Why do you believe the things you believe?
Imagine a belief continuum. On the left are beliefs you believe to be false. On the right are beliefs you believe to be true. Along the span of the continuum from left to right your beliefs are arrayed according to your degree of certainty that they are true or false.
- Why do some beliefs show up on the left and others show up on the right?
- On what basis to you assign your certainty about the truthfulness of your beliefs?
- What role does an appeal to authority play?
- What role does empirical evidence play?
- Do you assess the truth or falsity of a claim based on the credibility of the claim?
- How resistant are your beliefs to contradictory evidence?
These are a few examples of faith based beliefs resisting contradictory evidence:
- Fixed Point Foundation
- Answers in Genesis
- www.creationism.org
- Institute for Creation Research
- International Flat Earth Society
- The Institute for Creation Research
Let us look more closely at the claims of Process Theology and try to assess where they should be mapped on the Belief Continuum. What role does faith play in Process Theology beliefs? This list is my best effort to determine what adherents to Process Theology might believe:
- God Exists.
- God is not independent of the Universe. But rather part of the Universe.
- God can be experienced by humans.
- God did not create the universe from nothing.
- God directs/influences the ongoing processes of the universe.
- God makes new realities out of past events by integrating them into the present to create the future.
- When humans die they continue to exist in the memory of God.
- The redemptive activity of God consists in his willingness to accept past evil, transform it into good and continue to lure each individual toward a self-authenticating acceptance of true value.
To the extent these are accurate – where would you plot them on the belief continuum, and why?
I think it might be helpful in asking whether these things do occur. Do we know of anything which came from nothing? Or do we always experience some building material in whatever is. Does the past figure into the constitution of the present, the buiding blocks for the future? Is the past objectified or can it be changed? If these activities are experienced then presumably there also part of the workings of the universe, not something outside of it. In that the claims you listed about process theology should bear out in our experience of things.
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