ABSTRACT
Atheology of evolution maintains that whatever the immediate causes and mechanisms operative in Darwinian process may be, the ultimate explanation of evolution and of the cosmic process that sponsors it is God. The pure materialist, of course, will claim that nothing more is needed to explain the evolution of life than the bonding properties of atoms, plus chance, plus natural selection and an ample amount of time to experiment with various arrangements. Materialist metaphysical assumptions, according to which the category of “mind” has no essential place in nature, have caused scientific thinkers to ignore, if not explicitly reject, the peculiar reality of subjective experience, which, though not completely objectifiable, is nonetheless something the people all indubitably experience. A cosmos devoid of any actual “subjective” aspects prior to the evolutionary appearance of life leaves theology only two unsatisfactory ways of understanding the relationship of divine action to pre-biotic process.
