Starting Science From God

Many of us these days sense there is something real beyond the scope of naturalistic science. But what? Must mental and religious lives always remain a mystery and never become part of scientific knowledge?

In this well-argued book, physicist Ian Thompson makes a case for a 'scientific theism'. He shows how a following of core postulates of theism leads to novel and useful predictions about the psychology of minds and the physics of materials which should appear in the universe. These predictions constitute a kind of 'theistic science'. It meshes surprisingly well with the structure of reality already revealed by modern quantum field theory and by theories of developmental stages in human minds.

The result is a serious look at a promising new rational structure encompassing theology, psychology and physics.

An integration of science and religious theism
into a science of theism (theistic science),
in which both sides keep their strengths,
and are firmly and logically linked together,
and only a 'few' changes to either.

Unique explanatory advantages of this book:

• Presentation of a science of theism in a realistic manner with explanatory and predictive power.
• Philosophical account of 'substance' in terms of persistent underlying propensities
• Recognition and many examples of 'multiple generative levels' in physics and psychology.
• Presentation of the basis of theism as the consequence of One God existing who is being itself & unselfish-love itself & wisdom itself.
• Principles in more detail:
  1. God is love which is unselfish and cannot love only itself.
  2. God is wisdom as well as love and thereby also power and action.
  3. God is life itself: the source of all dispositions to will, think and act.
  4. Everything in the world is a kind of image of God: minds and also natural objects.
  5. The dispositions of an object are those derivatives of divine power that accord with what is actual about that object.
• Describes an honest, welcoming and living theism
• No reductionist or 'nothing but' explanations of God, spirituality or mentality.
• Prediction that minds exist with spiritual loves, mental thoughts and physical actions within an integrated complex.
• Prediction of internal structure of minds: thoughts of love, of thought and of action.
• Prediction of internal structure of physical degrees: principles of effects (pregeometric physics), propagation of effects (field  theories), and of final affects (quantum mechanics leading to actual selections)
• Prediction of relations between the mental and the physical
• Prediction of relations between the divine and the spiritual+mental: that we receive life according to those actions our loves have made in the past.
• Prediction of spiritual degrees not in terms of expansion/ elevation/ vibration/ dimensions/ nondualism of consciousness, but in terms of principal loves.
• Why progressive evolution of physical forms is necessary to make living & thinking beings like humans.
• Gradual biological, psychological and spiritual build-up is necessary in general, as there are no instant adults.
• That evolutionary fitness must be selected not only naturally, but also theistically according to reception of life from the divine.
• The consciousness is the joint action of love and wisdom. It is not itself causal, but is the operation of spiritual and mental causality.
• That permanent spiritual growth depends on those actions our loves have made with wisdom/faith in the past.
• That some formal modeling is possible within this scientific theism.