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Kyle, thank you for those links. Very interesting. In chapter 12 of Griffin’s book he discusses William James’ idea that maybe the brain is permissive or transmissive of consciousness rather than productive of it. I actually think that this relates better to Process thinking about relationality than ideas that our individual consciousness is actually a distinct reality.

My evolving Process brain therefore wonders if discussions about our ongoing life after death is misplaced. First the discussion is always anthrocentric since rarely does someone propose life after death for animals, other than possibly one’s prized pet, much less other life forms. If you are intrigued by the idea of panexperientialism then every entity should have the possibility of life after death since all has some modicum of “consciousness”. Also I think it repeats the physcialist’s misplaced ideas about separate individual existences. What consciousness am I saying is ongoing? Since every instant of actual occasions results in a new and unique entity, which one lives on. I think in Process thought that is a nonsensical question. Since we have not clearly defined this consciousness, can it even have an ongoing concrescence?

I think I am ready to move on in my imagination to think that we may be in fact transmissive of a greater consciousness (panentheistic God?) and when our material bodies come to the end of their objective existence our consciousness remains as part (but not individualized part) of this greater consciousness. Our objective history as an individual remains but our individualized consciousness does not.

Sorry if I have made many Process language mistakes here. Still working on my Whiteheadian terms lexicon! I hope it makes some sense and hope Charles can help correct my errors.

Thank you Charles for these thoughts. It is a wonderful reminder for people like me who are still trying to process and integrate the ideas of Process into my gestalt. In the last few years we have begun our thanksgiving prayers at family meals thanking as many individuals who have been involved in the meal from those who shopped and cooked, the farmers and laborers, the truckers and grocers and even the animals involved. And to God who makes it possible. I think this is an appropriate Process way of giving thanks.

Thanks Jennifer, this is such a good question for us all. I really struggle with this ever since becoming a Process person and giving up (with some difficulty) my old supernatural images. I was recently in Jay McDaniel’s class with you and he mentioned Whitehead’s term Harmony of Harmonies which really resonated (pun intended) with me. I like the musical hum image of God. I have a Christian upbringing and mindset but I have developed a new appreciation of YHWH which I used to understand as the word that cannot be spoken but now see it as the idea that is incapable of being expressed. We use the “peace that surpasses all understanding” in our services which I also like. “Be Thou My Vision” is one of my favorite hymns and the second verse uses the metaphors Wisdom and True Word.

I have said too much but I am really working on having metaphors of music and wisdom to represent God. The other metaphor we discussed in McDaniel’s class was “womb” for the idea of an all enveloping love. As long as we don’t get too anatomical, I love that metaphor also. Can’t wait to hear what others say

I always hesitate to become overly attached to the Anthropic Principle because I sounds too much like Wm Paley’s Watchmaker argument that the extraordinarily complex structure in biology required an intelligent designer. Basing any religious idea too heavily on a current scientific theory invites disappoint as we continue to develop new evidence and theories. Even the Big Bang now has some new evidence that calls this theory into question. However I think some variations on the Strong Anthropic Principle may be cautiously compelling.

The Weak Anthropic Principle argues that our universe is one of many in a multiverse and happens to be a random occurrence of great luck for us that the laws are “just so” in Kipling’s phraseology as to allow life to form. I have always thought that this is a very flimsy but imaginative way for atheists to deny even the possibility of divinity. The multiverse seems not to be able to be examined and proven/disproven and violates Occam’s Razor infinitely. There are ideas of Weak Anthropic Principles though that are more compelling including the idea from quantum mechanics that there needs to be an observer or ideas that information or consciousnesss (panpsychism) is built into the universe. Paul Davies, the magnificent theoretical physicist has proposed that there may well be an underlying unity to all the forces that we just haven’t understood yet or that maybe only universes that have consciousness can exist. Phillip Goff is an agnostic philosopher who writes about consciousness and panpsychism. His recent book “Galileo’s Error” is where I think I have heard him argue that he now feels that the evidence for a fine tuned universe has is convincing evidence for him of God.

Kent I have a hard time understanding how laws of the universe can develop over time and trial. This is contradictory to the definition. I certainly can understand that laws might not exist independently but are just our tools we develop to grasp the universe. I could grasp that there are some forces in the early universe that longer “exist” because the field they played in has been exhausted.

I think the Fine Tuned Universe is an intriguing and very attractive concept but I hesitate to put all my eggs in that basket. Been disappointed in other things I wanted to believe that turned out not to hold. Sorry Santa! A great law I still miss in its original form.

Genesis 1 in Hebrew reads something like In the beginning when God began creating, the world was void and without form. I think this acknowledges that there does not have to be creation out of nothing to begin to understand a concept of the divine. I would also think that panentheism would consider the Big Bang to have been within the “Harmony of harmonies”. I think our language always is in danger of drifting back to a supernatural God who acts on objects not a divine that events happen within. My uninformed idea is that we will never know if there was a universe “before” the Big Bang. And with Kevin I agree that this is a nonsensical question of what happened “before” since as Augustine says God created the world with time not in time. Basing any religious, philosophical or even scientific theory on our present scientific understanding is fraught with pitfalls. What I also like about Process is that it doesn’t matter. The same ideas of flow and creativity and novelty and concrescence still apply no matter what our scientific understandings. At least that is the way I can see it all.

Having grown up in the traditional middle American Catholic tradition, I have struggled in my adult life to deal with Jesus and his meaning and involvement in my ongoing journey. I can no longer accept the teachings I received about Jesus Christ being consubstantiated with the Creator before time. I read John 1 now hearing LOGOS as LURE. But I do like John Cobb’s view that Jesus was entirely and solely human but was completely porous to the Primordial God and the lure. He saw no I/Thou separation with the divine but but consubstantiated in that he felt the lure on an intimate basis as if the divine flowed through him without resistance. At least that is how I remember Dr. Cobb’s interpretation.

Thank you for sharing your light bulb moment. Dr. McDaniel’s comment struck me also but I did not follow it down the rabbit hole like you did. This has helped enlighten me and teased me into more active thought and imagination. I have conceived of Jesus Christ as two different entities, two different experiences, one a past occasion strictly historical and another that is the presence of this idea of Christ that has been shared and developed over two millennia. Does your concept entail just the single historical Jesus who is objectively immortal through our experiences and relationships with each other? Since this ongoing Jesus is continuously experienced, interpreted through our various relationships with him, does he have an ongoing consequent nature in the way Whitehead speaks of God?

Replying to both Eric and Charles
I think the anthropocentric language we use is inevitable for many of us but does not signify a belief that the universe is in fact anthropocentric. For me Whitehead is clearly interested in actual occasions “all the way down” but at some point we anthro’s just get lost in talking about quantum events and their relation to our macro lives. I agree with you that there is danger of using value language because the history of philosophy is paved with discarded moral theses and theories of absolutes that still await plausible locations for these laws. However to discard Process because of this is a error based on our poor use of these terms. I think those of us interested in the theological implications of Process are guilty of drawing others with us down our rabbit hole.

I agree with Charles when he discusses panexperientialism and the human cells. No immune cell or muscle cell or other “knows” it is part of Camp Lawrence Jones but they interact and are affected by all the others in a chaotic dance. Muscle cells are influenced by the plasma concentrations of electrolytes and by neurotransmitters from neurons which in turn are affected by almost innumerable other occasions. They respond in way appropriate to their level and a harmonious movement usually results. However we continuously fail to appreciate the next level down from every intereaction. An individual muscle cell may have 1 billion molecules of ATP, the molecular energy storage unit, and each of these molecules may turn over every two minutes. A human body turns over its entire weight in ATP molecules every day! These molecules are actual occasions of the Krebs Cycle which is an entire universe of interactions on its own. Do these occasions know value? As a panpsychist I would say this is a nonsensical question. They do not have a central nervous system, they are not conscious so questions of value are not relevant. But do they have appropriate interactions to their own being, then yes. And cooperation with their surrounding flow sustains their existence and creates harmony with a complex series of events. Maybe that is all value terms mean is creating complexity which requires positive interactions. Some smart person once said, “Biology is just a dance.”

Kyle that Twain quote is so beautiful and appropriate. Thank you. As always art expresses meanings that our ordinary words and thoughts cannot approach and it fits with the Heraclitus saying that you cannot step twice into the same river. There is a magnificent map you can find on nationalgeographic.com of the hidden history of the meandering pathways that the Mississippi River has taken over the centuries. It looks like a spaghetti junction. A beautiful example of the flow of change.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mississippi-rivers-hidden-history-uncovered-by-lidar

The philosopher Charles Taylor’s tome THE SECULAR AGE focuses on this very theme. He analyzes how we moved from a sacred (not religious necessarily) thought process to a default secular construct of the world where we have moved from a “porous self” to a “buffered self”. In my understanding we have lost the ability to completely interact with the magic of the world and have walled ourselves into impervious material beings. If I remember correctly he says we have lost our sense of the enchantment of existence. This can be a good thing when we believe in fewer imaginary superstitions and rely on science to get a closer picture of the universe, but can clearly drift into the excess of physicalism. We may not want to go back to seeing monsters under the bed but cannot lose our deep appreciation of the significance of all life and all experience. I do not know his connection to Whitehead and Process Thought but I think it integrates so well. Taylor argues against the idea that the advance of modern science has caused this default secular construct but rather social changes and movements. In response to Jay’s example today in the lecture where he found beauty and magic in calculus, I find it in physics and neurobiology which continually unfold with new magnificence all the time, recalling the Tao Te Ching initial chapter, “from wonder into wonder existence opens”. We live in enchantment if we only look to see it and Whitehead has helped me.

There also is a very interesting popular book, much easier and more fun to read, by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly called “All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning In a Secular Age”

Charles I love your comments and am continuously stimulated to new thoughts by your ideas. Therefore I feel encouraged to try to make a few points. I think panexperientalism has been gaining more interest and support in the natural sciences. I believe there is much support now for the idea that evolution is not the one way street some NeoDarwians would make it. All evolution is not random mututations of single base pairs resulting in beneficial or detrimental characteristics. Some genetic changes may instead be DRIVEN BY behavior rather than the reverse and that organisms at various levels help select traits for survival. We are all made up of various genetic modifications from viral infections, mating choices. In fact the mitochondria that are the energy factories in all our cells are likely due to some ancient symbiotic relationship between two different organisms that created the emergence of all eukaryotic cells. I do not subscribe to the idea that all bits of the matter we are composed of are sentient but I do think every molecular interaction is a result of attraction (or lure) and value realization. I like using the anthropomorphic word attraction for things like the actual occasion of an electron meeting a proton because it helps me conceptualize some “choice” that even a subatomic particle has.

Wow what an incredible conversation here. Thank you all. I cannot hope to meaningfully contribute much here in Whiteheadian language yet, but I am stimulated by Jay’s mentions of plants and also aggregrate expressions. It reminds me of some of the complexities of organism and panexperientalism. How do individual actual occasions down to even the level of quarks translate into our experiences as organisms. This “aggregrate problem” of hierarchy clearly is a struggle for me particularly thinking about consciousness. Also David Chalmers has a new book REALITY+ (sitting on my shelf uncracked so far) where I believe he argues that even virtual realities are genuine realities. I wonder how Whitehead would respond to that.

Mike, thanks for this conversation on cosmologies. I also grew up with the default edition of Christianity but have also been able to see it undergo various processes of change, both beneficial and harmful from my viewpoint. Explorations of Buddhism and Judaism have been some of my radial spokes that have been helpful. One writer I love and have been influenced by is the Christian mystic and monk Thomas Merton who explored every faith tradition he could and was open to all. He also wrote that he felt it was important to be grounded in one tradition to keep you from becoming too unmoored. Then you could explore and incorporate aspects of other traditions beneficially. This has worked for me even though I disagree with a lot of my tradition’s teachings. Maybe it just feels like it gives me a home to come back to.