I know you have been anxiously awaiting when you can read my M.Div. thesis. Well, good news! Academia.edu has used AI to turn it into a podcast! And their page also used AI to create 12 slides of its points. They are below.
My thesis, or as Vanderbilt called it, Senior Project, is entitled, "The Disjunction Between Scientific Materialism and Classical Theism: A Process Solution." Before getting to the podcast and slides, here is an intro to the subjects concerned.
What is classical theism? In classical theism, God "is believed to have created the entire universe, to rule over it, and to intend to bring it to its fulfillment or realization, to "save it." Classical theism draws on "intuitions and assumptions of Greek philosophy as much as biblical images," says Tyron Inbody.
Catholic Scholasticism developed Aristotelian formulations of God "as absolute, changeless, eternal being or actuality." This idea of impassive immutability remained in the Reformation, though the Reformers emphasized God's sovereignty as unchallenged, absolute power, wholly righteous and gracious. God was understood to have "absolute priority and decisiveness" in divine election.
Always known as powerful in the Jewish and Christian traditions, God was now understood as absolutely omnipotent, able to do anything God chose. "The concept of God's omnipotence is located at the center of classical theism," wrote Inbody, and so is at the heart of theodicy problems. (Theodicy is the theology of the problem of human suffering and evil.)
What is Scientism? Scientism is faith in science. Scientism is faith in science. As the dominant world view of our day, it is considered self validating. Scientism makes two major claims, neither of which, however, are provable using the scientific method:
(1) only science reveals the Real and only science can discover truth;
(2) scientific knowledge of reality is exhaustive, not inherently limited, is holistic and sees reality as reality really is.
The challenge of the new, scientific ways of understanding the world resulted in theological liberalism, which attempted to ensure Christian faith in a world dominated by the increasing power of science. However, "Attempts to render God and the modern world view compatible have been unsuccessful," observed David R. Griffin in God and Religion in the Postmodern World. This has led either to religious pantheism or insulation, which define the disjunction between scientific materialism and theism.
And so, here is the podcast. Slides are below:
