Chapter Synopsis of the new book "Starting Science From God"

 Brief outline of the structure of the book and its arguments:

Preface

The status of theism, and current debates
Acknowledgements

I. Preliminaries

1. Introduction
General discussion about the possibility of scientific theism today.


2. History
Brief(!) discussions of historical philosophical treatments of theism, and of theories of connection between God and the world, and between mind and nature.


3. A Way Forward
Describing the 'minor' changes necessary for science for science and for religion, in order to form together a way forward.

II. Ontology

4. Power and Substance
We must distinguish between form, substance and potentiality (like Aristotle), in order to make a realist ontology based on process logic. I give a general introduction to the realist ontology that will be used throughout this book. The ontology of form and substance, united in nature and distinguishable only by the mind, is one that dates from Aristotle and was still held by Descartes and Leibniz.


5. Multiple Generative Levels
Exposition concerning multiple generative levels, based on the asymmetric processes of generation from cause to effect, and selection from previous effects to future causes. Simple examples from classical & quantum physics and psychology.


6. A Dynamic Ontology
Summary of philosophical viewpoint of Part II, where substances are defined in terms of underlying dispositions, and also exist and operate within a generative structure of levels.

III. A Scientific Theism

7. Plan of Approach
Start from specific postulates of theism (just as physics theories start from their own a-theistic postulates), and see what can be deduced concerning minds and nature that is consistent with those postulates, as listed within Chapters 8-19.


8. The ‘I am’
That God exists, and that God is One, are the basic starting postulates of any theism.


9. God is Not Us
Nor are we part of God. To be loved, we must be other from God. The most distinctive feature of theism is that God is distinct from the world, in particular that there is something essential to humans that is distinct from God. The reason for this is that God’s love is unselfish, and unselfish love cannot love itself.


10. Images of God
In the Genesis story, man was made ‘in his image, according to his likeness’. The creation story leading up to this suggests that plants and animals were partial contributions to this making, and from biology we know that there are a great many internal similarities of plants and animals with humans. Although somewhat controversial, this implies that plants and animals are also in the image and likeness of God, but to a lesser extent.


11. God is Love
That God is love, as asserted by most traditional and modern theisms, has rarely been understood properly from the philosophical point of view. The nature of love is to want and then to achieve more than what is already obtained. God as Love wants to share its own with all of creation for the longest time possible, so all objects in creation are given the capacity to make something different in their future. Since God is Love, according to theism, divine love is the substance or being of which God is formed. Then, because created objects are a kind of image of God, we can conclude that something like love is the substance of all things in the world.


12. God is Life Itself
All our life is provided by God, and there is no life apart from God. If we could use the principle that ‘one is at least where one acts’, God would be immanent in His creation. Being eternal Life Itself, He is also transcendent of His creation.


13. God is both Simple and Complex
God is a unity in which there is no limit to the infinity of what may be intellectually distinguished, but what is not in fact separated.


14. God is Wisdom, and Action
That God is also Wisdom itself, and proceeding Action, so we have triad within God. This wisdom is the source of our own wisdom, understanding & knowledge.


15. God is Transcendent and Immanent
The distinction between the transcendent God and the finite creation depends on the distinction between the actual forms of created things and their received life. Thus we have neither pantheism nor deism, but what is a thorough-going theism: ‘God in everything, but distinct from everything’. Note that the ‘in’ here is not that of constitution, but of being hidden from the outside.


16. We Act Sequentially
That, in us, love and wisdom choose when to act. God may have foreknowledge of our free decisions, but time exists for us, and we still must will our own actions according to our understanding: with our own freedom.


17. We are Composite, as Spiritual, Mental and Physical
That God is Love, is Wisdom, and is also Life or Action in himself are what we can intellectually distinguish. Because what is unified and continuous in God is imaged in creation with what are distributed discretely, and these distributions function similarly by images of the God-world relation, we conclude that creation must have three realms, the first a reduced and distributed image of divine love, the second a reduced and distributed image of divine wisdom, and the third a reduced and distributed image of divine power and action.
The spiritual realm contains the separate loves in creation, including desires, loves, affections, motivations, purposes, dispositions, etc. The mental realm contains the separate carriers of wisdom, namely thoughts, ideas, understandings, rationality, plans, ideologies, beliefs, etc. The physical realm deals with all the separate final actions and effects, including the entire sets of things we know from external observations and physics.


18. We are Sustained by Influx From God, Directly and Indirectly
The traditional view of God creating the world is by fiat, taking literally the commands ‘fiat lux: let there be light’ and so on. The creation of substantial objects, still, involves God giving them their being (since he is being itself). Furthermore, in process logic, there is no power without substance. Or without (some kind) of presence.


19. God is Equally Present in All Subparts
Thus God must be immanent in every part of creation, and in every part of that part. And in every realm that influences each part and each sub-part. God must therefore be imaged (in some way) in each thing of love, and each thing of thought, and each physical thing, as well as in the interior realms of all of these.


20. The Theistic Universe
Taking an overall view of the universe from the above theistic principles.　

IV. Theistic Science

21. Methods
The previous Part III outlined an abstract structure of degrees and sub-degrees. Now in Part IV is the time to work out what these are in terms of the language and sciences that we already know, if possible. I call this the process of ‘identification.’ This is now longer deduction from theistic premises, not the least because now I call on meanings in ordinary languages and in the sciences, and these will have historical and contemporary overtones that certainly cannot be called deductive conclusions!


22. Discrete Degrees in the Mind
Discuss generic operation of sub-degrees in the mind, namely thought of loves, thought about thoughts, and thought about sensations & actions. These are identified as ‘higher rational’, ‘scientific rational’ and ‘external mind’ respectively. The sub-sub-degrees within these, and relation to the levels of cognition and affection discussed by Piaget, Gowan and Erikson.


23. Spiritual Discrete Degrees
When identifying the three main degrees of spiritual, mental and physical, I deliberately placed a spiritual degree above that of our normal mental life. That is because I read a great many reports of ‘peak experiences’, including those called visionary, mystical, out-of-body, near-death and spiritual, and I am convinced that there does indeed exist a realm about which we are normally unaware. I claim that this is the spiritual realm, and I have therefore identified this as ‘love’, the principal degree 1 of the three degrees. These must constitute some kind of heavenly states. An extensive discussion of misconceptions concerning the nature of the spiritual.


24. Discrete Degrees in Nature
The divine source does not produce all physical effects directly, but it produces via spiritual and natural stages what we see as natural dispositions or natural propensities. It is these dispositions or propensities, also known as causes, forces, potentials, quantum propensities) which lead to the ultimate physical interactions and events. The physical dispositions are a very limited ‘remnant' of Divine Power, and they operate in a way which corresponds to the characteristic operation of the Divine.
The stages and substages are directly related to problems in pregeometric gravity, quantum field theory, and in ordinary quantum mechanics. Prediction that there exists some actual selection processes in nature, in order to solve the (generalized) measurement problem.


25. Mind-body Connections
We derive a theory of mind and brain connection that establishes in intimate relation between them. It is not a relation of identity, or a relation of aspects or points of view. It is more a relation of inner and outer, or cause and effect: propensities in the brain are the causal product of mental actions. The mind and brain fit together by approximate analogy with hand and glove, or, better, with tissue and skin. The analogy is most precisely with thefunctions of tissue & skin, and not so much with their material shape. The mind provides all the directed activity of the brain, just as the tissue of the hand provides all the directed activity of the skin of the hand.
There are continual relations between minds generating brain dispositions, and brain events selecting which mental powers can act. This reciprocity means that the longest-lasting psychophysical structures have similar functional patterns in the mind and they body, and these similar functions we call 'correspondences’.

V. Applications

26. Evolution
That God cannot create self-sustaining organisms immediately, and neither can God instantaneously create robust receivers of divine love, since they need a history of their own actions in order to live as if from themselves. This implies that God needs evolution: descent by modification. Argue that this essentially the same as for mental and for spiritual (re)generation. That is, God has to manage external and internal changes in a gradualist manner: ab initio creationism is impossible. There is ‘theistic selection’ in addition to Darwinist natural selection.


27. Consciousness
In this framework, we are conscious of our actions when love and wisdom come together to make those actions. We are not directly conscious of our loves, and we are conscious of our thoughts only by reflective awareness at some upstream level.


28. Spiritual Growth
That we want permanent spiritual growth, and that this does not come quickly, but by cumulative joint actions of our own loves and wisdom. Not from one by itself, or from suffering alone, or from ‘elevated consciousness’. Look at stages of spiritual growth that starts in our higher rational, and continues in with our spiritual loves, especially in relation the sequence described in Genesis chap. 1.


29. Errors and Evils
What can we say about the problem of evil? Only some preliminaries: that Divine omnipotence is not absolute (since persons have love as their being, so cannot be arbitrarily remade): love always overrules omnipotence. That God can indeed create a stone he cannot (in practice) lift: that stone is us! Preliminary discussion of the real questions concerning freedom and evil.

VI. Discussion

30. Metaphysics
Responses, in the light of this book, to the philosophers and their queries as discussed in Chapter 2. Discussing in particular relations to ideas of Aquinas, Descartes and Whitehead (the leading ontologists who include mind and God in their theories).


31. Formal Modeling
The possibility of formal modeling of physical structures, and of limited modeling of mental structures. Dispositions can be partially modeled as procedures or functions, but not every aspect of them.


32. Possible Objections
Collection of frequently asked objections, and my responses.


33. Conclusions
Brief summary.


A. Theistic Postulates
A convenient summary


B. Further Resources
  Some relevant websites.

Bibliography
Index

Unique explanatory advantages of book "Starting Science From God"

• Presentation of a science of theism in a realistic manner with explanatory and predictive power.
• Non-metaphorical and non-mythical understanding of theism
• Philosophical account of 'substance' in terms of persistent underlying propensities
• Recognition and many examples of 'multiple generative levels' in physics and psychology.
• Presentation of the basis of theism as the consequence of One God existing who is being itself & unselfish-love itself & wisdom itself.
• Principles in more detail:
  1. God is love which is unselfish and cannot love only itself.
  2. God is wisdom as well as love and thereby also power and action.
  3. God is life itself: the source of all dispositions to will, think and act.
  4. Everything in the world is a kind of image of God: minds and also natural objects.
  5. The dispositions of an object are those derivatives of divine power that accord with what is actual about that object.
• Describes an honest, welcoming and living theism
• No reductionist or 'nothing but' explanations of God, spirituality or mentality.
• Prediction that minds exist with spiritual loves, mental thoughts and physical actions within an integrated complex.
• Prediction of internal structure of minds: thoughts of love, of thought and of action.
• Prediction of internal structure of physical degrees: principles of effects (pregeometric physics), propagation of effects (field  theories), and of final affects (quantum mechanics leading to actual selections)
• Prediction of relations between the mental and the physical
• Prediction of relations between the divine and the spiritual+mental: that we receive life according to those actions our loves have made in the past.
• Prediction of spiritual degrees not in terms of expansion/ elevation/ vibration/ dimensions/ nondualism of consciousness, but in terms of principal loves.
• Why progressive evolution of physical forms is necessary to make living & thinking beings like humans.
• Gradual biological, psychological and spiritual build-up is necessary in general, as there are no instant adults.
• That evolutionary fitness must be selected not only naturally, but also theistically according to reception of life from the divine.
• The consciousness is the joint action of love and wisdom. It is not itself causal, but is theoperation of spiritual and mental causality.
• That permanent spiritual growth depends on those actions our loves have made with wisdom/faith in the past.
• That some formal modeling is possible within this scientific theism.

See www.beginningtheisticscience.com

How can we distinguish between divine and human actions in the world?

Let me give a short answer presupposing the ontological framework of theistic science described in my book: it does not stand alone. I will also try to answer the question without using the word 'good' (though, if I could, the answer would be a little simpler). I will take the question as referring mainly to our own actions: trying to separate what is from ourselves from what comes from God.


There are 4 kinds of actions that should be distinguished here:

1. actions by God directly, such as creating, visiting, etc
2. actions done by God, by means of us.
3. actions done by us, with concurrence by God.
4. actions done by us, with permission from God but not initiation.

One purpose of my book is to show how the kind 4 can exist: we can redirect loves and dispositions from God to our own purposes quite distinct from his.
The challenge is to distinguish kinds 2 and 3. In general we only begin to distinguish them after the fact. That is because, during their operation, we tend to interfere if we see what is really happening.


The kind 2 requires no interference: we have to be almost distracted or looking the other way; at least with no self-consciousness. We still feel the delights soon afterwards, though. If we interpose our own ego, then actions get contaminated to some extent. For this kind, we will have to have previously 'cleaned the inside of the cup' by avoiding temptations and the later the desire for what was tempting.


Kind 3 is when our egos are still partially involved. That is the case for most of us on the path. In this case we ask for grace, and try to make way for it when it arrives. The actions will still be ego-connected, but, we pray, not too much.


This is necessarily a very brief summary of some different kinds of spiritual development, as we learn to turn away from selfishness. Some people, of course, would deny the very existence of these things. That is why my book deals mostly with ontology--what exists--rather than what we should be doing. In practice, of course, there are in us many desires pointing in various directions, and many partial insights that inform us of some of these directions. When it comes to actions by other people, it is more difficult again to tell.


As we all realize, distinguishing these aspects should be part of ongoing reflection about our own lives. For both theoretical and practical reasons.

Skeptiko thread discussing 'Starting Science From God' and theism

Over at the forums for the Skeptiko podcast, they have started a new thread to discuss my book and the ideas in it concerning theism and minds. Of particular interest to these people are Near-Death Experiences and parapsychology. Alex Tsakiris interviews researchers, near-death experiences, and those skeptical of these things. The focus is primarily on 'the data' and what can be shown on the basis of that evidence. 


They find, however, that they are hampered by the lack of any good theory for what is going on in these unusual situations. They wonder, for example, 'what - exactly - is consciousness'. Related to this is a lack of a proper theory, or even guidelines, to explain how the evidence from internal experiences and spontaneous events are supposed to be evaluated. I hope that the ideas I am developing might be useful for this and related applications. So on that thread I will be discussing various aspects of theism--trying to explain what theism is because it has been so long neglected philosophically--and how it relates to the existence of minds and spirituality. Some people think that there can never be any evidence for theism, for example, to which I reply here. Alex asked how theism might fit into a testable scientific framework, to which I replied here. It seems not often that theists defend their theory properly. I look forward to ongoing discussions.


I am 'phs1it', in case that is not clear.

New book published: "Starting Science From God"

At last my new book is published!

This book describes a general theory to link science to theism. Theism is the philosophical basis of Western religions. As the first Amazon reviewer says:

Here is a scientist who begins by assuming God exists and develops his scientific ideas from that point of view. He has a unique idea that is fascinating. I loved reading this, even though it takes concentration to follow. The discussion combines philosophy, quantum physics, and religion. It reminded me of the Tao of Physics, only more modern and more Christian.

More details of the book are at http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com, where there are sample chapters and preliminary reviews. It is available on Amazon now, and soon at Barnes & Noble. There are Kindle and Nook eBooks now, and soon there will be an iBooks version. It should be internationally distributed by the end of the year.


In future blog postings here, I will be discussing questions arising from the book and from its readers.