The Mind of God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, November 14, 2010, 19:28 (4905 days ago) @ David Turell


> > BBella resurrects the spectre of Process theology; God isn't present in the individual states of things, but in the process itself... God is formless because it never pauses, like an ocean without boundaries.
> 
> Why 'spectre'. Is process theology a 'bad' or a 'good' theology? Or am I picking up the wrong meaning for 'spectre'?-"Spectre" as in "ghost" or "shadow." No negative connotation is intended; it just happens to be a very unexplored set of ideas. -Process theology is becoming more and more of interest to me as of late; in hardware design I was recently introduced to a graph-theoretic technique called "finite-state machines." It's significance to our discussions is this: the technique calls for creating nodes (circles) that represent "finite states." The inputs to the machine initiates a process from which the overall machine moves from one state to the next. -During these transitions, the only thing we can have 'proof' of in regards to the state of the machine, is its initial conditions, and it's final state. Without having a complete schematic of the circuits, we will always have a large degree of uncertainty, no matter how much we have tested the machine as to the actual nature or design of the machine. -Process theology would roughly state that God has no 'finite state,' and that its interface with the world is firmly rooted within that process of change; from state 'A' to state 'B.' All of our languages deal with states; we don't have a good language or vocabulary for processes. So if we don't have a good language to deal with processes, it makes it less likely that we would be able to truly understand God as a Process. Which, if you've read Whitehead, this is exactly the problem he decided to try and solve; he created an entire vocabulary to try and deal with it. -To me, process theology is the only hope theology has if it wishes to be relevant over the next two thousand years.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"