Volume 39, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2010
George Allan
Pages 319-333
DOI: 10.5840/process201039227
In Defense of Secularizing Whitehead
This essay responds to Lewis Ford’s “Allan’s Atheism,” in which he assesses a recent essay of mine that finds God an unnecessary and indeed coherence-
destroying addition to Process and Reality. I clarify my position by showing how Whitehead’s notions of physical purpose and aesthetic determination adequately account for the novelty required for an actual occasion’s concrescence and for increases in achieved value. I then criticize Ford’s claim that genuine novelties must have a divine origin and that in Adventures of Ideas the Eros of the Universe refers to God.