The author of some blog I read made some points that sparked some ideas that I am coming to see a bit more clearly- that the brain is a limiting mechanism so we can function in this limited 4-dimensional material realm. It helps us to focus on just a little of what really is out there. It helps collapse quantum things (part of some greater reality) to observable material things.

Physicists talk about the ?wave function collapse? when some subatomic thing like an electron is observed. It actually exists all over (in more places than one) but when observed in some manner it collapses to a point that the observer can then see it (It changes from wave- all over- to particle in one observable place).

There is simply too much for us to handle out there in ?total reality?. So our brains collapse out of all that greater reality to just enough for us to see (as the mind creates pictures out of all the data it receives- not using all that data input from our senses but enough to make continuous pictures that we see all day). It collapses to what we can handle. Hence, we see regular patterns each day when we open our eyes and our conscious experience mysteriously continues each day.

Oh, its beyond any scientist understanding and I certainly don?t understand it. Weird beyond science fiction.

The author of God Theory also spoke of creation in this way- as a limiting from a greater reality (4 dimensions ?collapsing down? from many more perhaps). Not creating out of nothing (which suits more the materialist view that this observable material reality is all that exists).

Another interesting read, "In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being", is edited by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke. It deals with the doctrine of Panentheism which is defined as the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe so that every part of it exists in him, but (as against pantheism) that his Being is more than and is not exhausted by the universe. The authors claim it is a form of theism. A variety of thinkers contribute chapters, including Paul Davies. They are wrestling with the relation of God to the universe. As one adds, ?the being of God embraces and penetrates the universe?but is in no way exhausted by the universe for God remains utterly transcendent in his imparticipable essence?.

On one hand the book contains some of the questionable traditional theological reasoning that many of us long ago felt we needed to abandon. I mean how much of this can we really know- the old wild goose chase again (trying to know the unknowable). But on the other hand, it is people just like ourselves trying to find better ways of understanding things all of us are curious about.

I appreciated Paul Davies? chapter and his effort to respond to traditional theism and its interventionism beliefs (miracles). He is actually quite a firm theist and does some interesting material on interventionism and naturalism. As he argues, he believes panentheism is the theology that most closely matches his understanding of the relationship between God and the physical universe. I continue to see in him what I feel is an excessive concern to defend a naturalist approach- keeping God separate from so-called natural processes. But if, as he admits in places, God sustains all, including natural law (which I see as simply the regularity of a present God), then why excessively worry about keeping such things separate in your theology? Yes, of course, we do such things for the sensibilities of our atheist friends and to maintain the separation between science and religion, and so on. I see the value in such things. Aside from such a quibble, Davies does a good job of dealing with this interventionist issue. He does some interesting work on explaining how order and chance work together to produce creativity in the universe. This to explain the complexifying trend in the universe and life.

Some quotes- ?there are no miracles except for the miracle of existence itself?the laws (natural laws God created) encourage the universe to behave creatively?God may be more immediately involved in the process of evolutionary change when the laws of nature themselves are an expression of noninterventionist divine agency?the laws of nature can themselves be regarded as expressions of God as long as nature?s novelty and creativity are identified with, not separated from, divine agency?. And so on.

It is a useful work in that as science has challenged so much of previous thinking on such issues people need to find new ways to move forward. New ways of conceiving of theology and its relation to the scientific worldview.

I find the very idea of material existence to be a central miracle here- how do we explain the order of reality. What holds all together and in existence every moment. We don?t even know what atoms are yet. Some mysterious binding of things together in material forms. And what about things like gravity. Why would basic matter order itself together and in the form it took? Nothingness does not do such things. And why a reality with the laws that it has and the direction it has moved toward? As Sheehan suggests, God has incarnated in all this to explore our ?natural? potential. The natural element is primary.

For what its worth- it may help to understand better the wonder of existence and the wonder of being consciously human and comprehending something of it all. The meaning of human existence as God incarnate. And not just God incarnated but God as love incarnated (the ethical responsibility that flows from one?s view of the divine- the revolution Jesus started).

Davies sees the love of God in the unique laws and universe that God created.