Alfred North Whitehead and Process Theology | Robert Wright & John Thatamanil [The Wright Show]

1:26 Alfred North Whitehead and his “process philosophy”
9:03 “Process theology,” which features a changing, non-omnipotent God
22:38 A God of persuasion, not coercion
31:56 Whitehead’s conception of divinity
45:19 Whitehead’s God and Christian theology
55:40 Waiting, or not waiting, for God
58:53 Beauty and the divine
64:12 How Whitehead’s God solves the problem of evil

Recorded April 17, 2019

[DonAaronShow]

THANK YOU FOR THIS! I've been reading and watching so much on process philosophy and it never clicked. Until this video. This is an incredible feeling!

[inersphobia]

Thank you so much for this interview. I've been interested in process philosophy for a while.

[littlesigh]

Bob please consider an interview with Ken Wilber.

[wcropp]

This was a good one guys...Whitehead is always fascinating to ponder. Thanks!

[QuestforaMeaningfulLife]

Excellent clear introduction to a highly abstract idea.

[mrssrm]

For God's sake Bob that mic looks ridiculous.

[samrowbotham]

Process philosophy/theology and thought are all about the ontology of becoming if I am grasping this at all.
Instead of saying we are becoming what if it's all unfolding does that then negate Whitehead's position on free will? I am at heart an Idealist in my philosophy with everything including us emanating from Mind at Large to borrow Kastrup's catchphrase.

[littlesigh]

Bob do you have a big ZIT on your chin? what are you covering with the mic? Looks weird... OTW excellent discussion as always

[projectmalus]

In the discussion of beauty, is it something that facilitates the process? Something like efficiency, for example a process that yields a true result more efficiently, regardless of whether the result is good or bad wrt humans. In the human perspective, beauty is like the "less is more" philosophy in art where what is not needed is stripped away.


Or is beauty more like a recognizing that a process always yields a true result wrt itself? This would come when humans apply philosophy, spirituality or art (which are all processes) and obtain a result in the fields of economics, politics and religion. A beautiful result would be one that is true to the process, an ugly result puts the result first or foremost and then changes the process to obtain the result, which itself is changed due to cost reasons. Some of the actors in the process get marginalized to obtain some sort of gain and ugliness ensues.

[arizonaboy]

Are process theologians compatibilists or free will non determinists?

[nutronhammernutronhammer]

Bob, it'd be great if you could get Bernardo Kastrup on the show sometime.

[simka]

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Or, what is an even more astonishing question: How, or why, and what is the force that binds atoms together via electrons, protons, neutrons?
And why does not the entire created order simply stop there, with atoms and the void?
Why, or wherefore do the atoms then spontaneously level up (rather than dissolve back down) to more and more complex, energetic, heavier atoms ... and then what exactly is the purpose for their leveling up yet again - on their own, without being told or instructed on just how - to configure into molecules?
And why does everything simply not just stop right there?
I mean, it could all just stop. Right there. At molecules.
I mean, that would have been good enough, right?
In fact, that would have been a hell of a lot for one universe to do: to make stars, and then to somehow create heavier and heavier atoms, and then to top it all off with that crown of atomic creation: the molecule!
But it did not stop there! Why not?
Why did molecules mysteriously surge into a mode of being as magnificently different from those molecules as molecules were from atoms, and as atoms were from nothing at all?
Why did life appear from molecules, and molecules from atoms, and atoms from nothing at all?
And those primal, tiny lives - those one-celled wonders, the eukaryotes and prokaryotes - why did they not simply cease to level upward, level onward, level forward, level inward?
They might have been happy just remaining one-celled wonders.
Surely, that would have been wonder enough for one world suspended in the midst of eternity?
But, wait. Level inward? What is meant by that?
Oh Yes! For the inward lives of cells, then slightly higher organisms, then plants and animals, as if out of nowhere, became that of perception, and then sensation, and these material actualities arising out of invisible possibilities were as different as modes of being from the insensate molecules from which they emerged as those insensate molecules were from the simple atoms from which they themselves derived, and as different as the existing atoms were from the non-existent nothingness which preceded them.
So upward in complexity, and onward over space, and forward into time, and inward into higher, and deeper, and richer degrees of perception, and of sensation, and of emotion, and finally of intelligent reflection and language, each degree of consciousness increased in quality and degree as more developed entities, more intricate objects, more articulated species, more aware beings...
Just what is all of this for?
And if we have come this far after only 13 billion years, imagine where, and how, and why we yet may be in 13 trillion, or in three hundred and thirty-three!
Surely, if you cannot believe in God,
You can believe in why and how this all came to be!

[synsynsy]

Bob, please lower the microphone, we need to see your mouth. Looks strange...

[ADBCSH-jeuj]

It appears that the Allness of God (in nonduality) is manifesting in the eachness of us (in duality)... in both a participatory and interactive Being and becoming. The Allness of God is therefore enriched by our eachness as it is optimally unfolding in the present moment. God therefore works with us (not for us) in the gentleness of Love and the actualization of this inherent Divine Potential... opening to us all of its infinite possibilities. Holy sh-t... what a process! Could this be what Master Yeshua meant by "the kingdom of God"?

[BS-lkjg]

Multiple Ultimates is a v good band name

[TheDavddd]

It's deep, but it seems like just a new word coinage or language game of things we already knew, or that even Heraclitus wrote about. What bothers me the most is that metaphysicians never address the issue of logic. Logic for all philosophers reaches a self-defining basis, but no one really asks why is logic even there to begin with. Why do events in Whitehead's universe follow a logic to begin with? Moreover, I don't think Whitehead dispels the idea of Being or the platonic forms because how can consciousness agree on ideas of beauty or "the Good" by Whiteheadean becoming alone?

[DarrylWhiteguitar]

Why isn't this metaphysics nonsense?

[elizabethraper]

Thanks. That's as clear as it gets when it comes to Whitehead philosophy and theology. 👍🥹