Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Philosophy of Religions--all religions, including,

In opposition to the classical model of change as purely accidental and illusory (as by Aristotle), process philosophy regards change as the cornerstone of reality–the cornerstone of Being, thought as Becoming.

Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heidegger, Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare and Nicholas Rescher.

In physics Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

Major concepts

God is not omnipotent in the sense of being coercive. [This is why I (RevLGKing) as a unitheist, prefer using the acronym G~0~D, rather than a noun. This theology is open to all new ideas and respects individualism, including agnosticism/atheism..]

The divine has a power of persuasion rather than coercion. Process theologians interpret the classical doctrine of omnipotence as involving force, and suggest instead a forbearance in divine power. "Persuasion" in the causal sense means that God does not exert unilateral control.

Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experience (male, female, atomic, and botanical) is important and contributes to the ongoing and interrelated process of reality.

The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God cannot totally control any series of events or any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not everything that occurs is God's will.

God contains the universe but is not identical with it (panentheism, not pantheism or pandeism). Some also call this "theocosmocentrism" to emphasize that God has always been related to some world or another.

Because God interacts with the changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over the course of time. However, the abstract elements of God (goodness, wisdom, etc.) remain eternally solid.

The Rev.Charles Hartshorne believes that people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality, but they do have objective immortality, because their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. Other process theologians believe that people do have subjective experience after bodily death.

Dipolar theism, is the idea that God has both a changing aspect (God's existence as a Living God) and an unchanging aspect (God's eternal essence).