Author: Peters, Karl E.

Source: Zygon, Volume 43, Number 1, March 2008 , pp. 19-26(8)

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Abstract:

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Differences in methods of knowing correlate with differences in concepts about what is known. This is an underlying issue in science and religion. It is seen, first, in Arthur Peacocke's reasoning about God as transcendent and personal, is based on an assumption of correlative thinking that like causes like. This contrasts with a notion of causation in empirical science, which explains the emergence of new phenomena as originating from temporally prior phenomena quite unlike that which emerges. The scientific understanding of causation is compatible with a naturalistic theism that holds a nonpersonal model of God as the creative process. However, focusing on the immanence of God, there is a second correlation between methods of knowing and concepts of God. Classical empiricism, used by science, correlates with God understood nonpersonally as the creative process. Radical empiricism, in which feelings and not only sense perceptions have cognitive import, opens up the possibility that one can experience Peacocke's personal, panentheistic God as pattern-forming influence. I illustrate this second method-concept correlation with a personal experience.

Keywords: analogia entis; causation; classical empiricism; empirical theism; empiricism; epistemology; God; immanence; naturalistic theism; panentheism; Arthur Peacocke; radical empiricism; religious naturalism; transcendence

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00895.x

Affiliations: 1: Professor emeritus of philosophy and religion, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and adjunct professor of religion and science at Meadville Lombard Theological School, Chicago, Illinois. His mailing address is 30 Barn Door Hills Road, Granby

Publication date: 2008-03-01

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