Name: Anonymous 2007-09-10 19:25 ID:6kacSjkX
Divine power is persuasive, not coercive. God is not omnipotent in the sense of being coercive. Omnipotence involves force by suggesting a forbearance in divine power. "Persuasion" in the causal sense means that God does not exert unilateral control.
Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experience (male, female, atomic, and botanical) is important and contributes to the ongoing and interrelated process of reality.
The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God cannot totally control any series of events or any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not everything that occurs is God's will.
God contains the universe but is not identical with it. Because God interacts with the changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over the course of time. However, the abstract elements of God (goodness, wisdom, etc.) remain eternally solid.
Rather than the old idea of supernaturalism, according to which God miraculously interrupted the normal causal processes now and then, God is something like a cosmic hydraulic jack, exerting the same pressure always and everywhere, solving the problem of mind-body interaction, the interaction between free and determined things, and the emergence of time in the evolutionary process.
Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experience (male, female, atomic, and botanical) is important and contributes to the ongoing and interrelated process of reality.
The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God cannot totally control any series of events or any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not everything that occurs is God's will.
God contains the universe but is not identical with it. Because God interacts with the changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over the course of time. However, the abstract elements of God (goodness, wisdom, etc.) remain eternally solid.
Rather than the old idea of supernaturalism, according to which God miraculously interrupted the normal causal processes now and then, God is something like a cosmic hydraulic jack, exerting the same pressure always and everywhere, solving the problem of mind-body interaction, the interaction between free and determined things, and the emergence of time in the evolutionary process.