Public Forum with George Ellis on “Cosmology and Ultimate Causality”
Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Tucson Room

Feb 24, 2016

The deep issue in both cosmology and human life is what underlies the existence of the laws of nature, which define the possibility space within which the universe and life comes into being. Is the ultimate reason pure chance, probability, necessity, or purpose? Is their nature prescriptive or descriptive? The possibility of meaning and ethics has to have been built into the foundations that gave physical existence its structure, suggesting a higher intention is realised through physical reality. The kind of ethics that is compatible with this view is a kenotic (self-emptying) ethic that invokes a respect for the freedom and integrity of others as a basic principle underlying the nature of existence. As a result, two kinds of causation: intentional and impersonal, which undoubtedly both exist, occur in an intertwined way.

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