The Many Faces, and Causes, of Unbelief - Apologetics Press

at ease. Yes, it is! Therefore, in order to help explain what all
of this means in “plain English,” I would like to provide the
following well-written, simplified summary from Winfried
Corduan’s book, Reasonable Faith.
To understand the nature of God in Whitehead’s system,
we must come to terms with how Whitehead
wants us to think of the world.... Put briefly, rather
than thinking of things that change, we ought to think
of changes that take on the forms of things. Take
the following example. Let us say we are watching a
football game. We see players, referees, cheerleaders,
and spectators. They are running, kicking whistling,
clapping, and shouting. Whitehead would want
us to reverse the picture and think of the actions first
with the people second. We observe running, kicking,
whistling, clapping, and shouting which has taken on
the form of players, referees, cheerleaders, and spectators.
The action is of first order. In fact, it would be
correct to say that we are observing “the football game
event.” This is strange language intended to make
the point that nothing is as fundamental to the world
as change. Whitehead even wanted us to think of the
whole universe as one big event.
So when Whitehead says that the world is one big e­
vent, we need to picture it in terms of constant change.
Thus the world must consist of two parts—or poles—
an actual pole and a potential pole. The actual pole is
everything that is true of the world at a given moment.
What is change? Suppose we bake a cake. We mix together
the ingredients and create a batter. Then we
put the batter into the oven and out comes a cake. We
changed the batter into a cake. The batter had the potential
to become a cake, but it was only after the
change took place that it actually was a cake. The potential
cake became the actual cake; in other words,
the potential of the batter to become a cake was actualized.
All change can be understood in this way.
When something changes, a potential has been actualized.
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