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Jennifer,
It was I who asked the question about an “elevator speech” (without using those exact words, I think). Here is what I suggested as a very short (one sentence elevator speech) description of process theology:

“Process Theology is an intellectual study which posits God not as the controller who forces events to occur, but as the origin or source of novel possibilities that lead to greater wisdom, compassion, creativity, complexity, and beauty.”

To this definition, Dr. McDaniel suggested that to complete a good description of the God of Process Theology one should add this:

“This God is a deep listener and fellow sufferer who feels all experiences and offers possible and productive responses to every situation.”

With this addition, Prof. McDaniel seemed to think that would be a pretty good elevator speech (if you’re only traversing one or two floors)!

Can you think of any good additions or changes to this elevator speech description of Process Theology? I’m sure that there are ways it could be improved!

This is a post which interests me greatly and encourages me to finish watching the video of session 2 (which I had to miss on Saturday because I was volunteering at a camp for survivors of Traumatic Brain Injuries, or TBIs). I might contend that I am somewhat of a “professional” concerning memory because of my short-term memory is most strongly inhibited following my lucky survival of a severe TBI in 1998. I agree with what I think you said about memory — memory is the present activity of accessing information stored as neuronal patterns that have been created in the past. Additionally, one accesses only portions of patterns that have been created by the self, not 100% accurate records of what actually occurred. So, in a way, we “select” what we remember. The process of remembering in a present activity accessing patterns which were created in the past and which are affirmed, more or less accurately, by the repetition of accessing memories.

I’m sorry to have replied to your post without having completely viewed last Saturday’s class! I will likely have a more informed response later today; I was just caught by the topic!!!

Though I do understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the constant drive toward increasing entropy, I also understand that many parts of the universe (not just the human world, even if that might be a local high-point of interactive complexity) to be driven towards the creation of more complex structures. I don’t know too much about the writings of Henri Bergson, but I believe that his concept of élan vital might be related to Whitehead’s concept of God.

I believe that built into nature is a drive towards increasing complexity. At the negative extreme of a scale of complexity and “aliveness” is simply completely random motion. One step up from there is repetitive motion. Then, there is the interaction of multiple repetitive systems (the exchange of energy or structures). Then, there exists mutual interaction combined with specialization…

I could go on, but this would require more careful thinking and might bore you!

An example, for me at least, of the beauty of “islands of possibility” was the year after college I lived in rural Japan and taught English. Certainly, I experienced culture and ways of thinking that we very different from my upbringing. The year I spent “appropriating” and “creatively transforming” Japanese culture, studying Zen, and learning the productivity of different ways of being was the most important year of my intellectual development! Though I know that I will never understand Zen in the same way as a Japanese student of Zen does, I know that my “appropriating” and “creatively transforming” year living in rural Japan has significantly impacted the remainder of my life, in a most positive way!

Mr. Elder,
I agree with the response by our professor and feel that your statement “I am unaware of any physicist that would support his bold and fundamental claim that the future does not exist (2008, 5, his emphasis)” is NOT true. Although I work now to administer a not-for-profit, I was trained as a atomic physicist and I used to teach physics at the well-respected institution of Carleton College, the same place where my colleague Ian Barbour — the well respected process thinker — spent most of his career. Most all physicists agree that THE FUTURE DOES NOT EXIST… YET! (That’s what makes it the future!) In Mesle’s book, this is clarified in the third note in Chapter 1. In Whitehead’s language the now only a “potentiality”.