The multiple operations in which the constituents of the cell engage involve information, directional tendencies, behavior that insofar as it acts to achieve natural goods through sophisticated methods can be considered a manifestation of rationality. It is the overall coherence of the theist s worldview that should impress. It is tempting, of course, to go that one step further and make the wonders of natural self organization an independent argument for God s existence. But from the philosopher s standpoint, it is, to my mind, a temptation calling for critical scrutiny. According to Artigas, it is the emergence of rational beings possessing the sort of creativity attested to by the natural sciences that gives this process of self organization value, and hence allows it to be described in theological terms.
Human beings are in nature, but they somehow also transcend nature.
This is where Artigas integral naturalism comes under severe strain. The spiritual dimensions of the human are not accessible, he claims, to the natural sciences. Only metaphysics or theology can discover them. Artigas dismisses the emergentist solution to this dilemma favored by many naturalists, Christian and other. Yet the idea that the capacities of mind are naturally emergent from the potentialities implicit in the creation from the beginning need not be reductionist.