Cosmotheology and Process Theology: A Reply to Metaphysics of Exo-Life by Andrew Davis

ABSTRACT

In this paper I engage with the arguments of Andrew Davis’s book Metaphysics of Exo-Life, which is a commentary on my previous work on cosmotheology. I applaud Davis’s critique and deepening of my work in the context of Whitehead’s process theology. I largely agree with his metaphysical deepening of the first three principles of my cosmotheology, dealing with the non-centrality of humanity in the universe and its metaphysical re-centering. But I diverge on his view of the last three principles dealing with the metaphysical necessity of God, the source of value in the universe, and the nature of human destiny.

KEYWORDS:

• Cosmotheology
• biological universe
• extraterrestrial life
• human destiny
• process theology
• value
• Whitehead

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Dick, The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Dick, Life on Other Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); “Cosmic Evolution: History, Culture and Human Destiny,” in Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context, ed. Steven J. Dick and Mark Lupisella (Washington, DC: NASA); Dick, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

2 Andrew M. Davis, Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (Lexington: Lanham and Boulder, 2020); Davis, “Whiteheadian Cosmotheology: Platonic Entities, Divine Realities and Shared Extraterrestrial Values,” in Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy, ed. Andrew M. Davis et al., (Cham: Palgrave, 2022), 423–52; Davis, “From Negation to Exemplification: A Deeper Whiteheadian Cosmotheology,” in Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe, ed. Andrew M. Davis and R. Faber (Lanham: Lexington, 2023); Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage, 2023).

3 Ted Peters, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Life (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018). Peters has been writing on “Exo-theology” as far back as 1995, Peters, “Exo-Theology: Speculations On Extraterrestrial Life,” in The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, ed. J.R. Lewis (Albany: SUNY, 1995), 187–206.

4 Steven J. Dick, Classifying the Cosmos: How We Can Make Sense of the Celestial Landscape (New York: Springer, 2018); Vera Kolb, ed., Handbook of Astrobiology (Boca Raton, London and New York: CRC Press, 2019).

5 Steven J. Dick, ed. Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and the Theological Implications. (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000).

6 Steven J. Dick, “Cosmotheology Revisited: Theological Implications of Extraterrestrial Life,” in Consciencias: actas do Forum International Ciencia, Religiao e Consciencia (Porto, Edições: Universidade Fernando Pessoa, CTEC, 2005), 287–301; Dick, “Kosmotheologie – neu betrachtet,” in Leben im All: Positionen aus Naturwissenschft, Philosophie und Theologie, ed. Tobias Daniel Wabbel, (Dusseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 2005), 156–72; Dick, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact; Dick, “Toward a Constructive Naturalistic Cosmotheology,” in Astrotheology, ed. Peters, 228–44; Dick, “Astrobiology, Cosmotheology, and the Biological Universe: Implications for Religion and Theology,” in Astrophilosophy, ed. Davis, ed.,  (2023), in press.

7 Davis, Astrophilosophy.

8 Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life, Chapters 2, 3, and 4.

9 Steven J. Dick, “Cultural Evolution, the Postbiological Universe and SETI,” International Journal of Astrobiology 2 (2003): 65–74, reprinted in Steven Dick, Space, Time, and Aliens: Collected Works on Cosmos and Culture (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2020), 171–90; Steven J. Dick, “The Postbiological Universe Revisited: Cultural Evolution in the Cosmos,” in Origin of Life and the New Science of Astrobiology: Uniting the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities through Astrobiology, eds. Octavio A. Chon-Torres and J. Seckbach, eds. (New York: Wiley, forthcoming). On the case for the rarity of intelligence in the universe see the now classic Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000).

10 John D. Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1999); P.J. E. Peebles, The Whole Truth: A Cosmologist’s Reflections on the Search for Objective Reality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022).

11 David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), vii; David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts (Albany: State University of New York, 2000).

12 On the nature of superintelligence as it is evolving on Earth, see Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

13 Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life, 68.

14 Ibid., 93.

15 Steven J. Dick, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Nicholas Rescher, “Extraterrestrial Science,” in Science and Alien Intelligence, ed. Edward Regis, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 84–116: 84.

16 Mark Lupisella, Cosmological Theories of Value: Science, Philosophy, and Meaning in Cosmic Evolution (New York, Springer, 2020), 130–1.

17 Derek Malone-France, Deep Empiricism: Kant, Whitehead, and the Necessity of Philosophical Theism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), 113–30, 160–8, 190.

18 Iris Fry, “Is Science Metaphysically Neutral?” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43 (2012): 665–73; Iris Fry, “The Copernican and Darwinian Presuppositions,” in The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth, ed. Steven J. Dick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 23–37.

19 Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998).

20 Dick, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact, 142.

21 Davis, “Whiteheadian Cosmotheology;” Derek Malone-France, private communication, June 17, 2016; Malone-France, Deep Empiricism; Dick, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact, 144–51.

22 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected edition. Edited by D.R. Griffin and D. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 88.

23 Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life, 112.

24 Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 140–3, 212–8; Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism.

25 Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 21–26; 171; Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 14–17; 106n.

26 Stuart A. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Religion and Reason (New York: Basic Books, 2008).

27 Jerome A. Stone, Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010).

28 Mark Lupisella, “Cosmocultural Evolution: The Coevolution of Culture and Cosmos and the Creation of Cosmic Value,” in Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in the Cosmos, eds. Dick and Lupisella (Washington, D.C., NASA, 2009), 321–59. See also Lupisella, Cosmological Theories of Value, and Lupisella “The Connection-Action Principle: A Basis for Process Philosophy, Cosmic Creativity, and Value?” in Astrophilosophy, ed. Davis (2023), in press.

29 Whitehead, in L. Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (Jaffrey: David Godine, 2001), 233–4; Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life, 63; 119–78; Unitarian-Universalist Association, Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, https://uudb.org/articles/charleshartshorne.html. Davis reprints Ford’s essay in his Appendix II.

30 Mark Lupisella, Cosmological Theories of Value.

31 Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life, 112.

32 Ilia Delio, “Extending the Noosphere into Intergalactic Life: Teilhard de Chardin and the Third Axial Age,” In Astrophilosophy, ed. Davis, (2023), in press; see also Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2014).

33 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 3.

34 Davis, Metaphysics of Exo-Life, 29; Whitehead, Process and Reality, xiv, 343.

35 Jerome Stone, Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010), 1. Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (New York: Simon and Schuster).

36 Ted Peters, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Life (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018); Jorg M. Determann, Islam, Science Fiction, and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World. (London, I. B. Taurus, 2021); David Weintraub, Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal with It? (Switzerland: Springer, 2014).

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Steven J. Dick

Steven J. Dick served as the NASA Chief Historian and Director of the NASA History Office from 2003 to 2009, and prior to that as an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory for more than two decades, where he wrote the Observatory's history Sky and Ocean Joined: The U. S. Naval Observatory, 1830-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He has held the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, and has testified before the United States Congress on the subject of astrobiology. He has also held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum. Dick is the author or editor of 25 books, including most recently Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact, (Cambridge, 2018), Classifying the Cosmos: How We Can Make Sense of the Celestial Landscape (Springer, 2019), and Space, Time, and Aliens: Collected Works on Cosmos and Culture (Springer, 2020). He has served as Chair of the Historical Astronomical Division of the AAS, and President of Commission 41 (History of Astronomy) of the IAU. He received the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize from the American Astronomical Society for a career that has significantly influenced the field of the history of astronomy. He is an elected Fellow of the AAS and the AAAS. Minor planet 6544 Stevendick is named in his honor.