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Sabbath School for a New Generation

Among Seventh Day Adventists, Sabbath School is a time for discussion and learning. It is the belief of this site that Sabbath School should be an exciting venue for the discussion of new ideas, instead of rehashing old arguments. So welcome to a virtual Sabbath School, a Sabbath School for a new generation.

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I am an Electrical Engineer, working at Intel in the Portland area. I received my undergraduate degree from Walla Walla College and graduate degrees from the University of Southern California. The views expressed on this website are my own and do not reflect the viewpoints of anybody else. I reserve the right to change my mind at any point in time.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Process vs. Free Will Theism

I'm revisiting this subject. As you may remember, I recently reviewed a book on this topic. Well, here is David Larson's take on it as well. David Griffin articulated ten points that describe what is process theism. David Larson maintains that traditional free will theism can agree with nine of these points.

Without hesitation, qualification or equivocation, traditional free will theism can and should affirm 9 of the 10 "core doctrines" of process philosophy as identified by Griffin. These are:

1. "The integration of science and religion into a single worldview."
2. "Hard-core commonsense notions as the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position."
3. "Whitehead’s nonsensationist doctrine of perception."
4. "Panexperientialism."
5. "All enduring individuals as serially ordered societies of momentary ‘occasions of experience.’"
6. "All actual entities have internal as well as external relations."
7. Please see below
8. . "Doubly Dipolar Theism."
9. "Cosmological support for the ideals needed by contemporary civilization."
10. "A distinction between verbal statements (sentences) and propositions and between both of these and propositional feelings."


The seventh is
Although there is a divine actuality that influences human experience and, in fact, all finite beings, this divine influence never involves an interruption of the normal pattern of causal relations, being instead a natural dimension of this normal pattern.

This seventh point is basically about how God can intervene in the world. Anyway, read the whole article. I found the discussion of supernaturalism and miracles especially intersting.