Notes

  1. . Even though I have formulated these epistemological questions in a normative manner, I am not dealing directly with the question of the “naturalistic fallacy.” Actually what I am doing is something more radical than moving from “is” to “ought”: I am suggesting that even descriptive concerns, including scientific questions, require a normative formulation whenever there are genuine alternatives to be considered. This is parallel to the writing of some who suggest there are value questions to be considered even in scientific inquiry. See Bruce B. Wavell, “The Rationality of Values,” Zygon 15 (March 1980): 43–56. In the normative formulations I have offered, however, the equivalent of the problem of moving from “is” to “ought” still exists as the problem of how one moves from what we ought to believe and experience to what we ought to do. In other words, after we have decided issues of “true belief” and “real experience” we still have the problem of how these are to be related to future courses of action. This is because, once the decisions are made as to what we ought to believe and experience, we take the combined results of these decisions as at least tentatively descriptive of the way things are. It is a further step (however one which is not addressed in this particular paper) as to how one moves from the way things are to what ought to be done from among the possibilities that in the future may change the way things are.
  2. . In philosophy “knowledge” is usually understood to be “true belief” and hence is only conceptual. However, in religion people often speak of experiential knowledge, and common usage seems to support the notion of behavioral knowledge along the lines I have indicated. See further my definition of “knowledge” below in the section titled “Knowledge in an Evolutionary Perspective.”
  3. . Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1:211–15.
  4. . Cf. Henry Nelson Wieman who suggests that the creativity underlying all felt quality and knowable order is “ultimate in two senses: It is metaphysically ultimate because it is logically prior to all other knowledge and experience; it is religiously ultimate and valuationally (axiologically) ultimate because it brings forth the greatest human good which man can ever experience….” Man's Ultimate Commitment (Carbon‐dale: Southern Illinois University Press, Arcturus Books, 1958), p. 92. Metaphysical and valuational ultimacy are also implied in Frederick Ferre's definition of “religion … as the conscious desiring of whatever (if anything) is considered to be both inclusive in its bearing on one's life and primary in its importance,” or “religion is one's way of valuing most comprehensively and intensively.” Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967), p. 69.
  5. . Luke 17:21, RSV.
  6. . Cf. Harold K. Schilling's discussion of mystery in science and religion in The New Consciousness in Science and Religion (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1973), and Carl Raschke, “From God to Infinity, or How Science Raided Religion's Patent on Mystery,” Zygon 17 (September 1982): 227–42.
  7. . One criticism of the use of the word “ultimate” in a definition of “religion” is that ultimacy implies something singular. If this is so, the very existence of polytheistic religions shows the limits of the definition if “ultimate” implies one final, single reality as the ground of existence, the highest good, and the focus of personal concern. However, the word might still cover polytheistic religions if their various deities can be conceived to make up a single system, for example in a divine family or court. In any case, our definition of religion seems to apply well to the major developed religions of the world, which express a monotheistic or monistic conception of the reality that underlies all existence, and to contemporary naturalism, which views the total universe as the final reality.
  8. . There is a growing body of literature on Alfred North Whitehead and the use of his thinking in religious thought. Important works by Whitehead on the nature of God are Science and the Modern World (1925, New York: New American Library, Mentor Books, 1964); Religion in the Making (1926, New York: World Publishing Company, Meridian Books, 1965); and Process and Reality (1929, New York: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1960). Some good introductions analyzing Whitehead's thought and showing how it may be developed theologically include William A. Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967); Donald W. Sherburne, A Key to Whitehead's “Process and Reality” (New York: Macmillan, 1966); Elizabeth M. Kraus, The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead's “Process and Reality” (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979); and John B. Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965). For the ongoing discussion of process philosophy and theology see the journal Process Studies (Claremont, Calif.: Process Studies, 1971‐).
  9. . Cf. Karl Barth, The Doctrine of the World of God; Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, pt. I, trans. G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936), pp. 124‐35; and Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950), pp. 22–34 What follows is not strictly a Barthian formulation, because Barth limits religious knowledge to special revelation.
  10. . See Saint Paul in Rom. 1:18‐23; also Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (New York: Harper & Brothers, Harper Torchbooks, 1958), pp. 210–65.
  11. . Karl E. Peters, “The Image of God as a Model for Humanization,” Zygon 9 (June 1974): 98‐125; J. Bronowski, “New Concepts in the Evolution of Complexity: Stratified Stability and Unbounded Plans,” Zygon 5 (March 1970): 18‐35; and Ralph Wendell Burhoe, “Natural Selection and God,” Zygon 7 (March 1972): 30‐63, reprinted in Ralph Wendell Burhoe, Toward a Scientific Theology (Belfast: Christian Journals Limited, 1981), pp. 77–111.
  12. . Of course, at the different levels of cosmic evolution there are different mechanisms for variation, selection, and retention of order or information. All that is being asserted here is a common variation‐selection‐retention pattern. Various mechanisms will be specified as we develop our Darwinian model.
  13. . Donald T.Campbell, “Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes,” Psychological Review  67 (1960): 380, n. 2.
  14. . George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 58–61.
  15. . Donald T. Campbell, “Evolutionary Epistemology,” The Philosophy Of Karl Popper, The Library of Living Philosophers, ed. P. A. Schilpp (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1974), 1:423.
  16. . One of Donald T. Campbell's most systematic statements about vicarious selectors is in “Descriptive Epistemology: Psychological, Sociological, and Evolutionary” (William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University, Spring 1977).
  17. . Campbell, “Evolutionary Epistemology,” 1:424.
  18. . Ralph Wendell Burhoe, “The Source of Civilization in the Natural Selection of Coadapted Information in Genes and Culture,” Zygon 11 (September 1976): 263‐303, reprinted in Ralph Wendell Burhoe, Toward a Scientific Theology, pp, 151‐99: idem, “Religion's Role in Human Evolution: The Missing Link between Ape‐man's Selfish Genes and Civilized Altruism,” Zygon 14 June 1979): 135–62, reprinted in Toward a Scientific Theology, pp. 201‐33.
  19. . Paul D.MacLean, “Evolution of the Psychencephalon,” Zygon  17 (June 1982): 201–4.
  20. . Burhoe, “Religion's Role in Human Evolution,” pp. 153–58.
  21. . The development of the idea of resurrection and final judgment in late Judaism is expressed in Dan. 12: 1–3.
  22. . In response to the positivist criticism that religious language is meaningless because its claims are in principle unverifiable by observation, John Hick has suggested that the verification, although not the falsification, of such beliefs as an individual experiencing existence after death or a kingdom of God ruled by Christ could take place after death: if such beliefs are true a person will have a confirming experience after death; however, if the belief in an individual experiencing existence after death is not true, we will not know it. See John Hick, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 150‐63; idem, “Theology and Verification,” Theology Today 17 (April 1960): 12‐31, reprinted in The Existence of God, ed. John Hick (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 252–74.
  23. . MacLean, pp. 204‐9. For a summary of the connections between the neocortex and the limbic system in perception and long‐term memory, see John C. Eccles, The Human Mystery (Berlin: Springer‐Verlag, 1979), pp. 176‐77, 194–203.
  24. . Gen. 1:28. In the finally edited form of the Bible, this is the first commandment God gives to humans.
  25. . See Robert B.Glassman, “An Evolutionary Hypothesis about Teaching and Proselytizing Behaviors,” Zygon  15 (June 1980): 133–54.
  26. . See A. R. Peacocke's summary of the work of Ilya Prigogine and M. Eigen in Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 97‐104, reprinted in “Chance and the Life‐Game,” Zygon 14 (December 1979): 310–15. It is true of course that the mechanisms involved in variation‐selection‐retention at the atomic and molecular level of creation are different from those that create living organisms, just as the mechanisms of biological evolution are different from those of cultural creation. However, the important metaphysical point is that the basic patterns of creation (the variation‐selection‐retention pattern) is universal. If it is universal, then it is metaphysically ultimate. See Peters, “The Image of God (n. 11 above), pp. 104‐23.
  27. . One line of inquiry should examine the recent scientific proposals on punctuated evolution, which if correct would modify the more common Darwinian gradualism. For a detailed discussion of punctualism and its implications for religious thought see Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species (New York: Basic Books, 1981). If punctuated evolution were biologically true, it might serve as an analogue to the phenomenon of sudden, new, religious movements in culture.
  28. . Other factors include the repetitive stimulus of certain rituals, the sensory deprivation of some forms of meditation, and drugs. See Anthony Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 239‐42, and Eugene G. d'Aquili and Charles Laughlin, Jr., ”The Biopsychological Determinants of Religious Ritual Behavior, “Zygon 10 (March 1975): 32‐58. For a discussion of revitalization movements see Wallace, pp. 157‐65, and Solomon H. Katz, ”The Dehumanization and Rehumanization of Science and Society, “Zygon 9 (June 1974): 126–38.
  29. . AnthonyWallace, ”Mazeway Resynthesis: A Biocultural Theory of Religious Inspiration,“  Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences18 (1956): 636–37. Barbara Lex gives another analysis of the same process in ”Neurological Bases of Revitalization Movements,“  Zygon13 (December 1978): 276–312.
  30. . Donald T. Campbell, ”On the Conflicts between Biological and Social Evolution and between Psychology and Moral Tradition, “Zygon 11 (September 1976): 202, reprinted from American Psychologist 30 (1975): 1103–26.
  31. . Peacocke (n. 26 above).
  32. . See Bronowski (n. 11 above), p. 22–24.
  33. . For a more detailed statement of the roles analogy and of affirming the opposite in cultural creation, see Karl E. Peters, ”The Concept of God and the Method of Science: An Exploration of the Possibility of Scientific Theology, “(Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1971), pp. 67‐68, 91–92, 176‐78, and idem, ”Image of God' pp. 109‐12.
  34. . G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
  35. . Kent Danner, ed., The American Wilderness in the Words of John Muir (Waukesha, Wis.: Country Beautiful Corp., 1973), p. 58.
  36. . Peacocke (n. 26 above), pp. 316–17.
  37. . Sir Charles Elliot, Hinduism and Buddhism (London: Edward Arnold, 1921), 2:144, quoted in John B. Noss, Man's Religions, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1980), p. 199.
  38. . Rom. 7:l–8:17.
  39. . Cf. R. B.Lindsay'sthermodynamic imperative” in “The Larger Cybernetics,” Zygon  6 June 1971): 132–34.
  40. . The idea of separate universes of discourse is articulated nicely by Bruce B. Wavell in this Zygon issue. While Wavell cogently describes the methodological problem faced by those who seek to unite in some way science and religion, my suggestion here is that such a unification may be possible if one can develop understandings that meet the criteria of both scientific and religious discourse.
  41. . See for example Campbell, “Blind Variation and Selective Retention” (n. 13 above), “Evolutionary Epistemology” (n. 15 above), “Descriptive Epistemology” (n. 16 above), Donald T. Campbell, “Unjustified Variation and Selective Retention in Scientific Discovery,” Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, ed. F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 139–61, and Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
  42. . Burhoe. ‘Natural Selection and God’ (n. 11 above), and Peters, “The Image of God” (n. 11 above), esp. pp. 104–13.
  43. . Henry N. Wieman. The Source of Human Good (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, Arcturus Books, 1964). esp. pp. 54–83.
  44. . John 15:l–10.
  45. . Ekken Kaibara. “Precepts for Children,” Sources of Japanese Tradition, ed. R. Tsunoda et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), p. 367.
  46. . Martin Buber. I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970).
  47. . Stephen Toulmin, “The Future of Cosmology: Can Science and Natural Theology Get Together Again?–‐The Fire and the Rose” (Lecture delivered at the Divinity School, University of' Chicago, Spring, 1979).