Repository | Book | Chapter
(2013) Models of God and alternative ultimate realities, Dordrecht, Springer.
Three fundamental ideas from common experience have been developed metaphorically and philosophically in religious cultures to symbolize and facilitate human engagement of ultimate reality. These are: (1) the idea of the person, elaborated in assorted ways in theisms, (2) the idea of consciousness, elaborated variously in South Asian religions, and (3) the idea of spontaneous emergence of determinate changes from non-being, typical of East Asian thought. After sketching these developments, the paper presents a brief analysis of ultimate reality as an ontological creative act that cannot be modeled in any sense of one-to-one isomorphism. Then a theory of symbolic engagement is presented that shows how this ultimate reality can, under the right circumstances, be symbolized truly with the metaphors on personhood, consciousness, and spontaneous emergence.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_3
Full citation:
Neville, R. (2013)., Modeling ultimate reality: God, consciousness, and emergence, in J. Diller & A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and alternative ultimate realities, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 19-33.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.