The compatibility of God with contemporary scientific worldviews

Author: Héctor Velázquez Fernández hvelazqu@mx.up.mx
Published in: Tópicos, 27, pp. 147-164.
Date of publication: 2004

Index

1. Introduction

2. Physical cosmology and its relation to the God of theodicy

3. The Universe as a Caused Object in Current Physical Cosmology

4. The God of Theodicy and the Contemporary Scientific Worldview

5. Creativity and purpose in nature

6. Conclusion: Is God compatible with today's worldview?

Notes

1. Introduction

In a recent and audacious article, Francisco Soler Gil, from the University of Bremen, presents some reflections on contemporary cosmological models that are committed to the contingency of reality and the possibility of appealing from them to Necessary Being, in a way that relates cosmological study and the assertions of theodicy.

In his argument, Soler Gil states that in classical antiquity, rational criteria for access to the divinity were derived from the cosmology of the time, while at the same time important cosmological principles such as the unity of the world and the purpose of nature were concluded from the theodicy; and the same would occur in contemporary cosmology, since according to this author, conclusions could be drawn from it that would support the notion of God studied in the theodicy, as a transcendent being and the ultimate foundation of the beings of the universe.

In these lines I try, from Soler Gil's argumentation and conclusions, to add some reflections of other authors to show how the idea of God sustained by theodicy can have support, not only in contemporary cosmology, but in the contemporary cosmovision in general, since it integrates not only the results of physical cosmology gathered in Soler Gil's exhibition , but also phenomena of complexity and natural self-organisation that allow us to relate physical reality with rationality, contingency and necessity, just as theodicy does in its formulations about God. With this I am trying to overcome the objection that the experimental science of yesterday and today would overcome the supposed irrationality of accepting the existence of God in order to explain phenomena that science itself would be able to explain. This version of scientism is not new, but it is important to show, especially in the light of the current achievements of the sciences, how the results of the sciences bring us rationally closer to the proposal of the God of theodicy.

2. Physical cosmology and its relation to the God of theodicy

In his argument, Soler Gil proposes as a first step to establish the conditions by which an entity can be the object of external causality, which would imply the necessary existence of a cause that explains the presence of that object. Thus, if reality as a whole, that is, the universe, is an object, the necessary cause justifying its appearance would be God.

For Soler Gil, perhaps unlike what happened in classical antiquity, contemporary cosmological approaches do not always convert reality into a causal object; that is, they do not necessarily refer to the God of theodicy. For this author, there are four main ways in which cosmology has historically attempted to relate to theodicy, with unequal results.

(a) Firstly, on the basis of a certain concordism, according to which cosmology would describe a cosmogenesis similar to the one narrated in the Bible; therefore, the partnership between cosmology and theodicy would be almost natural. According to this position, cosmologies that do not take the temporal beginning of the universe as absolute would not be accepted, and would imply considering the biblical account of creation as a univocal, literal and scientific narrative. (b) Another position is to consider the temporal beginning of the universe as creation, with the drawback of confusing creation with temporal origin. (c) Yet another, when cosmology sample the peculiar initial conditions that allowed the appearance of the later Structures of the cosmos, perfectly adjusted as if following a meticulous plan; although in this position, certainly, not all the initial conditions imply the present universe. (d) And yet another, based on the anthropic principle, according to which the universe was designed to give rise to observers within it, either because the unfolding of the universe followed a very clear trajectory that made possible first life and then intelligent observers (weak anthropic principle), or because the emergence of observers in the universe was inexorably marked from the beginning (strong anthropic principle).

These four proposals show, according to Soler Gil, some difficulties to overcome when it comes to relating cosmology and theodicy; but they also throw up another consequence: the possibility of considering the universe as intelligible and under the category of object; so the universe appears as a non-self-sufficient entity and dependent in its existence on a being outside it as an efficient cause *(1). The central point in this argument is to consider that every object has a cause and that the universe as a whole is an object. With this step taken, the legitimate connection between cosmology and theodicy would in a sense be well established. But to conclude that the efficient cause of the object universe had to be so independent of it that it could not be any other object within the universe, implies a further argumentation *(2).

In effect, Soler Gil resolves the question by explaining that if there were within the universe itself another object that could be the cause of the object universe, there would be no reason to deny in turn another cause of that cause, and so on ad infinitum. Degree To deny the resource to infinity Soler Gil appeals to the fact that such an inflation of infinite objects succeeding one another infinitely in efficient causality would multiply the causal entities to such an extent that it would make them absurd.

In my opinion, this criterion for not unnecessarily multiplying causal entities is not entirely conclusive, so that a second criterion derived from it, put forward by Soler Gil, seems to me to be more complete: in any case, even if there is an infinite series of objects as a cause of objects within the universe, this does not take away the character of object from the universe as a whole, so that resource to an infinite series does not solve the problem of the efficient causality of the universe as a whole. Thus, it needs to be established that the universe requires an external efficient cause.

On the other hand, if it is objected that the universe as a whole is an object, then the reference letter to the efficient Cause of the same becomes meaningless. This is why Soler Gil addresses the possible objection to the object character of the cosmos. Although Kant had already suggested the impossibility of considering the cosmos as an object, given that it was impossible for experience to refer sensible intuition to a whole called the universe, nevertheless, if the idea of causality is maintained as the explanation that accounts for the existence of an entity, the explanation that accounts for the presence of the universe as a whole and of each of its parts and phenomena can be postulated as necessary. And if compared to the cosmological quest, there too there is an attempt to establish a sufficient reason for the existence and actual aggregation of the universe entity.

3. The Universe as a Caused Object in Current Physical Cosmology

For Soler Gil, one way to better identify the notion of object assumed in his argument is to return to the Aristotelian concept of substance. For this author, substance would be summarised in Aristotle in three fundamental features: determination (by which a behaviour or peculiar feature of a substance entity can be identified), unity (which alludes to the indivisible or causally unitary character of an entity or a group of entities within one that is substance) and independence (which refers to the capacity of the substance to exist independently of another entity) *(3). Although Soler Gil recognises that certain entities do not satisfy the requirements of substantiality, despite being objects, the fundamental point of a possible partnership between contemporary physical cosmology and theodicy is to explore whether current cosmology establishes the universe as an object-substance, and if so it would suppose a foundation or efficient cause that could not be any of the elements within the object universe as a whole, which would lead to conclude the God of theodicy as that efficient foundation of reality as a whole. But for this relation between cosmology and theodicy to exist, it is first necessary to justify whether contemporary cosmology considers the universe as an object; if the opposite is the case, then no support for theodicy should be sought in contemporary cosmology, as was attempted in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Soler Gil assumes that contemporary physical cosmology based on the big bang recognises the universe as a sought-after object.

This model, also called standard, gathers several moments that throughout the first forty years of the twentieth century were configuring the interpretation of our universe from an initial singularity, with different solutions or future states according to the values of the Friedmann equations included in the model. Soler Gil affirms that this model considers our universe with features of determination, independence and unity, although he recognises that unity would be the worst spared feature, since it is only a unity based on the movement and dynamism of the universe taken as a whole, although with parts that are to a certain extent unconnected in terms of movement and causality *(4). Whereas independence and determinacy would be guaranteed at the moment that the universe as a whole would be the most independent system conceivable, since it is not formulable in this standard model any surrounding environment. Besides, the dependence of the dynamism on the values of the Friedmann equations that fix the future universe from the initial singularity, act as peculiar determining features, which together with the independence and unity make our universe, in the model of the big bang, an object from which its efficient cause must be sought *(5).

But Soler Gil warns that in contemporary cosmology itself, as in quantum cosmology, models can also be established that make the universe a non-object being, that is, without an external foundation or efficient cause for its existence, with a sort of self-contained entity without an external cause. Stephen Hawking and others have been responsible for disseminating a version of cosmology according to which the universe would not have a beginning in any original singularity, and therefore neither a trigger of the beginning ontologically external to the universe. For Hawking, the non-necessity of a creator of the universe is evident in a self-explanatory universe. The condition for the possibility of establishing a self-contained, self-sufficient and self-explanatory universe lies, for Hawking and other authors, in the claim that the creation or appearance of the universe can be explained from a supposed nothingness, taking as such the quantum vacuum *(6).

But in reality, as Soler Gil notes, neither does quantum cosmology violate the characteristics that make our universe a caused physical object. Although there is not yet a sufficiently justified version of quantum cosmology, and even if we had developed and verified it (which is extremely difficult to achieve nowadays), quantum cosmology underlines the object status of the universe because it would continue to be an independent entity (because even in quantum cosmology the universe is a closed system, original, unique, although theoretically parallel universes could have developed which together would still mean "the universe"), but also unitary, because the dynamism derived from the initial conditions affects the whole of the universe; It would also be determinate, since it depends on the dynamical equation that explains its development in time, as well as on the so-called boundary condition that serves as a contrast in order to delimit the dynamism of the universe. Thus, quantum cosmology would not annul the object-condition of the universe either, and could not claim to rule out the research about the cause underlying the existence of that object.

Soler Gil recalls something that often goes unnoticed: if there were no determined, unitary, independent and, in this sense, substantial objects, physics would not exist. The fact that physics can develop explanatory models of these beings sample the rationality, the intelligibility of these objects. And even more, if the physical object to be such is determined, it is not self-sufficient in its existence; especially if we talk about the physical object system universe, since the conditions that determine it, such as the development derived from the dynamic equation of the origin and the boundary condition that makes it possible (according to quantum cosmology), are not derived from the system that is the universe, but are given to it, as Soler Gil *(7) formulates it. If the basic conditions do not come from the system itself, therefore the cause of the system and of the basic conditions must be sought outside the system, as happens with every caused object. This makes the universe as much a caused and determined entity as any of its constituent parts and even elementary parts. Just as the dynamics of subatomic particles can be explained from the Schrödinger equation, so the universe can be explained from the wave function and the boundary condition, as if the universe were a quantum object, but an ordinary object after all: determined, unitary and independent.

Thus, if theodicy assumes a notion of God as a being independent of reality caused or, properly speaking, created by Him, and this implies that reality is not self-sufficient, then the cosmological way of rational access to God remains. The objections that in the history of Philosophy have been raised against such access point against the universe as an ordinary object of experience. But at least physical cosmology stresses that the object studied has the characteristics of any other being in need of a foundation that justifies it. The reference letter to an infinite causality as an explanation would run into the problem that each successive cause from which one would like to derive our universe would have the same characteristics of the universe itself, so that the foundation or cause of the universe as a whole must be alien to it, independent and not derived from it.

Up to this point, Soler Gil's argumentation, which we have glossed, insists only on one of the rational approaches that allow us to relate the God of theodicy with the results of the conquests and interests of experimental science.

In my opinion, his approach can be completed, because not only physical cosmology allows this relation, but the contemporary cosmology as a whole (which includes physical cosmology together with other disciplines), expands much more the character of the object recognised by science and gives additional elements to be able to relate the God of theodicy with the scientific study of reality as a determined, unitary and independent object.

4. The God of Theodicy and the Contemporary Scientific Worldview

Today it is commonplace to recognise that we possess such a Degree complete and unified vision of the physical world that we can speak of a totally new worldview. Complete because it gives coherence to all the knowledge we possess about the various areas of nature, and unified because each of the sectors of nature explains in an impressive hierarchy and continuity the others. Today we know the basic components of the material world that originate the Structures and more organised levels: on the one hand, the microphysical and the physico-chemical level enter into composition and explain the astrophysical level of the subject, and on the other hand, the geological level explains the peculiarities of the Earth, while the biological level underlies the processes of living beings and the human being. The contemporary worldview unifies all experimentally known levels and describes the coordination that allows the subject to function at any of its levels and types of organisation, as a true network of interactions *(8).

At certain points in the development of this new cosmovision, it was suggested that science would definitively exclude the rational reference letter to a God as an explanation of nature and its dynamisms, since given the more or less explicit knowledge of how the subject originated, developed and organised, there would be little sense in reserve any space for God as the cause of the universe that surrounds us. We have already mentioned the case of S. Hawking's cosmology as an example of this position from the world of physics, but there has been no lack of authors such as R. Dawkins who argue the same from biology. However, the current worldview yields results that lead to very different conclusions from those of both scientists.

The core topic of the unity between the various levels integrated in this worldview is at the origin, since all the successive components of the subject were developed from the first elements. Today's morphogenetic theories try to explain the successive emerging complexity, and are particularly relevant today to justify our natural universe; but also the non-equilibrium thermodynamics studied by Prigogine, which deals with dissipative Structures , and Haken's synergetics (whose object is the cooperative phenomena that allow the coordinated functioning of all natural levels), René Thom's catastrophe theory, or chaos theory, which studies singularities and systems sensitive to initial changes. Together, these theories show how the most complex phenomena emerge over time, far from the simplistic view of determinism of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The current worldview sample that physical totalities are formed from cooperative processes due to patterns that are repeated in nature according to certain rhythms: a real set of stable processes that generate complexities that give rise to new ones, in processes of self-organisation. This is precisely the analogy that best describes how subject reveals itself to us today as a dynamic, creative entity, and very different from the image of subject as inert or passive that we had in determinism. Moreover, when subject appears to be passive, it is only as result of various dynamic equilibriums. *(9)

According to the new worldview, not only dynamism and modelling (i.e. the emergence of new spatial and temporal models or Structures of nature) are important in nature's development but also information, as it functions as a set of instructions that are stored, encoded and decoded, making natural systems possible; a kind of materialised rationality with very specific, ordered functions, and in fine-tuned tune with other processes and their own instructions. Information makes it possible to recognise a series of potentialities that unfold according to a very meticulous plan, and this makes our nature a world of diverse levels of emerging complexity open to new structures according to existing potentialities and interaction with the environment. The contemporary worldview brings together the achievements in all areas of science and gives them coherence and unity *(10).

Well, the creativity of nature seriously compromises the deterministic view of the cosmos according to which experimental science would show the impossibility of natural contingency needing a foundation outside nature itself. It was postulated in determinism that the existence of a God and his alleged causal relationship with reality would have to annul natural mechanisms; therefore, either nature possessed regular behaviours alien to any intervention and foundation external to them (self-founded nature), or else phenomena of intervention of divine action in the world should be noted, which would imply behaviours that are neither regular nor accessible to scientific research , since the universe would be subject to divine whim.

When the new worldview was just taking shape, another objection was raised against the possibility of a compatibility between divine existence and natural phenomena, because, according to the objectors, natural creativity would show a universe that would unleash from within dynamic behaviours that from the simple would generate more complex Structures , It would therefore seem impossible to reconcile the existence of God as the foundation of nature and his creativity with natural creativity, since it would seem that if God existed, he would intervene in the universe at such a Degree level that natural creativity would be eliminated.

However, and contrary to what the objection postulates, this natural creativity is presented as the result of the combination of the development and interaction of different dynamisms as a consequence of the information contained within the natural Structures , and although science has delved as never before in its history into the criteria, patterns and phenomena related to this creativity, it does not manage to explain with this description alone the conditions that make this creativity possible. It is the same reason why the universe as a whole in contemporary cosmology did not find in any of its elements the explanation of its given characteristics, as explained above. In this other case, completing the picture, the science that studies natural creativity finds that the explanation of creative phenomena is not found by any of the results of natural creativity: the effect turned into a cause of itself implies the absurdity of having to exist before it in order to be able to cause itself.

Therefore, there would be no contrast between natural creativity and the divine action studied in the God of theodicy, so that experimental science can argue little against the rational possibility of appealing, on the basis of science's characterisation of natural reality, to an extra-natural foundation of nature itself. The being and operation of nature cannot arise from any natural operation, however creative it may be *(11).

It has also been objected from the contemporary worldview that divine action is unnecessary as an object of rational study, since it would clearly oppose the existence of natural evolutionary phenomena. This argument says that if science sample the reality of natural evolution at all scales and the strong random component in the development of that evolution, how to keep divine activity in nature compatible if that activity competes with evolution? Moreover (the objection continues), the undirected and random evolution shown by science would make the postulation of a God as the foundation of natural existence and phenomena irrational, for there can be no governor of the natural world when the natural world behaves as if it does not need such a governor, since the governor would imply a series of directed interventions (by his mind or will) that would make evolution an illusion.

The flaw in this objection is the erroneous identification of divine action with deterministic, necessary, non-contingent phenomena; as if God's action in nature must occur in a single way, with no possible contingency. Thomas Aquinas had already established that when man rationally investigates divine action he tends to believe that it would operate just as it occurs in human action, that is, on the basis of particular concrete events, with a certain hint of necessity once exercised; but against this view Aquinas affirms that the divine action proper to the First Cause is presented as the basis of the existence of the entities that in nature carry out each of the particular events, in which, as particulars, contingency and the combination of random circumstances appear *(12). Therefore, if there is an evolution generated by natural beings themselves as the fruit of their own dynamism, even in that case there would be no reason to consider divine action as irrational or incompatible with natural creativity.

5. Creativity and purpose in nature

However, the same natural evolutionary phenomena studied and assimilated in the contemporary worldview are far from being presented as blind or ontologically random; on the contrary, the new worldview has forced a reinterpretation of evolutionary phenomena based on the notion of self-organisation: there is a combination of random and necessary phenomena, of variations and selections, which make it possible to register a real directionality in evolutionary phenomena.

Indeed, there are several examples of natural tendential behaviours included in the new worldview. In biology, for example, there are phenomena in which there is a conscious anticipation of the agent by way of a finalised action, as occurs in man and in various animal instinctive behaviours; there are also teleonomic phenomena that allow species to reach defined states, notwithstanding fluctuations in the environment, as in the conservation of body temperature or homeostatic reactions in general; also in functional Structures anatomically and physiologically designed to perform some function *(13), and in phenomena such as migration, foraging, courtship and reproduction, where they seem to happen by very specific goal-directed instructions. Most of these phenomena function as open processes in interaction with the environment, through learning or conditioning, incorporating additional information to existing information *(14).

But the same is true in the non-biological world, for the physico-chemical level, from the specific patterns followed by sub-particles to the organisation into atoms, molecules, macromolecules, inorganic and organic Structures , present behaviours where the presence of materialised rationality is clear. Holism, functionality, morphogenesis, information, tendencies, synergy, cooperativity, all dimensions related to teleology in today's worldview, make false the view that finality could not be supported in natural science*(15).

The problem that tends to exclude finalistic tendential phenomena from nature, which would render useless the rational appeal to a God as the ultimate foundation of this directionality, is the misunderstanding about the notion of end. Indeed, if we consider an end as a necessary state of nature, programmed with absolute necessity, and science sample on the other hand includes in its behaviour random phenomena, it is impossible to sustain an end within those processes and irrational to postulate a Designer of that end. Mariano Artigas has addressed this problem and has proposed to understand four ways of considering the end: (i) end as the end of a process, (ii) as the goal of a tendency, (iii) as the value for a subject, (iv) or as the goal of a plan *(16). It is important to look for which of these senses is the one in which the current worldview assumes a natural finality, so that tendential phenomena are compatible with random events and circumstances, and all compatible in turn with the need for a God as the foundation of that finality.

The sense of end closest to that held in the new worldview would be that of end as goal of a tendency, because in this way the initial physical values of the universe are made solidary with the subsequent capacity of the subject to self-organise and react to the influence of the environment, in function of the passage of time. Certainly, the existence of a tendency does not guarantee the arrival at the point to which it tends, but it allows us to accept a certain constancy of the tendential conditions, from which originates the emergence of new forms from the previous conditions *(17).

If we were to speak of natural finality only as the end of a process, it would imply that the current state of nature is definitive and invariable, which is absolutely false in the light of experimental science and the contemporary worldview. And, on the other hand, to understand end only as a value for a subject would imply the absurdity of recognising in nature a conscious rationality and will, more typical of organicist myths such as the myth of Gaia, than of the conquests of current science. On the other hand, the purpose understood as goal of a plan is very close to the sense of goal of a tendency, since in both cases information and interaction with the environment make it possible to explain the tendential phenomena of nature.

6. Conclusion: Is God compatible with today's worldview?

Thus, the current worldview does not support a notion of purpose as the result of a conscious and rational action of nature to arrive at the current states of organisation, nor does it understand nature as a blind mechanism that does not incorporate novelties over time and does not take into account the materialised rationality contained in the information of natural processes. Instead, it does sustain a purpose deduced from the information deployed in processes according to very specific guidelines for interaction with the environment and the incorporation of the already existing Structures .

Today's worldview, instead of considering natural teleology as useless, impossible, unknowable and illegitimate, as did determinism, emphasises how nature possesses possibilities to develop according to current or future circumstances, just as a plan or programme works, open to unfolding, whose end is neither guaranteed nor predetermined, as it depends on the steps that are achieved. Information presents a plastic, open-ended future, requiring decoding of certain precise instructions and interaction with the environment *(18). (18) Certainly, finality does not enter directly into the experimental research , but in the light of the unification of the current worldview it is necessary to consider it because indirectly, tendency phenomena show finality as an explanation of these phenomena.

In this way, the new worldview makes it possible to recognise that in its contingency nature makes previous states solidary with the new ones that succeed it, and sample how in none of the natural phenomena is the explanation of the natural creativity with which the universe operates. We have, then, two ways from the conquests of contemporary experimental science (physical cosmology and experimental worldview), to emphasise that the universe as a whole, taken as a whole, presents traits of self-determination, unity and independence, and that it can therefore be considered as any object, that is, as a being that does not possess in itself the resources to justify the behaviours by which it proceeds and develops.

Neither physical cosmology nor the contemporary worldview as a whole presents a self-justifying or self-organising universe as an explanation of its self-organisation in itself; rather, it presents an entity that operates detonated from outside its own being, or at least leaves open the rational doors to consider it as such. Today's science does not provide the tools, as its deterministic ancestor claimed to have, to show the search for the efficient cause of the object universe as irrational in the face of the conquests of science.

It would be absurd to make the possibility of the God of theodicy depend on the conjunctural conquests of science; this is not what has been attempted in these lines. But it is necessary to point out that cosmology within the current worldview, and this one as a whole, provide elements to show that together with the impressive order, beauty and natural spontaneity, our universe is accompanied by its indelible contingent character, which only refers us to the ineffable magnitude of its First Cause.

Notes

1. SOLER GIL, F.J., "The God of physical cosmology. Reflexiones acerca del modo en que la teología natural puede encontrar un punto de apoyo en los modelos cosmológicos actuales", Thémata, 32, 2004, p. 189.
2. SOLER GIL, F.J., "El Dios de la cosmología...", pp. 186-188.
3. SOLER GIL, F.J., "El Dios de la cosmología...", p. 194.
4. On this point I differ with Soler Gil on the apparent poverty of the unity expressed in the standard model , since Aristotle had already pointed out the possibility of establishing, among many other criteria, the unity of a plural series of realities on the basis of the same common movement. That is to say, not because there is a set of dissimilar parts, is its behaviour, as a whole, less unitary than that of a being whose parts are not separated or are homogeneous. When the parts of a whole are distinguished in act, it is unity by contiguity, while when the parts are not distinguished, it is unity by continuity; certainly, continuous unity is more perfect than contiguous unity, but both are part of the unity proper to physical beings. subject No other unity can be asked of the physical than that of movement in common, so long as we do not speak of unity in the sense of unity by essence or by definition. Cf. ARISTOTHELS, Metaphysics V 1015b36-1016a17; X, 1052a15-1052b18, and VELÁZQUEZ, H, El uno: sus modos y sentidos en la Metafísica de Aristóteles, Cuadernos de yearbook Filosófico, n. 123, Pamplona, pp. 40-45.
5. SOLER GIL, F.J., "El Dios de la cosmología...", p. 195.
6. Cfr. ARTIGAS, M., La mente del Universo, EUNSA, Pamplona, 1999, pp. 165-166. Quantum cosmology studies the initial conditions of the big bang which, because they are so extreme, cannot be explained by general relativity, and therefore requires a quantum theory of gravity that considers our initial universe as a quantum object; and such an object subject describes, according to the Schrödinger equation, a series of dynamic behaviours that will be the different possible states of the universe as it evolves. But to derive any prediction from the initial conditions as a wave function of the universe, a boundary condition needs to be established. Cf. ISHAM, C.J., "Quantum Theories of the Creation of the Universe", in RUSSEL, J., MURPHY, N., ISHAM, J. (Eds.) Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Vatican Observatory Publications, Vatican City State, 1999, 51-89.
7. SOLER GIL, F.J., "El Dios de la cosmología...", p. 199.
8. ARTIGAS, M., The Mind of the Universe..., pp. 184-196. AYALA, F., "Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology", Phylosophy of Science, 37 (1970), pp. 8-9. MAYR, E., Towards A New Philosophy of Biology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, pp. 45, 49.
9. ARTIGAS, M., "Creazione divina e creatività della natura. Dio e l'evoluzione del cosmo", in MARTÍNEZ, R., SANGUINETTI, J. (eds.) Dio e la natura, Armando Editore, Roma, 2002, p. 73.
10. ARTIGAS, M. La mente del Universo..., pp. 147-158.
11. Moreover, the rational exercise sample that contingent natural creativity, being dependent on a being that gives a foundation to its existence, is but part of the divine action; that is, that natural creative processes would be integrated and not excluded in the divine action studied in theodicy.
12. Thomas Aquinas, In duodecim lilbros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio, Marietti- Torino- Roma, 1964, VI, lect. 3, nos. 1202-1222.
13. AYALA, F., "Teleological Explanations... pp. 8-9.
14. MAYR, E., Towards A New Philosophy of Biology, pp. 45, 49. ARTIGAS, M., The Mind of the Universe, pp. 184-190.
15. ARANA, J. subject, Universo, Vida, Tecnos, Madrid, 2001, pp. 503-509.
16. ARTIGAS, M. The Mind of the Universe, pp. 181-190.
17. Thomas Aquinas himself had recognised in nature a tendency towards a determined end, as if the natural elements themselves had an internal dynamism that provoked their unfolding: "Unde patet quod natura nihil est aliud quam ratio cuiusdam artis, scilicet divinae, indita rebus, qua ipsae res moventur ad finem determinatum: sicut si artifex factor navis possit lignis tribuere, quod ex se ipsis moverentur ad navis formam inducendam", In Octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis Expositio, Marietti, Torino-Roma, 1965, II, lect. 18, n. 268.
18. ARTIGAS, M. The Mind of the Universe, pp. 195-196.