Even the creation of the world is held to be a contingent act, one which God need not have performed. Creation is understood somewhat differently in process thought. It is not the calling into being of that which had no being, but the divine persuasion urging the world toward greater complexity, an increase in order, first of matter and then of life. Divine persuasion by means of aim is the way novelty can be introduced into the world. It depends, to be sure, upon the mentality of the creatures to be affected by possibilities God provides, for only thus can any novelty emerge.
Mentality is required for the actualization of anything really new.
This need not mean, however, as Whitehead thought, that every present actuality must have some degree of mentality. Insofar as actualities repeat successful forms over and over, substituting the form of past actualities as the form for the present, ignoring any divine persuasion as to any variation thereof, actualities may lose their sensitivity. Repetition can dull mentality, so that in time the mentality which used to be active in their predecessors becomes purely vestigial, if at all. Much of the world, its weather, earthquakes, atoms and inorganic molecules may now be impervious to divine influence, however important it may have been in their initial emergence. Aim is communicated by means of form.