Instead of asking, “Does God exist?,” let’s ask, “How shall we interact with that wherein we and all others ‘live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28)?”
It’s too late even to ask about the reality of that wherein we and all others live and move and have our being. Nobody seriously doubts the reality of the ever-present. (Maybe that was St. Anselm’s point.)
But it’s not too late to ask what sorts of interactions with this reality are available to us.
Do we interact with this reality only as a “what” or also as a “who”?
People like me who resort to God-talk find ourselves interacting with this reality, at least sometimes, not only as a “what” but also as an exceedingly odd sort of “who.” That’s why we pray. We think our prayers prompt some sort of sympathetic response, however unpredictable.
Are we deluded?
How is it even conceivable that the reality embracing and suffusing quarks and galaxies interacts with me in any way even remotely resembling interpersonal interaction?
Good question.
The appeal of process thought (see below) is that it makes interpersonal-like interaction, even with this reality, not only conceivable but credible. (That depends, of course, on whether process thought is credible.)
It rejects an absolute split between “who-like” and “what-like” interactions at every level.
Process thought claims to appeal to the same evidence that’s available to everybody else—our continual engagement with whatever we take reality to be. It simply offers a different framework that is at least arguably simpler and more elegant.
