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Rating: Summary: Repetitious and Loose Arguments Review: I read this book hoping to understand the relationship between religion and contemporary worldview a little better, and found myself thoroughly disappointed. The author, despite stating that there is overlapping of ideas between/amongst the chapters, has done little to overcome this - chapters repeat themselves too frequently, and an idea is over-developed to breaking point that one seems to be reading the same old thing all over again with each new chapter. The author also tries too hard to marry religious philosophy and contemporary worldview under his all conclusive concept of `creativity', hence reducing everything living to an extension and expression of creativity. For the author, God is Creativity, who functions as a persuader of, and is persuaded by, other life-forms' creativity - persuasion being the `isness' of existence. This is an interesting concept, but a reader will soon realise that the writer is merely using a lot of jargon to propose his brand of pseudo-pantheism (or, as he calls it, panentheism). Hence, existence is merely the creative force of every living entity (which includes atoms and molecules - yes, even these are living, experiential entities)to connect with the past and shape the future - the `God is Nature, Nature is God' idea. But again, even without God, the world would still carry on rather well if we would follow the book's proposition - after all, everything is essentially creative, able to connect with its past and mould its future, and God is just another, albeit greater, creative being. The author stresses the necessity of God but, unfortunately, reduces God to just one of the many creative entities. But my greatest quarrel with this book, as mentioned earlier, is its repetitiveness, and by repeating this again, you know how annoying it would get.
Rating: Summary: More penetrating insight from Griffin... Review: Yet another well-argued philosophical masterpiece from one of the world's leading Process Theologians, David Ray Griffin. The other reviewer, Andrew Ng, is obviously not familiar with the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, nor with the variety of pre-modern, modern and postmodern theological views. If he were, he would realize that Process Thought is a practical, amazingly thorough, philosophically and ethically sound understanding of God and the world, that's based not on some "ideal", fantasy world, but on the ACTUAL WORLD AS WE EXPERIENCE IT. I've been a "student" of Process Thought for nearly 10 years now, and have yet to find a better, more holistic model of reality. I Highly recommended this,as well as Griffin's other books, and books by John B. Cobb, Jr, Marjorie Suchocki, and Ken Wilber.
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