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List of contents
Contents: Chapter 1: The Problematic Legacy of Agential Theism Chapter 2: Recent Debates over Agential Theism Chapter 3: Critique of the State of the Art in Theories of Divine Action Chapter 4: Rethinking Causation: Beyond Substantival and Relational Approaches Chapter 5: Rethinking Teleology: From Aristotle to Neo-Darwinian Evolution and Back Again Chapter 6: Rethinking Design: The History and Fate of the Design Argument Chapter 7: Rethinking Cosmology: The Transformation of the Cosmological Argument Chapter 8: Rethinking Determinism: The Misunderstood Significance of Chaos and Complexity Chapter 9: Rethinking Emergence: Canalized Creativity and Ultimate Reality Chapter 10: Rethinking Nature: Diverse Inferential Paths from Nature to Ultimate Reality Chapter 11: The Renewed Promise of Religious-Naturalist, Ground-of-Being Approaches
About the author
Wesley J. Wildman is Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics Department of Boston University’s School of Theology. He directs the multidisciplinary Science, Philosophy, and Religion doctoral program within the university’s graduate school. His research and writing focuses on interdisciplinary topics connecting religion with the natural and social sciences. He is the author of Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century (SUNY), an interdisciplinary study of plausibility conditions in Christian theology; Science and Religious Anthropology (Ashgate); Religious Philosophy: Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry (completed and under review); Religious and Spiritual Experiences: A Multidisciplinary Inquiry into their Nature, Functions, and Value (completed and under review); Slices of Life: Unconventional Essays in Religious Philosophy (completed and under review). He is author with S. Chapin Garner of a pair of books on liberalism and evangelicalism in the United States called Lost in the Middle? and Found in the Middle! (Alban Institute). He is co-editor with W. Mark Richardson of the textbook Science and Religion: History, Method, Dialogue; and co-editor with Wentzel van Huyssteen and others of Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. He is also author of over seventy articles and book chapters in which he develops his multidisciplinary philosophical and theological perspective. He is a founding director of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, a research institute committed to the scientific study of religion.
Summary
Science and Ultimate Reality is about the constraints that the natural sciences place on theological theories of ultimate reality. The natural-theology ideal of scientific information about nature directly entailing some degree of knowledge about ultimate reality has struggled in recent centuries, despite its modest revival in Intelligent Design theory. The complete independence of theology and the sciences in regard to models of ultimate reality seems equally mistaken. This book defends a constraint-without-determination view of the relationship between fundamental physics and fundamental biology, on the one hand, and theological interpretations of ultimate reality, on the other. It demonstrates that multidisciplinary approaches to such basic questions in metaphysics and theology are necessary and fruitful. Wesley Wildman advances a constructive theological argument, revisiting basic issues at the junction of science, philosophy, and religion with a view to seeing if science can support a more adequate idea of ultimate reality. The conclusion points out that the antecedents of this religious naturalist Ground-of-Being view have classical standing within ancient philosophical and theological traditions in West Asian, South Asian, and East Asian cultural contexts. It argues that a Ground-of-Being account of ultimate reality in a religious naturalist metaphysical framework has great promise for theologians and religious philosophers working closely and compatibly with the natural sciences.
