Greetings from Quincy

Hello fellow bloggerites,
I’m writing you from Quincy, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. I’m at a three week Science and Open Theology conference. We’ve got 20 or so scholars who espouse some form of openness interacting with various scientists doing work that may — or may not — have implications for our understanding of the future. We are meeting every day for four to five hours, discussing an assortment of issues related to this topic.

I’ve died and gone to heaven!!! (Well, not quite. I miss my wife and friends. But still).

Basically, the conference is on all the stuff that I and some friends are trying to cover in our quirky book called The Cosmic Dance (see excerpts on my homepage–Christus Victor Ministries). We’re two years into the Cosmic Dance project and only have one more chapter to go, so I’m REALLY hoping this Conference confirms my thesis in this book. Basically, we’re looking at how neuroscience, Quantum Physics, Chaoes and Complexity Theory, Non-Equilibrium Dynamics (or Systems Theory), and Relativity Theory affect our understanding of the future. My thesis in The Cosmic Dance is that they all, in various ways, support the concept of the future as partially open. I’m hoping I’m right!

Yesterday we tossed around a lot of different ideas, including the nature of time, different concepts of eternity, the problem of evil, the nature of power, and the history of openness thinking. We don’t all agree on things. Not even close. For example, one very reputable scholar at one point blurted out that the suggestion that Satan had anything to do with nature being the way it is was “the nuttiest idea every suggested.” A lot of people who know my work (esp. Satan and the Problem of Evil) looked at me and burst out laughing — as did I. I let it slide at the time (partly because I’d already talked too much that morning), but I’m sure we’ll come back to it.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on how the conference goes.

Blessings on ya’ll.
Greg