The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World - Paperback

by Bradford McCall (Author), John F. Haught (Foreword by)

This brief title will pursue a triangulation of chance, divine involvement, and theology through a fundamentally Peircean lens--at least epistemologically and semiotically. The argument proceeds over five distinct chapters, and a conclusion that constitutes a sixth chapter. In Part I, I discuss the Modern Synthetic theory in evolutionary biology. In particular, I refer to what I have labeled the secular evolutionary worldview (SEW). Also in Part I, I dismiss the French physicist Pierre-Simon de Laplace's claim that a sufficiently informed intelligence could forecast everything that is going to happen in the whole universe--and, working backwards, tell you everything that did happen, not by direct citation and rebuke, but rather by implicit argumentation and demonstration of the God of Chance. In Part II of this book, I explore the God of chance and purpose, with theological assists provided by Philip Clayton and Alister McGrath over two chapters. So then, we live in a world of both chance and purpose. One may even go so far as to state that this world is designed for both chance and purpose.

Author Biography

Bradford McCall, who possesses four master's degrees, is now preparing to defend his dissertation before the faculty of Claremont School of Theology in California. He is the author of A Modern Relation of Theology and Science Assisted by Emergence and Kenosis (2018); and Evolution: Secular or Sacred? (2020); and editor of God and Gravity: A Philip Clayton Reader on Science and Theology (2018). Several books are contracted, including Macroevolution, Contingency, and Uncontrolling, Amorepotent Love: How God Works in the (Late-)Modern World (2022).