Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 16:11 (5505 days ago) @ dhw

"And so, after this very long build-up, we come back to the two questions I'd like to put to your process theology: 1) At what point does consciousness begin? 2) What is its source?"-I touched on this earlier, I believe in my first answer to your post. There is no "point" where it begins. It gradually emerges from a sophistication of experience, as organisms naturally evolved to greater levels of complexity, where experience comes to a focus with greater and greater intensity until we recognize it as consciousness. So ultimately, the source of consciousness is experience, which "goes all the way down," as I believe Whitehead proves.-Let me back up to address one thing in your post: your definition of "theism", then I'll be done with your post: "theism: God (perhaps another name for Nature) has consciousness; life came about by design; evolution followed."-The first thing I have to say about this is, under that definition of theism, I am not a theist, yet I call what is behind my religious experience, the one and only personal God. And I would never claim that another name for God is Nature. Nature produces consciousness, because the basis for Nature is God and God is infinite consciousness, but the totality of God is not what we mean by the word, Nature. Panentheism says that God is both within nature and outside of it, and that's the way it seems to me that things are.-The second part of your definition of theism that I do not fall under is the assertion that "life came about by design; evolution followed." I believe that life came about naturally, and I believe that when science has fully worked out how that happen, we'll see that evolution doesn't follow the origin of life, but participated in it from the beginning. So I think that what will eventually be born out by the facts is that your definition of theism involves a conflict with the way things really are.-I think a proper definition of theism is disconnected from anything that science has to do with, and the origin of life and evolution is within the province of science, not theology. So any proper definition of theism would not say anything about the origin of life, or evolution. That's where religion gets into all kinds of trouble: encroaching on the province of science. The agenda of process theology is to stay out of that morass, and it accomplishes that by trying to understand exactly what the findings of modern science actually are.