Creative Genesis: Escalating Naturalism and Beyond — PTSc 2014

"Creative Genesis: Escalating Naturalism and Beyond," Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences (PTSc) 1(2014):9-23. This is the inaugural issue of this journal, a European-based journal of religion and science, in which Rolston was asked to write the lead paper. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/89526

Does a plausible worldview need some explanations that exceed the natural? Hard naturalisms insist not, but softer, or more open naturalisms find that natural processes can produce ever more complex results — moving from matter to life to mind — in a superb natural history. This invites a religious naturalism, and challenges it. Repeatedly the critical junctures require analysis pressing beyond merely scientific explanations: whether such narrative history is self-explanatory, whether each stage is sufficient for the next when more emerges out of less, what account to give of the creative genesis found in cybernetic genetics, the rise of caring, surprising serendipity, the opening up of new possibility space. Even scientific rationality depends on non-empirical logic, particularly in mathematics. Thoughtful persons are the most remarkable result arising out of natural history. If there is no supernature, at least nature is super. Further still, the intensity of personal experience suggests the Presence of transcending divine Logos, in, with, and under nature.