Divine-cosmic interaction : some contemporary alternatives

This analysis examines the theme of divine activity as found in the literature of religion and science over the past quarter century. After a brief historical chapter, reflections on divine action from authors in the philosophy of religion are considered. In chapters 2 and 3, concepts such as intervention, deism, master act and subacts, primary and secondary causation, double agency and the causal joint are outlined. Following this, chapters 4 and 5 concentrate on the work of Whitehead. The amount of space devoted to the treatment of process thought in this investigation reflects the attention it has given to the topic of divine activity.The focus then turns to scientific subjects and how they may inform the question of divine action. Some of the themes highlighted in the case of the large-scale world (chapter 6) include natural laws, evolution, the anthropic principle and the implicate order. Those concepts more appropriate for the small-scale world (chapter 7) involve quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and chaos theory. The positioning of process thought between the two fields of science and the philosophy of religion is strategic in the sense that process thinking claims to have built a bridge between science and religion, physics and metaphysics.In the concluding chapter, the various positions are plotted on three graphs. This approach illumines their relation to the others as well as the facet each can be expected to bring to the overall discussion of divine activity. A resolution to the issue, if any, will likely exhibit Whiteheadian and/or Bohmian contours