Ponder Anew 1!

David R. Larson            Loma Linda, California 

Is belief in a personal God compatible with evolutionary theory? Do our genes determine all that we are and everything that we do and what guidelines should we follow when doing genetic research and therapy? What are the implications of contemporary neuroscience for our understanding of the human soul? Does the classical idea of God’s omnipotence dovetail with what we see in the natural world and with evil, suffering and freedom? Has Christianity contributed to the ecological crisis and what should it do today? These are the five questions to which this slim but informative volume replies.

Ian G. Barbour, a physicist and Christian theologian who is highly regarded as the current "Dean of Religion and Science," devotes one chapter to each of these five questions and introduces them with another, making six in all. A preface, a six-page index of the authors he cites (Peter Abelard to Laurie Zoloth), plus another six-page index of the subjects he discusses ("adaptation" to "world as God’s body"), complete this helpful study.

Barbour describes conflicting, compartmentalized, interactive and integrating methods of relating religion and science in his introductory chapter and identifies himself with the last of these. Within the integrating approach, he favors the "theology of nature" option to "natural theology." The primary difference between these is that the first begins within a community of faith whereas the second often attempts to start with no declared religious commitments.

Barbour announces at the outset that he writes as a Christian who rejects Biblical literalism, on the one hand, and scientific materialism and reductionism, on the other. He affirms holism, emergentism and a modified form of process philosophy and theology. He explains these terms and defends these judgments throughout his entire book.

In his chapter on "God and Evolution," Barbour reviews recent scientific developments and summarizes four concepts (self-organization, indeterminacy, top-down causality, communication of information) with which contemporary scientists often update the views of Charles Darwin. He then outlines four corresponding models of how God acts throughout the universe and proposes a fifth, based on process thought, that modifies, supplements and integrates the others.

According to this proposal, the basic building blocks of the universe are not inert bits of matter but lively events. Each of these events is an occasion of experience that partly forms itself by integrating aspects of its past with some of its options for the future. God participates in the partial self-formation of each event as the supreme but non-coercive source of sufficient order and relevant novelty without which continuity and change would be impossible. Understood along these lines as the One who interacts with each event throughout the whole universe, God is "very personal and responsive," Barbour writes.

Barbour’s chapter on "Evolution, Genetics and Human Nature" begins with a survey of recent developments in areas of inquiry such as sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, the study of primates in captivity and in the wild, cultural and linguistic anthropology, and the evolutionary history of religion. The combined import of these findings is that human beings are closely related to other forms of life, but nevertheless unique.

The chapter then explores the implications of such conclusions for Christian understandings of humanity, sin, Jesus Christ and the moral life. Barbour writes that, in addition to thinking of sin as estrangement from God, one’s neighbors and one’s true self, we should also think of it as alienation from the natural world, for instance.

Turning from theology to bioethics, this chapter also evaluates therapeutic and reproductive cloning, somatic cell and germ-line therapies, genetic enhancement strategies and eugenic social policies. Christians should keep in mind that humans are both bearers of the divine image and marred by original sin, Barbour holds. Wary openness is therefore in order, as are concerns for social justice, human dignity and unconditional love.

Barbour denies genetic determinism. Environmental factors and personal decisions as well as genes establish who we are and what we do, he holds. One implication of his position is that even identical twins who are reared in virtually the same environment can have different lives if they exercise their partial but genuine freedom diversely.

This book’s chapter on "Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Nature" traces what several disciplines (philosophy, biblical studies, ancient, medieval and contemporary theology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence) say about embodiment, emotions and the social self.  These converging lines of evidence suggest that a human person is "a multilevel, psychosomatic unity who is both a biological organism and a responsible self," Barbour writes.

He uses two concepts in process thought to integrate these various findings. The concept of dipolar monism posits that the basic actualities are neither material substances nor mental ones, nor even both in some uncertain relationship, but events that possess a material pole, their receptivity to their past, and a mental pole, their creativity toward the future. The concept of organizational pluralism claims that these events are organized in a variety of ways, some simple and others complex. Because only the most complex are conscious, Barbour agrees with David Ray Griffin that this combination of concepts should be called panexperientialism, not panpsychism.

From this point of view, the human self is not a separate and unchanging substance but a linear sequence of interlocking events that share a common form to a considerable extent, sort of like the linked cars of a long train. In Barbour’s view, Whitehead put too much emphasis upon the uniqueness and separateness of each event in the self’s journey, something he tries to correct by putting more emphasis upon how much each event inherits from its predecessors and upon the common form the sequence as a whole largely shares.

Barbour begins his chapter on "God and Nature:  A Process View" with a survey of the many ways God is pictured in Scripture and in traditional theology: designer, potter, architect, lord, king, liberator, shepherd, father, mother and so forth. He then examines four themes in recent criticisms of traditional understandings of divine omnipotence. These are that nature possesses its own integrity, that more pain and suffering permeate human and non-human life than can be reconciled with absolute divine omnipotence, that such a view of God does not do justice to what the cross teaches us about God, and that such views legitimize and encourage the abuse of women by men. He concludes his chapter with a process view of divine power that emphasizes its persuasive character.

As Barbour sees the matter, God is omnipotent in the sense that divine power does all that can be done when others throughout the universe are able to resist God’s influence. Likewise, God is omniscient in the sense that God’s wisdom knows everything that can be known given the partial indefiniteness of events that have not yet occurred. Those who prefer more traditional definitions of divine omniscience and omnipotence must therefore demonstrate how God could definitely know that which is not yet definite and how God could share power with others and still completely control them.  Although they differ in substance, the issues of God's knowledge and power are similar in form.

If God acts persuasively, how do we account for those events in the Christian narrative in which God acts dramatically, episodes like creation, the Exodus, the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the final consummation? Barbour’s answer is that "In process thought, God provides initial aims relevant to particular occasions, so very specific divine initiative are possible, though always in co-operation with finite beings in the world."

Barbour’s chapter on "Theology, Ethics and the Environment" examines how alternative understandings of the relationships between God and the universe and between human and non-human life influence attitudes and actions toward the environment. After tracing the development of the environmental crisis and scientific and religious thought about it, he identifies four theological themes that provide Christian support for positive environmentalism: stewardship and celebration, the Holy Spirit in nature, the redemption of nature and the sacred in nature. Making use of process thought, he argues against dualistic understandings of God and the universe and against dualistic views of human and non-human life.

Contrary to those who say that non-human beings possess only instrumental value, or that we have only indirect duties not to treat them in ways that degrade ourselves, he contends that "all creatures have value to God and to each other, and all have intrinsic value as centers of experience." Contrary also to those who say that all living beings have equal worth, he writes that "creatures vary widely in their richness of experience and in their contribution to the experience of other beings, so they are not equally valuable." Establishing bioethical priorities when lives conflict is therefore both possible and necessary.

In the final section of this chapter Barbour moves from pure science to applied science and technology with emphasis upon questions of social justice in national and international contexts. Conceding that thoughtful people may disagree about such issues of policy, he comments on matters such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, low wages in developing countries, political accountability, transnational corporations, new technologies, and voluntary organizations that occupy the space between families and nations or corporations.

If there is one theme that threads its way through all of this book it is the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Barbour discerns the Spirit permeating and prompting the whole universe in dynamics such as creation, incarnation, redemption, liberation, reconciliation and final consummation. "Greater attention to the Spirit can help us find a better balance between transcendence and immanence in thinking about God’s relation to nature today," he writes.

A number of themes in this book deserve discussion. In what follows I will comment on only five of them.

Theology and Philosophy. This volume is an excellent fulfillment of Barbour’s stipulation in other books that Christian theology and ethics should "adapt, not adopt" philosophical orientations. Although he makes much positive use of process thought, in this book Barbour "adapts" Alfred North Whitehead’s conceptuality in at least two respects and Charles Hartshorne’s in at least one.

"While I accept the process critiques of divine omnipotence and of the body/soul dualism of classical Christianity," he writes, "I defend a stronger assertion of God’s power and a more integral view of selfhood than is found in Whitehead’s writings."  Demurring from Hartshorne’s suggestion that we might think of the universe as God’s body, Barbour writes that "The world and God seem more like a community with a dominant member than like a single organism."

Although he is a process thinker, Barbour feels free to disagree in public with Whitehead and Hartshorne! Contrary to what some apparently suppose, most process theologians are willing to do the same when they are persuaded by what they consider the best evidence and reasoning. It is therefore a mistake to state or imply that they are all so beholden to their favorite philosophical texts and mentors that in their work theology loses its independence and integrity.  As Barbour explains in this book, "We can adapt Whiteheadian categories to the theological task of interpreting the experience of the Christian community without accepting all of his ideas."

Scripture and Science. Like a number of others, Barbour suggests that we should take Scripture "seriously but not literally." This expression serves us well in several respects; however, it also seems to concede something that we might want to contest, that those who originated the literature that we now find in Scripture intended to answer scientific questions like the ones we now ask.

It is possible that this is not so. Because I am especially interested in ethics, perhaps I can be forgiven for wondering if Scripture’s various accounts of the first and last things were initially offered and received more like ethical, or even political, claims than scientific ones. One of these assertions might have been that all humans are composed of the same stuff, that they share the same origin and destiny, and that therefore they are of equal dignity and value. 

Barbour believes this, of course; however, I wish that we might entertain the possibility that assertions such as this one are the literal intentions of at least some of Scripture’s accounts of creation and consummation. Instead of thinking of these stories as bad science, perhaps we can think of them, when wisely interpreted, as good ethics or politics!

Evolution and Christianity. Some Christians may decide not to read this book because it makes a positive theological use of evolutionary theory. I think that would be a mistake. Throughout this volume Barbour portrays life on our planet both hierarchically, from the least complex to the most, and chronologically, from the Big Bang to the present. Those who reject evolutionary thinking can collapse his chronological scheme into his hierarchical one and keep on reading!

No matter how and when these things came about, for instance, we can agree that we are closely related to other forms of life, and yet unique. We can also concur that we are relational psychosomatic beings; that who we are and what we do are not determined wholly and solely by our genes; and that such understandings, plus many others, should make a difference in how we live.

Having said that, I admit that I am disappointed that in this book Barbour does not discuss any of the more aggressive objections to evolutionary theory, as they define it, in publications by people like Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski and Phillip E. Johnson. Doing so would have taken little additional space and would have made this volume even more helpful than it already is.

Brain and Mind. "Process thinkers thus agree with dualists that interaction takes place between the mind and the cells of the brain, but they reject the dualists’ claim that this is an interaction between two totally dissimilar entities," Barbour writes. Especially because in this paragraph Barbour compares and contrasts the mind to "the cells of the brain," or even to "a brain cell," instead of to the brain as a whole, I am not certain if he entirely agrees with David Ray Griffin regarding these issues.  Also, although Barbour often uses the word "mind" as a noun, he does not list it in the functional "neural hierarchy (molecule, synapse, neuron, neural network, and the brain with its changing patterns of interconnections)."  Is this omission intentional?  I do not know.

It would seem that if Griffin had outlined the functional neural hierarchy he would have made "mind," not "brain," the final and most inclusive item.  He holds that the human mind is identical to the human brain in kind, but distinct from it in number. 

Griffin depicts the relationship this way in order to avoid the pitfalls of dualism, the view that mind and matter, including the brain, are fundamentally different, and epiphenominalism, the view that causal influences flow from the brain to the mind but not the other way around.  In addition, separating in number but not in kind the mind from the brain would seem to make it easier to imagine how the former could survive the death of the latter, a possibility in which Griffin expresses some interest.

I find it difficult to use the word "mind" as a noun, however. It makes more sense to me to use the term as a verb or a gerund. Just as we say that "seeing" is what the eye does and "hearing" is what the ear does, we can also say that "minding" is what the brain does, even though this does sound strange at first!

Because it sounds less odd to say that the brain "thinks" or engages in "thinking," perhaps we should use these terms. Yet one disadvantage of doing so is that in ordinary conversation these words often refer only to conscious cogitation. We need terms that refer to the full range of things the brain does, subconscious as well as conscious, affective and volitional as well as cognitive. This is why I now prefer "mind" as a verb and "minding" as a gerund.

We know that we can alter thoughts, feelings and choices by modifying the brain. We also know that we can alter the brain by modifying thoughts, feelings and choices, so much so that over time the physical architecture of the brain partially changes in harmony with how the individual interacts with his or her environment. For this reason, it is no longer as helpful as it once may have been to think of the brain as "hardware" and the "mind" as software. Even the "hardware" of the brain changes!

All things considered, is it better to think of the interactive process between the human brain and the human mind as the mutual influence of two basically different substances, as numerically distinct but fundamentally the same sort of actualities, or as the uniquely reflexive capacities of a single psychosomatic unity?

If we begin with a dualism between mind and matter, we thereby choose the first option. But why must we choose either it or the second alternative if we begin, as process thought does, with the view that they are not different substances but the two poles of every occasion of experience? Why not opt for the third alternative?

Perhaps this issue is irreducibly perplexing because there is nothing else in our lives with which we can successfully compare the human brain. As far as we now know, it is a unique organ, and an amazing one at that! This is a case in which trying to understand something by comparing it to other things, and by analyzing its less complex components, cannot wholly succeed.

As Barbour says of the human brain, with "1,000 trillion neurons, each connected to as many as 10,000 neighbors; the number of possible patterns in interconnecting them is far greater than the number of atoms in the universe."  Besides, neuroscience increasingly understands the multiple ways various regions of the brain cooperate with each other in the process of "minding."  Most amazingly, no other organ of which we now have knowledge is able to transcend and transform itself to the degree that the human brain can. If this does not astound one, I’m not sure what will!

Although it may be too soon to cast a final ballot, at this time I am inclined toward the view that the human brain as a whole is capable of "minding" its own affairs with neither basically different nor numerically distinct leadership. After all, if it turns out that I am mistaken, my brain (as a whole) can always change my brain (in its pertinent parts)!

God and Universe. Barbour skillfully navigates one of the most controversial features of process thought, the notion that God and a universe of some sort may everlastingly co-exist. Even if we agree with Thomas Aquinas and others that this might be so, the more decisive question remains: Does the universe depend upon God or does it possess its own basis for being? In three brief sentences that are part of his larger discussion of divine power, Barbour gives us his answer to this question.

"To say that the limitation of God’s power is a metaphysical necessity rather than a voluntary self-limitation is not to say that it is imposed by something outside of God," he writes. "This is not a Gnostic or Manichean dualism in which recalcitrant matter restricts God’s efforts to embody pure eternal forms in the world. If God’s nature is to be loving and creative, it is inconsistent to say that God might have chosen not to be loving and creative."

If I understand it correctly, Barbour’s answer can be unpacked as follows: (1) By nature and not merely by choice, God is wholly and everlastingly loving. (2) Genuine love gives as well as receives; it enables others to become what they choose to be in limited but genuine freedom; (3) It is therefore reasonable to infer that in love, and as a gift to all others, God everlastingly dwells with some universe. Thus, even if the universe is temporally simultaneous with God, an idea about which Barbour acknowledges some scientific uncertainty, it is ontologically dependent upon God’s loving nature. Dualistic visions of God and the universe are therefore excluded, just as they are with respect to mind and matter.

Yet doesn’t this conclusion follow whether we say that God loves by nature or by choice? Isn’t love’s impulse both to give and to receive the decisive consideration at this juncture? Also, doesn’t the distinction between "choice" and "nature," which parallels the distinction between voluntariness and metaphysical necessity, possess limited value when applied to God? At present my own answers to these questions are "yes."

It therefore appears to me that the advantages of process thought when we are discussing God and the actuality of evil do not lie primarily with the claim that the limits on God’s power are metaphysically necessary. They lie more with the assertion that all integrated actualities, as distinguished from mere aggregates like stones and rocks, possess some measure of self-determination as a gift from God, even if at the simplest levels it is extremely attenuated, a theme that Barbour also develops.

Because many authors do not make this point, they find it difficult to address the evil that occurs in the natural world as well as that which is caused by human beings who misuse their freedom. Yet because their comparative lack of complexity makes it more difficult for God or anyone else positively to influence them, other actualities that are lower on the scale of life often act in ways that eventually destroy themselves as well as others. Unless stopped, malignant tumors kill the organisms of which they are a part and then die too, for instance.

If contrary to what Barbour writes we say that the limits on God’s power are not metaphysically necessary but voluntary, do we not make God responsible in some sense for the evil caused by those who misuse the measure of freedom God gives them? 

Providing we emphasize the words "in some sense," I believe that the answer to this question is "yes." As the One who makes possible continuity and change by providing both sufficient order and opportunities for relevant novelty, God is partly responsible in an ultimate and justifiable sense for all that happens, good and bad.

As far as I can now tell, the only way absolutely and wholly to relieve God of all responsibility for the actuality of evil is to contend that all those who are not God possess an entirely independent basis for being. To make this move would seem to endorse a dualistic understanding of God and the universe. It would also seem to erode any reason, again no matter how ultimate and justified, for praising God for being partly responsible for any realizations of good. For both philosophical and theological reasons, these prices strike me as too high.

There is a secondary and derivative sense in which the limits on God’s power are necessary, however. If by nature or by choice God’s love empowers others with partial but genuine freedom, it does follow that God cannot exercise unilateral and complete control over them. This necessity flows from no inadequacy on God’s part but from what it means for each occasion of experience to possess a God-given ability partially to determine itself.

If we are using the relevant words in the same way, it is self-contradictory to say that God can wholly compel all those whom God enables to exercise limited but genuine freedom. Compatibilism, the view that the same event can be both wholly determined and at least partially free, is thus mistaken, if we are giving all the key words the same meaning.

As I hope is evident, this small but solid book can be read with profit as a survey of the religious relevance of current scientific thinking, as an introduction to process thought and as a synopsis of Barbour’s own constructive positions. I am learning much from it in all three ways. I am confident that others will do so as well!