the mathematical answers. It’s not about me trying to convince you of what I believe or of my perspective or of my assumptions."

"We can all agree that one plus one is two, and we can all make calculations that come out to be the same, whether you’re from India or Pakistan or Oklahoma, we all have that in common. There’s something about that that’s deeply moving to me and that makes mathematics pure and special. And yet I’m able to have a more practical attitude about it, which is that, well, we can build machines this way. There is a physical reality that we can relate to using mathematics.”

"If I were to ever lean towards spiritual thinking or religious thinking, it would be in that way. It would be, why is it that there is this abstract mathematics that guides the universe? The universe is remarkable because we can understand it. That’s what’s remarkable. All the other things are remarkable, too. It’s really, really astounding that these little creatures on this little planet that seem totally insignificant in the middle of nowhere can look back over the fourteen-billion-year history of the universe and understand so much and in such a short time."

"So that is where I would get a sense, again, of meaning and of purpose and of beauty and of being integrated with the universe so that it doesn’t feel hopeless and meaningless. Now, I don’t personally invoke a God to do that, but I can’t say that mathematics would disprove the existence of God either. It’s just one of those things where over and over again, you come to that point where some people will make that leap and say, “I believe that God initiated this and then stepped away, and the rest was this beautiful mathematical unfolding.” And others will say, “Well, as far back as it goes, there seem to be these mathematical structures. And I don’t feel the need to conjure up any other entity.” And I fall into that camp, and without feeling despair or dissatisfaction."
Astrophysicist and theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin
Einstein's God, Interviews with Scientists by Krista Tippett

#5 Reason:

Think of the stunning results that humans’ rational abilities have achieved, especially when brilliant humans hypothesize in a number of different scientific, historical, and aesthetic fields.

#6 Ethics:

Moral realism!
In contrast, most Atheists and Creedal Christians aren’t moral realists.

It’s baffling that so many Atheists and Creedal Christians claim that morals and ethics, and human rights are subjective.

And many famous Atheist leaders take it one gigantic step further, claiming that human creative choice, moral responsibility, equality, liberty, justice, human rights, etc. are all “myths,” delusions!

And Creedal Christians claim that all humans, since we were foreordained from before the beginning of Time-Space, by their god to be sinful at conception/birth, we are incapable of any choice. Furthermore, God often changes what is moral or immoral. Whatever the Christian god decides—that becomes moral even if it is horrific such as genocide, the slaughter of children, rape, slavery, and so forth.

#7 Aesthetics

#8

#9

#10
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In SUMMARY:
All reality is coming about by the everlasting but limited cosmic reality that is “becoming.” This is the view of thinkers such as philosopher and mathematician Alfred Lord Whitehead, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, etc.

This cosmic but limited ‘god-ultimate reality’--who is far beyond human understanding--works toward changing matter and energy and conscious life (such as homo sapiens) into increasing patterns and forms of beauty, meaning, and purpose.

This is also the view of some Reform Jews and extremely liberal non-creedal Christians and Muslims.

But where is the evidence for this?

Process thinkers explain that consciousness, reason, ethics, mathematics, natural law, creativity, aesthetics, life itself, etc. are the evidence.
This view is appealing, (though most of the technical philosophical explanations are beyond my understanding).
OR
All reality came about somehow by a temporary, finite, imperfect, even distorted, expression of the perfect eternal Ideal Forms of Platonism.
I already explained that I've been influenced by Platonism though I strongly reject certain portions and claims of the philosophical worldview of Plato.

To be continued--


In the Light of Reality,

Daniel Wilcox

The First and the Last

Of course, this is a famous ancient quote from the Bible. The symbolic statement is still very important for humans, a vivid reference to their conviction that God--ultimate reality--is eternal, that God is, was, and will become, that God existed before the Big Bang billions of years past and will exist after the demise of the cosmos in billions of years future. (See several of my posts on philosopher Charles Hartshorne and others for more on that.)

Today, let's bring the image down to where our very finite shoe sole meets the ground in front of us, now, here, this second.

Think of yourself now, and others now, individuals you personally know now--the transcendental reality here at this moment, this hour, this very day.

Cosmology is fascinating, but so much of it is abstraction
and hypothesis.

In contrast, our conscious moment, right now, is an actual
fact--you and I exist right now
(except for atheists such as
Sam Harris who claim we don’t,
that each of our “I”s is an illusion).

This next second, minute, hour, day is our first step into the future. With that typed key, I did step.

And possibly it could be our last second, last minute, last hour, last day (and eventually some finite moment, depending on when we were conceived in the past, will be our last). 150,000 humans died today and many thousands were conceived.

252 births, 107 deaths per minute.

All we have for sure is now, this next moment.

So live as if this is always true—this moment, this minute, this hour, this day—is our first of what is to become.

Because this moment is all we have.

Why do we so often become preoccupied with superficial stuff, choose wrongly, let our inner self be twisted by immoral media or our dark side? Why do we focus on resentments, hurts, fears? Do we have time?

This next moment, sooner or later, in the not too distant future will be the last of who we have been.

So live NOW! Every moment in one sense is our first and last--never to become again.

Live for what is transcendent in this present now.


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #4: Life after Death?

Philosopher Hartshorne’s View of Reality: Death and the Question of After Life

For most of us humans, death comes all too soon, to millions of persons even before they even reach 10 years of age.

Of what worth is a tiny brief finite primate life in comparison to the vastness of the universe which is billions of years across?

Charles Hartshorne sought to deal with this deep quandary.

(Recall his complex Process Philosophy, panentheism, which we discussed and reflected on in the first 3 parts of this study.)

Here are 2 key graphics:

“To Hartshorne, a person's life was like a beautiful painting or a poem. It has a beginning and an end, but it exists forever in that those who live on can observe it and benefit from it.”
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Charles_Hartshorne
--
Beautiful painting? Deep poem?

Or how about the exquisite beauty of the extremely brief life of a Monarch butterfly?

Quality of life doesn’t have to equal length.

Besides the seemingly impossibility of mind surviving its grounding in the brain seems nigh impossible to defy. If the movie projector stops, the very real Academy Award winning film stops. A human “I” is a living process, not a thing. Does not my “I” stop when the billions of my neurons quit?*

And too often the childish literal concepts of the afterlife were an embarrassment to scientists and philosophers who were theists, who wrestled with the great question. Plus, the eternal damnation into Hell for unbelievers in creedal Christianity and Islam was deeply troubling ethically to many.

Probably most of the readers of this blog have heard about the Christian Heaven and Hell most of their lives, so I will only cite a Muslim view:
“Islam teaches that Hell is a real place prepared by God for those who do not believe in Him, rebel against His laws, and reject His messengers. Hell is an actual place, not a mere state of mind or a spiritual entity. The horrors, pain, anguish, and punishment are all real, but different in nature than their earthly counterparts. Hell is the ultimate humiliation and loss, and nothing is worse than it:
“Our Lord! Surely, whom You admit to the Fire, indeed You have disgraced him, and never will the wrongdoers find any helpers.” (Quran 3:192)

“Surely, God has cursed the disbelievers, and has prepared for them a flaming Fire wherein they will abide for ever.” (Quran 33:64)

Also, since everything happens according to the foreordination of God (called “fate” or “predestination” in Islam), the Muslim afterlife seems as damned horrific as the Augustinian-Reformed one of Christianity. In both cases, before humans are even born, before the universe is created, all humans are predestined to Hell, or in some cases to Heaven:-(

So when Process Philosophers offer a different more scientifically possible hypothesis for life after death, this is accepted by some people avidly.

At first, glance, the idea of being remembered by God for the everlasting future appeals to many of people grasping for hope. They find these metaphysical speculations so much more positive than hellfire or singing praises to God like he is some insecure petty medieval monarch. And the panentheism view is definitely much better than the literal crassness of Muslim men getting 72 virgins and Christians entering through pearly gates.

For my own part, even when I reached an age of critical thinking and abstraction, as much as I hoped for eternal life, the specifics always seemed very vague, and hard to imagine. It was a general hope, not a highly imaged dogmatic belief.

And I certainly rejected the literal description of Hell and Heaven of most Christian leaders. For instance, the brilliant Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas claimed only a limited number of afterlife-humans would look down from Heaven upon the billions of damned humans being tortured in eternal flames including their loved ones and friends, and give God all the praise and glory!

Sick, sick, sick ethically, a horrifically evil doctrine.

Process Philosophy completely rejects such a horrid outlook.
What a wonderfully different hypothesis, that Ultimate Reality remembers us, every detail of our lives forever.

So the theistic philosopher Charles Hartshorne and the brilliant mathematician and thinker Alfred Lord Whitehead
explained in their writings that there isn’t any "subject" aware afterlife,
but rather an objective afterlife. We former conscious ethical entities reside as permanent memories within God’s everlasting process life.

But every philosophical solution, usually has its own problems, right?

This alternative to the traditional understanding of the Heaven and Hell has its own negative aspect.

In the traditional religious view of the afterlife, all wrong will be righted, and justice and mercy and compassion will come to those tragic billions who lived tragic, all too short lives, such as the 3-year-old toddler who is suffering from malnutrition or leukemia.

Think of the billions who suffered in the countless slaughters, plagues, famines, or daily abuse of history, of their all too brief moment under the crushing boot heel of history, under the ruthless indifference of natural selection.

In the new sincere proposal by Hartshorne, Whitehead, and other thinkers of Process Philosophy,
NONE
of those who have suffered horrifically
will ever escape the horrors, their suffering. Nothing will be redeemed, only remembered:-(

While all sentient lives will be a permanent memory within God, is that a state to be valued if all the injustices and horrors and sufferings are never rectified!?

Remember, Hartshorne also wrote, “It has a beginning and an end, but it exists forever in that those who live on can observe it and benefit from it.”

As nice as Hartshorne’s image of a person existing like a brief poem sounds, to be remembered, the horrific problem with such a view
is that the vast majority of billions of humans
in the last 100,000 years
don’t get remembered by others even in the present life, not by anyone ever.:-(

As far as the billions of humans living now are concerned or aware, the billions of humans and countless sentient animals of the past NEVER existed. My family members don’t even know anything about our ancestors 3 or 4 generations back, let alone be able to “observe and benefit”!

They didn’t exist so that we "can observe [those past humans] and benefit from [their lives]” (Hartshorne’s phrase).

Once or twice in a generation, an anthropologist (or archaeologist or historian) finds skeletal remains, but even then, no one knows the inner life of that human who existed 60,000 years ago.

On the contrary—think of it--there are millions of recent humans who no one remembers now. For instance, millions of individuals who only lived a hundred or two hundred years ago are erased from human memory already.

There are plenty of faded Brady photographs of soldiers from over 150 years ago in the U.S. War Between the States. The still images are available to us in museums and books, but in many of the pictures the individuals are unknown. No one knows who they were, let alone knowing their deep inner lives. Heck, we don’t even know basic details. Their staring faces look down to us, but no stories are there for us to understand those men and women.

Historians haven't even been able to identify them. On some battlefields in Virginia, unknown corpses lay on the ground unburied even 3 years later:-(

Except for a fading image, all the beauty, poetic or scientific skill and inner life of each person is gone. As well as all the terror, sorrow, and loss.

Let’s say that God does record and remember. Of what help is that to us who live, or to those who are permanently gone?

I realize that Charles Hartshorne was trying to deal with the huge difficulty of how a human’s mind can survive beyond his human brain’s end.

But, as much as one can find keen insights in some of Hartshorne’s philosophical views, his answer that individual humans have no conscious future, that there is no life after death--except as God's permanent memory--seems weak and fraught with sorrow and unredeemable loss.

What do you think?

--


*A new Danish scientific study in “shows that astrocytes, which are also present in the brain, have responses that are almost as quick as those of the neurons. This, argue the researchers (such as Barbara Lykke Lind of the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology at the University of Copenhagen), means that the astrocytes may also play a part in thinking and feeling.”
http://sciencenordic.com/do-neurons-alone-cause-consciousness


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: Toward a Skeptical Worldview of Hope—God as Becoming

Being and/or Becoming, that is the question…
(to misquote the Bard).

What is the term “God” at a basic level but the Good with an additional exclaimed, “OH!”

Who is/was/will-be/does/becomes?

Before launching into the second part of this series on God, which will deal with philosophers’ reasoning about God such as that of Professor Charles Hartshorne’s analytical speculation on the nature of Ultimate Reality, here's a few introductory notes.
(IF you don’t want to be bored with the important introduction, skip DOWN to SECTION #2: CHARLES HARTSHORNE.)

INTRODUCTION

I suppose it goes without saying (but I will type it;-) that we finite educated primates have taken on a seemingly impossible task, sort of like one human swallowing the wide ocean whole--hook, line, and sinker;-)

We who only have a lifespan of about 70-80 years in developed countries show observation, ingenuity, creativity, and complicated thinking. But usually it also includes much hubris.

Think of various religious spokespersons now who claim the founders of their religion knew in detail what God was doing before the Big Bang, yet they excuse their founding leaders for horrific ethics-- burning people at the stake, enslaving millions, and so forth--claiming that the thinkers were only believing, behaving and doing like most other humans in their time period! The prime example, of course, is the intellectual Reformed religion and its founders John Calvin, John Knox, Martin Luther, and Hudrych Zwingli.

Who are we to think that we can understand and explain Reality, let alone Ultimate Reality? Heck, the existence of Homo sapiens has only occurred in the last second of the finite existence of one minuscule planet in a very small solar system on the edge of one of billions of galaxies. Let’s not even speculate on the multi-verse.

“Humans are good at a lot of things, but putting time in perspective is not one of them. It’s not our fault—the spans of time in human history, and even more so in natural history, are so vast compared to the span of our life and recent history that it’s almost impossible to get a handle on it. If the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight, 24 hours later, modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second. And if human history itself spans 24 hours from one midnight to the next, 14 minutes represents the time since Christ.”
Tim Urban
TIME By Wait But Why
http://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Time-G-e1419172691756.png

Human insight and understanding are on a long trajectory from basic self and natural awareness of early humans to the present when scientists understand enough of astronomy, complex math, an innovative technology to send a probe all the way to the dwarf planet Pluto, a journey which took almost 10 years.

“The New Horizons mission has taken what we thought we knew about Pluto and turned it upside down,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It's why we explore -- to satisfy our innate curiosity and answer deeper questions about how we got here and what lies beyond the next horizon."
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/four-months-after-pluto-flyby-nasa-s-new-horizons-yields-wealth-of-discovery

FAR BEYOND THAT—is the comprehending and understanding of the ultimate nature of existence.
What happens in the essence of reality?
What took place before the Big Bang of the universe?
What will happen after humans become extinct?
After our cosmos ceases to exist?

Or for that matter who can explain exhaustively the nature of the Cosmos right now? Cosmologists are working on the seemingly infinite task. We don’t yet understand dark matter or dark energy and so much else.

But humans are in a process of becoming. As mentioned before, think how far Homo sapiens have come since they first discovered fire, math, abstract thought, and reasoned speculation.

Since we humans are a self-aware, conscious, rational, ethical species, even though we understand so little, we need to think about meaning and purpose in order not to lapse back into only instinctive responses in our brief journey of living. Every day, every moment we make choices--

Let us THINK!

A skeptic...is a person who questions everything, including her own conclusions, all the time. She craves knowledge and understanding, so she loves bumping into people and ideas that challenge her assumptions. A skeptic views disagreements as opportunities to refine her knowledge and understand more today than she did last night.
Paul Mahan
https://medium.com/@ungewissen/religious-people-are-wrong-about-skeptics-1f502ebffe83

--
“speculation (n.)
late 14c., "intelligent contemplation, consideration; act of looking," from Old French speculacion "close observation, rapt attention," and directly from Late Latin speculationem (nominative speculatio) "contemplation, observation," noun of action from Latin speculatus, past participle of speculari "observe," from specere "to look at, view" (see scope (n.1)).
Online Etymology Dictionary

skeptic: related to skeptesthai "to reflect, look, view"
Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found. [Miguel de Unamuno, "Essays and Soliloquies," 1924]
“The extended sense of "one with a doubting attitude" first recorded 1610s.”

“Meaning "pursuit of the truth by means of thinking" is from mid-15c. Disparaging sense of "mere conjecture" is recorded from 1570s.”
OED
--

SECTION 2: CHARLES HARTSHORNE

First, the essential nut of God without even the shell:

Second, Charles Hartshorne answers Epicurus' striking questions with his own complex philosophy of God reduced to a poster:

And that's only the beginning:-)

TO BE CONTINUED--




In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Wonder of the Transcendent Good

If we as humans reject the horrific unethical beliefs of many Muslims, Christians, and Hindus (Part #1 The Horror of God Belief), and we already have rejected delusions and fanciful mythological stories of religions in general as various thoughtful theists have done since Plato...
HOW
do we go about thinking of Ultimate Reality
(usually and traditionally termed “God”)?

Ah, the God question.

WHY?

Nothing like trying to solve the nature of existence, billions of years of cosmic history, why the Big Bang happened, and why is it possible (to paraphrase Einstein) that mere primates came to self-aware consciousness
and the ability for creativity, reason,
science, aesthetics,
and compassion.

The how is often answered by cosmologists speculating about multi-verses and quantum events. Fascinating stuff. As for humanity’s sometime action of altruism, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins speculates that ethical ideal might have come about by a “misfiring” of evolution.

However open agnostics such as the astronomer Chris Impey of the University of Arizona-Tucson raise very good questions about the unusual anomaly of Homo sapiens in the midst of what appears to be an unconscious, thoughtless, amoral cosmos.

Astronomer Impey: “If the universe contained nothing more than forces operating on inanimate matter, it would not
be very interesting."

"The presence of sentient life-forms like us
(and perhaps unlike us) is the zest, or
the special ingredient, that gives cosmic
history dramatic tension."

"We’re made
of tiny subatomic particles and are part
of a vast space-time arena, yet
we hold both extremes
in our heads.”
How It Ends? By Chris Impey

Yes, the amazing ability of conscious primates to hold the concept of the macrocosm to the microcosm within each of our heads, to create new things which never existed, to have a sense of ought which often thwarts what is biologically advantageous….

So if we humans want to move beyond our personal feelings and inner intuition in regard to God, we need to look to brilliant philosophical thinkers.

While atheist thinkers have posited that everything is due to cosmic
Chance (Jacques Monad, Stephen Jay Gould) or
Necessity/Determinism (Sam Harris, Jerry Coyne),
in striking contrast mathematician/philosopher
Alfred Lord Whitehead
and philosopher Charles Hartshorne
think that Meaning and Creativity and the Good
are at the center
and beginning of
everything.

Consciousness, reason, ethics, aesthetics are somehow inherent
in the essential essence of the cosmos,
not meaningless anomalies like atheists claim.

Since Charles Hartshorne comes from a Quaker background, attended Haverford Quaker College
and is the most recent brilliant theistic thinker,
let’s first take a look at him
and his concepts and philosophy
which he terms,
panentheism.

Earliest Spiral Galaxy

For Hartshorne, the future is OPEN. Creativity, possibility are there. God and all conscious life have real alternative choices to create.

For instance,
"When Scrooge, in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, asks the Ghost of Christmas Future whether he is seeing the shadows of the things that “will be” or the shadows of the things that “may be only,” he is expressing in a precise way Hartshorne’s analysis of future tense statements."

"If the shadows are of the things that “will be,” then all hope is lost, but if they are the shadows of the things that “may be only” then Scrooge can change his ways and make for himself a different future."

"A hallmark of Hartshorne’s neoclassical theism is that the universe is a joint creative product of (a) the lesser creators that are the creatures, localized in space and time, and (b) the eminent creator which is God whose influence extends to every creature that ever has or that ever will exist."

By Donald Wayne Viney, Pittsburg State University

http://www.iep.utm.edu/hart-d-t/


"Charles Hartshorne, (born June 5, 1897, Kittanning, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 10, 2000, Austin, Texas), American philosopher, theologian, and educator known as the most influential proponent of a “process philosophy,” which considers God a participant in cosmic evolution."

"The descendant of Quakers and son of an Episcopalian minister, Hartshorne attended Haverford College before serving as a medical orderly in World War I. He completed his undergraduate education at Harvard University...earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1923. Hartshorne studied in Germany (1923–25), where he met Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl."

"He returned to lecture at Harvard (1925–28), after which he taught philosophy at the University of Chicago (1928–55) and at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (1955–62). He then taught...philosophy at the University of Texas--Austin...He also served as president of the American Philosophical Association and the Metaphysical Society of America."

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Hartshorne


*Side Note: Of course, some thoughtful people come to the conclusion there is no Ultimate Source/Essence. Nontheist and atheistic Quakers, Christian nontheists, religious atheists—all claim that there is no Essence, no Transcendence. Only matter and energy reign. It appears that they use religious language to describe their feelings and subjective preferences, nothing more. If you would like to read about nontheism, check back in to some of my posts on that subject.

To be continued--

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Ultimate Nature of Existence--We Think, Therefore It Might Be

A thinker needs to start with two moral values as presuppositions: Honesty comes first when one thinks about what is true, and humility is a close second.

The latter, humility, means keeping a constant awareness that even as a committed thinker, one is still only a brief finite being, a primate with limited reasoning ability, living within a relatively short specific culture within all of human history which itself is only a blip in the age of the earth, which is a very small planet

in a far corner of a minor galaxy
in the vast universe;
and there may be gigantic
universes outside of our universe,
the multiverse that some cosmologists
have speculated about.

And who knows if there is more existence outside of Space and Time as we know it?

Most of us seek to be meticulously honest when dealing with the nature of existence, but many of us often fail at the second beginning point--humility.

Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Pagans, Atheists, and so forth often talk as if they 'know’ or are at least fairly confident about the ultimate nature of existence.

Whenever I make a point, I will do so with IMHO—as the stated undertone. Each moment we live, we encounter choices; so we have to make decisions and in order to make those decisions, we have to assume that some things are scientifically, philosophically and ethically true.

But I am well aware that in many areas, indeed possibly in all areas, we may be in error or even worse very deluded. Look to the past; recall how many leaders and billions of humans in nations in history have chosen sincerely wrongly, and done so after much thought and discernment.

So let us constantly doubt and re-evaluate what we discern to be true and what we think might be the ultimate nature of reality.

All of this gets very speculative…

To paraphrase Descartes: We think therefore, it might be;-)

These are some of the main views of reality that humans have considered, speculated about, even fervently thought were true:

#1 All reality came about by cosmic chance.

#2 All reality came about by a cosmic determinism of meaningless matter and energy which is eternal.

#3 All reality came about by emergent possibilities in a quantum singularity vacuum or some unknown ultimate reality. But where did the quantum singularity vacuum come from? Here goes "turtles all the way down."

#4 All reality came about by an impersonal ultimate reality of cosmic beauty. Scientists such as Albert Einstein stated this was his view, that he thought the impersonal god of Spinoza was true. But this seems similar to #3. Unlike #2, the emergent possibility cosmos isn't meaningless and purposeless, but filled with meaning.

#5 All reality is coming about by the everlasting but limited Process God of thinkers such as philosopher and mathematician Alfred Lord Whitehead, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, theologian John Cobb, etc. This cosmic but limited God who is far beyond human understanding "woos" matter and energy and conscious life such as homo sapiens into increasing patterns and forms of beauty, meaning, and purpose. This is also the view of some Reform Jews.

But where is the evidence for this? Process thinkers explain that consciousness, reason, mathematics, natural law, creativity, aesthetics, etc. are the evidence.

#6 All reality came about as just one of an infinite number of universes of an infinite multi-verse, the view of some modern cosmologists. What is the ultimate of the multi-verse is unknown or maybe the multiverse itself is ultimate.

#7 All reality came about by the Omni-God of absolute sovereignty and meticulous control who does and plans and ordains everything only for his own glory, including all natural and all human evil. This is the view of Augustinians, Calvinists, some Lutherans, most Muslims, etc.

#8 All reality came about by the ultimately essentially all-loving God of Open Theism, Arminianisn, Quakerism, Universalism, and other forms of mystical, ethical religion, and so forth.

#9 All reality came about somehow by a temporary, finite, imperfect, even distorted, expression of the perfect eternal Ideal Forms of Platonism.

#10 All reality came about by the impersonal Brahma God of Hinduism and some modern New Age leaders such as Ken Wilber with his Integral Theory, and Deepak Chopra, etc. . The impersonal God Brahma is conducting a cosmic dance in which it forgets its self and dreams into billions of separated forms including in one minor edge of the universes, thinking humans.

But all is illusion. And all events both good and evil are produced by Brahman. That is why Ken Wilber and other such leaders claim that Brahman caused 9//11.

#11 All reality came about by unknowable factors. Everything beyond and before the Big Bang is such a complete unfathomable mystery that it will probably not ever be solved by finite humans.

Could a flea figure out the Theory of Relativity?

#12 All reality continually comes about by infinite impersonal reality which never had a beginning. No creator god exists. Some forms of Buddhism (though other forms are theistic).

Think deeply on all of this. Take your pick:-)

What do you think?

To be continued--

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox