Replies

Hi Sheri,
I may be the odd man out here, I don’t know. I actually did a BA in Bible and Theology with the expectation of becoming a minister, but my education made me realize that what I was being taught was intellectually and scientifically bankrupt. Since that time I have become increasingly skeptical that there is any redeeming value in religion, particularly in light of the “Bapti-costal” movement in political life. (I nearly wrote “evangelical”, but this movement has nothing to do with the Gospel.)
I once considered myself “spiritual, but not religious” but that label has taken on a meaning I don’t intend. Perhaps I could, more accurately, refer to my thinking as “secular, but not atheistic.”
I say these things not to shock anyone, but rather to inoculate others to my views in order to lessen the likelihood of offending fellow students.
I’d be interested to learn what others think of this.
Thomas Royce

Thanks, Jay, that little explanation just rang a bell. I’d read it before many times, but it never penetrated until just now.

I am guided by the principle I picked up from somewhere that, every theory is metaphysical because makes a general proposition without a complete sampling of the event being generalized. In other words, unless every such event is recorded as data and analyzed to yield information, you cannot report a universal fact, you can only make a generalization about what appears to be happening in the specific events so classified. “There are no black swans.” or “White Crows.” except that there are.

I think it’s interesting to note that although Whitehead speaks of ‘actual occasions’ as synonymous with ‘actual entities’, he explicitly includes God as an ‘actual entity, while at the same time he excludes God from the category ‘actual occasion’. And he insists later that God is not to be conceived of as exempt from the metaphysics he presents, but as the chief exemplification of that Metaphysic. Those thoughts together bring into question the notion absolute synonymity of the two terms.